As Florida strikes ahead with plans to reinstate a regulated black bear hunt for the primary time since 2015, opponents of the hunt from around the globe 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 objective 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, instructed Naples Daily News. “Now that now we have a constitutional proper to hunt, I’d as effectively make the most of that.”
O’Neal was sarcastically referring to Amendment 2, Florida’s new constitutional modification that ensures the precise to hunt and fish for anybody with a correct license. Handed in 2024 with greater than 67 p.c assist from the Florida citizens, the modification protects particular person participation in searching 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 attainable for them to buy a license and apply for one of many black bear permits, that are more likely to be allotted this 12 months.
“We’ll put in just a few occasions or just a few hundred occasions. It’s an equal alternative to enter this. I need to admit, I’m not a superb marksman. I could kill a bear with kindness,” O’Neal said.
Nonetheless, the precise language of the modification might complicate the protest effort. It will not be unlawful to buy a tag and keep residence, however the coordinated effort to impede authorized searching entry appears to run afoul of the spirit of Modification 2, which was supposed to ensure Floridians the precise to hunt, not simply to buy a license. If anti-hunters snatch up a big amount of the state’s obtainable bear permits, it will 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 stop anti-hunters from making use of or if there can be any punishment for drawing with the intention of limiting searching alternative for others.
Including to the complexity of the problem 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 gained’t have the ability to purchase a allow, even when they’re drawn within the lottery. This might restrict the protest’s potential influence (except, in fact, 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 remaining vote on the proposed hunt, which might allot 187 black bear tags, is scheduled for August. The FWC was not instantly obtainable for touch upon whether or not the state has a plan to handle protester-driven lottery entries.
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