Faced with five incidents in Central and North Florida when female Florida black bears (four of whom had cubs with them) injured people, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has responded with a hasty proposal to open a hunting season on Florida black bears.

Proposing a bear hunt is simply a knee-jerk reaction that makes officials feel that they are doing something — anything — to make us feel safer. But it won't work, and it sets citizens' expectations up for failure.

There is no scientific basis to support the notion that a trophy hunt will solve the problem. In the past 26 years, at least eight scientific studies probed the question, and not one found evidence that hunting results in fewer human-bear conflicts, unless hunters wipe out so many bears that their populations are no longer viable. The Florida black bear is a unique subspecies of the American black bear that until 2012 was listed as a threatened species; that level of persecution would return bears to the threatened species list in short order.

Hunting doesn't reduce neighborhood conflicts because hunters generally remove non-problem bears from the population. Hunters target large bears deep in the woods — but not in Florida's urban conflict zones — in an attempt to gain an impressive trophy.

Each of the five Florida bear incidents has a common denominator: Bears had ready access to garbage and food. After one incident, authorities charged three people in the neighborhood with intentionally and illegally feeding bears. (One man was caught on film.) The other incidents happened near open Dumpsters and trash bins where bears and cubs were eating and were startled by the person.

If we keep bears wild and away from human foods, we can resolve this problem and prevent such incidents, as has been done successfully in other states and in national parks. Commonsense measures like using bear-proof trash bins and securing garbage until morning pickup are successful. Systematically applied hazing techniques such as loud noises, paint guns and rubber pellets can teach bears to stay away from neighborhoods. FWC should focus on educating communities and ensuring that these proven techniques are sufficiently adopted in bear country.

Enforcing state laws against feeding bears is also a vital part of the solution, but to date, the state wildlife agency has failed to adequately enforce these laws. In 2014, a year when Florida had unprecedented bear-human conflicts, including three people injured, wildlife officers issued only eight warnings and three tickets for bear feeding violations.

In its panic to appear that it is doing something to solve a problem, the FWC isn't even carrying out the people's will. In a statewide January poll, 61 percent of Florida voters say they oppose a bear hunt, 84 percent favor providing bear-proof trash cans and educating residents, and 87 percent agree that neighborhoods located near bear habitat have a responsibility to avoid attracting the animals by securing food and garbage. Only 25 percent of voters support a bear hunt.

FWC officials keep saying that the proposed hunt — which they will address at their April 14-16 meeting in Tallahassee — is just "one tool in the toolbox" for managing conflicts between people and bears. Well, it is the wrong tool.

The FWC does not even have a current count of how many bears are in Florida; the last statewide count was 13 years ago. Given that Florida's own special bear is so rare, we must do all that we can, and much more than we already have done, to conserve them for future generations.

A majority of voters want humane, effective solutions, and that's where the Wildlife Conservation Commission should put its focus.

Alexis Horn, far left, is associate organizing representative for Sierra Club Florida, and Kate MacFall is state director of the Humane Society of the United States. They wrote this exclusively for the Tampa Bay Times.