As pressure has increased for the state to allow bear hunting for the first time in nearly a decade, Florida wildlife officials will get an update this upcoming week on the state’s black bear management plan.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will receive information about the 2019 management plan during a meeting Wednesday in Lakeland. A memo to the commission from Melissa Tucker, habitat and species conservation director, said the state has more than 4,000 bears and that the agency receives more than 6,000 calls a year about bears.
“Staff focus on mitigating human-bear conflicts by securing garbage from bears, with studies showing that when bears do not have access to garbage, residents experience significantly less interactions with bears overall,” Tucker wrote. “In situations where bears or the public could be at risk, staff will capture and remove bears.”
The presentation said an average of 300 bears are killed by vehicles each year, and “despite our best efforts, on average, one person each year is injured by a bear in Florida.”
In June, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law aimed at bolstering self-defense arguments for people who kill bears on their property. The law requires shooters to notify the commission within 24 hours of bears being killed. They also are prohibited from possessing or selling bear carcasses. Legal immunity isn’t available to people who provoke or lure bears.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, and Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, gained support after Franklin County Sheriff A.J. Smith said his rural community was “being inundated and overrun by the bear population.”
Opponents of the bill said it would lead to increased deaths of the once-threatened animals.
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