Orlando Sentinel Reported: A dozen Florida lawmakers, including several with ties to Central Florida, want state wildlife officials to allow limited bear hunts in “hot spot areas” after two recent bear maulings in Seminole County. The lawmakers, who also want the state’s waste-management companies to provide “bear-proof” trash containers, sent their requests in a letter Monday to Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.
They cited “the latest incidents involving human and bear interaction” for their requests, which also ask the agency for an educational program for people living near bear habitat.
“What I’m concerned about mainly is that this continues to happen without intervention and the bears walk up on children who are playing and drag them off into the woods,” said Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, calling hunting “a piece of the solution.”
But Rep. Mike Clelland, a Lake Mary Democrat whose district includes both neighborhoods where the maulings occurred, described the push for bear hunting as “absurd.”
“It’ll only add to the public-safety issue we’re dealing with now by having people hunt bears between neighborhoods,” said Clelland, who was not asked to sign the letter. “It’s not the number of bears that we’re most concerned about — it’s bears interacting with humans. The reason they’re interacting with humans is trash. We can solve that problem with bear-proof cans, not guns.”
Both Brodeur and Clelland think educating homeowners to be bear-aware is more important.
FWC’s Wiley was open to the legislators’ suggestions, including a bear hunt.
“I saw the letter as helpful,” he said. “They offered up a broad range of ideas they thought were really important for us to consider.”
Florida prohibited bear hunting in most areas of the state in 1971, when black bears were considered a threatened species, with fewer than 300 roaming the state. All bear hunting in the state was outlawed in 1994.
The black bear was officially listed by the state as a threatened species in 1974.
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