Older man, dog killed in the southwest of Floridas, says FWC, says FWC

Jerome, Fla. – – The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) says that an 89-year-old man and his dog were killed on Monday by a bear that marked the first fatal bear attack in the state since the records were kept.

Fatal bear attack

The background story:

According to the authorities, Robert Markel, 89, was outside with his dog near the Big Cypress Wildlife Management area in Collier County in the early Monday when the reported attack took place.

Markel's daughter told the investigators that she was attacking a father's bear and then realized that her father could not be found anywhere. Then she found his body hundreds of meters away.

“We know that it was a bear attack. We do not know whether it was the same bear or several bears,” said FWC spokesman George Reynaud.

After the authorities had used four live bear traps, the authorities said that an animal that was assumed that he was a black bear in Florida was later captured, and FWC works to determine whether it was responsible for the attack on Monday.

Black bear attacks on humans

According to the numbers:

There are around 750,000 black bears in North America, but attacks on people are rare, with black bears killing less than one person per year.

According to wildlife officials, around 4,000 black bears live in Florida.

The fatal bear attack on Monday has been the first in Florida since the FWC started persecution of bear encounters.

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Grab deeper:

Since last week there have been at least two bear attacks in Florida. A woman in Sanford was attacked outside of her house when she walked with her dog and said she used a bag of cookies as a distraction to get to safety.

RELATED: Florida woman uses a bag of cookies to escape the bear attack near home

Click here for a more detailed overview of Bearch's encounters in Florida.

Will there be a bear hunt in Florida?

At the beginning of this year, FWC asked for public contributions to a potential black bear hunting and held a number of public meetings in early April.

Plans for a hunting in December 2025 to kill 4,000 black bears in 187.

It would have been a premiere for the state since 2015, as an overwhelming enthusiasm of hunters, caused the officials to close the bear hunting season after only 48 hours because hunters had already exceeded the specified limit of the animals that were allowed to be killed.

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