1 year study of a Wildlife Management Area (WMA) shows damage caused by deceptive policies

By Staci-lee Sherwood

When people here the phrase ‘wildlife management area’ they assume these are areas that biologists meticulously study and manage for the good of the wildlife and area in general.  This would be a false narrative.  The WMA’s run by the states and federal government are not about wildlife or management.  It’s all a ruse.  I’ve spent years working with various state and federal agencies on many issues from wildlife to water quality so I personally know this to be true.  Whenever there is a hearing I point out their hypocrisy and conflict of interest and it always seems to come as a surprise to everyone.

Every state and federal agency that has anything to do with wildlife, public lands and water is run by hunters, developers and realtors.  They have co-opted these agencies over the years from the top down.  The public is kept in the dark because as employees they don’t have to disclose who they used to work for or are invested in.  Anyone can comb through the internet and find enough to make a detailed 3D picture of who these people are but few people bother to do the research.  Any staff for conservation is silenced or fired.

FWC  (Florida Fish Wildlife Commission)

As an example I’ll use Florida but this is also true from Montana and Wyoming to Colorado and New York.  The higher up the agency the farther they are from being a conservationist to just a con artist.  The FWC Commissioners are appointed by the Governor for a five year term.  Of the 7 commissioners in 2026   4 are hunters, 4 are developers or own businesses in the field of real estate/construction, one commissioner is both.  Their decisions are all based material gain for themselves.

Spirit of the Wild WMA (S.O.W.) in Florida as a case study 2025 – 2026

Formerly a ranch this track of 7000 acres is now owned by the state as a wildlife management area.  This means it’s mostly for hunting since the hunting season covers at least some days during every month except May – July.   The trails are barely visible and not maintained and there is little wildlife to watch compared to other areas I’ve been.  Everyone I’ve seen there and on the trail cameras are hunters.

When I first signed up to volunteer putting out trail cameras for FWC I really wanted to see 1.) what wildlife actually existed and 2.) what FWC would do with the data and any violations caught on tape.  February 5, 2025 was the first day of training with biologist Grayson Boehning out of the West Palm Beach office along with Jeremiah, a hunter and friend.  Jeremiah didn’t work for the agency but was there pointing out where to place the cameras and he kept track of the coordinates.  We put cameras where we would hope to see the most activity and dropped a pin on Google Maps to record where they were for future reference.  Only one camera was placed right off a trail in full view, the others were way off the trail so only those with the pin coordinates would know where they were and most likely the most abundant wildlife. 

Doesn’t anyone question why a hunter would be putting out trail cameras for FWC?  

The biologist in charge of this area is Tanner Mazanec.  We never met and if he does monitor the area he would have to see the obvious decline in species especially after hunting seasons.  There is barely any water, which we long suspected the surrounding ranches were taking as this land used to be a working ranch as well.  There was never anyone from FWC at the hunter checkpoint station, no one from FWC was out during the hunting seasons of which there were dozens throughout the year.  Since we had to coordinate when the SD cards would be picked up I knew when they would do a burn and if any FWC staff would there.

Why would an FWC biologist claiming to be doing this program for conservation basically have a hunter in charge?  FWC commission is run by hunters and developers who work in tandem.  This program just makes it easier for them to find the animals they want to kill.  Some of the cameras produced hardly anything.  A couple had lots of wildlife activity.  Every time I pulled the SD cards from the cameras I viewed every video, hundreds of them, before turning them in.   Captured on film were the following:

• I saw pesticide being sprayed in a so called natural area.  Why spray poison where only animals live? 

• I saw hunters driving on grassy roads with signs clearly posted NO VEHICLES

• I saw hunters in the off season. 

Neither Boehning nor anyone at FWC did anything, not a peep.  No surprise this agency is as anti conservation as it gets.  

Why would you spray poison in an area supposedly wild?  FWC is rabidly addicted to spraying poison from land to air to water.

Why have signs when no one cares, or maybe they just can’t read them, either way this is another unenforced policy of FWC.

May 23, 2026 video of hunters I’d seen before when the FWC own hunting season calendar shows no hunting in May.  In 21 months of videos everyone captured has been a hunter, not a hiker or photographer.  This place gets local use not much more.

S.O.W. hunting seasons

https://app.myfwc.com/hsc/wmahuntcalendar/?areaName=spirit-of-the-wild

Hunting with dogs is only allowed for bird dogs.  No one is around to enforce this and dogs don’t know they’re not allowed to chase Bobcats, Coyotes or Panthers.  Using dogs has been well documented to be cruel and grisly not that hunters are humane.

Hunting at night after isn’t allowed.  This trail cam captured hunters after dark

The videos spanning 21 moths showed the effects of over hunting, as in no bag limits no one monitoring anything.  Aside from the videos it’s obvious the difference when driving up County roads 833 and 832, which takes an hour, how little wildlife you see after hunting.  In summer it’s common to see many Crows, Hawks, Caracaras, Turkey, Deer and Sandhill Cranes along the road.  After hunting seasons the road is quiet mostly empty.  It’s an easy connection to make.

During the summer of 2025 there were Deer with fawns and Turkey with poults (chicks).  After hunting season the same areas had very little Deer and no Turkeys.  These cameras were checked every month for 15 months, long enough to know the area.  Many of the animals came and went around the same time of day or night, especially the Deer and Turkeys.  It was easy to establish a pattern of before and after hunts.  Driving around the area it was easy to see how there was less wildlife, and there wasn’t that much there when I started.

Here is a screen shot of a Doe and her fawn in 2025 before hunting season, I don’t use the video which shows their location to keep them safe.  In 2026 we didn’t see any fawns.  What type of person takes pleasure in killing them?  You know what kind.

Here is a screen shot of a Turkey hen with her 4 tiny poults in 2025.  After December 2025 I didn’t see or record any Turkeys of either gender.

What does a bag limit mean?

Technically it means a hunter can’t take more of any species, or gender, than allowed.  In Florida very few species even have the words bag limit attached.  Some animals can be killed year round with no limit like Skunks, despite they’re being a vital part of a healthy ecosystem.  Policy and law only works if there is someone physically watching.  An unmanned kiosk, app or anything to do with A.I. can be manipulated and ignored.  During the highly controversial Black Bear hunt in 2025 and despite FWC claims of a limit on Bear kills there was no monitoring.  If you think hunters care about the honor system you haven’t a clue about them or human nature.

How FWC pretends to 'manage' wildlife. It's always a CON. Once again FWC is too busy to operate the check stations and will rely on hunters honesty.....

Trail cameras and Bear tag data

In 2015 FWC held its first Bear hunt in many years.  Within three days they killed over 300 Bears.  Even for professional hunters and scouts that is an unbelievable number of kills in a very short time.  I thought the hunters must have had help from FWC who gave them the trail camera locations were Bears were most spotted and the tags placed on Bear which are monitored in real time.   Mathematically and logically there is NO other explanation for such a rapid record of known kills.  FWC has never addressed this they repeatedly refuse to answer the question.  That seems to spell guilt to me.

I’m convinced FWC helped hunters find Bears to kill in 2015 and again in 2025.  After working with them for over a year putting out trail cameras NO other explanation is logical

Lessons learned

Don’t believe anything government says, they all lie it’s only a matter of degrees.  Those that work for FWC or any agency only have one priority – their job.  Those at FWC have zero spine or ethics and I have unfortunately had to work with many staff from the Sea Turtle department to Bear, Manatee, Panther biologists including the aquatic water people who love to spray poison in the water.  Another example of their fraud is when the rare endangered Florida Bonneted Bat was recently discovered in Palm Beach County for the first time FWC did nothing because they lived on land sold to a developer.  The same goes for the endangered Key Deer that neither FWC nor the federal USFWS does anything to protect because again developers have plans for Big Pine Key despite it being a National Wildlife Refuge.

The best thing you can do for wildlife is take matters into your own hands.  The lunacy and audacity of anyone in government claiming only the have a right to protect, monitor or help injured wildlife is a sick and twisted lie the public has been duped into believing.  If you see an injured animals it’s up to you to save them.