Florida’s first black bear hunt in a decade kills 52, officials say

Florida’s first black bear hunt in a decade ended with state officials reporting that 52 bears were killed, closing a hunt that began Dec. 6 and ran through Sunday. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the hunt was limited to 172 permit holders, selected after a random lottery of more than 160,000 applicants.

Under the state’s wildlife-management strategy, each permit holder was allowed to kill one bear. The Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which encouraged critics to apply in hopes of saving bears, said the permit system produced an unintended result: at least four dozen of the permits, the group alleged, went to people who never intended to use them.

State officials described the hunt as grounded in scientific planning. “The 2025 black bear hunt, rooted in sound scientific data, was a success,” Roger Young, the commission’s executive director, said in a statement.

Sierra Club director Susannah Randolph said the reported kill total may have been lower than expected for several reasons, including the possibility that the state overestimated the bear population. Randolph also suggested that conservationists may have occupied enough permits to affect the outcome.

The dispute sharpened around how Florida tracked and reported the number of bears killed. Randolph said the commission did not provide transparency about the kill count despite multiple media requests, and she said the absence of check-in stations—unlike the 2015 hunt—raised questions about whether the number was accurate.

Randolph also said hunters self-reported their kills using the commission’s hunting app. She said the commission had refused to divulge details on the number of bears killed until Tuesday, and she criticized what she described as a lack of knowledge and responsiveness by state wildlife officials. “They have designed it so that they don’t actually know the numbers, and they have been dodging the media,” Randolph said. “So that is super fishy right off the bat.”

The Sierra Club’s concerns come as Florida’s black bear population has been described by state officials as a conservation success story, growing from several hundred in the 1970s to an estimate over 4,000. Opponents had questioned whether a hunt was necessary, but they were unable to persuade the courts to stop it.

Randolph contrasted this year’s rules with the 2015 hunt, when permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them, resulting in more than 3,700 permits issued. She said that prior hunt led to a chaotic event that was shut down days early, and she noted that this year’s plan included more stringent rules.

In addition, Randolph cited the sex and reproductive status of some kills in criticizing the hunt’s broader impact. She said that, of the 304 bears killed under the 2025 plan, at least 38 were females with cubs, meaning young bears may have died as well.