The 172 available lottery permits for Florida’s December black bear hunt have mostly been claimed and paid for, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. But it appears that many of those tags won’t actually be used, as they were drawn by anti-hunters looking to thwart the upcoming bear season by keeping tags out of hunters’ hands.
One Florida activist, Steve Rosen, told the Orlando Sentinel Thursday that, to his knowledge, at least 39 of the 172 available lottery permits (around 23 percent of the total) went to anti-hunters. Rosen said he had spent roughly $200,000 of his own money on the lottery. At $5 a pop, this translates to roughly 40,000 lottery tickets, or close to a quarter of the overall submissions. There were 163,459 applications submitted in total, according to the final figures released by FWC after the lottery ended on Sept. 22.
Rosen, who used at least some of that money to fund entries for other anti-hunters, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Outdoor Life Friday. In a Facebook post on Sept. 20, the local anti-hunting group, Angels In Distress, had told its followers who oppose the bear hunt that Rosen, the group’s director, would pay for their hunting licenses as well as their entry fees. It’s unclear if Rosen was planning to pay the additional fee — $100 for residents and $300 for nonresidents — required for a lottery winner to claim their black bear tag.
“There are probably others that filed on their own and won permits but I am not aware of them,” Rosen told the Sentinel.
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This effort to undermine state wildlife managers and disenfranchise hunters by gumming up the lottery system has been underway since this summer, when Florida wildlife commissioners voted unanimously to reinstate the hunt amid pushback from local animal-rights advocates. And while local groups like Bear Warriors United have played a role, the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club has spearheaded the “Bag a Tag, Spear a Bear” campaign.
In September, when the lottery was still underway, the Sierra Club posted a tutorial video showing people how to buy a hunting license online, which was a requirement for lottery entrants. The Sierra Club specifically showed purchasers how to check a box to request a deferral from Florida’s hunter education requirements. (Under the deferral program, FWC allows those without hunter’s ed to hunt with someone who already has their hunter ed or is exempt from those requirements.)
FWC communications director Shannon Knowles told OL in September that the agency was aware of this campaign to thwart the hunt. She said they weren’t overly concerned about it having any real impact on the hunt, which is slated to run from Dec. 6 to 28.
As many local hunters have also pointed out, any impacts that the anti-hunting campaign has on this year’s bear hunt will likely come out in the wash next year, as state wildlife managers could raise the overall black bear quota to make up for the tags that go unfilled this winter.
Knowles confirmed this likelihood with OL, pointing out that FWC will evaluate hunter success and the number of unused permits after the hunt, and that this data will be used to shape future seasons. Although it’s unclear if anti-hunters will keep pouring money into the “Bag a Tag” campaign in the years to come, Knowles also noted that “any money paid for permits will be used for conservation.”
The black bear hunt this December will be the first to take place in Florida in a decade. Anti-hunting activists have continued to push back on the hunt in other ways, such as filing lawsuits against the FWC to try and block the hunt from proceeding as planned. A lawsuit filed last month accuses the agency of violating due process and using outddated population data to reinstate the controversial hunt.
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State wildlife managers, meanwhile, estimate that there are at least 4,000 bears in Florida as of 2023, and that this population could reach more than 11,000 by 2026 if left unchecked. They say that reinstating a regulated hunting season is the best way to manage these numbers.
“Hunting allows the FWC to start managing population growth rates for the Bear Management Units, or BMUs, with the largest bear subpopulations,” the agency explains on its website. “Slowing population growth will help balance population numbers with suitable habitat, and hunting is an important and effective tool that is used to manage wildlife populations across the world.”
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