When most people think of bears they think of teddy bears and lone animals wandering the woods without encountering anything else. However that’s not the case. Bears are incredibly intelligent and persistent and they have huge ranges on which they wander. When a bear runs into a human one of two things usually happens; the bear might decide the human isn’t worth it’s time and wander off after trying to scare the person or the bear might attack and either kill or seriously injure the victim. Bears are killing machines and now the state of Florida has a problem; there are many bears and they’re increasing both in number and in range. Bears and human interactions have already happened and they will continue to do so and now Florida needs to figure out how to deal with the issue.
One of the solutions that has been floated has garnered both support and criticism: hunting. Other states with similar bear issues have introduced limited hunting seasons on bears to help manage the population and prevent any sort of interspecies conflict. Florida is actually the only state (out of the 32 that allow bear hunting) with a population of over 1,000 bears but no hunting season to help control the numbers; hunting for bears was banned in 1994. To put the numbers in perspective, in 1974 there were 300-500 bears in the entire state. Now officials believe that Florida has over 3,000 bears roaming from the panhandle to right outside of Miami and these bears are starting to cause issues.
In the past year there have been 4 black bear attacks on people, calls to wildlife officials about bears have increased 400%, and bear deaths by vehicle have risen from 33 in 1990 to 285 in 2012. While Florida wildlife officials haven’t said that there would be a hunting season for bears, it was brought up in a meeting and they seemed receptive of the idea. However while hunting would be part of the plan to stop bear/human conflict, it wouldn’t be the only part. Officials would also focus on educating people who live near bear areas on how to minimize the chances of running into a bear as well as providing bear-resistant trash cans so that the bears won’t be drawn by food. Hopefully these ideas work because bears are a vital part of the ecosystem and important to the health of this land we all love.
If you’d like to read more, the link is here.
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