Crowd of bear lovers seeks answers for recent conflicts
A standing-room crowd of mostly outspoken bear lovers filled a church hall in Longwood on Tuesday night to seek ways to curb increasing conflicts between people and black bears in Central Florida neighborhoods.
Many put the blame for the spike in conflicts not on bears but on people — particularly developers and politicians responsible for projects that have whittled away the wooded areas that are home to Florida’s largest native land mammal.
Others blamed “the stupid people” who don’t secure trash or who put out bowls of pet food on their porches and patios, unwittingly luring the opportunistic beasts into neighborhoods for easy meals.
“Fine the idiots,” said Cathy Noga, wearing a Tshirt with the slogan, “I support the right to arm bears.”
Organized by the bearmanagement unit of the Flor- ida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, the meeting drew about 150 people to the Markham Woods Road Church. Somepledged to volunteer with the wildlife agency to help educate neighbors or comeupwithstrategies for co-existence.
But a few quietly proposed an unpopular solution for thinning the state’s bear population.
“I’m a hunter, and I think the best way to regulate them is to allow hunts and harvest them,” said Marvin Lail, 79, of Apopka, who wrote his suggestion on a comment card. “I’m sorry if the bleeding hearts don’t agree. It’s a beautiful animal and wouldn’t it look nice on your living-room floor?”
The gathering came after a tumultuous year.
State wildlife officers documented the worst Florida black bear attack ever on a humanonDec. 2 whenSusan Chalfant, 54, was mauled as she was walking her dogs
in a gated community off Markham Woods Road in Seminole County. FWC euthanized two bears caught in traps after the attack on Chalfant. Neither was involved in the mauling, according to post- mortem DNA tests.
Callers to an FWC hotline also complained at a record pace last year about bears chasing people, breaking through pool screens, busting into garages, tearing through garbage and killing pets. The agency handled more than 6,700 human-bear conflicts in 2013 with more complaints originating from Central Florida neighborhoods than anywhere else in Florida. A third of the calls involved bears foraging in garbage.
A key part of the state’s management plan is to help citizens gain a better understanding of bears and develop “bear-smart communities.” Wildlife officials hope to use the citizen input to craft strategies to reduce bear conflicts.
But they also got an earful from citizens angry about the euthanization of the “innocent” Longwood bears. The critics challenged the agency’s position that they had no place to hold the captured animals.
Nonetheless, wildlife officials were encouraged.
“It’s a great turnout,” said Mike Orlando, an FWCwildlife biologist and a black bear expert whowill lead a similar gathering in Umatilla on Thursday. “We couldn’t ask for a better start.”