Drew Wilson
Advocacy group Humane World for Animals is launching a digital ad urging state officials to nix a potential recreational bear hunting season.
“Florida’s last bear hunt was a massacre. Senseless killings based on lies about overpopulation and danger to humans. Their actions left hundreds of bears dead in just two days … bear cubs still nursing and left orphaned,” the ad’s narrator says over footage of dead bears.
“They want to do it again in an even crueler way — by luring bears with bait for an easy shot and chasing them with packs of hounds. Floridians want to protect their bears, not hunt them,” the narrator states, with on-screen text asserting “81% of Floridians oppose a hunt.”
The figure comes from a recent poll conducted by Remington Research Group, which asked registered voters whether they supported or opposed a recreational hunt. Just 16% of respondents said they support a hunt compared to the 81% who said they were opposed.
The pollster asked the question again after informing respondents “Florida law already allows individuals to kill any bear posing a threat to public safety, pets, or to private property.” Sentiment was largely unchanged at 78% opposed and 18% supporting.
Meanwhile, 4 out of 5 voters told the pollster they would support “policies that promote effective, non-lethal and more humane methods to reduce conflicts between bears and people,” such as “public education campaigns where trash and bird feeders are made unavailable to bears, or by ticketing people who intentionally or unintentionally feed bears.”
Remington Research Group conducted the poll April 22-24, not long after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) put out the call for public comment on a proposed bear hunt. In December, FWC staff were tasked with developing proposals for a hunt.
Humane World for Animals flatly opposes any recreational hunt, but says the options on the table for 2025 are particularly “cruel and dangerous” — the organization describes hounding as a “brutal” practice that poses as much danger to dogs as it does bears.
The organization further describes baiting as “unethical” and questions FWC’s ability to monitor whether hunters on private property are filling bait stations with chocolate or other foods toxic to bears that would cause undue suffering.
Humane World for Animals also asserts bow hunting would lead to slow and painful killings. Data on deer hunting shows 30% of those shot with an arrow die slowly. Humane World for Animals posits that as larger, stockier animals, bears would be more likely to survive the initial shot “and suffer for hours — or even days — from blood loss or infection before dying.”
View Humane World for Animals’ ad here, or click play below:
