A Leon County circuit judge on Monday rejected a group’s request for a temporary injunction to halt the state’s first black bear hunt in a decade.
With the three-week hunt set to begin Dec. 6, Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey said Bear Warriors United, a Central Florida-based nonprofit, was unable to show “substantial likelihood of success on the merits” in its lawsuit challenging the hunt.
Dempsey also noted Bear Warriors United was able to participate in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s rulemaking process that led to plans for the hunt.
The bear hunt, the first approved by the commission since 2015, could lead to as many as 172 bears being killed in four regions of the state. The commission issued 172 hunting permits, with each recipient able to kill one bear.
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The 2015 hunt was planned for seven days, with up to 320 bears expected to be killed. After two days, the hunt was halted with 304 bears dead.
“That 2015 hunt was found constitutional under the rational basis test, and this hunt is significantly more conservative than that hunt in 2015, both in number of bears that could be harvested, as well as the timing, when it's a little less likely for more female bears to be killed,” Dempsey said.
Bear Warriors United argued, in part, that the commission approved the hunt in August with obsolete data and without “sound” science and research.
“FWC (the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) has made a decision here to go forward with a bear hunt, starting on Dec. 6, and has made its decision based on outdated and stale population information and models,” said Thomas Crapps, an attorney for Bear Warriors United.
In its motion for a temporary injunction, the group contended the hunt would “result in the needless destruction of Florida black bears.”
Rhonda Parnell, acting deputy general counsel for the commission, argued that Bear Warriors United showed no evidence that constitutional due-process rights were violated, as its members participated in public workshops on the hunt and were in attendance at two meetings when the rule was set. Parnell added that multiple courts previously decided that the commission is the exclusive regulatory body to determine hunts in Florida.
“This becomes Bear Warriors whining about what they did not get,” Parnell said. “They didn't get what they wanted, because they didn't want a bear hunt.”
In a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the commission said that “stabilizing the bear population through a limited hunt will enable the commission to maintain bears at appropriate population levels in suitable habitats across those four regions of the state, thereby enhancing the long-term survival potential of the species.”
Florida is estimated to have more than 4,000 black bears, which have drawn attention in some parts of the state because of interactions with humans in residential areas.
While the commission issued 172 permits, opponents of the hunt say they have secured up to 40 of the permits by submitting about 163,000 entries into a lottery-style drawing. The entries each cost $5.
The hunt will be held in the Apalachicola region west of Tallahassee; in areas west of Jacksonville; in an area north of Orlando; and in the Big Cypress region southwest of Lake Okeechobee.
Bear Warriors United noted that the commission had originally approved 187 permits, but reduced the number by 15 after a bear population estimate was updated in the area north of Orlando.
Michael Orlando, the commission’s bear program coordinator, told Dempsey that bear demographic studies do not have a timeline.
“Those studies are good for quite a bit of time, based on female survival, birth rates, death rates, that sort of thing. So, no, all of that is the best available science that we have and we make decisions based on that,” Orlando said.
Orlando said the hunt has been designed in a “conservative” manner intended to limit deaths of female bears.
“If all 172 bears were harvested, and they were all female, it would still not impact the population,” Orlando said.
