Florida’s rare and controversial black bear hunt kills 52
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/12/2025 (274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Fifty-two bears were killed during Florida’s first black bear hunt in a decade, state wildlife officials said Tuesday.
The bear hunt, which started Dec. 6 and ended on Sunday, had been restricted to 172 permit holders who had won their vouchers through a random lottery involving more than 160,000 applicants.
At least four dozen of the permits went to opponents of the hunt who never intended to use them, according to the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which encouraged critics to apply in the hopes of saving bears. Each permit holder was allowed to kill one bear as part of the state’s wildlife management strategy.
The Florida 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 estimate over 4,000. Opponents had questioned whether the hunt was necessary, but they were unable to convince the courts to halt it.
“The 2025 black bear hunt, rooted in sound scientific data, was a success,” Roger Young, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in a statement.
The kill count may have been lower than expected for a range of reasons, including the possibilities that the state overestimated the population or conservationists managed to take up enough permits to make a difference, said Susannah Randolph, director of the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter.
The lack of transparency by state officials about the number raised questions about whether it was accurate since there were no check-in stations for hunters like in 2015, and hunters self-reported their kills via the commission’s hunting app, Randolph said.
Until Tuesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had refused to divulge any details on the number of bears killed, despite multiple media requests.
“They have designed it so that they don’t actually know the numbers, and they have been dodging the media,” Randolph said. “So that is super fishy right off the bat.”
This year’s hunting plan had more stringent rules than the 2015 hunt, in which permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them, resulting in more than 3,700 permits issued. That led to a chaotic event that was shut down days early. Of the 304 bears killed, at least 38 were females with cubs, meaning the young bears may have died too.
___
Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social
