Speak Up for Wildlife<\/a> said the lack of transparency is troubling.<\/p>\n\u201cThis executive director \u2014 we called on him to shut down the hunt and release the numbers. He has done nothing,\u201d O\u2019Neal said. \u201cThe last commission at least realized in 2016 that this was a fiasco, and they shut it down completely for nine more years.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the last bear hunt in 2015, hunters killed around 300 bears in just a couple of days, reaching the limit set for the entire week-long hunt. O\u2019Neal said his organization worked closely with the FWC director at the time to monitor those numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast time around, we had our monitors at the check station on the phone with the executive director throughout the first day,\u201d O\u2019Neal said.<\/p>\n
[VIDEO: Why we may not learn how many Florida black bears have been hunted just yet]<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neal said that cooperation no longer exists and believes the current administration has not been transparent about this hunt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s ridiculous. It\u2019s a total mismanagement of the resource, and we hope there\u2019s some accountability somewhere down the line,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neal said Speak Up for Wildlife filed a public records request seeking information on how many bears were killed, in which zones, and how many were females or cubs, but said they have not received a response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole thing has been very shady, in my opinion. I believe the people of Florida deserve a lot better,\u201d O\u2019Neal said.<\/p>\n
The FWC estimates there are more than 4,000 bears statewide. According to the agency, only 18 permits were issued in Central Florida.<\/p>\n
News 6 also submitted a public records request earlier this month seeking the same information. As soon as the agency responds, we will bring you the latest.<\/p>\n
Breaking News Alerts<\/p>\n
Get breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 This weekend marks the end of the statewide bear hunt, which has been underway since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[910,8278,147,28,30,29,4747,139],"class_list":["post-98310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-bear","tag-bear-hunt","tag-central-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-fwc","tag-orlando"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}