A brand new poll shows that a supermajority of Florida voters, 81%, do not want a bear hunt

Kate MacFall

https://www.news-press.com/story/opinion/2025/05/18/black-bears-deserve-protection-not-a-trophy-hunt-opinion/83639208007/

• The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) is proposing a new black bear hunting season despite public opposition and concerns about its impact on the bear population.
• The proposed hunt includes a three-week season, use of hounds, baiting, and potential for bow and arrow hunting, raising ethical and management concerns.
• Critics argue that focusing on human behavior changes, such as securing garbage and removing food attractants, is a more effective way to manage human-bear conflicts.
• The author contends that the hunt is unnecessary and poses a risk to the genetic diversity and survival of Florida’s black bear population.

The hunting of Florida black bears is a matter of science, numbers and stewardship, and right now, it looks like the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission is coming out wrong on all three. The FWC staff proposal refers to a new bear hunting season as a “highly regulated hunt.” It’s more likely a tragic trophy hunt on Florida’s black bears that will likely embarrass our state. It’s a hunt almost no one in Florida wants. A brand new poll shows that a supermajority of Florida voters, 81%, do not want a bear hunt, and even more — 89% — oppose hounding and 86% oppose baiting bears at “feeding stations.”

In 2014 and 2015, biologists conducted surveys of Florida’s bears in their core areas and suggested that there might be a mere 4,000 individuals spread across the entire state. Most of these subpopulations are not interconnected as their habitats are fragmented by human developments and highways.

In 2015, the FWC set a week-long season on bears but shut down the hunt in just 48 hours because trophy hunters killed over 300 of them. Sixty percent were females, many of them mothers.

Trophy hunters are even shamelessly taking advantage of the recent tragic bear-related death in Collier County; even as sound science shows hunting won’t prevent such incidents. Yet, FWC admits that randomly hunting bears won’t stop them from entering neighborhoods.

Changing human behaviors will. Securing garbage, removing bird feeders, and eliminating food attractants are far more effective than random hunts. In a Florida black bear study, FWC biologists found that securing bear attractants reduced human-bear interactions by 54% and reduced the chances of bears eating garbage to “zero percent.”Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

In data gathered from 34 bear-hunting states, we found that while the number of bears hunted has increased nationwide, conflicts did not decrease.

Instead of such sensible measures, FWC proposes to give trophy hunters a three-week-long season with 24 hours to call in their bear kills (to help determine when a unit quota has been filled). The 24-hour delay could result in hunters far exceeding the 187-bear quota.

FWC has in mind to permit up to ten people and six hounds to chase terrified bears through Florida’s swamps and wildlands. Once the bears were treed or cornered, hunters would get an easy and unfair shot. Hounding results in other terrible outcomes, as the hounds chase bears onto roads where they are struck by motorists, kill non-target animals including endangered panther kittens, bear cubs and deer fawns.

In addition, FWC is considering allowing private landowners to lure bears to bait piles to reinforce a taste for free, easy meals. Soon enough, however, they’ll become live targets for trophy hunters hiding behind blinds.

FWC may also authorize bow and arrow killing or archery hunting. The massive bones and thick coat of a bear make it hard for hunters to achieve a quick kill. All too often, bears wounded by bow-and-arrow hunters flee, only to die slowly from blood loss or infection.

Adding to the mayhem, FWC may allow trophy hunters to “dress” (gut and butcher) bears in the field. This could lead to misreporting the sex of bears to hide the number of females killed, particularly lactating mothers, or to cover up the killing of cubs. Nor does FWC intend to require hunters to immediately check in at an FWC station with their bears, perhaps to avoid public scrutiny. In Florida, less than 1% of residents hold hunting licenses, and only a fraction would ever hunt bears.

Bears have been balancing their ecosystems for millennia, spreading saw palmetto and other seeds across vast distances and helping to regenerate plant life. They break apart logs, speeding up decomposition and soil enrichment. Their movements through forests create spaces in which sunlight can reach the ground, encouraging diverse plant growth. We’d be doing bears no favor if we authorized a trophy hunt, which will certainly undermine the genetic diversity of their populations, with profound ramifications for their survival in Florida’s increasingly volatile weather systems.

It amounts to this. Black bears are too valuable to our state to see them put at risk in so reckless a fashion. There is no need to kill them for something so frivolous as a trophy part or bragging rights, and we simply shouldn’t let it happen. The simple truth in 21st century Florida is that black bears deserve both our mercy and our protection, and we should adopt public policies shaped by that conviction.

Kate MacFall is the Florida state director for Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the United States.