Hunted turtles need more than a shell

May 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:
LITTLE ROCK, TALLAHASSEE–The Florida Fish & Wildlife
Conserv-ation Commission on April 15, 2009 unanimously voted to ban
capturing or killing freshwater turtles. The proposal–if ratified
in June 2009–would bring into effect the strongest restriction on
turtle hunting in the U.S.
But the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission on March 29, 2009
rejected a proposal to stop “commercial harvest, sales and export”
of turtles.
Commission director Scott Hender-son acknowledged that, “We
have seen a lot of pressure on turtles in the last three years.”
The most recent available data indicates that Arkansas turtle
hunters are exporting about 200,000 turtles per year. However,
Henderson told the Conway Log Cabin Democrat, “Our staff
recommendation is that it is not an emergency and should be included
in our regular fishing regulations process.”

Editorial: Learning from the Glendale Creek beaver disaster

May 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:

ANIMAL PEOPLE is headquartered at the top of a steep hill
rising above Glendale Creek. Formed from 5,000 to 9,000 years ago by
runoff from a melting glacier, Glendale Creek cut a deep ravine
through which it flows for about three miles before draining into
Puget Sound at the 10-house village of Glendale.
Glendale a century ago was the chief link between South
Whidbey Island and the mainland. Steam-powered ferries stopped
there. The first car dealership on the island perched precariously
beside Glendale Creek. A narrow gauge railway, built in 1900, ran
from the water’s edge at low tide into the interior of the island.
Eventually about 10 miles long, it hauled huge cedar logs down to
the Sound, where they were floated off of flat cars and tied into
rafts to be tugged to Seattle.
The logging predictably created soil erosion. Loss of
topsoil led to loss of ground covering vegetation and flash floods,
but the loggers, the farmers who followed them to work the land,
and the hunters and fishers who came from the mainland for holidays
of recreational mayhem were all preoccupied with killing most of the
wildlife who survived the tree-cutting.

Chimp attack wins attention of lawmakers

April 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
WASHINGTON D.C–Boosted by the February 16, 2009 rampage of
a longtime pet chimpanzee named Travis in Stamford, Connecticut,
the Captive Primate Safety Act on February 24, 2009 cleared the U.S.
House of Representatives by a vote of 323-95 and returned to the U.S.
Senate.
“The bill will ban interstate commerce in apes, monkeys,
lemurs, marmosets, and other nonhuman primates for the pet trade,”
explained Humane Society Legislative Fund director Mike Markarian.
“A number of states and communities already prohibit private
ownership of primates as pets, but the patchwork of local laws and
the interstate nature of the primate pet trade call out for a federal
response. The Senate bill passed the Environment and Public Works
Committee in July 2008,” Markarian continued, “and has been
awaiting further action. Identical legislation passed the Senate
unanimously in 2006.” Charla Nash, 55, “lost her hands, nose,
lips and eyelids and may be blind and suffering brain damage” after
Travis attacked her at the home of her friend Sandra Herold, 70,”
reported Associated Press writer Dave Collins on March 17, 2009.
Receiving treatment at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where the first
U.S. face transplant surgery was performed, Nash remained in
critical condition.

Alaska suspends shooting wolves from the air

April 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
FAIRBANKS– The Alaska Department of Fish
& Game on March 19, 2009 suspended shooting
wolves from a helicopter, after killing 84
wolves in five days to try to increase the
numbers of caribou and moose accessible to human
hunters in the Fortymile region.
Currently numbering about 40,000, the
Fortymile caribou herd reputedly stretched from
Fairbanks to White-horse, and included about
568,000 caribou in 1920, when first surveyed.
Subsequent counts have never found more then
46,000, and the 1975 count fell below 4,000,
but the Department of Fish & Game continues to
try to increase the herd to 60,000.

Russia halts seal hunt

April 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
MOSCOW, OTTAWA–Russian minister of natural resources Yury
Trutnyev on March 11, 2009 told the world that Russia has halted
hunting seals under one year old on the frozen White Sea.
“This bloody hunting is from now on banned in our country,
as in most developed countries,” Trutnyev told media.
Trutnyev described the ban as “an important measure to
preserve Russian biodiversity.” The recent White Sea quota of about
35,000 seals per year was about a tenth the size of recent Atlantic
Canadian sealing quotas, but amounted to a third of the White Sea
seal population. The White Sea seal herd has reportedly declined by
95% since it was first surveyed in 1928. However, the first herd
estimate, produced in the early years of the Communist era to assess
the potential for economic expolitation, may have been grossly
exaggerated.

Wolves will be hunted

April 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
WASHINGTON, D.C.–Gray wolves may soon be legally hunted in
several of the Lower 48 states of the U.S., for the first time in
more than 80 years–but whether that means more wolves will be killed
than the 300-plus dispatched by USDA Wildlife Services in 2008 for
menacing livestock is anyone’s guess.
Among the restored populations of Idaho, Montana, and
Wyoming, together including about 1,650 wolves, Wildlife Services
in 2008 killed 264 wolves, more than one wolf in six, exterminating
21 entire packs as well as alleged rogue individuals.
Wildlife Services, other agencies, and farmers protecting
livestock also killed 45 wolves in Wisconsin, plus some in Michigan
and Minnesota.
Ranchers, blaming wolves for the confirmed loss of 601
cattle, sheep, llamas, and guard dogs in 2008, and sport hunters
who allege that wolves have reduced the numbers of elk and deer,
would like to kill even more wolves. Some elected officials in the
northern Rockies would openly prefer to hunt wolves back to regional
extirpation.

Nature’s animal control officers

March 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:
To fully appreciate coyotes may require
getting to know them– not taming them, not
trying to interact with them as wild cousins of
domestic dogs, just watching and listening.
Long before humans devised Tweeters to
let all their friends and family know where they
are and what they are doing at every moment,
coyotes learned to bark briefly each evening as
they emerge from their dens, which they change
almost every night, to tell every other coyote
within earshot where they will be hunting and
scavenging.

Wild Animals

REVIEWS: American Coyote: Still Wild at Heart

March 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:

American Coyote: Still Wild at Heart
30-minute documentary by Melissa Peabody
Distributed by Project Coyote, a program of Earth Island Institute,
c/o P.O. Box 5007, Larkspur, CA 94977; 415-945-3232; www.projectcoyote.org

American Coyote: Still Wild at Heart is a 30-minute edition
of a documentary that debuted in 2007 as the 55-minute DVD release
San Francisco: Still Wild At Heart, and was later screened at the
2008 United Nations Association Film Festival. A three-minute
trailer, Bernal Hill: Still Wild at Heart, aired in 2008 at the
Bernal Hill Outdoor Cinema.
Videographer Melissa Peabody came to coyotes as her focal
subject after editing wildlife programs for Animal Planet, producing
educational videos for Stanford University, and a three-year stint
with KRON-TV, the San Francisco NBC affiliate.

BOOKS: Top 100 Birding Sites of the World

March 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:

Top 100 Birding Sites of the World
by Dominic Couzens
Univ. of Calif. Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704-1012), 2008.
320 pages, illustrated. $45.00.

Just a year after publication of the first edition of Dominic
Couzens’ Top 100 Birding Sites of the World, now reprinted in an
expanded edition, climatic change has transformed three of the ten I
have been fortunate enough to visit.
Keoladeo Ghana National Park at Bharatpur, India, is badly
depleted by drought, though the Indian government hopes to restore
it by piping in water.
The Florida Everglades, also drying out, are now home to
increasingly abundant feral pythons. The pythons prey upon the
resident alligators, who are the major predators of Everglades
wading birds. Since big snakes have consumed crocodilians in most
crocodilians habitat for the past hundred million years, the only
surprise is that big snakes of some sort didn’t reach the Everglades
sooner.

« 1 … 22 23 24 25 26 … 173 »