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http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=FWS-HQ-ES-2013-0073
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Photo: Subadult Wenaha wolf ODFW
Posted in: Wolf Wars
Tags: USFWS, national wolf delisting rule proposal, Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Interior, Dan Ashe, wolf persecution, please comment, deadline March 27
Oso, Washington, is a very small town (at least, it used to be). Until now, most people had never heard of it—it doesn’t even show up on Mapquest.com. Suddenly, in the time it took for a mountain to tumble down to the valley below, everyone worldwide seems to have heard about Oso.
I knew of it because we built our family cabin at Lake Cavanagh, which is at the end of the gravel, potholed Oso Road. Now half the town is under a mountain of dirt, rock and mud.
When it first hit the news, I thought it was just a standard mudslide like the ones we regularly see around here when the rains come down extra hard in the winter. Because of all the logging that Washington State is famous for, washouts are now commonplace. Logging slash left behind from years of clear cutting clogs up in the creek beds and blows out the culverts in a dramatic race to the bottom, taking out everything in its path and choking the salmon spawning streams below. But these slides are usually limited by the size of the creek where they originated.
It wasn’t until I saw aerial photos of the enormity of this washout that it became clear something strange and new had happened in the town of Oso. This was no surface water run-off, but though timber companies will probably never admit it, you can bet your bottom dollar that this will also ultimately prove to be the result of clear-cut logging in years past. Trees grew tall and wide in this neck of the woods, before the initial assault on old growth cedars around the turn of the 20th century. Many of the forests in Washington have been logged off several times by now. The aerial photos reveal smaller, even-aged trees on the slope above the washout. I learned from having a 300′ deep well drilled in western Washington, that, despite the sometime steady rain, there is really no aquifer to speak of. And no real rocks in these foothills either. Water finds its way through cracks and fissures in the claylike soil that passes for rock.
While old growth trees are vast reservoirs for rainwater, younger, smaller trees only hold so much. Although this winter has been a comparably dry one, heavy rains in late February and March have made up for it. In a sure sign of climate change, the northwest has been seeing more downpours measured in the inches per hour, rather than per day. Excess water can fill the cracks and fissures to overflow, forcing the cracks to expand and sometimes, as we saw in Oso, break away large chunks of earth.
For now all we do is hope for the people who were trapped, entombed, in their uprooted houses. Hope that they died quickly, that is. President Obama stated today that we should “pray” for the victims. Pray for what? Their souls, that they made it to heaven? If anyone is trapped under the mud this long, they’ve surely run out of oxygen by now.
Also in today’s news, a train derailment resulted, surprisingly, in no deaths. It was a “miracle,” the media announced. So my question to the media is, where are God’s miracles in the case of the Oso mudslide? All of this reminds me of those haunting lines in Gordon Lightfoot’s song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” asking, “Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
If you think you know why any loving god would save a train full of people, while letting others suffer under the weight of a mountain, more power to you. Personally, I still haven’t figured it out.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Danish zoo that faced protests for killing a healthy giraffe to prevent inbreeding says it has put down four lions, including two cubs, to make room for a new male lion.
Citing the “pride’s natural structure and behavior,” the Copenhagen Zoo said Tuesday that two old lions had been euthanized as part of a generational shift. It said the cubs were also put down because they were not old enough to fend for themselves and “anyway would have been killed by the new male lion.”
Zoo officials hope the new male and two females born in 2012 will form the nucleus of a new pride.
Last month the zoo triggered a wave of protests by killing a 2-year-old giraffe, and feeding its remains to the lions as visitors watched.
Also: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/danish-copenhagen-zoo-kills-four-lions-marius-giraffe
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26735118
There is no known cure or vaccine for EbolaGuinea has banned the sale and consumption of bats to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus, its health minister has said.
Bats appeared to be the “main agents” for the Ebola outbreak in the remote south, Rene Lamah said.
Sixty-two people have now been killed by the virus in Guinea, with suspected cases reported in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Ebola is spread by close contact and kills between 25% and 90% of victims.
There is no known cure or vaccine.
Symptoms include internal and external bleeding, diarrhoea and vomiting.
‘Quarantine sites’
It is said to be the first time Ebola has struck Guinea, with recent outbreaks thousands of miles away, in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mr Lamah announced the ban on the sale and consumption of bats during a tour of Forest Region, the epicentre of the epidemic, reports the BBC’s Alhassan Sillah from the capital, Conakry.
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said it had set up two quarantine sites in southern Guinea to try to contain the outbreak, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Health officials reported one more death on Tuesday, bringing the number of people killed by Ebola to 62, our correspondent says.
Sierra Leone’s health ministry said it was investigating two suspected cases of Ebola, the AFP news agency reports.
Aid agencies and the government are taking medical supplies to the affected areas in Guinea“We still do not have any confirmed cases of Ebola in the country,” its chief medical officer Brima Kargbo is quoted as saying.
“What we do have are suspected cases, which our health teams are investigating and taking blood samples from people who had come in contact with those suspected to have the virus,” he added.
Mr Kargbo said the one suspected case involved a 14-year-old boy who was thought to have died two weeks ago in Guinea and then brought to his village on the Sierra Leonean side of the border in the eastern district of Kono.
The other case was in the northern border district Kambia, he added, without giving further details.
“This is the first time such a national health threat has come to our borders. In any case, we are prepared and on the alert in readiness in case the disease is diagnosed in Sierra Leone,” Mr Kargbo was quoted as saying by AFPs.
Five people are reported to have died in Liberia after crossing from southern Guinea for treatment, Liberia’s Health Minister Walter Gwenigale told journalists on Monday.
However, it is not clear whether they had Ebola.
Outbreaks of Ebola occur primarily in remote villages in central and west Africa, near tropical rainforests, the World Health Organization says.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/drone-assisted-hunting-banned-alaska-180950251/?no-ist
by Rose Eveleth smithsonianmag.com
Alaska takes big game hunting seriously, and, in a recent meeting of the Alaska Board of Game, the state officially banned the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to help hunters track prey.
Alaska Wildlife Troopers told the board that, while drone-assisted hunting was still rare, they worried that, as the technology got cheaper, more hunters would start using it, Casey Grove at Anchorage Daily News reports. In 2012, a hunter took down a moose using a drone, and troopers couldn’t do anything about it because the practice wasn’t technically illegal. “Under hunting regulations, unless it specifically says that it’s illegal, you’re allowed to do it,” Wildlife Trooper Captain Bernard Chastain told Grove.
To get ahead of potential problems, the board decided to make spotting and shooting game with a drone illegal. This is similar to the law that bans hunters from using aircraft to follow and shoot animals. With aircraft, it’s legal to shoot the animal if you take it down a day or more after spotting it with the plane but, with drones, any kind of tracking and killing will not be allowed. According to Grove, these laws stem from a “principle of fairness”—not to the animals, but to the other hunters. “Other people don’t have a fair opportunity to take game if somebody else is able to do that,” Chastain says.
According to Valentina Palladino at the Verge, this isn’t the first use of drones banned by hunting communities. Colorado will vote on a rule that would require permits to use drones while hunting. And in Illinois, PETA’s drones, which were tracking hunters, were made illegal. And not only can you not hunt animals, but delivering beer by drone is apparently also a no-go. Spoil sports.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-greenwald/idahos-wolf-hunting_b_5010249.html
by Noah Greenwald, 03/24/2014
When it comes to killing wolves, Idaho has an appetite that just can’t be
sated.
State lawmakers just approved a bill that sets aside $400,000 to exterminate 500 wolves. Adding insult to injury, the bill takes management away from the state wildlife agency and places it in the hands of a “wolf depredation control board” that will consist solely of members appointed and overseen by Governor Butch Otter, who said in 2007 that he wanted to be the first to kill an Idaho wolf after federal protections were taken away.
Just a few months ago, Idaho sent a bounty hunter into the woods to wipe out two wolf packs and more recently announced plans to kill 60 percent of the wolves in another part of the state.
The slaughter continues and Idaho’s political leaders seem to bask in the carnage they’re leaving behind.
It’s exactly the kind of ugly behavior that we feared when Congress in 2011 stripped Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the northern Rockies, where some 1,600 wolves have been killed since protections were lifted. And it’s clear, more mass killing is on the way.
This isn’t supposed to be happening. The United States worked for 40 years to return wolves to the American landscape. Canis lupus had been driven to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states as settlement moved west, ranching moved in and government sponsored programs trapped, poisoned and shot wolves into oblivion.
The Endangered Species Act allowed wolves to begin recovery, at least in a few places like the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes states. After reintroductions in Yellowstone National Park and parts of Idaho, wolves came back. New packs formed. Families were built. Ecosystems, now with a keystone predator back in the mix, began to function like they had historically.
Politicians in Congress, though, pulled the plug and unceremoniously stripped federal protections. We were told that wolves could be responsibly managed by state wildlife agencies in places like Idaho.
Truth is, wolves are being persecuted in Idaho with the same kind of repulsive attitude that nearly drove them to extinction 100 years ago. Only now it’s happening under the official state flag.
And here’s where it gets worse: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now wants to take away federal protections for nearly all wolves in the lower 48 states. And, just like in 2011, we’re being told that wolves will be fine. They won’t be. Wolves today live in just five percent of their historic habitat.
Abandoning wolf protections across the country will not only ensure that wolves never get reestablished in places like the southern Rockies or the Northeast but that any wolves that remain will be subject to the same kind of treatment they’re getting in Idaho.
Idaho may have gone too far this time. The rule removing protections for wolves, which was made law by Congress, specified criteria under which wolves would again receive consideration for Endangered Species Act protection and this atrocious bill may just have crossed the line.
Alliston Herald
BARRIE – A 16-year-old Essa boy who accidentally shot his father and brother in a hunting accident last year has been discharged of criminal charges following a ruling Thursday at the Barrie courthouse.
In January, the court heard how the teen thought he was shooting a wild animal near their Baxter home Nov. 5
According to the testimony, he mistook the carcass of a deer being pushed by his dad and brother in a wheelbarrow along
Photo Copyright Jim Robertson
the train tracks as a bear or a cougar.
The shooting happened at 6 p.m. when it was dark outside.
A slug from a single shotgun blast went through his father’s leg and entered his brother’s hip, requiring surgery.
At the hearing in January, he pleaded guilty to careless use of a firearm.
During the presentencing, the court also heard how the boy had an impeccable record prior to this incident and held top marks at school.
The boy cannot be named under the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Judges can issue an absolute discharge if it’s in the person’s best interest and if there is no threat to the public. As such, the teen will not have a criminal record.
Bison slaughters in Yellowstone over for season after almost 600 killed, removed
Yellowstone announces end to 2014 bison slaughter following one-man blockade
Yellowstone seeks information on illegal bison shootings
Killed and injured by men in helicopters for NO good reason
This year’s tragic bison slaughter in Yellowstone National Park, driven by Montana’s ranchers, has come to an end. It resulted in nearly 600 bison being killed or otherwise “removed” from their rightful home in Yellowstone National Park. 318 were shipped to slaughter or research facilities and more than 270 wild bison have been killed by state and treaty hunters just outside Yellowstone’s boundary in Montana.
Lawsuits are underway to grant bison to habitat north (the Montana Supreme Court just ruled in favor!) and west, outside of the park. If you haven’t already, please send a letter to the Montana officials responsible for allowing or not intervening in this massacre:
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Exposing the Big Game 