No Pride–A Shame
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Monthly Archives: September 2016
Excerpt: Letter from Predator Defense on the slaughter of the Profanity Peak pack
Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson
The Profanity Peak wolf pack was wrongfully slaughtered. They were set up for the kill. The rancher, a known wolf-hater, put his cattle to graze on pristine, forested public land in the core of the pack’s territory. His cattle, of course, displaced the wolves’ normal prey–elk and deer. The cattle then became prey. The rancher did not use anywhere close to an adequate level of nonlethal deterrents to prevent predation. He also put salt blocks near the pack’s den, according to WDFW, which drew the cattle right to the wolves. And so, the wolves predated on the cattle.
After this WDFW’s Wolf Policy Lead had the gall to state in a TV interview: “Is that really the wolf population we want to repopulate the state? Wolves that have demonstrated that behavior and see livestock as prey items.” In other words, wolves being wolves (let alone being set up!) and doing the job nature gave them as apex predators should not be themselves?!
So WDFW has now killed at least 6 of the 11-member pack and is actively trying to kill the rest. This situation is an outrage! The slaughter of the Profanity Peak Pack must be stopped. And cattle should cease being placed in wolves’ territory unless truly adequate nonlethal control methods are in use. There are also areas where it is inappropriate to have livestock, and this is surely one of them.
Brooks Fahy
Executive Director, Predator Defense
http://www.predatordefense.org
Vaux’s Swift Soon to be another Victim of Climate Change
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Colorado Parks & Wildlife is hitting a new level of absurdity.
From Wild Earth Guardians
The State has a new plot to kill cougars and bears in an attempt to boost mule deer populations so that it can sell more hunting tags. Yup, that’s right, they want to kill native animals so that more people will pay to kill other animals. Join us in telling our state’s wildlife managers it is past time to put wildlife first.
Poorly disguised as two “predator control studies” aimed at increasing sport-hunting opportunity for mule deer over the coming years, the state is putting bears and cougars in the crosshairs. The first plan calls for trapping and killing between 15-45 cougars and 30-75 black bears over a period of three years. The “study” part is a post-killing analysis of the impact of removing native predators on mule deer fawn survival rates. The science shows that removing native carnivores from the landscape undermines ecosystem functions. Adding insult to injury, the state plans to have the federal government’s rogue wildlife killing program—Wildlife Services—do the dirty work by setting cruel and indiscriminate traps and using hounds to capture the bears and cougars before shooting them dead. So, both your state and federal public resources would be used for the killing.
And, as if one so-called “research” project wasn’t good enough, another is set to begin this year. This second cruel project allows for dramatically increased trophy hunting of mountain lions over a nine-year “study” period. Fully six years of the study involve increasing cougar harvests by 50% to purposefully suppress the population. The “study’s” goal is to analyze the impact of using sport-hunting to control the wildcat population and increase deer density. Again, state sponsored killing of one native species purportedly to benefit hunters trying to kill another.
Killing Colorado’s native carnivores to benefit sport-hunters is just plain wrong. It’s also biologically unsound. Please join us in speaking out for Colorado’s wildlife and thriving natural ecosystems. Help us talk some sense into our state’s leading wildlife managers.
The State is hosting a public listening session on September 19th from 6:30 to 8:30p at the Hunter Education Building in Denver (6060 Broadway). Join Guardians in showing your support for Colorado’s native carnivores by attending and sharing your thoughts on the State’s proposed “research” plans.
Coloradans are proud of the healthy, wild ecosystems that make the state unique. Don’t let bloodthirsty minority interests destroy the balance for us all. Tell Colorado Parks & Wildlife native carnivores belong in Colorado.
Ignorance was bliss; time to go vegan
Iwas in the local fish shop buying my dinner when another customer in front held up two live lobsters that he had just bought. He needed some advice about what to do with them. “I’m going to boil one today,” said he, “but how long can I keep the other before I boil it? Will it last two days?”
There were the poor lobsters, held aloft, waving their arms about in a frenzy. Did they know what awaited them? Horrible. I suddenly remembered those Buddhist monks who saved hundreds of lobsters in July – bought them, carefully untied their claws and set them free again. They probably knew that lobsters “have a long childhood and awkward adolescence” and feel pain. So that cheered me up a bit – not all humans are greedy, heartless bastards. But it means no more lobsters for me, and perhaps I should cut out fish, too, and be a proper vegetarian. Or even a vegan, because once you start on this road, there’s no way back.
And it’s difficult, because I was brought up eating meat. Lovely tasty stews, roast dinners, bacon for breakfast, and shellfish. My mother cooked it all, in defiance of Jewish dietary laws and her own ferociously kosher mother. But those were more innocent and ignorant times, when we didn’t know about how dairy cows suffer, or eat such gigantic chunks of everything; when there was no Twitter, Facebook and endless campaigns against eating, boiling and torturing dogs, pigs and more or less anything that moved, and we just thought animals wandered freely around fields or spacious pens and didn’t miss their children, or mind being slaughtered, or feel anything much. And we didn’t yet know that the planet was almost totally buggered.
“This is a middle-class activity,” says Fielding harshly. “And remember, you live in Islington. People will mock.” Who cares? I’m not claiming to be saintly. I have lapses; I eat Olivia’s heavenly roast chicken, pretending to myself that I’m just being polite. Daughter’s making more effort than me, often turning to tofu. Perhaps the next generation will do better than us, and save the world. If they still have time.
Animal Protection Group Shuts Down US Senator Inhofe’s Pigeon Shoot
– Pigeon Supplier Leaves with Crates of Live Pigeons
LONE WOLF, OK – SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) shut down a live pigeon shoot fundraiser held Friday afternoon by US Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the international animal protection group reported. SHARK said it will also monitor an Inhofe Dove Hunt Saturday if it goes on as scheduled.
According to SHARK, the story begins at the Quartz Mountain Lodge in Lone Wolf, OK, which was the sign-in location for Senator Inhofe’s pigeon shoot. Activists followed the procession of vehicles when they left the lodge to go to the shooting area. The Inhofe party went through extreme measures to lose SHARK, including driving the rear cars at extremely slow speeds on the highway to block the activists.
Inhofe’s team successfully lost the activists – except for one car, which eventually led the rest of the activists to the shoot, which was located down 10 miles of washboard dirt roads. The shoot site was located off of N2113 road in Lone Wolf.
Once SHARK launched its Angel drone, the shooting of birds stopped. Almost immediately vehicles started leaving. A trickle quickly became a flood, as was video documented. This included the person who supplied the pigeons. He left with many still living birds in his vehicle. The entire pigeon shoot was over.
“This a major victory,” said SHARK President Steve Hindi. “In 2014, when our investigator was at the event undercover, the shoot lasted more than an hour and forty-five minutes and there were ten shooting stations. This year there were only six shooting stations and the shoot was only about forty-five minutes long. All of this represents a dramatic reduction in shooters and time spent killing since SHARK first exposed Inhofe’s cruel fundraiser. Clearly the pressure is on Inhofe and we will not be letting up.”
Should veganism come with a mental health warning?
12 June 2014
by Clare Mann
As a psychologist with over 20 years’ experience, I admit that I have a mental health disorder.
Some professionals might say I have an eating disorder because I am vegan. Others would show concern that I regularly feel anxious, depressed, experience panic attacks and even post-traumatic stress symptoms at what I have and continue to see in society’s abuse of animals.
I say this because, in the past year I have seen an increase in GPs referring people they believe are suffering from mental illness, particularly eating disorders. However, upon meeting them, I find that these preliminary diagnoses follow these patients explaining that they are vegan.
What if their associated symptoms were not signs of mental illness at all, but instead signs of extreme anguish, grief, betrayal and the madness of speciesism?
So if you are reading this and are actively involved in animal advocacy and consider yourself to be an ethical vegan, then perhaps you should be issued with a health warning?
Not a physical health warning because with the proper nutritional advice, your health will positively improve by adopting a plant based diet, but with a mental health warning.
Once you lift the veil on what is going on behind our speciesism, you will most likely reach the same conclusion – that it is a form of madness but not your madness. The madness of how our society thinks speciesism – our unspoken superiority over the animal kingdom and differing treatment of different species – is ok.
More: http://www.thescavenger.net/social-justice-to-all/social-justice-for-animals/943-should-vegans-be-issued-with-a-mental-health-warning.html
the Ocean: “When I die, I’m taking you all with me”
A letter to humanity from the Ocean:
State Turns Down Sanctuary’s Proposal to Save Wolves Facing Extermination
http://www.chronline.com/state-turns-down-sanctuary-s-proposal-to-save-wolves-facing/article_b0a9b220-7700-11e6-af50-37a4b2d1b449.html
Profanity Peak Pack: Official Says California Facility’s Offer Isn’t Feasible
Wolves Killing
Opponents of the state’s decision to eradicate a wolf pack in order to protect cattle protest outside of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016, in Olympia, Wash. So far, six of the 11 members of the Profanity Peak pack have been killed.
Posted: Friday, September 9, 2016 7:45 pm
Washington state officials have rejected a proposal by a wildlife preserve to save the Profanity Peak wolf pack targeted for extermination.
“We received the proposal to relocate the remaining Profanity Peak pack members to California, but that approach just isn’t feasible,” said Eric Gardner, assistant director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, in an emailed statement.
Lorin Lindner and Matthew Simmons, co-founders of the Lockwood Animal Rescue Center, a 4,000-acre preserve near the Los Padres mountains in Ventura County, Calif., offered to use helicopters to find and tranquilize the wolves, then move them to the preserve.
The pack, originally estimated at 11 animals — six adults and five pups — was cut in half in August after six of the wolves were killed. State officials authorized the exterminations following a series of attacks on livestock put out to graze on public land in the Colville National Forest.
Since mid-July, WDFW has confirmed that wolves from the Profanity Peak pack have killed or injured six cattle and possibly five others. The most recent incident occurred on Aug. 31, when a calf was killed, a WDFW spokesman said.
Simmons and Lindner said they began putting out feelers about their proposal after hearing of the state’s decision in August.
Last week, they traveled from California to rural Ferry County to make a pitch directly to state and local officials about providing a nonlethal alternative at no cost the state.
“We knew it was a last-ditch effort,” Simmons said. “Bringing wolves into a sanctuary should be a last option, but we think it’s a viable one if the alternative is killing the animals.”
But according to WDFW officials, Simmons’ proposal is unworkable. “We know from experience that darting and capturing wolves when there’s no snow on the ground to slow them down isn’t practical,” Gardner said.
Reached Thursday, Simmons rejected the state’s assessment of his offer, adding that he would be open to adjusting the means of removing the wolves.
“People in your state seem to be determined to kill these animals even when there’s an offer to remove them that won’t cost the state a dime,” he said.
The fate of the remaining members of the wolf pack remains in limbo. The department is open to new strategies, but will continue to re-evaluate the situation at the end of each week to determine whether efforts to exterminate the pack should continue, said WDFW spokesman Craig Bartlett. What, if any, nonlethal strategies are being considered was not immediately made clear.
State policy authorizes “lethal removal” after confirming that wolves have preyed on livestock at least four times in one calendar year, or six times in two consecutive years. Livestock must have been confirmed to have been killed by wolves in at least one of the events.
The state’s Wolf Advisory Group is scheduled to hold meetings on wolf management policy in North Bend on Wednesday and Thursday.
Coming Big Arctic Ocean Warm-Up May Extend Sea Ice Melt Season
It’s September in the Arctic, a time of year when temperatures should be cooling off. But with sea ice at second-lowest levels on record in most monitors and the globe experiencing an unprecedented hot year, it appears that the next week may see the Arctic Ocean reverse its typical seasonal cooling trend and significantly warm up over the coming five to six days.
(GFS model runs show a significant warming is in store for the Arctic Ocean over the coming week — and that’s bad news for sea ice running at second-lowest levels on record in the current daily measures and lowest levels on record for the first eight months of the year so far. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer.)
GFS model runs show a strong pulse of warm air will rise up over the Atlantic Ocean and Barents Sea in the next 72 hours. This warm air then will ride in over the…
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Exposing the Big Game 