Barring a last-minute miracle, Florida’s black bears will be in the crosshairs of hunters on Saturday — a planned slaughter based on shoddy science and laden with potential for things to go wrong.
More wrong is more like it.
This hunt never should have been approved, let alone tagged as an annual event that will proceed until state officials come to their senses. Thousands of Floridians begged the Legislature and the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to stop the hunt from going forward, citing threats to a bear population that are going to get worse as more people crowd into Florida.
In August, the FWC approved a three-week hunt from Dec. 6-28, based on its own estimates that the bear population is around 4,000.
Bear-loving advocates say the number is based on old data and not adjusted for the fact that many bears that might have been living undetected in remote undeveloped land are now far more visible in residential neighborhoods and along highways that have pierced their former sanctuaries.
A state judge in Tallahassee on Tuesday dismissed a last-ditch effort to call an emergency stop to the hunt.
That leaves the slaughter proceeding under rules that allow ample opportunities for lethal errors.
The hunt is authorized in four state-approved “bear management zones,” including in southwest Florida, covering Collier, Lee and Hendry counties.
A central Florida zone covers Orange, Lake, Marion, Seminole and Volusia counties — the hot spot for human-bear encounters around the state but with almost no reports of humans injured by bears.
That could be due, in large part, to efforts in Seminole County to manage the bear population in a non-lethal way, with locking trash cans and a public outreach campaign. That region was allocated 18 permits to kill one bear each, contributing to 172 bear hunt permits issued statewide.
A cruel framework
Aspects of this bear hunt make it especially vicious.
Hunters can legally use dogs to hunt — a move that greatly increases trauma to the bears and could separate mothers from their cubs. Hunters are also allowed to take advantage of bait stations to shoot the bears when they are concentrating on eating.
The terms of the hunt also allow bows and arrows, which are less likely to be immediately lethal, increasing the bears’ suffering.
Hunters will not be required to take bear carcasses to centralized checkpoints as they were in the last hunt in 2015. Is it because FWC officials don’t want photographs of blood-matted fur and empty staring eyes circulating on social media? They shouldn’t have bothered. There are plenty of those shots from a decade ago.
Stealing back lives
A sly move is underway to undermine the event — one that breaks no laws and won’t deprive the state of revenue. When the state opened up applications to participate in the bear hunt, environmental groups urged opponents to send in the $5 entry fee and hopefully win a permit — a move that would spare bears’ lives, one at a time.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that Bear Warriors United, the group that went to court to stop the hunt, estimates that 45 permits, or 26% of the total, could be held by people who have no intention of shooting bears with anything but a camera and long-range lens.
Another note making the rounds of social media reads: Hunters being paid to not use bear killing permits? Hunters needing money for the holidays? Interesting. Tell us more at BearWarriorsUnited@gmail.com.
The organized resistance is cheeky. But it obscures a deep public grief that this state would sanction such a cruel, barbaric hunt in the first place. Florida officials should have listened to the voices of opposition last time. This time, the only way to get their attention may be through the ballot box.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
