Black Bear Crosses Lake Falcon, published here at Higher Calling Wildlife earned first place for outdoor news reporting at the Texas Outdoor Writer’s Association “Excellence In Craft” awards banquet in Port Arthur, TX.

The story written by award-winning wildlife journalist & conservationist Chester Moore detailed the story of a bear caught on video by a fishermen swimming from Mexico to the Texas side of the lake.

It also detailed the black bear’s return throughout South, West and Northeast Texas.

“It’s an honor to win this award for a subject I am so passionate about. Hopefully this will help give me an opportunity to raise more awareness to the return of bears to Texas,” Moore said.

Moore, who has recently joined Bear Trust International (BTI), believes conservation groups like BTI and conservation-minded hunters and outdoor lovers will be crucial to future bear management in Texas.

“Texans are not used to bears but in parts of the state they are going to have to get educated. I highly recommend connecting with BTI and learning about bears and bear management,” Moore said.

Moore was awarded 10 TOWA “Excellence In Craft” awards including five first place showings in publication, magazine feature, website and video categories.

“It’s an honor and privilege to be recognized by such a prestigious organization of such talented outdoor communicators,” Moore said.

Besides being the founder of Higher Calling Wildlife, Moore is also co-founder of the Kingdom Zoo Wildlife Center® and the Wild Wishes® program with his wife Lisa where they work with critically ill and abused children in nature settings.

He is also a member of many wildlife and fisheries conservation groups in addition to BTI including the Houston Safari Club Foundation, National Wild Turkey Federation, Coastal Conservation Association, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, The Wild Sheep Foundation, Texas Bighorn Society, Oregon Foundation for North American Wild Sheep, Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation, Idaho Wild Sheep Foundation, Rocky Mountain Bighorn Society and the Rocky Mountain Goat Alliance.

Moore is Editor-In-Chief of Texas Fish & Game, host of “Moore Outdoors” on Newstalk AM 560 KLVI and  the “Higher Calling Wildlife” and “Higher Calling Gulf Coast” podcasts.

You can subscribe to this blog by entering your email address at the subscribe prompt at the top right of this page. You can contact Chester Moore by emailing chester@chestermoore.com. Subscribe to the podcast by visiting thehighercalling.podbean.com.

California State Senator Scott Weiner’s “Bear Protection Act” would have ended all hunting of black bears in California.

He withdrew the bill Monday after a vast opposition from wildlife managers, conservation organizations, and hunters.

Bear Trust International’s Executive Director Logan Young said his group strongly opposed the legislation as it was based “100 percent off emotion and had zero scientific data to back it up”.

“Sportsmen and conservationists rallied together to display the true biological facts and proven negative outcomes of what they were proposing. The right decision was made,” Young said.

Under a management system where hunting is one of the tools, black bear populations in California have increased from 10,000 in 1982 to 40,000 in 2021.

And that’s factoring in vastly more people and development that has eaten up their habitat in the last 40 years.

California officials tightly regulate bear hunting with a cap put on harvest annually based on surveys. Last year fewer than 1,000 bears were harvested.

As bear populations have grown in the Golden State, so has the issuance of depredation permits where state officials deem a bear can be terminated due to livestock attacks or dangerous behavior around people.

In 2018 (the last year stats were available), more than 300 depredation permits were issued, which is a full third of the usual harvest in the state. Banning hunting would certainly increase human-bear and livestock-bear conflicts, ending in more killing of bears.

Science should dictate wildlife management, and what California is doing now works.

I love bears.

In Texas, I started Texas Bear Aware, a program that raises awareness of black bears returning to the state in 2007. Through Texas Fish & Game magazine, we have distributed thousands of educational posters and worked with tens of thousands of wildlife class students on bear issues.

And it’s not so we can hunt them.

It will be a long time before these animals are ever at a huntable number in Texas unless some drastic migration happens. And it won’t.

Banning bear hunting where they are flourishing (300,000 in the Lower 48 and 600,000 in North America total) is pointless.

There are real bear issues right now that need looked at around the globe. In America, helping support wildlife overpasses like ones instituted in Colorado and Texas will save their lives.

More importantly, on a global level, species most American’s don’t know to exist are having real problems.

The world’s smallest bear, the sun bear, which lives in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia is a prime example.

These bears are listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN, and there is great concern due to an increased market for their bile.

Traditional medicine adherents use the bile, and while most comes from bile farms where bears are kept in tiny cages and have their bile harvested from them in shocking ways, wild-caught bears replenish those that die (and they do so frequently).

Poachers also kill them for their claws and other parts, and they catch babies to sell as pets.

The sloth bear of India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal has had increasing issues in the human-conflict arena. Supporting education initiatives for the species from groups like Bear Trust International, for example, would do much to help them.

We support these actions and have used our media platforms to raise awareness throughout the world.

There are bears out there that need protecting, but they’re not in California. They need managed, and the current system is doing a great job of that.

No system is perfect, but when wildlife managers follow the North America Model of Conservation that allows hunting as a tool, wildlife flourishes.

And that’s precisely what bears are doing in California.

Chester Moore

You can subscribe to this blog by entering your email address at the subscribe prompt at the top right of this page. You can contact Chester Moore by emailing chester@chestermoore.com. Subscribe to the podcast by visiting thehighercalling.podbean.com.