Florida’s bear hunt is on for this December, but the verdict for 2026 and onward is still out.
A circuit judge in Leon County on Nov. 24 denied a request for an emergency court order to block a limited hunt for this Dec. 6–28 but did not dismiss the overarching lawsuit to have the bear hunting rules declared unconstitutional.
Judge Angela Dempsey said Bear Warriors United’s motion failed to meet the legal threshold, including showing a likelihood of irreparable harm taking place, but she heard enough in the two-hour hearing to entertain the idea of hearing evidence in the full suit.
The dispute rests on whether the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) followed a constitutional mandate to follow scientifically based recommendations in managing wildlife, and adhered to due process when it approved an annual hunt last August.
FWC assistant general counsel Rhonda E. Parnell told Dempsey that the Bear Warriors complaint was not valid, that the public had plenty of opportunities to participate in the process, and in the end Bear Warriors was just “whining” because they lost the debate.
“They have received due process. … Just because you do not agree with the decision does not mean that due process has been violated,” Parnell said.
But Thomas P. Crapps with the Meenan Law Firm in Tallahassee argued that while FWC has a constitutional mandate to be guided by science-based wildlife management, it instead relied on “obsolete data and assumptions … to make a political decision not a scientific one and that is wrong.”
Parnell countered that the agency has constitutional exclusivity in managing wildlife, and that means the question of science is inconsequential to FWC’s decision to authorize a bear hunt.
A bear hunt in Florida: Science or politics?
Even so, the FWC does rely on sound science, Parnell added, and pointed out Bear Warriors’ legal briefs cite FWC’s own data to bolster its case.
But Dempsey allowed Crapps wide latitude, over Parnell’s objections, in his questioning of Michael Orlando, the FWC’s Bear Management Program coordinator.
When Orlando said different population models and demographic research indicate the bear population can support an annual hunt, Crapps asked if he was concerned about a 25% decline in the past decade to about 300 bears in the Osceola bear harvest zone.
Orlando said numbers don’t tell the whole story. Bears have a 60-mile range and some of the Osceola bears may have wandered into the Okefenokee Swamp in South Georgia. He said Georgia estimates there are 600 Florida black bears living on its side of the border.
“But you are not selling permits for people to go across the (state line) and shoot a bear in Georgia, are you?” Crapps said.
“Those bears do exist. They could come back and be harvested in a harvest zone,” Orlando answered.
Courts have upheld FWC’s exclusive constitutional authority to set hunting regulations since 1994, when the state ended bear hunting. That’s when the population had dropped to fewer than a thousand bears. The last hunt was in 2015, after the population had rebounded to 4,000. The FWC estimates there are still about 4,000 bears today.
Dempsey directed Crapps and Parnell to prepare respective version of orders by Dec. 15 in response to FWC’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Parnell told Dempsey if Bear Warriors succeeds in blocking an annual hunt, a precedent will be set in which “courts can supplant the judgment of the Commission.”
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him X: @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Court clears way for this year’s Florida bear hunt
Reporting by James Call, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat
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