Conservation News

A Virginia hunter died this week from injuries he sustained after a black bear fell out of a tree and struck him. The unusual and tragic accident has garnered national media attention even though the details of the incident remain unclear. Lester C. Harvey, 58, was chasing a black bear with hounds...

Disturbing new details and images have emerged about three Wisconsin juveniles and one adult who allegedly poached over 100 deer, some of which they tortured. Police reports and other documents obtained by MeatEater make the case against 36-year-old Jessica Kroening, her 16-year-old son, and two of...

One of America’s most iconic fish species is in continued decline, new data shows. In the Chesapeake Bay, biologists are reporting that this year’s striped bass spawn was dismal—for the sixth straight year in a row. The Bay is the largest spawning area for stripers on the entire East Coast, and it’s...

Last week, researchers in Russia published a paper on a rare find: a mummified cub, from about 30,000 years ago. The mummy—complete with head, fur, paws, and the upper half of its body—is the first glimpse ever at the external morphology of an extinct cat with no present-day analogs. It was...

In November 1959, 56 pronghorn were captured in the plains of Montana. Their final destination being the tropical island of Lanai, Hawaii. This bizarre plan stemmed from a discerning biologist who identified 35 square miles of grassland on Lānaʻi. The open expanse resembled the grasslands of the...

Ever wanted to hunt a hippo? It’s probably not something you’ve considered. But if Teddy Roosevelt had gotten his way in 1910, hippo tags would have been available to American hunters from Florida to Texas–not to mention, as the New York Times put it, “lake cow bacon.” Here’s what happened. A...

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Sergeant Alexander was patrolling during deer season when he encountered some unexpected law violators. According to a press release from WDFW, two males were in a vehicle, and when the sergeant asked what they were up to, stated that they were “just...

On November 5th, Colorado voters delivered a victory for science-based wildlife management by rejecting Proposition 127, which sought to ban mountain lion hunting. But this wasn’t just about mountain lions; it was an attempt to politicize wildlife management and shift control from scientists to...

Everything was going according to plan when Devin Simpson shot a doe on opening day of this year’s rifle season in Arkansas. Two deer had walked into the shooting lane as he and his wife, Daelyn, sat in the tree stand. Daelyn advised him to take the larger one on the left, which he dropped with a...

On a Forest Service all-employee phone call in mid-September, it was clear that bad news was imminent as agency chief Randy Moore rambled on about recent budget challenges and the employee-first mentality of the Forest Service. Then he dropped the bombshell: the agency wouldn’t be bringing on any...

It’s not “weights in fish,” but it’s pretty close. A 27-year-old Arkansas man named Andrew Riels has been cited by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) for poaching a buck and then entering it into a big buck contest. Louisiana officials first got a tip from the Arkansas Game...

Bad ideas aren’t so bad until they start to get contagious. That appears to be what’s happening with one of the worst public land viruses infecting our nation today. Four western states have thrown their support behind a Utah lawsuit that could transfer millions of acres of public land into private...