Local Brewery Creates Beer to Help the Hellbender
Lafayette Brewing Company designed the "Hellbent to Help" fundraiser to help raise funds for hellbender research, conservation and education.
For much of the last 15 years, Dr. Rod Williams and his team have been researching eastern hellbenders, spearheading regional conservation efforts and advancing hellbender captive propagation, or the rearing of this ancient animal in captivity and their eventual return to the wild.
After five years of breeding efforts, Williams’ partners at the Mesker Park Zoo in Evansville, Indiana, successfully bred eastern hellbenders naturally in captivity in October 2020, signifying the culmination of a long and collaborative effort to breed the species and restore this endangered species to its native environment.
