We're officially hunting Teddy's bears 🐻

If you’re still with us, that means you’ve made it to the middle of yet another week.

With that in mind, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get another mid-week dispatch out the door.

Here's what's worth reading about so far this week:

• It’s go-time - Louisiana makes bear hunting a thing again 🐻

• Of mice and moose - Yes, mice can grow antlers. Kind of…🐁

• Forcing sheds - Idiots in London are grabbing deer, trying to force antlers from their heads 🤦

• USFWS goes a little crazy - They’ve hired a $3 million mediator to deal with wolf issues 💸

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OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL
LOUISIANA GREENLIGHTS FIRST BEAR HUNT SINCE 1987

After a lot of talk last fall surrounding the possibility of hunting Louisiana black bears, state regulators made it official last week. Announcing the state’s first bear hunting season in nearly 40 years, a handful of Louisiana hunters will get a shot at a black bear this December.

Following a bit of pushback from bear activists, the state’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries stood their ground, disagreeing with the naysayers. Stating that there was not a healthy enough population to sustain a hunt was simply not true according to the department’s large carnivore manager John Hanks. Pegging the population at around 1,200 bears, Hanks told both commissioners and those opposing the hunt that these numbers were sufficient to have a “conservative harvest in limited areas,” in a statement in the Shreveport Times. 

State officials have made it clear that most of these bears are located in roughly the same area. A small region in the northeastern corner of Louisiana is ground zero for black bears where many local residents are supporting the hunt as a way to help manage the growing population of bears…

🐁 10-point mice - In a world where not much in the news surprises us anymore, the story surrounding a study in which researchers were able to grow “mini-antlers” on mice just might. Chinese researcher Tao Qin and his team performed a deep dive into the science behind the antlers of Sika deer. Given the fact that these antlers shed and regrow year after year, the scientists were able to map out the unique process of regeneration in Sika antlers. 

The team then took the stem cells they believed had the most regrowth potential and cultured them in a Petri dish before implanting them into the heads of a few unsuspecting mice. After a short period of time (45 days), researchers found that the mice miraculously grew their own mini-antlers. Given the speedy response, researchers are curious about the possible human treatments this kind of treatment could provide.

"We present a spatiotemporal cellular atlas of antler regeneration, which provides a useful genetic and histological resource for mammalian organ regeneration," the journal read.

"Our results show that antler regeneration is consistent with a conceptual stem cell–based regenerative process." Here we grow.

🤼 Antler wrasslin’ - London’s Richmond Park, one of the city’s eight Royal Parks, is home to a number of impressive stags (what we’d call bucks here in America). As with all male cervids, the 600 red and fallow deer that call the park home shed their massive antlers each year, attracting seasonal hunters looking for them strewn about the forest floor. An activity that has long been a pastime here on this side of the pond is quickly spiraling out of control both here and now apparently in England. 

Recent reports by the Royal Parks Police indicate that rather than waiting for the antlers to drop, people are actually approaching the deer and trying to force the antlers from their heads. In addition to being unethical, this type of activity is illegal, and rightfully so. Park Police reportedly have obtained footage of these incidents and are urging residents to report such activity by calling 911 101.

💸 $3.2M Mediator Hired by US Fish & Wildlife - The squeaky wheel gets the grease and in the outdoor space, that wheel, at the moment, happens to be the national debate over how to handle wolf management. The capture and killing of a live wolf by some hammerhead in Wyoming has proven to be the Franz Ferdinand moment wolf activists have been waiting for. Declaring war on the hunting world and wildlife agencies, the US Fish & Wildlife Service is not expecting the decades long onslaught of legislation and litigation to subside anytime soon.

In a response that sounds more like Big Tech than environmental science, the FWS has gone all DEI by instituting a “National Dialogue Around Working Landscapes and Gray Wolves and Thriving Communities and Cultures” committee. 

With a price tag of $3.2 million just to hire the mediator of the program, it begs the question as to where all of this time and money could better be allocated. But then again, the answer to that question might be a bit too simple.