Conservation News

At the southern border, a new threat is creeping into the United States—and no wall can stop it. Enter, the New World screwworm: a small fly that lays eggs into open wounds of a bird or mammal, where the larvae feast on live flesh. If untreated, the wound will become infected and likely fatal. The...

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recently announced a slew of recent busts of illegal marijuana busts—and they included eye-popping wildlife infractions impacting some of the Golden State’s most iconic rivers. According to a Facebook post, “during the week of August 11, wildlife...

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recently announced citations in a startling case of marine wildlife poaching. According to a Facebook post, CDFW officers were on a routine patrol on the evening of August 1, when they encountered suspicious activity around 11 p.m. near Royal...

Texas wildlife officials have named the suspects at the center of a massive smuggling operation to illegally transport whitetail deer across the state–and one of the alleged smugglers is on the board of the Texas Deer Association. These “ghost deer,” as they’ve come to be called, were allegedly...

On August 5, a federal judge in Missoula, Montana, vacated a 2024 ruling by the US Fish and Wildlife Service that refused to re-list the Northern Rocky Mountain population of gray wolves under the Endangered Species Act. The decision threatens the current status of this wolf population and could...

It’s official: After signaling their support for a black bear hunt, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) voted this morning to finalize a set of rules for the three-week December season. The 5-0 vote in favor of the hunt is a striking rebuke to anti-hunting groups that have...

This past winter, a Minnesota sheriff allegedly overstepped his bounds by issuing an “elk possession tag” to a farmer who shot and killed an elk after elk herds had damaged his crops and feed. A case report from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) obtained by MeatEater explains the...

Well, this is strange: blue meat has been turning up in wild hogs killed in California. Dan Burton, the owner and operator of Urban Trapping Wildlife Control, first noticed the unusual tissue in feral pigs back in March, when he began trapping the hogs on a commercial farm in Monterey County, a...

In November 2022, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to permanently eliminate the state’s spring black-bear hunt by a 5-4 margin. Now, the Sportsmen’s Alliance is seeking to remove four of the five commissioners who voted against the hunt, claiming that they “demonstrated incompetence...

I can already see the skepticism in your scrunched face as you read this byline. It’s the same look I get when I tell anyone that I write poetry. Unless you read it in your spare time or pursued a degree in English literature, you probably have preconceived (and incorrect) notions about what exactly...

A Canadian man who played fast and loose with wildlife laws for well over a decade just received his latest punishment—and it’s a severe one. On July 25, British Columbia Supreme Court judge David Crerar sentenced Scott Steer of Gabriola Island to six years of jail time and over $1 million Canadian...

On July 16, US Representative Shri Thanedar of Michigan introduced House Resolution 4422, the “Don’t Feed The Bears” bill, whose name might seem promising at first glance: Will this bill enforce strict penalties against people feeding bears grain and molasses in their backyards? Will it provide...