Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources

Could be cave beetles, could be something like crickets, could be isopods.

Courtney Hayes is a wildlife biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.

She says the state's first nine-bedded armadillo was found in 1986 in LaRue County and have since been documented in 63 of Kentucky's 120 counties.

Armadillos haven't made their way to the Appalachian Mountains yet, and Hayes says wildlife experts are still trying to piece together why.

Um, you know, we were talking before, um, before the interview about how some of these projects, uh, that I write about, reintroducing elk, bison, and red wolves, um, and also the, the restoration of landscapes or other animals that I write about, or other species, um- Kind of happens sometimes because someone has this wild idea to do something.

Um, for example, Doug Hensley, he's the, um, uh, he's the man from East Kentucky who was a commissioner on the, the v- volunteer commissioner for the Department of c- um, Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

And he looked at mine-scarred landscapes, mountaintop removal landscapes where thousands of acres have been blown apart by explosives and, and, um, [lip smack] uh, you know, devastated ecologically.

Um, and he looked at this landscape, and he thought...

Yeah.

He wasn't the president of the United States.

Um, and, and he was a volunteer in his capacity as a commissioner, uh, on the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources.

And, and so again, he, you know, he's not at the highest level of government making this happen.

Its eastern boundary is the Conservancy's managed Cumberland Forest, which is protected by a 55,000-acre conservation easement that we spoke about several years ago.

And then just to the west is a Mountain River Farms property that the Conservancy bought last year and has already transferred to our partners at Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.

So it's right in the mix of well over 100,000 acres of protected lands.

Okay,

So it's going to be part of this larger connected corridor that we're building throughout these mountains.

And I can touch on the benefits ecologically of that here in a minute.

But we do plan to open this property for public access and restoration, hopefully by transferring it to our partners at Kentucky Fish and Wildlife, who really have the resources, the staff capacity to manage that.

Because we want this property to benefit nature, but also to benefit people.

30 people suffered serious injuries.

Joe McDermott from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, he's the deer program coordinator.

October to December is mating season for deer, a time when deer activity peaks as males roam further afield to locate females.

They're going to be crossing quiet lanes and busy highways, particularly at dawn and dusk.

One of her signature comedy bits draws from a childhood conversation with her parents.

She begged them to let her join her friends at a sleepaway camp run by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.

I'm convinced that the only reason they let me go is because it was called Camp Curry.

They're like, finally, our daughter is showing an interest in cooking.