State reduces bear-proof funding

State wildlife officials have $310,000 less this year to help bear-proof communities.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission announced last week that it has begun accepting applications from local governments for “BearWise” funding to help communities lock up garbage and keep bears out of neighborhoods.

The agency handed out $825,000 last year but has just $515,000 to distribute this year.

Bears, described by FWC’s Thomas Eason as “opportunistic feeders,” often wander into residential neighborhoods in search of food.

State figures show that nearly seven of every 10 calls to Florida’s nuisance-bear hot-line are related to concerns about bears roaming out of the woods to forage in garbage bins.

FWC’s “BearWise” program helped pay for 4,000 bear-resistant trash cans in 2016 as an effort to reduce potentially dangerous human/bear conflicts.

Bear advocates criticized the funding cuts.

“I would think if a program’s working, you’d want to continue it,” said Chuck O’Neal, president of Speak Up Wekiva, a Lake Mary environmental group that sued to stop the 2015 Florida bear hunt.

He was among environmentalists who supported an unsuccessful legislative proposal that would have provided $1 million in funding for the “Bear-Wise” program and imposed a 10-year ban on bear hunts.

The Legislature cut its funding to the program from $500,000 in 2016 to $415,00 this year.

An FWC spokeswoman point out that about $375,000 of last year’s state money for the program came from the sale of bear-hunt permits.

The controversial Florida bear hunt, the state’s first in 21 years, killed 304 bears, 143 in Central Florida.

The Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida, an organization that provides funding for FWC programs, also cut its pledge to the “BearWise effort,” though its board chairman, Richard Corbett, praised the program.

“Local communities and homeowners across Florida are eager to upgrade their trash receptacles to reduce human-bear conflict, but the funds are not always available,” Corbett said in a statement posted on the foundation’s website.

Corbett was chairman of the FWC’s governing board in 2015, when the panel voted for a hunt.

The foundation reduced its award to the program from $325,000 in 2016 to $100,000 this year.

Those funds come from the sale of “Conserve Wildlife” license plates, which feature a black bear in sawgrass and a snowy egret in flight.

Orange, Seminole and Lake counties each received $200,000 last year through FWC’s “BearWise” program to defray the cost of bear-proof trash bins for residents in areas where black bears commonly roam.

The deadline to apply for BearWise funding is Oct. 16.

Lake, Marion and Seminole counties ranked among the top five counties in Florida for bear conflicts in 2016. Orange County ranked seventh.

Florida wildlife biologists, who concluded a scientific survey of the species in 2016, estimate 4,050 black bears roam the state.