Florida Ready To Take Another Look At Bears, Bear Hunts

April 13, 2017

Florida game officials will get an update next week on the state’s growing black bear population, a discussion animal-rights supporters contend is a first step toward holding a hunt later this year.

A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission staff update that will be presented April 19 at the Florida Public Safety Institute in Havana — northwest of Tallahassee — doesn’t include “anything specific” about holding a bear hunt this year, said Thomas Eason, director of the commission’s habitat and species conservation division.

“However, with that said, at all of the previous commission meetings recently, the public has come and talked about bear hunting,” Eason said Monday. “We anticipate that likely will happen again, and our commissioners can always engage on that topic if they wish to do so.”

Hunting backers have argued that a hunt is one way to manage bear populations and to reduce potentially dangerous bear-human interactions.

A one-page agenda item on bear management for the meeting says, “This presentation is for informational purposes and any direction the commission may want to provide staff.”

Bear hunting has been a controversial issue since the commission in 2015 allowed the first bear hunt in more than 20 years. The commission decided against holding a hunt in 2016.

Animal-rights supporters consider such hunts as trophy excursions and question the agency’s bear population numbers.

“The bear population is so fragmented, and there are so many bears hit by cars, we should be conserving them and helping connect the different subpopulations with safe passages over interstates and things like that,” said Kate MacFall of the Humane Society of the United States. “Floridians don’t want a hunt.”

Chuck O’Neal of the Seminole County group Speak Up Wekiva said that if the commission plans to start 2017 hunt discussions, it will happen at this month’s meeting.

The commission meets quarterly, and directions would have to be given at the meeting in Havana for staff to outline a fall hunt — from the days and locations to permit requirements — that could be voted on at a July meeting in the Kissimmee area and a late September meeting in Okeechobee.

“They need to let what they’re doing take effect,” said O’Neal, whose group was among those that went to court to try to stop the 2015 hunt in court. “The number of nuisance calls is down. It’s well known the number of bear conflicts, where there is a result of injuries, is way down. It’s working. There is no reason why they should even contemplate even having a hunt if what they’re doing is working.”

After 304 bears were killed in two days during the 2015 hunt, the commission narrowly rejected a hunt last year. The decision was to give the agency more time to build a case for future hunts and to provide more time for non-lethal efforts to reduce human-bear conflicts to take hold.

The agency used money from the state and through fees paid for bear hunting permits in 2015 to spread $825,000 across 12 counties — Seminole, Lake, Orange, Santa Rosa, Collier, Franklin, Gulf, Leon, Marion, Putnam, Volusia and Wakulla — to increase the use of bear-proof trash containers.

Also, after the 2015 hunt, the agency completed a population estimate that raised the number of bears in the state from just over 3,000 to 4,350.

“A growing bear population is good to see,” Eason said. “A lot of us have worked hard to recover bears in Florida. They continue to do well, and that is why we are looking at all aspects of bear management.”

The staff update comes as the number of bear-related calls has fallen from 6,688 in 2014 to 6,088 in 2015 and 5,132 last year, according to the state agency.

In February, Eason advised state lawmakers that a number of factors could be involved in the reductions in calls: an abundance of natural foods that would make bears less likely to come into more-urban areas; work in 2015 and 2016 to relocate about 100 bears that were generating the most calls; and the impact of a 2015 hunt and the public reaction to the hunt.

“There’s been strong reaction to the bear hunt,” Eason told members of the House Agriculture & Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee. “We definitely get reports that people are not calling in when they maybe would have in the past.”

Jacki Lopez, the Center for Biological Diversity’s Florida director, noted that a recent Colorado Parks and Wildlife study found that an increase in bear-human conflicts was more a sign that the creatures adapted to urban expansion into their habitats rather than a growth in population.

“It supports our position that if the real reason for a hunt is to address a growing so-called problem bear population, hunting is not the correct tool to address that problem,” Lopez said in an email.

by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida

NorthEscambia.com file photo.

Comments

5 Responses to “Florida Ready To Take Another Look At Bears, Bear Hunts”

  1. Rocky on April 15th, 2017 3:03 pm

    And, your assumption that there are so few bear is based upon exactly what Kathy?

    Given the numbers FWC reported in their 2000 survey, and reports on reproductive rate of black bear in studies they included in the initial Black Bear Management Plan, the population should be 4 times what they currently suggest. Additional studies conducted in the Ocala National Forest however placed reproduction and the survival rate of black bear cubs at nearly twice what the study cited in the initial management plan reported.

    Furthermore less than 30% of the total area of the state was surveyed in their study, as the management plan clearly indicates that only Primary Habit is surveyed. It also states that secondary habitat is difficult to survey so they don’t. Cities and densely populated urban areas are not considered habitat, and are not surveyed. Given that synopsis in their theory, once the carrying capacity of primary habitat is reached, the black bear population will never expand, although they KNOW that those bear in excess of said carrying capacity are moving into secondary habitat and cities. Again Ludicrous at best!

  2. Pensacola Ed on April 15th, 2017 8:13 am

    Kathy,

    I have an idea, why not let the EXPERTS manage the Bear Population, like they manage the population of every other animal in the State. these animals have no fear of humans, from being protected for so many years. Their population is stable and sustainable. Wildlife should be managed by SCIENCE, not emotion.

  3. Rocky on April 14th, 2017 5:11 pm

    It would appear to me that Eason left out one scenario… Maybe those that continue to have problems with nuisance bear have had enough, and quit calling, because they realize the Game Commission is too busy listening to bunny huggers to do their jobs, and those people are dealing with problem bears themselves.

  4. Sedition on April 14th, 2017 3:39 pm

    @Kathy

    Oh, it’s going to happen…you can bet on that.

  5. Kathy on April 14th, 2017 10:47 am

    It should be illegal to kill a Black Bear. There are so few, I hope the never make it legal.

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News