Florida wildlife officials have stopped planning for a second bear hunt in the fall. For now, they have made up their mind to hunt for other means to make tension-filled ursine relations better.
The moment they came out of the Endangered Species list, the Florida black bears have been creating problems for the state's wildlife officials. The jump in the population from hundreds in the 1970s to an estimated 4,350 has been called a conservation success, but keeping the now prospering bear population from coming very close to human beings have paved the way for another equally loaded challenge.
As per the News-Press, Brian Yablonski, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioner, who argued fruitlessly in support of a 2016 bear hunt, said, “Bear conflicts are out there. They're real and they're growing. But that's a sign of robust health with our bear population. But unfortunately it gives us a complicated problem, and we're trying to solve it”.
Every year, the country’s third most-populous state comes across over 6,000 complaints regarding bears straying very close to humans, in comparison to just hundreds of such complaints ten years back.
The problems have come quite soon after the black bears escaped from the Endangered Species list in 2012, raising questions regarding how narrow the margin for bear population in Florida is in reality. The question has echoed across the nation, as earlier endangered animals have re-emerged successfully as a result of decades-long conservation work. The same issue is prevailing in the urban areas countrywide.