JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – More than 300 bears were killed last year in Florida’s first bear hunt in 20 years. Despite widespread public outcry from animal rights groups, the hunt went on as planned.
Will bears be hunted again this year after the controversial 2015 bear season? There’s still plenty of opposition, but officials at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission gathered Wednesday for a discussion and a vote. They are recommending another scaled-back hunt.
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Hunter Bill George traveled all the way from Zephyr Hills up to Eastpoint, Florida, a small Panhandle town where state officials debated the future of bear hunting in Florida.
"We have very stable, large populations of bears in Florida, and there’s enough bears to hunt,” George said.
George agreed with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission that the state can sustain another black bear hunt. The hunt in 2015 was the first in 20 years and resulted in 304 bears being killed in two days.
Maria Bolton-Goubert, from Orlando, said FWC isn’t listening to a majority of the public in opposing the hunt.
“Cubs and mothers were impacted, and to me that took away from what I thought they wanted with this hunt,” Maria Bolton-Goubert said.
South Florida Wildlands Association executive director Matthew Scwartz said the black bear won’t survive hunts as long as the population keeps going up.
“This is not going to support the black bear population that we have right now,” Scwartz said. “It’s not going to support virtually any wildlife.”
But FWC officials said the bear population is healthy, and hunting can help control population and conflicts with humans.
“We have very strong, growing bear populations,” Dr. Thomas Eason, with FWC Habitat and Species Conservation, said.
Leah Reeder was attacked by a bear in Eastpoint in 2014. She survived, and her family now supports the hunt.
The National Rifle Association has expressed support for the people who want the hunt.. Opponents said killing the animals won’t cut down on interactions with humans. They said time and money needs to be spent, instead, on getting bears away from neighborhoods. This would include taking measures to make trash cans bear-proof. Overall, they said, the proposals currently on the table aren't good enough.
“They are proposing different things and trying to make us feel better about killing bears and we as the public, we as bear lovers, are saying, 'You don’t understand. We don’t want the hunt at all,'” Laura Bevan, from the Humane Society, said.
Outside the meeting, FWC had other bear management tools on display, including bear-proof trash cans.
FWC staff recommended a scaled-back hunt for 2016, including limiting hunting permits and breaking the season up into three four-day seasons.
FWC will consider several options, including:
- Holding this year's hunt with the same rules we saw last year.
- Having a scaled-down hunt that would include more restrictions on hunters.
- Postponing a hunt this year, but reconsidering it in 2017.
- Doing away with bear hunting altogether.
More than 100 people signed up for public comment and spoke for more than four hours. As of Wednesday night, commissioners had yet to vote on a bear hunt option.