As Florida strikes ahead with plans to reinstate a regulated black bear hunt for the primary time since 2015, opponents of the hunt from world wide are mobilizing an unconventional tactic — making use of for the lottery hunt en masse. If these anti-hunters draw a tag, they’ll maintain onto it, successfully stopping a authorized, well-intended bear hunter from drawing. Their purpose is to flood the lottery and, theoretically, cut back the variety of bears harvested.
“By no means in my life did I feel I’d be a hunter,” Chuck O’Neal, president of Speak Up Wekiva, a grassroots group devoted to defending the Wekiva River and its watershed, informed Naples Daily News. “Now that now we have a constitutional proper to hunt, I would as nicely reap the benefits of that.”
O’Neal was sarcastically referring to Amendment 2, Florida’s new constitutional modification that ensures the fitting to hunt and fish for anybody with a correct license. Handed in 2024 with greater than 67 p.c help from the Florida voters, the modification protects particular person participation in looking and fishing. Additionally, it identifies these actions because the “most popular technique of responsibly managing and controlling fish and wildlife.”
O’Neal and different opponents of the bear hunt argue that Modification 2 makes it potential for them to buy a license and apply for one of many black bear permits, that are prone to be allotted this 12 months.
“We’ll put in a couple of occasions or a couple of hundred occasions. It’s an equal alternative to enter this. I need to admit, I’m not a great marksman. I’ll kill a bear with kindness,” O’Neal said.
Nonetheless, the precise language of the modification may complicate the protest effort. It is probably not unlawful to buy a tag and keep dwelling, however the coordinated effort to impede authorized looking entry appears to run afoul of the spirit of Modification 2, which was supposed to ensure Floridians the fitting to hunt, not simply to buy a license. If anti-hunters snatch up a big amount of the state’s accessible bear permits, it could rob others of their constitutionally protected proper. It additionally strips the state of the administration software that the modification prioritizes.
It’s unclear how FWC would forestall anti-hunters from making use of or if there could be any punishment for drawing with the intention of limiting looking alternative for others.
Including to the complexity of the difficulty is Florida’s utility course of. The state requires people to finish a hunter safety course earlier than buying a license. If non-hunters apply for the black bear lottery with out finishing the required course, they received’t be capable of purchase a allow, even when they’re drawn within the lottery. This might restrict the protest’s potential influence (until, after all, these candidates are keen to finish hunter schooling).
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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee maintains the hunt is critical to handle the state’s rising black bear inhabitants and to mitigate rising human-bear conflicts, together with a current fatal attack on an 88-year-old man in Collier County. The FWC voted 4-1 to offer preliminary approval for the hunt on Might 15. A ultimate vote on the proposed hunt, which might allot 187 black bear tags, is scheduled for August. The FWC was not instantly accessible for touch upon whether or not the state has a plan to handle protester-driven lottery entries.
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