As black bears continue to flourish across Florida, state wildlife officials are revisiting the possibility of an upcoming regulated bear hunt. The public will have an opportunity to weigh in on the options for the proposed hunt at a virtual public meeting on March 13.
The state’s bear population has rebounded from just a few hundred bears in the 1970s to more than 4,000 as of 2023 — with the potential to reach more than 11,000 animals by 2026. Black bear season has been closed in Florida since 1994, with the exception of a conservative hunt in fall 2015.
Officials closed the 2015 season after just two days and 306 bears were tagged. They stopped it just ahead of the 320-bear quota, in part because the number of bears harvested was much higher than expected in certain bear management units. The FWC chalks that up to the fact that bears hadn’t been hunted in two decades, and that bear populations in certain management units were significantly higher than the last population estimate.
Overall hunter success rates aligned with similar hunts in other states (nearly 11 percent in the East Panhandle Bear Management Unit, for instance). A local anti-hunting group sued Florida over the hunt anyway, challenging — in part — the constitutionality of the hunt with support from the usual suspects like the Center for Biological Diversity. The suit was later dropped. Since then, Floridians voted to amend their constitution with the right to hunt and fish, though it’s unclear if such an amendment will have any teeth in the face of a similar lawsuit.
The fallout from that 2015 hunt was a bit of a political and PR nightmare, says Richard Martinez, the chapter chair for Florida Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. The state sold an unlimited number of tags, and there were anti-hunting protests at check stations.
“[A black bear hunt] seems a little more favorable to bring back right now. The only question is, how are they going to do that?” says Martinez. “Is it going to be managed better this time? We’d love to see something closer to the way alligator tags are managed. The FWC allocates a certain amount of tags and that’s how many tags are sold, so there’s no real chance for overharvest of the bears. We support a hunt. From what we understand of the science, the resource is there and the population can sustain it.”
Human-bear conflicts remain a growing problem across the state, with bear-related calls up 42 percent since 2016. About 40 percent of those calls are complaints about bears, while others are simply sightings. Meanwhile local governments have received $2.1 million for bear-proofing trashcans.
“Black bears are doing well in Florida,” says Martinez. “The only real enemy of black bears in Florida is development. And unfortunately we’re losing so much habitat. Bears are being displaced, they’re moving into neighborhoods, they’re getting hit on the road, nuisance bears are being removed. So why not let hunters take that on both financially and just from a harvest perspective?”
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For instance, from 2015 to 2024, a total of 2,675 Florida black bears were struck by cars across the state. And the absence of a hunt doesn’t mean black bears aren’t being killed. FWC reports that between 2009 and 2018, employees killed an average of 38 bears each year that posed a public safety risk.
Officials are revisiting the hunt now according to guidelines outlined in the 2019 Bear Management Plan. If you want to speak up on behalf of a hunt, you can email your comments to [email protected]. You can also join the virtual public meeting scheduled for March 13 at 6 p.m. EDT.
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