Bear sightings happen daily and an attack on a woman in April put the issue in the spotlight.
Now there's an effort to make more tools available to the public to keep the bears off their property. Florida fish and Wildlife is also getting new ways to deal with the animals.
A black bear was spotted over the weekend in the Lake Forest community in Seminole County.
FWC officers said they get calls about bears on a daily basis.
Alex Jack lives in Lake Mary and has seen bears on his property. "The two cubs were climbing up the pine trees and jumping around."
He said he takes precautions to keep them away.
"I have a bird feeder but I bring it in every evening and I only put my trash out in the morning," he said.
Experts said keeping your trash secure is one way to keep your family and property safe.
Seminole County leaders are selling bear-resistant trash cans for $210 each. They just arrived Tuesday.
The Lake Mary Home Depot just got some three weeks ago. They are the only Home Depot in Central Florida to carry them.
"We needed it," said Nathan Graboff, Home Depot representative. "The community here in Lake Mary just needed it."
"We've been hearing a lot of reports about bears. Everybody sees bears in this area," said Graboff.
But how many are there? That's a question FWC is trying to answer right now.
This week they're wrapping up a DNA collection study of bears. They've been taking hair samples from the bears over the last six weeks. Results from this study will not be ready until next summer.
Below is an explanation of the six-week process from FWC:
We are conducting abundance estimates in the 6 largest bear populations in the state – (a population has to be of a certain size for the approach to work). This year we are collecting data to estimate bear abundance for the Ocala, Osceola, and St Johns subpopulations. Next year (2015) we will be estimating bear abundance in SW Florida, Apalachicola National Forest area, and Eglin AFB.
To do this we constructed 272 bear detectors (hair snares) in this year’s 3 study areas. Hair snares are 2 strands of barbed wire attached to trees about 15 and 30 inches above the ground and are 10-12 feet square or rectangular (see attached photo). The idea is to get the bear to cross into the hair snare and leave tufts of hair. The hair snares are in clusters of 9 in a 3 x 3 array. There are approximately 1.25 miles between individual hair snares in a cluster and 7.5 miles between clusters. These distances are based on what we know about bear movements and home range size in Florida.
Once a week for 6 weeks we place a small food reward in the hair snare and collect tufts of hair left behind by bears. The hair will be sent to a wildlife genetics lab that will identify individual bears. The pattern and rate at which “new” bears are identified during the monitoring period will allow us to estimate bear abundance and bear density in each study area. Wildlife biologists refer to this approach as a mark-recapture study because we “mark” individual bears by identifying them through DNA and then “recapture” them by collecting a tuft of hair from them later in the monitoring period.
Last checked there were 3,000 bears statewide, but that number is from 10 years ago and the number might not be accurate.
FWC said they are also looking to change the language in the law and increase the penalty for feeding bears. But those efforts are in the preliminary stages and would need to get approved by lawmakers.
FWC officers are also meeting at the end of this week to update officers on their study and review the policies and procedures on how to handle calls for bears.
Seminole County leaders said the bear resistant trash cans come with a $60 a year fee. That is to pay for the additional effort it takes to open the cans. They said they are contracting a company to pick up the special trash cans.