Wildlife groups have condemned a decision by regulators in Florida to allow the hunting of black bears for the first time in a decade, and to permit “barbaric” practices including the use of bait traps, archery and dog packs.
The unanimous vote by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) on Wednesday to approve a limited hunting season in December followed a presentation from staff insisting that a rising bear population and increasing encounters with humans warranted a reduction in numbers.
In May, officials investigated what was believed to be the first fatal mauling of a person by a black bear in the state.
But many protesters who spoke at the FWC meeting in Havana said the decision turned back the clock on decades of recovery of the once endangered species.
They criticized the hunt as “legalized animal cruelty”, and said commissioners were using flawed science to justify its approval, including estimates of bear numbers instead of a formal census that will not be complete for another five years.
“This ill-conceived bear hunt will endanger an already threatened animal and open the door to destruction of critical wilderness habitat throughout Florida,” Susannah Randolph, chapter director of the Sierra Club, told the panel.
“Is our future one of pictures of trophy hunters standing over dead animals in vast concrete parking lots? [Florida governor] Ron DeSantis could stop this hunt right now and leave an enduring legacy for our children and grandchildren.”
More than 160 members of the public spoke at the highly charged meeting that effectively rubber-stamped rules approved provisionally by commissioners in May. FWC will issue permits for the cull of 187 bears, almost 5% of Florida’s estimated total of 4,000, over a 23-day hunt starting 6 December in four subpopulations where numbers are considered to be healthy.
Several speakers said methods of hunting that will be permitted – including bows and arrows, luring bears with food traps, and setting trained dogs on their prey beginning in 2027 – belied the state’s assertion that it was a conservation measure.
The use of hounds is allowed in only 17 of the 32 states that permit bear hunting.
“It’s just slaughter and torture,” said Adam Sugalski, founder of the wildlife advocacy group Bear Defenders.
“Using dogs is legalized animal cruelty. The dogs will be phased in over the next few years after they’re trained, meaning in the off-season you can just run your dogs to the woods and chase bears just for fun, and kill them.”
Others pointed to the 2015 debacle of Florida’s most recent hunt, which was halted prematurely when 300 bears were killed inside 48 hours, and hunters, including an FWC commissioner who had voted to approve it, were accused of illegally killing pregnant bears, new mothers and cubs.
Steve Meyers, an attorney who worked on a lawsuit to try to prevent that hunt, noted on Wednesday that all seven current FWC commissioners were appointed or reconfirmed by DeSantis.
“The imagery of a Ron DeSantis bear hunt is not going to be a harvest, it’s going to be the lifeless bodies of black bears hanging upside down with blood pouring out of their mouths,” he said.
“The media doesn’t need pictures from this hunt. The ones from the last hunt will be just fine. Ron DeSantis’s face will be wedded to that imagery.”
George Warthen, the FWC’s director of hunting and game management, conceded that the public response to the May vote was “significant and divided”, and appeared to suggest the hunt was more of a pre-emptive move than a response to any existing problem.
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“A highly regulated hunt would prevent negative future impacts of overpopulation,” he said. “Hunting at feeding stations and with dogs would provide hunters with the opportunity to selectively harvest larger male bears and avoid harvesting females, or females with young bears.”
The decision is the latest in a series of developments wildlife advocates see as detrimental to a slowly-recovering black bear population that was as low as a few hundred in the 1970s. They include DeSantis signing into law last year a measure allowing residents to kill without fear of repercussion any bear perceived to pose a threat to their families, pets or property.
Conservationists have attempted to raise awareness of the challenges facing black bears in Florida, most notably deaths from vehicle strikes, and loss of habitat through development.
Carlton Ward Jr, an environmentalist who helped found the Florida Wildlife Corridor in 2010 to allow the free movement of vulnerable animals, said black bears were still fragmented in Florida across seven subpopulations, some of which had not recovered as well as others.
Ward’s documentary Florida Bear Tracks, produced by his nature storytelling company Wildpath for the National Geographic Society, chronicles the habitat issues by following an all-female team of FWC workers trapping and tagging bears in south Florida.
“We appreciate all the public attention Florida black bears are getting and will be getting around this controversial bear hunt, and we also recognize that the bigger story of who Florida black bears are, and where they live, is likely to be left out of this conversation,” he said.
“There’s only around 4,000 bears in the state, and 23 million people. So bears are facing a lot of challenges with habitat loss and fragmentation. As Florida grows, we need to learn how to coexist with wildlife. It’s not optional. It’s essential.”
Ward said that healthy black bear populations in some of the habitats are not an indication that the species has recovered in the state.
“Bears are not thriving everywhere they need to be. We actually need more bears in Florida, in more places, to have the stated goal of a genetically connected statewide bear population,” he said.
