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Bear population in Florida is on the rise and so are incidents with humans – including some attacks. As Matt Galka tells us, a pending bear hunting season in the state is getting push back from animal rights groups who showed up in the Capital on the same day a bear was caught in a panhandle neighborhood.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Commission caught what they call a nuisance bear in Florida’s panhandle Wednesday night.

“This bear broke into two separate porches,” said FWC Bear Management Coordinator David Telesco.

The bear has been deemed too comfortable with people and a public safety risk. The bad news: that means he has to be euthanized. First he is sedated with a tranquilizer.

“Putting an animal down is hard for us,” said Telesco.

Increased bear-human interactions puts the FWC on the verge of authorizing Florida’s first bear hunt in more than 20 years.

“The idea is if we can have the population not grow, we can stabilize it, and then we can keep up with what’s going on in the neighborhoods,” said Telesco.

But animal rights groups are fighting back. A coalition is calling on the Governor to end the proposed hunt.

“They’re ignoring public outcry and catering to trophy hunters,” said Holly Parker with Sierra Club Florida.

Laura Bevan with the Humane Society of the United States says that allowing hunters to go into areas in the woods and hunt bears does not mean they’ll help neighborhoods dealing with bear problems. Bevan said a hunt wouldn’t have prevented the bear from going on porches in the panhandle Tuesday night.

“No, because that bear is not out in the Apalachicola National Forest or in Tate’s Hell or any of those, it is hanging around those neighborhoods,” she said.

The two sides agree on one thing – humans can cut down on bear interactions by controlling their garbage and investing in other things like bear proof trash cans.

The FWC says they catch about 26 bears per year – but they’ve already caught 50 through 6 months of 2015 due to increased complaints.

There were more than 6,000 bear nuisance complaints in 2014 – but only 61 were euthanized. The FWC will likely give the bear hunting season final approval at the end of June. It’s set for one week in October with a limit of 200 bears to be hunted total – but the animal rights groups say there’s no one to monitor that number.