The Wildlife and Florida Fisheries Conservation Commission (FWC) announced that on Wednesday the applications for hunting about 200 bears in the state will open, after a decade of suspension of this controversial practice, in order to control the population.
The regulated hunting of specimens of the black bear was in force between 1930 and 1994 and had a brief and controversial return in 2015.
The FWC justified this decision as a tool of the 2019 Florida Black Bear Management Plan to combat the increase in its population, estimated at four thousand copies by biologists of the Commission.
“I am proud that Florida joins most of the states that manage black bears through regulated hunting,” FWC president Rodney Barreto said in a statement.
Balancing the number of animals with the appropriate habitat keeps healthy populations, said the FWC.
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The organization recounts that there has been an increase in encounters between bears and humans, which includes a fatal attack that occurred in May, the only one in the history of the state, when a black bear killed Robert Markel, 89, in Collier County, southwest of Florida.
However, conservation organizations and animal defenders expressed their opposition, by describing hunting as unnecessary and cruel.
The activists also criticized the lack of an updated census of the population of bears and warned that the measure could endanger the recovery of the species, which was on the list of species threatened until 2012.
FWC restrictions includes young and females with young; and limits hunting areas to areas with high population density.
Approved hunting methods include the use of traps with bait, arches and trained dogs, although the use of the latter will be gradually implemented until 2027.
Permissions requests will be open from September 12 to 22, with a cost of one hundred dollars for residents and three hundred dollars for non -residents, in addition to a five -dollar management rate at request and no more than 10 % of permits will be issued to non -residents of Florida.
The permits will be by raffle, with a limit of 187 bears in total, within bears management units, between December 6 and 28.
With EFE information
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