Florida Wildlife officers look at a bear hunt

By Jim Turner © 2025 The Florida news service

Tallahasee -Florida Wildlife officers will hold a number of online meetings in March and April about the possibility of returning to the bear hunting in the state.

Roger Young, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said on Wednesday that the first meeting that is open to everyone who wants to give feedback “will take place on March 13.

Three more will take place in April. Young, who was concerned with the problem during a commission at Florida State University, said that data from April meetings had not been determined.

Bear hunt has long been a controversial problem in Florida, but the calls that wildlife officers have approved the first hunt for a decade. Followers say that a hunt could partially help to manage the bear populations, since the animals interact with humans in November and indicate a ballot that was approved by the voters that anchored the hunting and fishing rights in the state constitution.

The opponents have argued that hunting does not reduce the interactions between humanbaumers and says that the state should not use fatal options to tackle the bear populations. They say that unsecured garbage is still a bait for bears for residential and commercial objects.

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is halfway into a 10-year bear management plan, whereby the focus is on education and provides bear waste containers. In December, however, the members of the Commission instructed the employees to submit proposals for a possible bear hunting.

It is expected that the proposals will be completed by a session in the May commission in order to give employees time to create data from ongoing studies on bear populations and to collect public contributions.

The last hunting, which took place in October 2015, was expected to take up to a week. Instead, it was deported after two days when the number of bears quickly reached 304.

At that time, officials from the Commission recognized that the success of the hunters was surprised.

The state estimated Florida more than 4,000 bears in 2015, and it is known that the population is growing. In the meantime, the agency receives more than 6,000 calls a year for bears.

In June, governor Ron Desantis signed a law that strengthened self -defense arguments for people who kill bears on their property.

The law requires shooters to notify the Commission within 24 hours after the death of bears. Protects are forbidden to own or sell bear cadavers. Legal immunity is not available that provoke or attract bears.

Similar legal templates were submitted in previous years, but the legislation did not pass. But that of Rep. Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, and Senator Corey Simon, R-Tallahasee, sponsored proposal from 2024, but took part in the R-PortaHassee after the Franklin County Sheriff Aj Smith said. “Shoaf and Simon largely represent rural districts, which includes Franklin County.