It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know the Florida Fish and Wildlife “Conservation” meeting about hunting bears was going to be a pro-hunting virtual call with no chance of bear advocates having an opportunity to speak. The tightly filtered meeting only showed hunters’ comments on the screen when FWC officials posed questions like how we should kill bears, with bows and arrows, pneumatic devices, dogs, baiting’s, should they be young, old, mothers, cubs, weighing under 100 pounds…one of my comments made it through the filters.
“Only bears weighing over 2,000 pounds should be killed” – of course, there are no bears weighing that amount – was the one comment I made which made it onto the comment thread and away from the private section.
Who can forget the last 2015 bear massacre in the woods? The images are still on my cell phone, photos taken of bears bleeding from the nose, some so very small, one who was called Grandfather Bear by locals, and the first bear killed, a lactating mother.
The majority of Floridians (and the rest of the world) are against killing bears and the world reacted. Florida was shamed in global news reports.
I can see the writing on the wall, and it’s written in the red blood of Florida Black Bears. The bear advocates will unite again, and we will never stop organizing, fighting, planning, speaking, shouting, writing and advocating for bears to not be killed.
