California won’t ban bear hunting this season, despite pleas from animal welfare advocates

California wildlife regulators won’t be banning black bear hunting this year.

In a 3-0 vote Thursday, the Fish and Game Commission, which sets California hunting regulations, rejected a request from the Humane Society of the United States to stop the upcoming fall hunting season.

The animal welfare organization had argued that California’s bear populations may have been harmed by recent wildfires and that the state should prohibit bear hunting until a more thorough survey of bears was done.

The commissioners sided with state biologists who argue the bear population has grown substantially in recent decades and that bears are expanding into places where they’d not been in modern history. The biologists presented the commissioners with data that they said showed “conclusively that California’s bear population is not experiencing a decline, and current evaluations may even be underestimating the population.”

Previous estimates pegged California’s bear population at 30,000 to 40,000 statewide.

It’s the second time in less than two years that the Humane Society has tried to ban bear hunting in California, whose state flag features a now-extinct bear, the California grizzly. Last spring, the group sponsored a bill by State Sen. Scott Wiener that would have permanently banned bear hunting.

At the time, Wiener’s office cited polling that showed bear hunting is unpopular among Californians. Nonetheless, the San Francisco Democrat quickly withdrew the bill after his office was bombarded with calls and emails from state and national hunting associations that had mobilized their members to oppose the ban.

Hunters say that contrary to claims by animal welfare activists, who frame bear hunting as a cruel bloodsport for trophies, hunters eat the pork-like meat from bears they kill with rifles and archery equipment. They’re legally forbidden from wasting bear meat, and hunters can be cited for shooting female bears with cubs.

Plus, hunters contend the fees they pay to kill a few hundred bears each year provide a hard-to-replace source of wildlife-agency funding that’s used to benefit all species — including the vast majority of bears that survive a given hunting season. Bear hunting permits generated nearly $1.5 million in revenue last year for the state’s wildlife agency. The money goes into a big game management fund that supports habitat preservation.

Last year, 31,450 hunters bought permits to hunt bears. They reported killing just 1,186 of them during the fall season.

This story was originally published April 21, 2022 at 6:19 PM with the headline "California won’t ban bear hunting this season, despite pleas from animal welfare advocates."