Florida wildlife commissioners Wednesday shot down a bear hunt this year — and next — although the chief of the state’s wildlife agency said the science backing another bear season is “absolutely rock solid.”
While science supports a hunt, the public does not, said Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission. FWC authorized a bear hunt in 2015 for the first time in 21 years.
“We’re not ready to go back into another hunting season,” Wiley told the governing board during a meeting in Havana, north of Tallahassee. He said the agency “needed more time” to better explain itself and turn public opinion around.
Hunters, many wearing orange shirts or caps, accused wildlife commissioners of ignoring their own scientists and caving in to anti-hunting opinion.
“Show some courage,” said John Fuller, executive director of The Future of Hunting in Florida, a nonprofit pro-hunting advocacy group.
More than 80 people — both for and against the hunt — signed up to speak to the seven-member board.
Commissioners listened to four hours of testimony — from a child who complained that killing bears was cruel to a frustrated beekeeper who warned the commission that the state’s next bear mauling will “be on y’all.”
First, commissioners voted 4-3 against a bear hunt this year, with commissioner “Alligator” Ron Bergeron defending the bear as an iconic animal.
“I look at a bear like [I look at] a manatee, a bald eagle or a panther,” he said.
Bergeron was joined in his opposition to a hunt by fellow commissioners Bo Rivard, Robert A. Spottswood and chairman Brian Yablonski.
Commissioners then unanimously agreed to put off a hunt in 2018 to allow the agency to update its bear-management plan, first drafted in 2012.
The revised plan is supposed to specifically address hunting as a tool to manage the species’ growing numbers.
The agency’s staff and biologists have worked during the past year to increase the use of so-called bear-proof trash bins in wildlife corridors.
Bears often follow their super-sensitive noses into residential neighborhoods to scavenge in trash cans for left-over pizza scraps.
Before the board discussed bear hunts, state wildlife biologist Thomas Eason said the unique species’ numbers and range have grown.
He described the bears’ recovery in Florida as “remarkable,” rebounding from as few as 300 in the 1970s to more than 4,000 now.
FWC statistics show that complaints about nuisance bears have dropped sharply in two years.
Eason said people may not call the state’s hotline about a nuisance animal as often as they once did because they are concerned that state wildlife officials might trap and kill the problem bear.
The 2015 hunt sparked outrage among bear lovers and members of animal welfare groups, who flooded the agency with emails. Bergeron cast the only vote against that hunt. He said he could see no downside to putting the hunt on hold for at least two years.
The 2015 hunt killed 304 bears before it was called off, just two days into the week-long season.
Commissioners voted last June not to hold a hunt in 2016.
Coincidentally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that its own study of the Florida black bear population concluded the species did not need federal protection.
Several groups petitioned the agency last year to list the bear as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
At the FWC meeting, Tony Gurdak, a lifelong Central Florida hunter, implored commissioners to authorize a vote before the growing number of bears overrun the state.
After the outcry about the 2015 bear hunt, wildlife officials commissioned a telephone survey to gauge attitudes and opinions of Florida residents about the state’s native black bears and FWC’s management of the species.
The survey found that 70 percent of those responding support hunting, but that support falls to just 48 percent if the hunter’s target is a bear.
Most respondents said they want to see black bears in their counties but not in their neighborhoods.
M. Lane Stephens, a lobbyist for the Florida Dog Hunters and Sportsman Association, warned the commission that hunters won’t give up.
“The sea of orange is only going to grow,” he said.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6361.