The bear response agent program was an experimental program designed to help educate humans that live in bear areas how to responsibly live among bears.
We do this by performing “site evaluations”. We go out to the site where someone has called in about a bear in their area or on their property and we do an investigation to find out why the bear is coming to that said location.
Most often we find that the people are unintentionally attracting the bear in with pet food, garbage, bird feeders or some other attractant. Also unsecured livestock is another big attractant.
We educate the residents of these areas and often solve the problem. A lot of people have no clue about living in a bear area, but we have made a huge differenceby educating them. We have thwarted potential severe bear/human incidences because of the bear response agent program.
Also to collect data from live and road killed bears for DNA and aging. This helps better conservation decisions in Tallahassee. We (agents) all are on 24/7 call to handle certain emergencies pertaining to bear/human situations.
In 2007 the decision to kill approximately 4 out of 5 bears was made to (in theory) cut down the number of “habitualized” bears.
A simple statistic to understand the numbers put down is, between 1975 and 2007 we euthanized 26 bears, since 2007, we have more than quadrupled that. Last count from biologist data is there are just over 3000 bears in the whole state. Most of the bears are here in central FL.
70% of the work biologists were involved in before the program was on bear calls, not their job description. This has free the biologists up so the can perform their field duties and wildlife management service. (impact studies/bio-counts)
The high ranking officials recently stated the we agents have done an impeccable job and made HUGE advances in bear/human awareness=their words.
However because of economic cut backs the program has run out of money and the program is slated to be shut down. If we loose the program, the bears will loose.
Without our efforts to educate the populous it will dramatically increase the chance of someone getting hurt or killed because of their ignorance or someone else’s ignorance. Some people will still feed the bears and a fed bear is potentially dangerous and it WILL get the bear killed as well.
Because of the agents educating the public, the numbers of bears being destroyed have dropped almost to none. Also the results of our efforts have dramatically reduced the numbers of bear calls in bear areas.The Florida black bear remains on the threatened species list and is a valuable asset to the Florida wilds. It is an umbrella species and deserves to be here like everyone else.
The bottom line is, we need $50,000 to keep up this great effort and to help both man and beast.
All donations will go directly to the Bear Response Agent program.
Any questions feel free to contact me, thank you.
For information on how you can help, please contact Fred Bohler!
