ORLANDO, FLORIDA– Fifty-two bears were killed during Florida First black bear hunt In a decade, state wildlife officials said Tuesday.
The bear hunt, which began on December 6 and ended on Sunday, was limited to 172 permit holders who won their vouchers through a random lottery including… More than 160,000 applicants.
At least forty of the permits went to hunting opponents who never intended to use them, according to the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which encouraged critics to apply in hopes of saving the bears. Each permit holder was allowed to kill one bear as part of the state’s wildlife management strategy.
Florida’s black bear population is considered one of the state’s conservation success stories, having grown from just several hundred bears in the 1970s to an estimated more than 4,000. Opponents questioned whether the hunt was necessary, but they were Unable to convince the courts To stop it.
“The 2025 black bear hunt, based on sound scientific data, was successful,” Roger Young, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in a statement.
Susanna Randolph, director of the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter, said the death toll may have been lower than expected for a variety of reasons, including the possibility that the state overestimated the population or that conservationists were able to obtain enough permits to make a difference.
Randolph said a lack of transparency by state officials about the count raised questions about whether it was accurate since there were no check-in stations for hunters as there were in 2015, and hunters self-reported the kills via the commission’s hunting app.
As of Tuesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had refused to release any details about the number of bears killed, despite multiple media requests.
“They designed it so they didn’t actually know the numbers, and they were evading the media,” Randolph said. “So this is very suspicious right off the bat.”
This year’s hunting plan had stricter rules than the 2015 hunting plan, as permits were given to anyone who could pay for them, resulting in more than 3,700 permits being issued. This led to a chaotic event that was shut down days ago. Of the 304 bears killed, at least 38 were females with cubs, meaning the baby bears may have died as well.
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