Wildlife Advocates Condemn Proposed ‘Barbaric’ Florida Black Bear Hunt

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officials are moving forward with plans for a black bear hunt in the state in December. The proposed 23-day hunt could result in the slaughter of nearly 200 bears — almost five percent of the state’s estimated total.

Opponents are calling it a bloodlust-driven trophy hunt with no scientific basis, reported The Guardian.

“It’s open season. It’s just ‘let’s use everything we have against the bears now.’ It completely blows my mind,” said Adam Sugalski, founder of Bear Defenders, as The Guardian reported.

The proposed hunt would reintroduce “barbaric” practices like chasing and cornering bears with packs of dogs, bear baiting and hunting with bows and arrows.

“They already pulled every protection. You can’t get in trouble for killing a bear, it seems, and now there’s this unregulated hunt. I just kind of feel for these poor souls in the woods with no protections any more, and then they’re about to release the hounds on them,” Sugalski said.

Conservation groups like the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife and the Florida chapter of Sierra Club have said the FWC is using incomplete and outdated data of the bear population to justify the hunt while falsely claiming the killings are a necessary conservation measure.

The FWC has itself admitted that the most recent count of black bear numbers in Florida — approximately 4,050 — was tallied over a decade ago. Additionally, the commission has never set a limit for the population other than noting the number of bears that would exceed the capacity of available habitat and overtax other resources.

A controversial black bear hunt in 2015 resulted in the killing of 305 bears in just two days, including those who were said to be off-limits like mothers, cubs and many bears that weighed less than 100 pounds.

“It’s going to be a brutal massacre, as it has been in the past,” Democratic State Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith told Florida Politics.

“This is not wildlife conservation — it’s cruelty,” Smith said in an email to supporters of a letter-writing campaign urging Governor Ron DeSantis to stop the hunting of black bears in Florida. “And even worse, there will be no oversight to ensure hunters don’t exceed these brutal limits.”

James Scott, campaign coordinator for Speak Up Wekiva and former chair of the Florida chapter of Sierra Club, called the proposed slaughter a “rich man’s hunt… not science-based conservation,” as reported by The Guardian.

Floridians don't want trophy hunts of bears. Speak Up Wekiva responds to tragic bear incident in Jerome, calls on FWC to delay controversial bear hunt vote. theapopkavoice.com/stories/spea…

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“If we got to where bear populations were clearly exceeding the carrying capacity of any given unit, with the negative effects that come with that, that would be justification, a science-based, conservation-based approach to hunting. But they haven’t got anywhere near justifying that,” Scott said. “Instead you have some characters who have worked really hard framing hunting as a conservation tool, and some folks who have ingratiated themselves with commissioners. You also have a commission appointed by the governor, and most of them are land developers. So there are powerful interests that have a financial interest in limiting the growth of the bear population.”

Scott pointed out that the existing FWC Florida Black Bear Management Plan, which was last updated in 2019, stated that the bears were listed as a threatened species in the state as recently as June of 2012, and did not propose that hunting be reintroduced.

“Fortunately, the Florida black bear population is growing. We have more bears now than at any time in the last 100 years, but our conservation efforts are not finished,” the plan said.

The proposed December hunt, approved by the commission earlier this month, seeks to “remove” 187 black bears across four zones.

A petition against the hunt launched by Bear Defenders has over 43,000 signatures.

“You’ve got to think about the money and power of the folks that want to hunt bears. They’re trophy hunters, the kind of guys that can afford to go to Africa and mow down cheetahs and giraffes and lions and stuff. Let’s not kid ourselves here, these guys just want to have a head on a wall,” Scott said, as The Guardian reported.