Unfortunately, it’s just a U-tube; I’d like to see a transcriptpt…
Sir David Attenborough on Overpopulation
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Monthly Archives: April 2017
Gators beware, SC hunters are coming for you this fall
Gators beware, SC hunters are coming for you this fall. Here’s how you can hunt.
COLUMBIA, SC
You can apply for a permit to hunt alligators in South Carolina this fall starting Monday.
The S.C. Department of Natural Resources will accept gator hunting permit applications online from May 1 through June 15 for the season that runs from Sept. 9 through Oct. 14.
A random computer drawing will award a select number of permits, with notifications being sent out in July. Selected hunters must then go back online to purchase their permit and a tag for $100. Non-SC residents will have to pay an additional $200 fee.
Each selected applicant may harvest only one alligator and may hunt only in the area they are selected for.
Permit applicants must be 16 or older at the time of the hunt, but hunters of any age may participate with the hunter selected for a permit.
Each selected hunter can have as many helpers with them as they like, as long as each person in the boat has a South Carolina hunting license.
If you’re already getting excited about bagging a gator this fall – or want to stay far away but are curious about what it’s like – here are a few technique tips the DNR provides:
▪ Alligators are usually hunted after dark, although some hunters use snatchhooks on animals during day and twilight hours.
▪ Alligators are located at night by their reflective eye shine, which has a characteristic red glow.
▪ Alligators should be approached quietly keeping the beam of the spotlight directly in or just above their eyes.
▪ Do not shoot an alligator between the eyes or on the top of the skull. The skull is very thick and a bullet may ricochet off of the skull. To humanely kill an alligator, a shot must be directed to the portion of the neck/head juncture where the neck meets the top of the skull plate and angled slightly toward the skull.
▪ Never assume any alligator is dead.
For more information about alligator hunting in SC and applying for permits, visit www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/alligator.
Grizzly bear trophy hunting will continue under all the political “bans.”
Animal Alliance of Canada
BC Animal Advocates – Please share widely!
– The Liberals, NDP and Greens all plan to allow trophy hunting of Grizzlies to continue! The Greens and NDP are just giving sport/trophy hunters loopholes.
~ If we want to save the lives of Grizzlies and all wild animals, now, during election time, we must get our message through to every candidate!
The Greens and the NDP are playing coy with the issue by allowing Grizzlies to be hunted as long as the entire body is packed out, or the body is supposedly used for meat; green-washing the Grizzly hunt by making sport and trophy hunting look like subsistence hunting.
This is simply a loop-hole that will allow any trophy hunter to use a guiding service who will take care of the bear’s body for them, leaving them to thrill-kill Grizzlies and keep the heads and hides as…
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Ted Nugent Murdered Or Killed In A Montana Hunting Accident…
… Is A Celebrity Death Hoax
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/entertainment/ted-nugent-murdered-killed-montana-hunting-accident-celebrity-death-hoax-01833295#CLffGmQbC1S84Eji.99
Shawn Rice — April 28, 2017
Ted Nugent killed or murdered in a Montana hunting accident is just another celebrity death hoax. Despite rumors that the rocker was killed in a hunting accident in Montana, he remains alive and well. Nugent is an American musician and political activist. Nugent initially gained fame as the lead guitarist of the Amboy Dukes, a band formed in 1963 that played psychedelic rock and hard rock. Where did this false rumor originate?
On April 28, 2017, a number of unreliable web sites began publishing stories reporting that the rock musician and conservative icon had been killed in a hunting accident in Montana. You can read text from that fake story below.
“Ted Nugent, 70’s rocker turned hunting guide and conservative icon, was shot and killed early this morning in a tragic hunting accident. While setting up his tree stand just outside a wildlife reserve in Montana, Nugent was fired on and hit in the chest by a hunter with a scope nearly a quarter of a mile away who believed he was a brown bear.”
However, there are no legitimate news reports of Nugent’s death. Just recently, Nugent made a Facebook Live video with his wife Shermane on the same afternoon the death hoax starting circulating social media. They confirmed he is indeed alive and well. You can see that video below.
If that were not enough, Shermane posted another live video a few minutes later in which her husband’s voice could be heard while she played with the couple’s dogs. You can check out that video below as well.
Nugent’s spokeswoman Linda Peterson confirmed to Snopes that reports of Nugent’s untimely death were nothing more than “fake news.” Here are some examples of people discussing Nugent’s alleged death on social media.
Nugent is famous for his rock career, but has also become an outspoken supporter of conservative political figures, such as former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and President Donald Trump. Nugent recently made news when he was pictured alongside Palin and fellow rock singer Kid Rock at the White House, where they all dined with Trump. The trio also were pictured in front of a painting of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mocking her.
Nugent is also a divisive figure due to comments he has made about former President Barack Obama and Clinton that have been characterized as racist, sexist and potentially inciting violence. Nugent hunts and is an ardent Second Amendment advocate who sits on the board of the National Rifle Association..
What did you think of the fake news about Nugent’s alleged death? Did you see people sharing it falsely on social media? Have you seen any other celebrity hoaxes recently? Let us know in the comments section.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/entertainment/ted-nugent-murdered-killed-montana-hunting-accident-celebrity-death-hoax-01833295#CLffGmQbC1S84Eji.99
You Can’t Catch, Sell, or EAt an Extinct Bluefin Tuna
<http://www.bornfreeusa.org/weblog_canada.php>
Born Free USA Canadian Blog
by Barry Kent MacKay
28 Apr 2017
How bad does it have to get before sanity dictates action? For every 100 Pacific Bluefin tuna who were in the ocean at one time, there are only about two-and-a-half left! Certain ideologues continue to claim that the value of living resources, such as ivory, big game species, timber, or Bluefin tuna, guarantee their protection. But, the situation with species of wild fauna and flora with high commercial value too often illustrates the reverse… and none more so than the Pacific Bluefin tuna.
Members of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, including Japan, agreed to significantly reduce their catch of young Bluefins weighing under 30 kg (66 pounds), giving them a chance to breed and to thus contribute to restoration of the severely depleted population. However, The Guardian reported that Japan will reach its quota…
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Seals and Their Race against Climate Change
http://climate.org/archive/topics/ecosystems/seals-battle-climatechange.html
With the rapid ice loss in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, many subspecies of seals are currently racing against the ticking clock of climate change. The worldwide status of seal population is alarming. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “almost no seal pups, dependent on sea ice, survived in Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence during the ice-free years of 1967, 1981, 2000, 2001, and 2002.” The southern hemisphere seal population has been likewise affected by ice loss. Environmental scientists, Dr. Clive McMahon and Dr. Harry Burton of the Australian Antarctic Division, have concluded that warming climate is changing the ocean’s ecology to such a degree that the survival of seals and their young has increasingly become a concern for marine biologists.
Scientists have continued to monitor the decline in seal numbers considering also what is known about climate in the Southern Ocean and conclude that the…
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From Gandhi to guns: An Indian woman explores the NRA convention
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/28/world/indian-immigrant-nra-convention/
The author, an Indian-American, visiting her first NRA convention on Friday.
Atlanta (CNN)Guns are not a part of the culture of my homeland, except perhaps for the occasional Bollywood movie in which the bad guy meets his demise staring down the wrong end of a barrel.
My childhood in India was steeped in ahimsa, the tenet of nonviolence toward all living things.
The Indians may have succeeded in ousting the British, but we won with Gandhian-style civil disobedience, not a revolutionary war.
Trump: Eight-year assault has come to end 01:07
I grew up not knowing a single gun owner, and even today India has one of the strictest gun laws on the planet. Few Indians buy and keep firearms at home, and gun violence is nowhere near the problem it is in the United States. An American is 12 times more likely than an Indian to be killed by a firearm, according to a recent study.
It’s no wonder then that every time I visit India, my friends and family want to know more about America’s “love affair” with guns.
I get the same questions when I visit my brother in Canada or on my business travels to other countries, where many people remain perplexed, maybe even downright mystified, by Americans’ defense of gun rights.
I admit I do not fully understand it myself, despite having become an American citizen nearly a decade ago. So when I learn the National Rifle Association is holding its annual convention here in Atlanta, right next to the CNN Center, I decide to go and find out more.
My eyes open wide inside the vast and cavernous Georgia World Congress Center. I take in countless exhibits by the firearms industry and even check out a few guns. Among them are the Mossberg Blaze .22 semiautomatic Rimfire Rifle and an FN 509 semi-automatic 9mm pistol.
I’ve never had the desire to own a gun. I try hard to experience the excitement of others who are admiring these products.
Around me are 80,000 of America’s fiercest patriots and defenders of guns. Many are wearing American flag attire and T-shirts with slogans like: “Veterans before refugees” and “God loves guns.”
Few people here look like me. Most appear to be white and male. Many view the media, including my employer, with disdain — and they do not hesitate to let me know.
I walk around with some trepidation, but I’m determined to strike up conversations. I begin with this question: “Why do you want to own an object that can kill another human being?”
The answers are varied, but they center on three main themes: freedom, self-defense and sport. The first type of response is rooted in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which allows for the ownership of more than 300 million guns in America. How many other countries have the right to bear arms written into their very foundation? It’s unique and because of that, foreigners often have trouble grasping it.
I meet Chris Styskal at a booth set up by the NRA Wine Club. Yes, a wine club for the almost 5 million members of the organization.
“Eat, sleep, go fishing. Drink, sleep, go shooting. In that order,” Styskal jokes.
But then we get into serious talk. Gun ownership, he tells me, has its roots in the birth of this country.
“George Washington’s army fought off the British with rifles,” he says. “They overthrew an oppressive government.”
His statement gives me pause. The gun laws in India stem from colonial rule, when the British aimed to quell their subjects by disarming them. Perhaps my Indian compatriots should consider the right to own guns from this perspective.
Styskal, 41, earned a degree in psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and tells me the prevailing belief that gun owners are not educated is simply wrong. He owns a collection of rifles and pistols at his home in Port Carbon, Pennsylvania, and last year he fired 100 rounds every week at a shooting range.
He says the Second Amendment is about much more than the right to bear arms. It’s about freedom.
“We don’t want any government telling us what we can and cannot do.”
It’s a thought echoed by Brickell “Brooke” Clark, otherwise known as the American Gun Chic. She has a website by that name and also a YouTube channel. Both are bathed in hues of pink and dedicated to her recently formed passion for guns.
I introduce myself to Clark as we await President Donald Trump’s arrival at the convention. The darkened room is booming with NRA clips bashing everyone from Hillary Clinton to George Clooney.
“What would you tell my friends in India who say Americans are infatuated with guns?”
“I wouldn’t say Americans have an obsession with guns,” Clark says. “We have an obsession with being free.”
I ask what the Second Amendment means to her.
“It means I can live my life without anyone overpowering me,” she says. “It makes me equal with everyone else.”
The great equalizer. I never thought of the Second Amendment in that way.
Self-protection, I discover, is a huge reason many Americans own firearms.
Take Chloe Morris. She was born in Atlanta to Filipino parents; on this day, she’s brought her mother along to hear Trump, the first sitting President to speak at an NRA convention since Ronald Reagan.
Morris is 35, petite and soft-spoken, but she’s fierce about her opinions on guns.
“I’m 5 feet tall and 100 pounds,” she tells me. “I cannot wait for a cop to come save me when I am threatened with rape or death.”
Morris was once opposed to guns. “Extremely opposed,” she says.
She earned a master’s degree in criminal justice from Georgia State University. “I know the law,” she says. “For me guns were not the answer.”
But a few years ago, a dear friend was assaulted in her own home in an upscale Atlanta subdivision. The incident struck fear in Morris. She would never let herself become a victim.
She took shooting classes and became a Glock instructor. “I teach for free. I want women to be safe.
“I own 10 guns. I have a 14-year-old son. I started teaching him to shoot when he was 5. I’m a lifetime member of the NRA.”
She pauses, and her next sentence surprises me.
“I don’t think I can even kill another person — except when my life is in danger.”
In a way, I understand her position. My first real exposure to guns came after I embedded with the US Army and Marines to report the Iraq War. As a journalist I never carried a weapon, though soldiers coaxed me to learn how to shoot an M16. My conversation with Morris reminded me of a night when we came under threat, and the platoon sergeant placed a 9mm pistol on my Humvee seat. I refused to take it but knew instantly what he was trying to tell me. What if I were the last one alive? How would I save myself?
Luckily, we were safe that night. But I’ve always wondered how I might have acted under a dreadful scenario.
Other NRA members I speak with also tell me they don’t trust the police to arrive in time when they are in danger. Scott Long, 55, lives out in the country in Piketon, Ohio — 25 miles away from the county sheriff.
“The police can’t be there all the time,” he says, looking at his wife, DeeDee, and their three young children, whom he’s brought along to the convention for a mini family vacation. Their son Brody, 9, has been shooting at the pellet range and is excited about his first 20-gauge shotgun.
“Where we live, we can shoot in our backyard,” says Long, who owns 25 guns and is enjoying checking out all the shiny new weapons exhibited here.
Such remoteness, too, is alien to me. I grew up in a city that now brims with some 16 million people on a working day. Firing guns in my grandfather’s garden would not have been a good thing. I think about all the space we have in America. So many of us live far from other human beings. Like the Long family. Perhaps isolation adds to the need to own guns.
I move forward in my quest to know more.
I hear gun proponents express a dislike for big government. They stress individual liberties over the collective. For people who live in more socialist countries, it’s another obstacle to understanding American gun culture.
Near a stairway emblazoned with a giant Beretta, I speak with Derrick Adams. He’s a 32-year-old electric lineman from Nottingham, Pennsylvania. He describes himself as part black, part Puerto Rican and part Caucasian.
“How many guns do you own?” I ask.
“Not enough,” he replies.
He picked up his first Glock when he was 22, and his first shot shattered a whole bunch of stereotypes.
“People look at guns as this evil tool whose job it is to kill,” he says. “They’re not at all that. They are about protection.”
Adams believes that if all law-abiding citizens were armed, crime would drastically go down. He tells me that Chicago would not have such a high gun homicide rate if good folks in the inner cities were armed to fight “thugs and gangs.”
“Stop looking to government to help us. They are not our parents,” Adams says.
Liberals in America who want more gun control, says Adams, want to keep minorities and poor people dependent on government. Gun control started after slavery ended and was a way to keep black people disarmed, he says.
“You idiots,” Adams says, referring to all people of color. “It was invented to suppress you.”
He looks at me as though to say: You should know better.
Again, I think of colonialism in my homeland and how the British passed strict gun control to keep Indians from rising up.
Fighting tyranny and oppression is something Jaasiel Rubeck considers, too. The 29-year-old wife and mother from Columbus, Ohio, immigrated to this country from her native Venezuela when she was 6. People who live under authoritarian regimes should all understand the need to own a gun, she tells me.
Rubeck’s words remind me of a friend from Iraq who wished she could own a gun during Saddam Hussein’s rule. After he was overthrown, she slept with an AK-47 under her pillow at the height of the insurgency. She has always spoken of her love-hate relationship with guns. She wants to protect her family, but she is tired of the eternal violence plaguing her land. She wishes now that every gun would disappear from Iraq.
What I hear from speakers at the NRA convention, though, is that a peaceful world is a utopian fantasy — and that the need for guns will always exist.
“The NRA saved the soul of America,” says Chris Cox, the executive director of the organization.
I leave the convention trying to reconcile what I’ve gathered on this day with the philosophy of nonviolence with which I was raised. I am not certain that vast cultural differences can be bridged in a few hours, but I am glad I got a glimpse into the world of guns. I have much to consider.
No Apologies. Not Now. Not Ever
.From Captain Paul Watson’s FB Page:
My post from a couple of days ago on this page deploring the killing of a 200 year old Bowhead whale by some 16 year old who was joyfully boasting of his snuffing the life from such a majestic creature seems to have ruffled some feathers.
Some are calling me racist. Others are demanding an apology.
There will be no apology. Not now, not ever.
And there is nothing racist about it. I condemn all whaling by anyone, anywhere for any reason. I don’t care for nor accept any justifications of any kind.
It’s our culture! It’s a tradition! Bullshit. In my eyes it is murder and I make no exceptions.
Whales are self aware, socially complex, highly intelligent, sentient beings and they are my clients. They come first in my eyes. I have no sympathy for their killers nor would I ever apologize…
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My Trip to the Ice: Visiting Baby Harp Seals with Sea Shepherd
My Trip to the Ice: Visiting Baby Harp Seals with Sea Shepherd
By Camille Labchuk, Executive Director
The commercial seal slaughter has long been a bloody stain on Canada’s reputation. Every spring, the Canadian government lets sealers club, shoot, and skin baby seals in Atlantic Canada—most of them only a few weeks or months old—simply so their fur can be turned into luxury products for foreign markets.
I was pleased to team up this year with our friends at the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as a crew member for Operation Ice Watch 2017. Sea Shepherd and its founder Paul Watson have been fighting to save seals for over 40 years. On this trip our mission was to visit seals on the ice with Hollywood actress Michelle Rodriguez, and remind the world to keep pressuring Canada to end the bloody slaughter of baby seals.
The seal slaughter has always been devastating to me. I grew up in Prince Edward Island—not far from where the killing takes place—and I can still remember the shock and sadness I felt as a child when I first saw footage of gentle baby seals seals being chased and clubbed by sealers.
Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to meet harp seals in their icy nursery. Spending time with these creatures is an incredible experience, but meeting them makes it even more heartbreaking to return to the ice a few short weeks later when sealing season opened. Working with Humane Society International/Canada, I’ve helped document the slaughter, expose its cruelty to people around the world, and push other countries to ban seal product imports. Fighting to save seals helped inspire me to become a lawyer and use the law as tool to protect animals.
© Bernard Sidler
Ten years after my first visit to the ice, I returned. On our first day the Sea Shepherd team took off from the Charlottetown airport and flew out to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, hoping to find the seal nursery. Searching for seals is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. The Gulf is around 155,000 square kilometres, and spotting a patch of seals that may be only a few kilometres wide can sometimes feel impossible.
But as I looked down from the helicopter, not only did I not see seals, I didn’t even see any ice. I saw large expanses of dark, open water instead of the solid, packed sea ice that should be there at that time of year. Harp seals are an ice-dependent species; they need thick sea ice to give birth to their babies on, nurse them, and let them learn to swim and fish on their own. If mother seals can’t find enough ice to give birth on, or if it melts from underneath them, seal pups will drown.
Camille Labchuk, Yana Watson, Brigitte Breau, Clementine Palanca. © Bernard Sidler
After hours of flying, we finally found a small patch of packed ice and a harp seal nursery with only a few thousand seals—a far cry from the tens of thousands we expected. We landed on the ice and stepped out into the icy wonderland in the midst of hundreds of baby whitecoat seals—newborn animals who were still nursing their mothers.
Whitecoat harp seal. © Camille Labchuk
No matter how many times I visit seals, it always feels magical. Baby seals are incredibly trusting; they have never seen humans before and don’t fear us. They look up with black, liquid eyes, make soft noises, and if you lay still on the ice they may even come up to have a closer look. It’s especially incredible to watch them doze in the sun, warm in their thick fur.
Beater seal. © Camille Labchuk
We also saw a few “beater” seals—still babies, but slightly older as they have shed their white fur in favour of a silvery, spotted coat. (They’re called beaters because they beat their flippers in the water while learning to swim.) Whitecoats are protected from being killed, but once they begin to moult at only a few weeks of age and become beaters, they will be clubbed and shot. Their silver, spotted fur is what sealers are after.
On our second day, we returned to the area where the nursery had been only to find the solid ice was broken up by warmer weather and strong storm winds. After hours of zigzagging back and forth in search of the nursery, we feared the worst—that the babies drowned when the ice smashed and melted beneath them.
On our third and final day, we cheered after finally spotted a small scattering of seals, but the ice was still broken and thin. The helicopters couldn’t land on the precarious ice pans, so they dropped us off and hovered nearby. Our worst fears were confirmed—the larger patch of seals we saw on the first day was still nowhere to be found, suggesting they likely perished in the melting and broken ice.
Sealing, 2009, © Camille Labchuk
Harp seals have endured centuries of being clubbed and shot to death for their fur, but now they’re also facing global warming, which is literally melting their habitat out from underneath them. Sea ice has declined drastically over the past few decades, yet even with so many drowned seal pups, the Canadian government opened the hunt up early. It’s heartbreaking to think of the peace and beauty of the harp seal nursery being shattered by industrial sealing boats, gunfire, and hakapiks, with the baby seals bloodied and dead.
The good news is that dozens of countries around the world, including the entire European Union, have closed their borders to products of the cruel commercial seal slaughter. With markets shrinking, pelt prices are lower and fewer seals are being killed.
The seal hunt is an outdated, dying industry that is being kept on artificial life support by massive cash subsidies from taxpayers—even though most Canadians oppose commercial sealing. Please ask Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end the East Coast seal hunt, buy back sealing licenses, and support humane ecotourism instead of brutal seal killing.
Six women who work to save the world’s most endangered wildlife
ttps://www.theguardian.com/vulcan-partner-zone/2017/mar/14/six-women-who-work-to-save-the-worlds-most-endangered-wildlife?
1 ‘My experiences inspired me to pursue this career’
Elizabeth Whitman is a doctoral candidate in the department of biological science at Florida International University. She has developed a research programme focusing on the factors influencing habitat use of green turtles and the role of this endangered species in marine ecosystems.
Whitman says that her upbringing played a significant part in her decision to pursue a career in conservation. “My mother always encouraged me to explore my surroundings and I was fortunate enough to be able to travel and experience a variety of environments at a young age. These experiences inspired me to pursue a career in science, to assist conservation and management of marine…
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Exposing the Big Game 
