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Over 1,000 Florida Hunters Bag Permits For Bear Hunt
August 4, 2015
More than 1,00 permits to hunt bears this fall were sold by Tuesday morning, the first time in more than two decades that such licenses have been available in Florida.
The sale of the special-use permits — available throughout the state at tax collectors’ offices, online and at sporting-goods stores that sell hunting and fishing supplies — began despite a lawsuit that was filed Friday against the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to try to halt the hunt.
“I do know the permits are being sold and being sold successfully,” Diane Eggeman, director of the commission’s Division of Hunting and Game Management, said Monday morning.
The state hasn’t estimated how many permits — which cost $100 for Florida residents and $300 for non-residents — will be bought by Oct. 23, the day before the hunt begins.
The hunt is slated to last from two to seven days, depending on the number of bears killed.
Laura Bevan, southern regional director for the Humane Society of the United States, said people seeking permits are only doing so to get trophies, and she doesn’t believe the state is doing enough to limit the number of bears that will be killed.
“All the hunters will go into the woods at the same time. We’re really worried that it’s going to be a slaughterhouse,” Bevan said. “This is a (bear) population that only came off the threatened list 2 1/2 years ago. This is a population that’s under pressure from development, from poaching, from all kinds of things, and now we’re going to open up a hunt.”
The Humane Society supports but isn’t a party to the lawsuit seeking to stop the bear hunt. The lawsuit was filed in Leon County circuit court by the Seminole County-based environmental group Speak Up Wekiva.
“Even if we feel that the hunt is unethical and unscientific there may not be a legal way to stop it,” Bevan said.
The permits went on sale at 5 a.m. Monday. All but six of the first bear permits sold were to Florida hunters.
The state is seeking a 20 percent reduction in the bear population, which is estimated around 3,000. That percentage reduction includes bears dying naturally or getting killed by vehicles, as well as those killed in the hunt.
“We want to reach that minimum number, that harvest objective, so we can reach the stabilization of the populations,” Eggeman said.
The state hasn’t put a limit on the number of special-use bear permits that will be sold, but each hunter will be limited to killing a single bear during the week.
Eggeman said officials don’t expect the hunt to exceed bear-hunting quotas that will be set for each of the four regions of the state where hunting will be allowed — the eastern Panhandle, Northeast Florida, east-central Florida and South Florida.
The commission will set the final quota numbers for each region in September.
Other than to say they are confident a judge will support the commission’s approval of the bear hunt, state officials aren’t discussing the merits of the lawsuit.
The lawsuit contends the rules for the hunt go against a 1998 voter-approved constitutional amendment that created the commission as an independent body “to conduct management, preservation and conservation decision-making based upon sound science.” The complaint also claims the bear hunt is not based upon sound science and won’t reduce growing conflicts between bears and humans.
The lawsuit didn’t ask a judge to halt the commission from offering the permits.
But supporters of the lawsuit contend the permitting should wait until the courts rule on the lawsuit to reduce the risk of having to refund money to people who have paid.
Opponents of the hunt have argued that Florida’s increased human population is expanding into wildlife habitat and that the state should further implement non-lethal rules, such as bear-proofing trash containers, prohibiting people from feeding wild bears and cracking down on the illegal harvesting of saw palmetto berries, which is a staple of a bear’s diet.
by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
Comments
14 Responses to “Over 1,000 Florida Hunters Bag Permits For Bear Hunt”
Mmm, bear meat! I hope the hunters kill as many as they are allowed to, but none just for fun, the meats & hides should be consumed not wasted. If a hunter is not going eat the meat & cure the skins for leather-like consumption, he/she should be required to donate them to some organization for the poor or needy.
Florida Wildlife has made exhaustive studies on the bear population & deemed this hunt necessary, so you treehuggers are wrong, & need to talk about something else that you know a little bit about.
Hey looks be real. People kill people for all sorts of reasons hate,greed,drugs,money and get to carry a legal/illegal weapon too. Do you see a bear killing bears for those reasons. Its not the bears to worry about these days…..yall.
Well said Jim.For those that haven’t had bear meat you’re missing something good, so glad bear season has came back !
If the bears were plentiful, i would say go for it. But they are not. They are concentrated in a few small areas. No doubt some wealthy person or big shot at eglin had an opinion because they, or someone they know, had an unpleasant experience.
I am a hunter. Year round, my family eats meat that was caught or killed locally. Mostly fish, deer, hog, and crawdads, but sometimes a few others i’d rather not say. I know in my heart most people trying to kill a bear will be for pride, ego, attention, etc. Not meat.
State lands have been purchased and managed in a muti-state partnership specifically to provide the black bear an interstate (so to speak) for travel to and from the Mississippi River Delta to the Florida Panhandle. You’ll have to read but search Perdido River WMA/ Black Bear. They are specifically trying to reintroduce Black Bears to their natural habitat yet completely conflicting with the new rule. Do you really think they purchased thousands of acres so you could go to Filingim Landing or the Pipes ? Do you think Alabama purchased 18,000 acres for the same reason ?
What they should do is report to bear incidents and issue citations for attracting bears in the first place (eg; leaving trash out) . Please don’t tell me how your birdseed attracts bears. First, the birds aren’t going to starve if nobody in the world put seed out. Second, your desire to see birds at your feeder does not outweigh the bears necessity to live.
To the supporters of it, you just want to say you killed a bear. There are plenty of other plentiful creatures to get meat from. Besides, the bears apparently aren’t eating wild which was the reason for killing them. They’re eating trash, birdseed, dogfood, etc. So don’t try me with that bull, try lotto.
Folks in Appalachia seem to have no problem with their bear population, and they have way more than we do. I bet 99.9% of the people here have never even seen a black bear.
The problem I have is that THEY don’t even know what the bear population numbers are. They are guessing because of human to bear encounters. Here is an idea…….shoot the people who are feeding the bears! End of problem. Stop the scare tactics, these are not bears that are on the hunt for our children. Nor are they killing our livestock. You could put an all out hunting season on poison snakes, there are more of them and they harm more people. When my grandchildren go out to play in the yard I don’t say “watch out for bears”, I say “watch out for snakes”.
Anyone who participates in the shooting of a bear is weak human. I’d like to see that same person try to take on the bear without their gun.
Who, in this world eats bear meat? How disgusting. I don’t think that is the intent with this bear massacre thing. This is just wrong. Go get em rednecks…
@Linda – as a female hunter, if it were being offered closer to this area I would be getting one so it is not just “all the men that think they are tough”.
@Jim – you have it right. I would much rather eat meat that has been raised in the wild than purchase meat that has been raised in deplorable conditions.
Ladies – Bears are hunted for meat. Shooting them provides a quick death. Bears are not endangered. As far as us invading their habitat, if you can get humans to stop breeding and spreading into Florida, I’m all for it.
The meat that you buy in the supermarket suffered far more than these few bears will. They are force fed, spend most of their lives standing in their own excrement in a tiny stall or in a packed feed lot, while being pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. The chicken that provided you with that succulent breast had it worse. Where is the rainbows-and-bunnies appeal for these animals?
alternatives to keep the bear population under control should not include killing bears by cruel and unethical means a bullet will not solve natures’ problems with breeding bears in the future. For Heaven Sakes, we wouldnt put a bullet in the head of a human being because of out of control breeding so what gives man the right to do such a horrible act to another being on earth.
All the men that think they are tough will be lining up to get their permit.
Susan, I bet you wouldn’t be saying that if one of those cute little bears maul one of your loved ones.
This is so sad. We invade and take over their natural habitat then kill them for just trying to live. They don’t know any better.