What is going on with the black bear hunt, does the FWC even know? We have a 3-week hunt with no monitoring or check stations.
This hunt goes against the North America model for wildlife conservation as well as the FWCs own bear management plan. For example: FWC scientists estimated the number of bears in the Oceola unit as being below 200. Yet FWC decided to move forward with the hunt despite the science requiring a 200-bear minimum just to maintain genetic diversity and viability for a given population.
FWC commissioners asked the staff to present a hunt option despite staff recommending no hunt was needed at this time last December. Once the staff did their job and presented an option for a hunt the FWC commissioner Rodney Barretto turned the tables and said it was staffs’ idea to have a hunt!
The FWC approved the worst possible options for this hunt: No monitoring, no check stations or oversight of any kind throwing the door wide open for poaching and multiple bears being taken or maimed and left dying. The tag system without check stations is senseless.
The hunt at the end of 2026 will be even more egregious: Allowing baiting stations (that’s not a hunt at all!) it’s a coward’s way to bait the animals and then simply shoot them once they have come for an easy meal. And allowing hunters to train packs of dogs on frantic bears that can’t distinguish between male, female, yearling bears or mother bears with dependent cubs. In 2015 the hunt had to be called off after 48 hours because over 300 bears had already been killed! Yes. 38 of those bears were lactating mothers, leaving an estimated 72-114 orphaned cubs in the woods to starve. We knew this because there were monitoring and check stations!
Has the FWC not reported the number of bears killed because very few tags have been turned in so far? This would stand to reason, as the way the hunt was designed a hunter could potentially go out and kill multiple bears during the first two weeks and then on the third week kill another bear and place a tag on that one.
At a time when Ireland recently banned fox hunting with dogs (an age-old tradition there) Mexico banned bull fighting and Costa Rica banned hunting as a sport, the state of Florida has legalized extreme animal abuse by allowing an upcoming hunt to bait bears and then sic dogs on them. This is disgusting and barbaric.
Pam Bondi prosecuted a case in 2018 where bears were being baited and then dogs sicced on them. Everyone should view that footage so they will know of the horror legalized by FWC commissioners! Video taken by the perpetrators clearly shows exhausted bears being attacked after a second pack of fresh hounds were released on them! What do you think happens when an exhausted cub lags? They are literally ripped apart by a pack of hounds. No one in their right mind could find this acceptable!
The FWC is pandering to special interest groups! Through twisted logic Commission Chair Rodney Baretto has essentially reverse engineered the science to create an unwarranted trophy hunt!
The FWC must be reformed. They have set forth a hunt without proper monitoring, no check stations no current science and more horrors to come.
Our black bear deserves better; our people deserve better.
Bobbie Lee Davenport is vice chair, Responsible Growth Management Coalition.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Florida bear hunt is disgusting and barbaric | Opinion
Reporting by Bobbie Lee Davenport / Fort Myers News-Press
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