{"id":71970,"date":"2025-08-10T08:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/71970\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T08:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:50:07","slug":"florida-wildlife-officials-to-vote-on-bear-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/71970\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida wildlife officials to vote on bear hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is set to vote within a week on a proposal to start a seasonal bear hunt<\/a> in the state, sparking opinions on both sides.<\/p>\n

Several protests took place across Florida on Saturday ahead of the vote, including a demonstration in downtown Orlando. <\/p>\n

Some of the activists said education as the key to reducing negative bear-human interactions.<\/p>\n

Discussions over a possible bear hunt began in December 2024 as a measure to control the growing bear population and reduce encounters between bears and people. The FWC estimates more than 4,000 bears currently roam the state.<\/p>\n

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Bryan Wilson, coordinator for the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida, said a bear hunt would not effectively control the population because bear communities are so fragmented.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you kill a bear in the Ocala forest, that\u2019s not going to do anything for a bear in downtown Orlando. You kill a bear in the Panhandle, that\u2019s not going to do anything for the people who are having negative conflicts with bears in South Florida,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n

The FWC\u2019s plan would issue permits for hunting within bear management units that have at least 200 bears. Wilson believes education is a better approach to prevent negative interactions between bears and humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeminole County has implemented a Bear Wise community standard. Bear-proof cans, bear education for the communities and communities where they have bears living within close proximity to them were even under more scrutiny and more education,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n

Back in May, News 6 spoke to Lee Kramer<\/a>. She lives off of Markham Woods Road in Seminole County and said she had an encounter inside her home in 2016. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the bears got inside the laundry room and as soon as he turned around, the door shut,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cI just ran inside and closed the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kramer said that while she doesn\u2019t want to see the bears killed, a regulated bear hunt could be beneficial. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt will protect everyone,\u201d she said. \u201cRegulation is good for everything. Regulation and discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

If approved, this would be the first bear-hunting season in Florida in a decade. The vote is expected to take place during FWC\u2019s meeting Aug. 13 in Gadsden County.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is set to vote within a week on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1147,7438,51671,16638,192,2808,7221,79,201],"class_list":["post-71970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-animals","tag-bear","tag-bear-hunt","tag-black-bear","tag-environment","tag-florida","tag-nature","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}