Florida will allow hunters to kill black bears for the first time in a decade, after state officials gave final approval to contentious new rules on Wednesday that critics say will effectively authorize trophy hunting.
With a unanimous vote, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved an initial hunt that will take place over three weeks this December, followed by annual bear hunting seasons that run from October through December.
Proponents say a regulated hunt has become necessary to manage the native Florida black bear population, which has rebounded after years of being threatened. In some parts of the state, there have been increasing reports of bears roaming into backyards and rummaging through garbage bins.
Opponents counter that the animals pose little threat to people, who have invaded bears’ natural habitat with overdevelopment, and that the new rules will encourage hunters to kill bears merely to display them as trophies. The rules allow hunters to use chase dogs, bait stations and bows and arrows, all methods that critics consider inhumane.
This year’s hunt, from Dec. 6 through Dec. 28, will allow up to 187 bears to be “harvested.”
The state recorded its first known fatal bear attack in May, when an 89-year-old man and his dog were killed in a wooded part of Collier County, in Southwest Florida. Wildlife officials killed three bears in the area within a day after the attack.
Roughly 4,050 black bears are estimated to live in the state now, mostly in Southwest, Central and North Florida. In the 1970s the bears were nearly extinct in the state.
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