$1,000 Reward Offered After Three Alligators Poached in Texas 🐊

As we continue to slowly but surely inch back towards the weekend, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get into what this beautiful Tuesday has to offer.

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

WARDENS WANT ANSWERS
$1,000 REWARD OFFERED AFTER THREE ALLIGATORS SHOT ON LAKE WORTH PRESERVE

Texas Game Wardens are hard on the trail of whoever decided to waste three gators at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge on Lake Worth. According to wardens, the incidents took place between May and June of this year and have since resulted in two dead, abandoned carcasses and a third surviving nesting female with what appears to be a crossbow bolt or arrow shaft lodged in her neck.

“It’s extremely unfortunate that people would take advantage of doing that to a keystone, protected species on public land," said Jared Wood, manager of the Nature Center…

📋 Mississippi Lab Helps Connecticut Conduct First Black Bear Survey in a Decade. It’s been a long time since Connecticut performed a heavy-duty black bear survey and now, with help from Mississippi State University, officials are after some accurate numbers following a 10-year drought. Together with the school’s Carnivore and Population Ecology Lab, Connecticut officials has assembled a 10-person field team that has set roughly 340 barbed-wire-hair-collection sites across western regions of the state.

As of early August, about 850 samples have been collected with genetic analysis and a final population estimate expected next spring.

The last formal study, which took place back in 2013, identified 235 individual bears and estimated 400–450 animals in western Connecticut. State officials now put the overall statewide population at roughly 1,000–1,200, as human-bear conflicts continue to spiral out of control, including more than 50 home break-ins already reported this year.

And in a state that has not ever had a modern-day bear hunting season, this new survey could carve a path back to regulated harvest.

🦌 EHD Outbreak Kills Dozens of Deer in Wisconsin. Dozens of whitetail deer have died in Wisconsin from an outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), with estimates of 80 to 100 deaths concentrated in Washington County since late July. Officials are calling this a larger than normal outbreak and one that is happening earlier in the year than what they are used to seeing. In years past, normal EHD events in Wisconsin claim between 30-50 deer and tend to peak later in the season where the looming first frost can quickly end the cycle.

The DNR notes that deer herds generally recover quickly from these localized die-offs and asks the public to report sick or dead deer (with location details) so the outbreak can be tracked.

🐻 Black Bear Killed After Attacking Man in Port Coquitlam. BC’s Conservation Officer Service has pulled the trigger on another bear after it attacked a man outside of an apartment complex in Port Coquitlam on Sunday afternoon. Officers were called to the scene around 3 p.m. and caught up with who they believed to be the attacking bruin later that evening. The bear was tranquilized and sent for testing where it was confirmed to be the perpetrator in the attack. Due to public safety concerns in the residential area, officers made the decision to destroy the animal.

The incident is the latest in a string of bear attacks in British Columbia this month, including an attack of a 3-year-old girl at her home in Maple Ridge.

🐈 That moment your cabin gets a visit from a whole group of elusive visitors. Often called “Ghosts of the Forest” by Alberta wildlife managers, cougars are plentiful in the Wild Rose province, but sightings still remain quite rare.

Very cool footage on the ol’ cabin cam…

Oh, and one more thing…