State wildlife officials to request an end to ban on bear hunting

Florida’s wildlife agency will request a rule change to allow black bear hunting in some areas because of bear attacks and other conflicts with people, state wildlife officials said Tuesday.

Florida has at least 3,000 bears, up from around 500 in the 1950s. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in 1994 voted to make bear-hunting illegal under pressure from critics who argued that shooting a bear in a tree wasn’t sporting or humane.

There have been four bear attacks on people within the past year, leading some Central Florida legislators in 2014 to call for dropping the ban on bear hunting.

Nuisance bear complaints also have increased from about 1,000 per year in 2000 to more than 6,000 in recent years, according to data presented Tuesday to the Senate Committee on Agriculture. A survey of the state’s bear population won’t be completed until 2016.

State wildlife officials are set to ask the fish and wildlife commission at its Feb. 4 meeting in Jacksonville to consider a rule change to allow bear hunting.

“I think it will be controversial — I do,” Nick Wiley, the agency’s executive director, said after the Senate committee meeting. “It’s gotten to the point there are not a lot of easy answers left.”

The fish and wildlife commission already is increasing the number of bear biologists on staff, euthanizing more bears and removing them from neighborhoods even when they are not causing problems, said Thomas Eason, director of the agency’s habitat and species conservation division.

“I want to point out that hunting is not going to affect most of the bears in these suburban areas,” Eason told senators. “We are not going to propose hunts in someone back yard obviously.”

Sen. Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring and an agriculture committee member, told Eason she had been in constant contact with the agency about bear problems in her neighborhood.

“This is a big problem down where I live particularly in my neighborhood to the point where I don’t want to go out to ride or walk in the morning,” Grimsley said.

“My legislative aide, who also lives in the neighborhood, found a bear in his garage,” she said. “My neighbor came home to find one very aggressively tearing down a fence in the neighborhood.”

But David Cullen, representating Sierra Club Florida, said his group is opposed to bear hunting in Florida. He said Florida should do more to reduce the availability of human and pet food that attracts bears and use “smart growth” policies to prevent urban sprawl in areas where bears live.

“It’s more important than ever, since the FWC has put all of this work into building the black bear population, that their professional advice be provided when planning and management decisions are being made,” Cullen said.

Bruce Ritchie (@bruceritchie) covers environment and growth management issues in Tallahassee.