Tagged: department of wildlife and fisheries

Twenty-eight endangered whooping cranes now live in the wild in southwest Louisiana.

Louisiana's fall shrimp season is closing in most state inside waters.

Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham said last week that the season would close for most inside waters at sunset Tuesday to let white shrimp grow larger and more valuable.

On Monday, he set closing Dec. 30 in parts of Lake Pelto and Terrebonne and Timbalier bays where the fall inshore season had been briefly extended.

Hurricane Isaac killed so many fawns in parts of southeast Louisiana that Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission is limiting the deer season in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes and the Lake Maurepas Basin.

The archery season remains the same, but others are shortened and limited to bucks.

Dates also were changed in several wildlife management areas.

In Plaquemines Parish, biologists report high fawn mortality, moderate adult deer mortality and severe damage to habitat from salt water shock and storm surge debris.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says biologists did not see any external sign of trauma in a young dolphin found dead along the Mississippi River bank at Baton Rouge.

Spokeswoman Ashley Wethey said Thursday that the body was moderately to severely decomposed when biologists retrieved it by boat on Wednesday for testing.

A hydrologic survey crew reported the body Monday near the U.S. Highway 190 bridge.

A dead young dolphin washed ashore in an isolated area along the Mississippi River bank at Baton Rouge, state Wildlife and Fisheries personnel say.

Fisheries division biologist Mandy Tumlin says that in seven years with the department, she's never heard of a dolphin getting so far upriver. She says it might have done so by drafting along the bow of a ship headed upriver or by swimming up during Hurricane Isaac.