TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — For the first time in a decade, hunters armed with rifles and crossbows are fanning out across Florida's swamps and flatwoods to legally hunt the Florida black bear, over the vocal opposition of critics.
The state-sanctioned hunt began Saturday, after drawing more than 160,000 applications for a far more limited number of hunting permits, including from opponents who are trying to reduce the number of bears killed in this year's hunt, the state's first since 2015.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission awarded 172 bear hunt permits by random lottery for this year's season, allowing hunters to kill one bear each in areas where the population is deemed large enough. At least 43 of the permits went to opponents of the hunt who never intend to use them, according to the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which encouraged critics to apply in the hopes of saving bears.
The Florida black bear population is considered one of the state's conservation success stories, having grown from just several hundred bears in the 1970s to an estimated more than 4,000 today.
Opponents have questioned whether the hunt was necessary, but they were unable to convince the courts to halt it.
Here's what to know.
The 172 people who were awarded a permit through a random lottery will be able to kill one bear each during the 2025 season, which runs from Dec. 6 to Dec. 28. The permits are specific to one of the state's four designated bear hunting zones, each of which have a hunting quota set by state officials based on the bear population in each region.
In order to participate, hunters must hold a valid hunting license and a bear harvest permit, which costs $100 for residents and $300 for nonresidents, plus fees. Applications for the permits cost $5 each.
The regulated hunt will help incentivize maintaining healthy bear populations, and help fund the work that is needed, according to Mark Barton of the Florida chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, an advocacy group that supported the hunt.
Having an annual hunt will help guarantee funding to "keep moving conservation for bears forward,” Barton said.
According to state wildlife officials, the bear population has grown enough to support a regulated hunt and warrant population management. The state agency sees hunting as an effective tool that is used to manage wildlife populations around the world, and allows the state to monetize conservation efforts through permit and application fees.
"While we have enough suitable bear habitat to support our current bear population levels, if the four largest subpopulations continue to grow at current rates, we will not have enough habitat at some point in the future," reads a bear hunting guide published by the state wildlife commission.
Opponents meanwhile have called the hunt cruel, unnecessary and an excuse for hunters to bag a trophy animal when the real issue is the ever-growing human population encroaching on bear habitat.
This year’s hunting plan has more stringent rules than the 2015 hunt, in which permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them, resulting in more than 3,700 permits issued. That led to a chaotic event that was shut down days early. Of the 304 bears killed, at least 38 were females with cubs, meaning the young bears may have died too.
Ultimately, wildlife officials decided to call off the hunt after its second day after a higher than expected number of bears were killed, though hunters did not exceed the statewide quota.
Doug Moore regularly sees bears on the more than 6,000 acres of timberland that he manages in northeast Florida. The president of a local hunting club, Moore is generally supportive of the new regulations for the bear hunt, even though he and his family members weren't issued a permit this year.
Moore described the management of the 2015 hunt as “fouled up” and “totally wrong" but said, “they’re doing it right this time."
Backers of the hunt have said that growing numbers of bears present a safety problem, with local officials sharing reports of bears on porches, rooting through garbage cans and roaming neighborhoods and playgrounds.
Activists have argued that the state should instead focus on other means of curbing nuisance bears and assuring safety through better trash management.
While opponents failed to convince a judge to stop the hunt, they were issued about a quarter of the overall permits, after activists applied for hunting tags they never intend to use.
“Somewhere out there a bear will be walking the grounds of the Panhandle, and I gave them a stay of execution,” said Joel Cleveland, an opponent of the hunt who was issued one of the permits.
Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
FILE - A black bear is weighed by FWC Biologists Alyssa Simmons and Mike Orlando at the Rock Springs Run Wildlife Management Area near Lake Mary, Fla., Oct. 24, 2015. (Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via AP, file)
Joel Cleveland poses with his Florida bear hunting permit Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Mike Carlson)
KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Many of the voices were frantic and desperate. A few were steady and calm amid mounting, frightening danger, and in some cases, inescapable doom.
They came from families huddled on rooftops to escape rising, swirling waters, mothers panicked for the wellbeing of their children and onlookers who heard people yell for help through the dark as they clung to treetops.
One man, stuck high in a tree as it began to break under the pressure of the floodwaters, asked emergency dispatchers for a helicopter rescue that never came.
Their pleas were among more than 400 calls for help across Kerr County last summer when devastating floods hit during the overnight hours on the July Fourth holiday. The recordings of the 911 calls were released Friday.
The sheer volume of calls would overwhelm two county emergency dispatchers on duty in the Texas Hill Country as catastrophic flooding inundated cabins and youth camps along the Guadalupe River.
“There’s water filling up super fast, we can’t get out of our cabin,” a camp counselor told a dispatcher above the screams of campers in the background. “We can’t get out of our cabin, so how do we get to the boats?”
Amazingly, everyone in the cabin and the rest of campers at Camp La Junta were rescued.
The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide during the holiday weekend, including at least 117 in Kerr County alone. Most were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by county officials.
One woman called for help as the water closed in on her house near Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died.
“We’re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic and we had two little girls come down the river. And we’ve gotten to them, but I’m not sure how many others are out there,” she said in a shaky voice.
A spokesperson for the parents of the children and counselors who died at Camp Mystic declined to comment on the release of the recordings.
Many residents in the hard-hit Texas Hill Country have said they were caught off guard and didn’t receive any warning when the floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. Kerr County leaders have faced scrutiny about whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep during the initial hours of the flooding, and a third was out of town.
Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, The Associated Press assembled a chronology of the chaotic rescue effort. The AP was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.
Many people were rescued by boats and emergency vehicles. A few desperate pleas came from people floating away in RVs. Some survivors were found in trees and on rooftops.
But some of the calls released Friday came from people who did not survive, said Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall, who warned that the audio is unsettling.
“The tree I’m in is starting to lean and it’s going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?” Bradley Perry, a firefighter, calmy told a dispatcher, adding that he saw his wife, Tina, and their RV wash away.
“I’ve probably got maybe five minutes left,” he said.
Bradley Perry did not survive. His wife was later found clinging to a tree, still alive.
In another heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of riverside cabins told a dispatcher the water was inundating their building
“We are flooding, and we have people in cabins we can’t get to," she said. "We are flooding almost all the way to the top.”
The caller speaks slowly and deliberately. The faint voices of what sounds like children can be heard in the background.
Some people called back multiple times, climbing higher and higher in houses to let rescuers know where they were and that their situations were getting more dire. Families called from second floors, then attics, then roofs sometimes in the course of 30 or 40 minutes, revealing how fast and how high the waters rose.
As daylight began to break, the call volume increased, with people reporting survivors in trees or stuck on roofs, or cars floating down the river.
Britt Eastland, the co-director of Camp Mystic, asked for search and rescue and the National Guard to be called, saying as many as 40 people there were missing. “We’re out of power. We hardly have any cell service,” he said.
The 911 recordings show that relatives and friends outside of the unfolding disaster and those who had made it to safety had called to get help for loved ones trapped in the flooding.
One woman said a friend, an elderly man, was trapped in his home with water up to his head. She had realized his phone cut out as she was trying to relay instructions from a 911 operator.
Overwhelmed by the endless calls, dispatchers tried to comfort the panic-stricken callers yet were forced to move on to the next one. They advised many of those who were trapped to get to their rooftops or run to higher ground. In some calls, children could be heard screaming in the background.
“There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room and the water is rising,” said a woman who called from Camp Mystic.
The same woman called back later.
“How do we get to the roof if the water is so high?“ she asked. “Can you already send someone here? With the boats?”
She asked the dispatcher when help would arrive.
“I don’t know," the dispatcher said. “I don't know.”
Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Ed White in Detroit; Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed.
FILE - Camper's belongings sit outside one of Camp Mystic's cabins near the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area, July 7, 2025, in Hunt, Texas. (AP Photo/Eli Hartman, file)
FILE - Damage is seen on July 8, 2025, near Hunt, Texas, after a flash flood swept through the area. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, file)
FILE - Rain falls as Irene Valdez visits a make-shift memorial for flood victims along the Guadalupe River, Sunday, July 13, 2025, in Kerrville, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
FILE - A lone tree stands in the debris from structures that were wiped out after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)
