(The Center Square) – Black bear hunting is now legal in Florida, after a state commission on Wednesday approved a limited program in response to a rising population of the animals in the state as a result of conservation programs.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted to allow hunting in four of the state’s seven bear management areas.

The number of permits will be limited to 187 and each permit only allows hunters to kill one bear. Permits will be issued in a random drawing with hunters 18 and older eligible to enter.

“I am proud that Florida is joining the majority of states that manage black bears with regulated hunting,” commission chairman Rodney Baretto said in a statement. “The components of the hunt are conservative and prioritize conservation, with a limited number of permits only being issued in the areas of the state with the largest bear populations.”

In the 1970s, there were only a few hundred black bears in Florida but the number has now increased to an estimated 4,000, the state said. The state describes the increase in the bear population “one of Florida’s most successful conservation efforts.”

Regulated hunting of bears in Florida started in the 1930s, but was halted in 1994. It reopened in the fall of 2015 for one season and has been illegal since then.

A limited hunting program will help the state manage the bear population and keep it from becoming too large, the state said.

“Slowing population growth will help balance population numbers with suitable habitat, and hunting is an important and effective tool that is used to manage wildlife populations across the world,” the state said on its website.

Wednesday’s decision was criticized by some environmental groups, including the Sierra Club Florida.

“Today – in direct defiance of public opinion, science, and its own wildlife data – the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted to reinstate black bear hunting in Florida,” the Sierra Club said in a statement.

The last legal hunt in 2015 resulted in the killing of 300 bears in two days, according to the Sierra Club.

“Sierra Club Florida has opposed the hunt as cruel, unnecessary, and ineffective, with FWC’s own research confirming that protecting and restoring habitat – not trophy hunting – is the proven way to support healthy bear populations,” the organization said.

(The Center Square) – Major hurricane status, with wind speeds greater than 110 mph, is expected by Saturday morning just north of the Dominican Republic as Tropical Storm Erin on Tuesday churned across the Atlantic Ocean toward the United States.

The National Hurricane Center, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said it is too early to know the impacts of Erin on the northern Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Erin was described in an 11 a.m. Eastern update as “moving quickly westward” at 23 mph, at that point about 820 miles west of the Cabo Verde Islands and 1,765 miles east of the Northern Leewards.

Erin is projected to become a hurricane on Thursday, meaning wind speeds of 74-95 mph on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Overnight Friday into Saturday, it would leave the Category 2 range of 96-110 mph and reach Category 3, or major, of 111-129 mph.

Along the southeastern coastline of America, preparations have begun for potential arrival next week. Where is a guess, with the cone of probability still far from Florida.

AccuWeather’s forecasting cone keeps the storm off the coast at least through Tuesday with a turn to the north avoiding the Deep South.

Rough surf and rip currents, however, are likely by the weekend and into early next week regardless of potential landfall.

The Atlantic hurricane season opened June 1 and runs to Nov. 30. Average formation date for the season’s first is Aug. 11.

Last year, three hurricanes in 66 days landed in Florida. The season’s worst damage was from one of them, Helene, that landed near Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26 and traveled into western North Carolina on Sept. 27. Helene was a Category 4 upon arrival with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph.

The Tarheel State is in its 46th week of recovery from the storm that killed 107 and did an estimated $60 billion damage. Across seven states, Helene killed 236.

(The Center Square) – Though the economy and immigration were issues that helped President Donald Trump secure the White House, some economists have said that too steep a decline in immigration will prove harmful to the economy.

The Trump administration touted a statistic Monday reported by CNN the day before: The U.S. may see negative net migration in 2025, meaning more people will leave the country than move there. However, economists from both right- and left-leaning policy centers warn that too little immigration drags down GDP growth.

The center-right American Enterprise Institute recently authored a report with the center-left Brookings Institution projecting net migration would land between -525,000 and 115,000 in 2025, but with “zero or net negative migration” being the more likely outcome.

The report considered the president’s deportation efforts, as well as his broader immigration policy, predicting lower legal permanent resident entries than in his first term and factoring in greater vetting for temporary visas, a suspended refugee program, travel bans and terminated humanitarian parole programs.

“All told, given changes at the border and the regular migration system, we expect 2.47 million to 2.76 million fewer people to come to the U.S in 2025 than in 2024,” they wrote. And later, that they “expect around 675,000 to 1,020,000” more immigrants to leave the country than last year. 

They project these changes will reduce GDP growth by 0.3-0.4 percentage points.

Chief Economist for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Gbenga Ajilore wasn’t surprised by the report’s findings. 

“While think tanks may have different ideologies, there are basic facts that a majority of economists believe in, and one is that immigration has a net positive impact on our economy and our communities,” Ajilore said in an email to The Center Square. 

Lower immigration means a smaller labor pool – which one might think translates to less people competing for the same amount of jobs, meaning more employment among American citizens. However, it actually means less jobs overall, according to David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“Yes, there are fewer competitors for jobs, but because there are fewer people requesting services and goods in society, then there’s a comparable shrinking in the number of jobs for U.S.-born workers as well,” Bier told The Center Square in an interview.

Giovanni Peri, a professor in international economics at the University of California, Davis, and the founder of the school’s research center on migration policy, along with a colleague, has studied some of the same data that was covered in the AEI-Brookings report. The report anticipates, as does Peri, some of the other negative economic impacts that can result from a smaller labor force. 

“We do not expect natives to take [jobs held by immigrants] as the labor market is already tight, especially in manual services… and the native labor force is shrinking,” Peri wrote in an email to The Center Square. “As a consequence, prices in those services will increase.” 

For these reasons, in addition to the loss of some highly skilled workers and lower investments, according to Peri, Peri and Georgetown Professor of Economics Anna Maria Mayda predicted an even greater impact on GDP growth of -0.7%.

Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute Daniel Costa doubts that net migration will be negative in 2025 but thinks it will be soon. 

“I am skeptical that we will see negative net migration in the first year, just based on some of the legal immigration flows… which might take longer for the administration to impact,” Costa told The Center Square. “But I do think we will likely see it in the next years of the administration, especially after the major influx of $170 billion the administration has been gifted from Congress for immigration enforcement.”

The AEI-Brookings report authors believe net migration will start to recover some in 2027 and 2028, “as the adverse economic and political consequences of extreme policy stance become clear.” Bier was less optimistic.

“I wouldn’t think that because we have so much money going into ICE and Border Patrol and almost none of it has been spent at this point,” Bier said. “I think it’s more likely that you’re going to see an escalation over four years.”