{"id":129409,"date":"2026-07-09T05:04:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T11:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uswps06.newsmemory.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/2026\/07\/09\/biologists-cautiously-optimistic-that-spring-moisture-will-help-boost-mule-deer-numbers\/?destination=northern-plains-independent"},"modified":"2026-07-09T05:15:08","modified_gmt":"2028-12-25T05:15:08","slug":"biologists-cautiously-optimistic-that-spring-moisture-will-help-boost-mule-deer-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/2026\/07\/09\/biologists-cautiously-optimistic-that-spring-moisture-will-help-boost-mule-deer-numbers\/?destination=northern-plains-independent","title":{"rendered":"Biologists Cautiously Optimistic That Spring  Moisture Will Help Boost Mule Deer Numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three years of extreme drought conditions have resulted  in lower-than-average mule deer numbers across much of north-central Montana.  But in trend area surveys conducted earlier this year, biologists  saw good over-winter survival of fawns born in the spring of 2025 and are hopeful  that significant rainfall in May and June will translate to better habitat conditions and lead to an increase in mule<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"news-destination":[14],"news-source":[11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129622,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129409\/revisions\/129622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129409"},{"taxonomy":"news-destination","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-destination?post=129409"},{"taxonomy":"news-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernplainsindependent.com\/northernplainsindependent\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-source?post=129409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}