TALLAHASSEE — Florida wildlife officials repeatedly searched personal driving records as they secretly investigated at least a dozen outspoken environmental activists who opposed the state’s efforts to revive bear hunting and enshrine hunting and fishing rights in the state constitution, records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel show.

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also pulled the driving records of a North Florida Republican woman who is the elected property appraiser in Taylor County and her husband, according to a federal lawsuit the pair filed against the FWC.

The agency claimed in at least one case that the records searches were part of an active criminal investigation, which would have provided legal justification for its actions.  But an agency spokesperson acknowledged to the Sentinel last week that there are no current investigations of the activists, despite its earlier statement. It is not clear whether FWC ever took any action based on its review of the driving records.

The lawsuit from Taylor County appraiser Shawna Beach claims the agency’s actions violated her civil rights and federal privacy laws. At least one environmental activist also plans to go to court.

The common thread tying together the individuals known to have been investigated by the FWC is that they had all publicly tangled with the agency, in forums ranging from public meetings to courtroom challenges to social media.

“There is a clear abuse of power,” said Katrina Shadix, the head of Bear Warriors United and a self-described eco-warrior from Seminole County who scored a landmark victory last year in federal court against the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for violating the Endangered Species Act.

Shadix is among at least 13 people who belonged to an Instagram chat group devoted to environmental issues, frequently attended FWC hearings and had their driving records pulled by FWC law enforcement agents.  They have been rebuffed when they asked the agency why. One man’s driving records were accessed 28 times, the records obtained by the Sentinel show.

Brent Fannin, a documentarian and former employee at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, learned he was under investigation when he received an anonymous email last summer from someone within the FWC saying the agency “was watching me and knew where I lived.”

When he made a request for information about the investigation last August, an FWC law enforcement officer said the records were “part of an active criminal investigation at this time” and exempt from public records law, Fannin said.

Several months later, Fannin learned of the lawsuit filed by Beach accusing the FWC of illegally accessing her driving records after her husband, Dustin Beach, made complaints with the agency’s Office of Inspector General, requested public records and posted online comments critical of the agency and the conduct of two of its officers.

The lawsuit claims the FWC officers fabricated felony charges against Dustin Beach in retaliation for him posting details of an agency disciplinary action against one of the officers. Charges of “witness retaliation” and “corruption by threat,” for allegedly making threatening statements to the officers, were dropped in exchange for a reduced plea of resisting arrest without violence, and the court withheld adjudication.

The suit also alleges the FWC made “unauthorized queries on the driver records and photographic identification records of Shawna Beach …  on dates when she was not a suspect, witness or subject of any investigation.” The suit claims those actions violate federal driver privacy laws.

Reading the lawsuit prompted Fannin to ask the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles for a report of the agencies that had accessed his driving records. The report, reviewed by the Sentinel, confirmed that two different FWC law enforcement agents accessed his records seven times in April and June of 2025. The report also showed their reason for accessing his records was “criminal investigation.”

FWC spokeswoman Shannon Knowles said last week there is no current criminal investigation of Fannin, Shadix and others whose names were on the list obtained by the Sentinel. When told about the email from FWC confirming there was a criminal investigation, she said in an email, “The information requested back in August 2025 was concerning active criminal intelligence, not investigation.”

Asked why those persons’ particular driving records were pulled, Knowles said, the FWC’s law enforcement division was “committed to anticipating potential threats, continuously monitoring safety and security conditions, and implementing appropriate measures to provide a safe, secure, and orderly environment for all participants at public meetings and for employees, visitors, and other occupants of any FWC facility.”

Fannin had suspected the agency was watching him and others ahead of its public meetings, and Knowles’ statement confirmed that for him. He thinks the FWC used the driver’s license and motor vehicle database in conjunction with license plate reader systems to keep tabs on the more outspoken and better known activists culled from the Instagram chat group.

Her denial of a criminal investigation “proves they fabricated their reasoning for accessing our DMV data under the code ‘criminal investigation’,” he said.  And if they didn’t have a criminal investigation underway at the time, but were using the criminal investigation code to access the database, then they could have broken federal law, he added.

Fannin said he thinks the FWC targeted him for two reasons. He released a film in 2024 called “Gopher Games” that was critical of the agency’s handling of gopher tortoise permits for developers.  The film sparked outrage on social media.

And he wrote a bill, sponsored by Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, that called for a constitutional amendment to reform FWC by requiring its commissioners to have some background in environmental sciences. The bill died in committee.

“This is some Big Brother kind of stuff,” Eskamani said after the FWC’s surveillance activities were described to her.

She has called for the reform of the FWC after watching its board approves projects that are ”degrading our environment.” Most board members — all appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis — are in real estate development and donors to the Republican Party and appear to have no environmental background.

The “agency is weaponizing its tools to harass and stalk and attack the credibility of everyday Floridians exercising their first amendment rights to protect the environment,” she said. “It is offensive and inappropriate.”

The Driver and Vehicle Information Database, or DAVID, that FWC accessed contains personal information that is regulated by state and federal law. Authorized uses include criminal and traffic investigations, child neglect cases, and employee background checks, among others.

After personal information pulled from the driving record of a female Florida Highway Patrol trooper was used to harass her because she’d ticketed a fellow trooper for speeding in 2011, the state imposed new restrictions on who could access the records, limiting it to official business.

In 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law increased penalties for misusing the DAVID system,  from $500 to $2,000 for each violation.

Another environmentalist whose driving records were accessed is Volusia County resident Chuck O’Neal, a founder of Speak up Wekiva. He also chaired the No to 2 campaign, which in 2024  fought against a constitutional amendment that made hunting and fishing guaranteed rights in the state constitution. He was not surprised that the FWC accessed his records.

“Maybe I’m a little bit jaded after all the years of activism, because my life is an open book,” he said.

FWC agents accessed O’Neal’s driving records 28 times between April and June of 2023 and February of 2024. They requested his addresses, vehicle registrations, photos, signatures, and driver license transactions.

He said he had no idea why he was investigated other than his outspoken nature.

“There was always some kind of motion for having a bear hunt,” O’Neal said. “I would go make public comments about that. It’s hard to say what the correlation might be”

He also believes his organized opposition to Amendment 2 caught their attention from the time he started organizing in 2023 right through the 2024 election when the opposition was in full swing.

“What else have I done that has been a pain in the butt to them?”

Shadix said she’s consulted with the attorneys who represented her in her successful case against the DEP, and they told her the FWC clearly abused its power. A federal lawsuit is in the works, she said.

She hopes that drawing attention to this secret investigation and suing the FWC will help strengthen the environmental community’s ongoing efforts to reform the agency.

“They are breaking federal law to take our right to free speech,” Shadix said. “That is especially heinous because these are some of the most powerful and influential people in Florida. They didn’t want the truth spoken to power. We’re not going to put up with it.”