So...maybe don't move into this guy's neighborhood and he won't try to forage in yours? Credit: Wikimedia Commons

So…maybe don’t move into this guy’s neighborhood and he won’t try to forage in yours? Credit: Wikimedia Commons
After four hours of passionate public testimony on Wednesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission decided to eschew discussion of another black bear hunt in the state until an intensive, decade-long study is complete in a few years.

While there were hunters and gun nuts in the room eager to trivialize the arguments of animal rights advocates and environmental conservationists, a majority of commissioners opted not to revisit the deeply controversial prospect of a bear hunt like the bloodbath that took place in 2015.

"A hunt is consuming, it is consuming to this agency all the way around," Commission Chairman Brian Yablonski said, according to News Service of Florida. "And the benefit that we get with this species at this moment in time, I don't know if it's worth the consumption that our team is going to go through and we're all going to go through."

The agency will instead focus on non-lethal methods of reducing the number of run-ins between humans and bears (not that the bears being hunted deep in the wilderness are the same ones that are rifling through exurban residents' garbage — because they're not).

The ten-year study that could launch another debate over the appropriateness of the hunt will be complete in two to three years, NSF noted.

Activists who are passionately opposed to the hunt may also want to take note of that.

For obvious reasons, they should mark their calendars. But before that conversation is due to start, another important thing will happen: Florida will elect a new governor — and the governor is who appoints people to the commission.

Should anyone leave the commission after 2018, it would be the next governor's job to replace him or her.

Over his tenure as governor, Rick Scott appointed people tied more closely to real estate and development than to environmental science, biology or wildlife conservation. The earliest and most vocal critic of the hunt, meanwhile, was Commissioner Ron Bergeron, whom former Governor Charlie Crist appointed.

So if those opposed to hunting black bears want to help unstack the deck, which heavily favors monied interests, they'll have to show up at the polls in November of 2018.

Otherwise, it'll be Richard Corcoran/Mike Huckabee(!)/Adam Putnam adding his friends to the dais when it could have been Andrew Gillum/Gwen Graham/Phil Levine putting conservationists on this very important panel.

In other words, vote in 2018. And tell your friends to, as well.

This article appears in Apr 20-27, 2017.