Florida officials said 52 black bears were killed during the state’s first black bear hunt in a decade, ending Sunday after starting Dec. 6. The state restricted the hunt to 172 permit holders who were selected through a random lottery from more than 160,000 applicants, according to Florida wildlife officials.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the hunt was part of the state’s wildlife management strategy and that each permit holder was allowed to kill one bear. The commission has described the state’s black bear population as one of Florida’s conservation success stories, with the bear population growing from “just several hundred bears in the 1970s” to an estimate over 4,000.
Roger Young, executive director of the commission, said in a statement: “The 2025 black bear hunt, rooted in sound scientific data, was a success,” according to the announcement reported by the Associated Press.
Opponents of the hunt argued that the permit process allowed people who did not intend to hunt to obtain the vouchers in hopes of keeping bears alive. Susannah Randolph, director of the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter, said “at least four dozen” of the permits went to opponents who never intended to use them, and the Sierra Club had encouraged critics to apply for permits.
Randolph also criticized what she said was a lack of transparency about the kill count during the hunt. She said the commission refused to divulge details on the number of bears killed until Tuesday, despite multiple media requests, and she argued that the state’s approach raised questions about accuracy because hunters self-reported their kills using the commission’s hunting app and there were no check-in stations like those used in 2015.
Randolph said the commission appeared to have designed the hunt so it “don’t actually know the numbers, and they have been dodging the media,” adding: “So that is super fishy right off the bat.” She also said the state’s approach differs from the 2015 hunt, when permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them, resulting in more than 3,700 permits issued and a chaotic event that was shut down days early.
In addition to the transparency concerns, Randolph said the kill count may have been lower than expected for multiple reasons, including the possibility that the state overestimated the population or that conservationists managed to take up enough permits to affect the outcome. She said 2015 had produced an earlier, much larger permit pool that shaped how the hunt operated and how many animals were killed.
The hunt’s backers said conservation remains the goal, while opponents said the cull was unnecessary. The Sierra Club’s challenge to the hunt’s necessity did not succeed in court, and the reporting said opponents were unable to convince courts to halt the hunt.