Bear Warriors United, an Oviedo-based nonprofit dedicated to defending Florida's wildlife, filed a lawsuit Aug. 15 to block the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission from moving forward with a planned black bear hunt in December and to declare invalid the commission's approval of the hunt.
The petition, filed in the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings two days after the FWC voted 5-0 in favor of the the bear hunt, asks the court to bar the commission from issuing 187 bear hunting permits this year in a lottery. Each permit would allow the hunter to “harvest” one bear from four management areas during the hunt, which would take place from Dec. 6-28.
This would be the first black bear hunt since 2015 when 304 bears were killed in two days.
Holly Hill attorney Raquel Levy and Tallahassee attorney Thomas Crapps represent Bear Warriors United, the nonprofit fighting to prevent the hunt.
The FWC Communications Director Shannon Knowles wrote in an email Aug. 15 that she was unable to comment on the lawsuit.
The planned hunt will allow hunters to use dogs to chase bears and to hunt bears at game feeding stations. Hunters will also be able to use bows and arrows. Opponents of the bear hunt say all three methods are cruel.
Katrina Shadix, the founder and executive director of Bear Warriors United, said the planned bear hunt would be a fatal blow for bears.
“We’ve only 4,000 bears left in the state of Florida,” Shadix said in a phone interview. “They are already being killed off by deer strikes, poaching and over development and loss of habitat.”
She said more than 300 bears are killed by vehicles every year in Florida.
“This trophy hunt would be the final nail in their coffin,” she said.
Lawsuit seeks to block issuing of black bear hunting permits
The lawsuit asks for an administrative court to declare the FWC rule allowing the bear hunt "an invalid exercise of delegated legislative authority" under Florida law.
Challenge: FWC rule provides 'unbridled authority'
The petition states that the FWC rule allowing the bear hunt is invalid because it gives the “FWC executive director, or designee, unbridled authority to issue permits to kill bears annually without any guidance or scientific facts.”
“Rather than having the constitutionally created commission’s seven appointed members wrestling with the difficult questions, the proposed rule delegates the decision of annually establishing bear hunting zones and bear harvest quotas to the executive director or designee,” the lawsuit states.
The rule deprives the public of due process to be heard by the constitutionally appointed officers making the decision, the suit states.
Proposed bear hunt based on outdated data
It also states the hunt is based on “stale facts from a 2014-2015 bear population study and is directly contrary to the FWC’s own 2019 Bear Management Plan and staff recommendations.
The FWC notice of the proposed rule did not provide “the public with supporting methodology or scientific facts to support its decision and wrongly limited and misinformed the public about how to provide public comments on the proposed rule.”
FWC rule is vague, arbitrary
The rule is “vague, as well as arbitrary or capricious,” by failing to establish adequate standards for deciding the number of bear hunting permits to issue and gives the executive director “unbridled discretion.”
The 2019 Bear Management Plan prioritizes preventing conflicts with bears and protecting the animals’ habitat along with starting “BearWise community programs.” The plan “expressly encourages the Commission” to use its powers to “influence land use and development decisions in bear habitat.”
“The proposed rule contradicts the 2019 Bear Management Plan and results in the FWC flying blind as to the black bear population in making decisions,” the petition states.
It also states the FWC notice improperly limited public comments by closing comments on July 4 as opposed to at the end of the final public hearing as set out by Florida law, the petition states. The agency also improperly limited comments to about three pages, it states.
Levy spoke against the bear hunt during the commission meeting last week in Havana, Florida.
"We are asking each and every one of you to please reconsider at the 11th hour," Levy told the commission in a video posted on the Florida channel. "Do what’s right. You don’t want this to be your legacy."
Levy's daughter, Bella Schwartz, 17, a paralegal student at Daytona State College who conducted research for the lawsuit, also spoke against the bear hunt.
"There’s over development," Schwartz told the commission. "Stripping bears of their habitat and then saying that there’s an overpopulation of bears and killing them is not the right thing to do. I’m here to ask you to do the right thing by not supporting the bear hunt."
Schwartz said there was no need for the bear hunt.
"Lets be realistic. These hunters aren’t wanting to eat the bears, right. This isn’t just a bear hunt. It’s a bear trophy hunt," Schwartz said. "I am the youth. Please don’t steal an economically stable future from us."
In an interview, Schwartz said the FWC was not doing its part to protect Florida's black bears.
“Obviously, bears don't have a voice, so we have to speak up to help them," Schwartz said. "Otherwise, no one will, although you would think the FWC would, as it's their job."
Schwartz said that it’s unknown whether there is an overpopulation of bears in Florida because the science on the issue isn't current. But even if the data was updated, she said there are more humane ways to remove bears.
“I think that the fact that the cruelest methods are being included, it's truly horrible. It shows that the commissioners just aren't interested in caring for the wildlife,” Schwartz said.
Ex-Volusia Councilman Clay Henderson opposes bear hunt
The lawsuit has an attached letter from Clay Henderson. a lawyer and former Volusia County Council member now living in Virginia. Henderson stated that he was a member of the 1998 Constitution Revision Commission which established the FWC.
Henderson wrote that "the proposed rules leads me to the conclusion that they run afoul of the stated intent behind the creation of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, that decisions be based on sound science ... ."
Henderson wrote the bear hunt is "inconsistent" with an FWC plan about non-lethal bear conflict mitigation and "undermines the public confidence in the FWCC's commitment to make wildlife decisions based upon sound science."
The Bear Warriors United legal challenge also includes a letter from Rachael Curran, staff attorney at the Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment at the Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport. Like Henderson's, Curran's letter was submitted to the commission before its approval of the bear hunt.
"FWC's proposed Florida black bear trophy hunt, this time with dogs and hunting over bait, is biologically reckless, ethically indefensible, and legally unsound. FWC must reject this Proposed Rule and uphold its core conservation mandate."
Central Florida Bear Management Unit would issue fewest permits
About 4,050 bears live in seven regions across Florida, according to a story in the Tallahassee Democrat.
The bears were listed as a threatened species in the 1970s. But the bear population has increased from 1,200 in the 1990s when the annual hunt ended to a current estimate of 4,050 bears in seven regions across the state.
The season in December will allow for the hunting of 68 bears in the East Panhandle Bear Management Unit; 46 in the North; 18 in Central; and 55 in the South; the story stated.
Volusia and Flagler counties are in the central bear management unit which includes the Ocala/St. Johns subpopulation of bears. In 2014, the FWC estimated an average of 1,200 bears in the central unit, according to the FWC website.
The FWC is proposing the fewest hunting permits for the central unit because it has the highest bear mortality in the state with an average of 209 bears killed each year, according to the FWC website. Of those, 84% are vehicle-related deaths.
Also cub survival is 38%, lower than other units, mainly due to male bears killing cubs and vehicle strikes. The vehicles kill cubs by directly hitting them or indirectly when the cubs' mothers are killed by vehicles before the young bears can't live on their own, according to the FWC.
The planned hunt comes in the wake of the first fatal bear attack in Florida's recorded history, according to a USAToday story. Robert Markel, 89, and his dog, were found dead on May 5 on his property 30 miles east of Naples, according to the FWC. Markel's daughter called 911 after seeing a bear attack the dog. FWC killed three bears after the attack and found Markel's DNA on one of the bears.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Bear Warriors, Holly Hill lawyer file suit to block FWC bear hunt
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