JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s first bear hunting season in a decade is now in its 10th day, but no one knows how many bears have been hunted at this point.
Susannah Randolph with the Florida Chapter of the Sierra Club argued the public has the right to know what’s happening with the hunt, especially after the last hunt in 2015 came to an abrupt end after nearly 300 bears were killed in the season’s first two days.
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“There are mothers and cubs out there. There are some that are not denning. So, that really puts a lot of urgency on knowing whether or not it’s zero or it’s 100, both of which are numbers and they need to come forward on that,” Randolph said.
It’s not just advocacy groups that are having a hard time getting information from FWC.
Last Monday, Action News Jax emailed FWC’s communications team asking for the total number of bears hunted during the first weekend of the season.
We were told to submit a public records request, which we did that same day.
A week later, that public records request remains outstanding.
We emailed FWC again Monday morning asking for a statement addressing why our records request had not been fulfilled.
RELATED: Many would-be bear hunters won’t be gearing up for this bear season due to efforts by advocates
We quickly received a response from an FWC spokesperson who stated in accordance with state statute and FWC policy, “records staff will process your request and notify you of the results.”
Randolph argued the stonewalling is unacceptable.
“It’s time for the FWC to stop hiding the ball, or hiding the bears as it were, because they have a public integrity problem at this point if they do not,” Randolph said.
A total of 172 tags were auctioned off for the season.
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At last count, bear advocates had managed to acquire as many as 78 of them.
That means we should likely expect to see less than 100 bears in total harvested.
But Randolph argued without transparency, there’s no way of knowing whether hunters are playing by the rules.
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“Did a hunter take one bear or two bears and did they take two bears and they only report one? If they took two, that’s poaching. That’s a felony and FWC needs to go after that. That’s another reason they might be hiding the numbers,” Randolph said.
Another aspect of this season that makes it difficult to track what’s happening: In 2015, hunters would have to take their kills to weigh stations, which the public were able to access to see the bears for themselves.
This year, there are no such stations and hunters are able to self-report their kills.
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