Louisiana black bears expanding habitat into Texas
It’s been 16 years since the Lousiana black bear was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In the early 1990s, the federal government attempted to designate critical habitat for the bear in Louisiana. Public hearings erupted with growls from landowners and politicians who claimed that their rights would be curtailed if permits for land use such as oil and gas exploration or timber harvest hinged on bear habitat. The project was put in hibernation until this spring, when U.S. Fish and Wildlife issued preliminary maps of 1.3 million acres of critical habitat in Louisiana.
While Louisiana landowners again huddle to attempt to scuttle the new regulations, the black bears, protected in Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma, seem to be expanding territory on their own. The Dallas Morning News reports bear sightings in Texas Parks and Wildlife’s White Oak Creek Wildlife Management Area, a 25,000-acre hardwood bottom on the Sulphur River and White Oak Creek. “Bear sightings in East Texas started picking up in the late 1990s,” TP&W biologist Ricky Maxey told the DMN. “Some years, we only get two or three reports. Other years we get 10 or more.”
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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