Florida Says First Hunt Since 2015 Killed 52 Bears
Guy Marwick waits his turn to speak at a Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission hearing about proposed bear hunting Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in Ocala, Florida. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
Fifty-two bears were killed during Florida’s first black bear hunt in ten years, state wildlife officials reported Tuesday.
The hunt ran from December 6 through Sunday and was limited to 172 permit holders who won their vouchers through a lottery that drew more than 160,000 applicants. According to the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, at least four dozen of the permits went to opponents of the hunt who never intended to use them. The group had encouraged critics to apply in an effort to protect the bears.
Each permit allowed the holder to kill one bear as part of Florida’s wildlife management strategy. The Florida black bear population is considered a conservation success story, growing from a few hundred in the 1970s to an estimated 4,000 today.
Opponents of the hunt questioned whether it was necessary but were unable to convince the courts to block it, the AP reports.
“The 2025 black bear hunt, rooted in sound scientific data, was a success,” said Roger Young, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). The FWC said all bears killed during the hunt were physically checked by its staff and contractors, WPBF reports.
The kill total may have been lower than expected for several reasons, including the possibility that the state overestimated the bear population or that conservationists successfully acquired enough permits to reduce the number of bears taken, said Susannah Randolph, director of the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter.
Until Tuesday, the FWC had declined to release any information on the number of bears killed, despite repeated media requests. Critics have questioned the accuracy of the reported figures, noting that unlike in 2015, there were no check-in stations for hunters and kills were self-reported via the FWC hunting app.
“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 hunt had stricter rules than the 2015 hunt, when permits were sold to anyone who could pay, resulting in over 3,700 permits and a chaotic event that was shut down early. Of the 304 bears killed during that hunt, at least 38 were females with cubs, meaning some young bears also likely died.
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