This December, a handful of Louisiana hunters can have the chance to take part in a black bear hunt of their residence state for the primary time in many years. The final time Louisiana held a black bear hunt was in 1987.
The upcoming 2024 black bear hunt was formally licensed on Tuesday at a Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting, throughout which the LFWC adopted a Notice of Intent that defines the laws across the hunt, together with dates, areas, bag limits, and authorized strategies of take. The Discover additionally establishes a lottery system to allocate the ten accessible black bear tags to resident hunters.
Tuesday’s determination was to be anticipated, for the reason that identical group of wildlife commissioners voted unanimously to establish the hunting season in November 2023. Their newer determination was greater than only a formality, since final November’s vote ignited an argument that would have derailed these prospects. On Dec. 31, a coalition of animal rights teams launched a petition to dam the proposed hunt. The petition, which has garnered greater than 31,000 signatures since then, asserts that black bears are a state image and claims their inhabitants isn’t giant sufficient to maintain a regulated hunt.
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Officers with the Louisiana Division of Wildlife and Fisheries disagree, and so they’ve supported the concept of bringing again a black bear hunt. LDWF giant carnivore supervisor John Hanks estimates the statewide inhabitants is a minimum of 1,200 bears, and final fall he informed commissioners this was ample to have a “conservative harvest in restricted areas,” based on the Shreveport Times.
Most of those bears stay within the northeastern nook of the state — the identical area the place the 2024 hunt will happen — and state lawmakers there have additionally pushed for regulated looking as a solution to handle the state’s rising bear inhabitants. They level out that the species has bounced again in an enormous approach since 1992, when Lousiana black bears (a definite subspecies of black bear and the official state mammal) had been added to the Endangered Species Record. This was 4 years after the state banned bear looking altogether.
By 2016, the species was formally deemed recovered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and federal protections were dissolved. State wildlife biologists have continued to watch their populations since then, and so they say a rigorously managed looking season can have little affect on Louisiana’s black bears.
Beneath the laws adopted Tuesday, the 2024 black bear hunt will run from Dec. 7 by Dec. 22. All looking might be confined to the far northeastern nook of the state, the place LDWF has established a bear administration space comprising 4 parishes and parts of three extra parishes.
LDWF will allocate 10 black bear tags to licensed resident hunters by a lottery system. Profitable candidates might be required to attend a bear hunter coaching course previous to looking, and the harvest of cubs (outlined as any bear underneath 75 kilos) and females with cubs is prohibited. The draw will happen within the fall.
