Over 40 community members gathered at the intersection of Northwest 8th Avenue and 34th Street Saturday to protest a proposed Florida black bear hunt. This would be the first bear hunt since 2015.
Gainesville’s anti-hunt demonstration was part of a 13-city protest coordinated by Bear Defenders to protest the black bear hunt proposed in a bear management plan by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission in December 2024.
The FWC will discuss the options for the black bear hunt during a meeting on Wednesday in Ocala.
Cars honked their horns as activists held up signs that read “Trophy hunting is not conservation” and “Stop the hunt.” They gathered from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. under the shade of trees on the corner of Albert “Ray” Massey Park, while others crossed the street to stand in the hot sun.
A woman with a rattle and a toy bear tied on her sunhat walked along the street, singing, “‘Don’t shoot my mom,’ said the bear cub. ‘I’m not a trophy for your wall.’”
James Ryan, a 66-year-old Interlachen, Florida, resident, drove 45 minutes to attend the protest. He said he came to raise awareness about the hunt.
A Florida black bear hunt is a bad idea because the population is already so small, he said. The hunt in 2015 was a mess, he added.
“ I'm not against hunting, but it needs to be done right,” Ryan said. “We don't have enough wild animals in Florida.”
The black bear population grew from several hundred in the 1970s to over 4,000 today, according to the FWC. The commission stated multiple bear subpopulations were determined to be large and healthy enough to sustain a hunt. There are more bears in Florida than there have been in the last 100 years.
The last black bear hunt was Oct. 24, 2015, and it lasted two days. Hunters killed 304 bears, almost reaching their goal of 320. The FWC sold 3,776 permits for use in four bear management units – north, south, central and east panhandle. Alachua county falls under the central BMU.
Each BMU had an objective for the number of bears hunted, and both the central and east panhandle units over-harvested.
Fifty-nine-year-old Audrey Holt, one of the protest’s coordinators, has worked with Bear Defenders since 2016.
“ During the hunt in 2015, I sat at home and cried,” Holt said.
She’s worked with animal rescue for over 30 years and said she chose to protest to try and keep a hunt from happening again.
Maria Geer, a 67-year-old registered nurse, came out to protest for a simple reason: She loves bears.
“ I don't believe in unnecessary hunting,” Geer said.
She’s lived 20 minutes north of Gainesville in the country for around 30 years and said she’s only seen a black bear once.
Geer doesn’t think the bear population in Florida is big enough to warrant a hunt, she said.
Sarah Younger, the 65-year-old conservation chair of the Sierra Club’s Suwannee St. John’s Granch, stood by the street with a neon green sign reading “I am not your trophy” in one hand. She held a stuffed bear in the other.
“Our plea is to the Fish and Wildlife to at least postpone the vote,” Younger said.
The FWC stated in the 2019 Florida Black Bear management plan that human-bear encounters will likely continue to increase in number and intensity as Florida’s human and bear populations both grow, which justified the hunt.
Younger, though, said human population growth has caused more environmental pressures than bears. Instead of hunting bears in their homes, she said wildlife-friendly options like wildlife corridors should be prioritized, especially as the impacts of climate change take effect.
“ We don't need to interject a bear hunt at this time to manage them,” she said. “We know that those factors are going to have a considerable amount of impact on the bear population.”
Crow Wilds, a 50-year-old Gainesville resident, sat in a sunny corner across the majority of the protesters with his dog, Sallievrei, for over an hour. .
He said he came because the 2015 black bear hunt was a disaster, and hunters had killed cubs and mother bears during it. According to the FWC, 59% of the bears harvested during the 2015 hunt were female.
He hopes protesting lessens the number of people who want to go out and hunt bears, he said.
“We can’t have that again,” Wilds said. “I just say leave the bears alone.”
Contact Maria Avlonitis at mavlonitis@alligator.org. Follow her on X @MariaAvlonitis.
