A small but vocal group of trophy hunters in Florida is calling for a bear trophy hunt, and we are determined to prevent it.
The last bear hunt held in the state was in 2015: Hunters killed 304 bears in just two days, including 179 females. Sadly 38 of them were mother bears still nursing cubs, which means dozens of baby bears undoubtedly died, too. These bear families were torn apart, targeted when they were most vulnerable. It’s shameful that Florida is even considering repeating this.
But last November, despite our fight against it, an amendment to the state constitution elevated hunting and fishing as the “preferred” method for managing wildlife, flying in the face of science. Most people do not want bear hunts, so why are some Florida decision-makers so laser-focused on holding these cruel trophy hunts?
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will host a virtual webinar to hear public feedback about a potential trophy hunting season on March 13 at 6:00 pm EST. The link to the Microsoft Teams meeting can be found on the Commission’s website.
It’s absolutely critical that Floridians attend this meeting and let the commissioners know that residents do not want bears trophy hunted. Now that Amendment 2 has been added to the state constitution, it’s likely that trophy hunters will try to bring back “traditional methods” of bear hunting, which is their code phrase for unpopular and cruel practices, such as baiting and hounding.
Florida’s bears already face significant challenges. Thousands of people are moving to the Sunshine State, joining the already 23 million inhabitants. Great swaths of black bear habitat are cut and cleared to make room for more homes and highways. Because of this, Florida’s bears find themselves cut off from each other—marooned on biological islands—which risks the inbreeding that already plagues the even more rare Florida panther. And when there are natural food shortages, as happens in nature, bears end up coming closer to people and foraging for food in their trash cans and on their decks.
Florida’s iconic bears are already in the crosshairs because of a new law, passed just last year, allowing people to kill them in unlimited numbers under the guise of protecting property and safety. At least three bears have already been killed under this new law. But, as most bear biologists know, killing bears is short-sighted and fails to resolve conflicts. Preventing those conflicts from happening in the first place better protects bears, keeps people and their property safe, and preserves wildlife agencies’ time and resources.
Almost all human-bear conflicts orbit around food attractants, primarily unsecured garbage cans and bird feeders, or chicken yards and unguarded beehives. These human behaviors are easily changed by educating people about how to prevent human-bear conflicts before they occur. For example, researchers in Durango, Colorado, found that when residents had access to automatically locking, bear-resistant trash cans, 93% complied with city codes to avoid attracting bears. And on farms in Durango, biologists found that to prevent attracting bears to beehives, chickens and sheep, the most effective solution was the employment of electric fences, which reduced damage by 79% to 100%.
People simply cannot kill their way out of human-bear conflicts. It is essential that we all take easy, commonsense steps to eliminate food attractants and learn to humanely coexist with bears. They are vital to Florida’s ecosystems, creating biological diversity and promoting forest health through their feeding habits and spreading even more seed than birds. They’re also extremely family-oriented, as mother bears will spend up to two years taking care of their cubs. And because bears have small litter sizes, they are extremely slow to reproduce. Allowing people to kill them for fun or for any perceived “threat” would result in unacceptable losses to their population.
These days, many more Americans seek to view and treasure wildlife rather than kill them out of misplaced fears or for a trophy. Florida’s black bears are one of the most photographed and watched populations of wild animals in the U.S. What kind of people do we become if we simply allow the practice of eliminating wild animals merely for living their lives?
Don’t let Florida’s decision-makers paint a bull’s-eye on black bears. Log into the virtual meeting on March 13 and let them know where you stand.
