Florida hunters may celebrate this holiday season with three weeks of bear hunting.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is working on a plan to issue 187 permits to harvest black bears in mid-December. A permit allows the harvest of one bear.
After FWC staff updated the commission on a bear management plan during a meeting last December, FWC Chair Rodney Barreto called for staff to develop a bear hunting option for commissioners to consider. There are an estimated 4,003 bears in fragmented habitats across the state.
The state’s wildlife biologists plan to present rules for a bear hunt this upcoming December to the commission at a meeting in May, and those rules will be voted on in August. Opponents, however, already are raising an alarm, with one saying they “don’t want trophy killing.”
Florida black bear once listed as threatened species
The Florida black bear, a distinct subspecies of the American black bear, was listed as a threatened species as recently as 2012; the population had dwindled to about 500 in the mid-1970s.
The rebound in bear population combined with a significant increase in the human population – more than tripling since 1970 – has led to an increase in human bear encounters and public complaints.
Tallahassee’s state capital had a famous black bear run-in in 2007. Wildlife officers had to shoot a tranquillizer dart into a 200-pound male bear that wandered into town and up a tree near the Thomasville Road Whataburger in Midtown. That bear was euthanized after the FWC determined it was a repeat visitor from the Apalachicola National Forest.
One Florida Panhandle sheriff has even taked to Facebook to plead with the FWC for help. Franklin County Sheriff A.J. “Tony” Smith said the once reclusive animals now boldly roam the streets of Carrabelle, have broken into homes in St. Teresa and have startled a Lanark Village resident who found one snoozing on her porch.
Complaints by Smith and others led lawmakers to pass The Self Defense Act of 2024, that allows the taking of bears without a license if a person “reasonably believed that his or her action was necessary to avoid an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to himself or herself, or a pet.”
The FWC fielded more than 7,000 nuisance bear calls in 2023, up from 2,000 in 2016.
“As the bear population grows and development occurs, we are probably going to see more bears move into developed areas. So that’s one reason we want to try to manage bear population growth,” said the FWC’s Morgan Richardson at the start of the first virtual meeting.
More than 200 people were on the call with Richardson and other officials, including a biologist who specializes in “imperiled species.” Many of the public speakers opposed a hunt and objected to the FWC’s use of terms such as “harvest” and “management” instead of “hunting” and “killing.”
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Environmental attorney Chuck O’Neal said the virtual meeting appeared to be an exercise for the FWC to “fine tune” the rules for the proposals they will deliver to the commissioners.
Others called for the FWC to deploy more wildlife officers into the field to regulate the hunt more closely, and to take the money raised with the sale of hunting permits and plow it back into bear management.
“We don’t want trophy killing. We want responsible bear management and that includes buying land for conservation so our wildlife can survive,” Katrina Shadix of Bear Warrior United said.
Under a proposal outlined in three virtual public meetings last week, there will be a $5 application fee to enter a random drawing for a permit. If selected, a bear hunting permit would be $100 for a resident, $300 for non-residents.
According to the FWC presentation, a proposed harvest quota of 187 bears was selected to reach the number of females needed to achieve a zero percent bear population growth. The draft of the proposal that will be presented to commissioners is expected to be ready for public review by May 7.
What to know
The 31 counties where bears may be hunted
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida may allow 187 black bears to be hunted in December
Reporting by James Call, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat
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