February 7th, 2018 (Joan Stamm). It’s curious that in all the scientific studies conducted on orcas, and all the political actions proposed to protect them, nobody ever states the obvious: human consumption of salmon is the main reason that orcas are endangered.
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http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/feb/10/famous-yellowstone-elk-herd-rebounds-two-decades-a/
Sat., Feb. 10, 2018, 5:17 p.m.
The Northern Yellowstone elk herd, one of the most famous and closely watched in the world, is finally growing at a healthy clip.
An annual winter aerial survey conducted by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Yellowstone National Park biologists counted 7,579 elk over two days in January, up a whopping 42 percent from last winter’s 5,349 elk.
The sizable increase over last year is likely due to the inconsistency in the ability to see animals from the air, said Karen Loveless, an FWP biologist based in Livingston who flies part of the survey area. Studies have shown the accuracy of aerial counts can vary from 65 to 90 percent, depending…
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Film Review and commentary by Jim Robertson
Spoiler Alert:
If you haven’t seen the movie, Life of Pi, and you plan to, don’t read this post yet. In discussing what I feel is the story’s theme I will end up revealing some of its major plot points, and I don’t want to spoil the experience just to make a point about ethical veganism…
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Still here? Ok, assuming you’ve seen the film (or read the book on which it’s based), you’ll recall that there are essentially three parts to the story, ending with what many critics felt was a disappointing and even unnecessary “alternate” account of events to explain how Pi survived such a long ordeal at sea. Personally, I didn’t find the ending a disappointment, perhaps because I may have been one of the few people who got the message the movie was trying to make. After reading dozens of reviews fawning over the special effects (the computer generated middle act was indeed amazing) and decrying the ending, I found only one review that saw it the way I did: the “alternate” story (told by Pi to a pair of Japanese Ministry of Transport officials) was really what happened.
Now, you might be thinking, why does it matter; why ruin a fun thing (especially when it looked so astounding through 3-D glasses, so I hear)? To answer that, I’m going to try to make a long story short and hit its key points (many of which were completely missed by most mainstream film critics, and movie-goers).
The film starts off with an introductory act in which we learn about the early life of the main character, Pi, through a series of flashbacks as told to a visiting writer who wants to write his biography. We are told that Pi spent his childhood trying many of the world’s religions on for size, hoping to get to know God (his atheist father tells him, “You only need to convert to three more religions, Pi, and you’ll spend your life on holiday.”) At one point he jokes that as a Catholic Hindu, “We get to feel guilty before hundreds of gods, instead of just one.”
Of note is the fact that Pi is an ethical vegetarian. He’s also fascinated by a tiger (named Richard Parker, after its captor) stuck in a zoo owned by his father. When Pi is caught trying to befriend the captive tiger, his father decides to teach him a lesson by making him watch Richard Parker kill a goat, thus instilling a morbid fear of tigers in the curious boy.
The movie’s second act begins after it’s revealed that the zoo must close and the father decides to move the animals, and his family, by ocean-going freighter across the Pacific from India to Canada. En-route, the ship is swallowed up in a massive typhoon and Pi—according to the version of the story he is telling the writer, as we witness it—is the only human to make it onto a life raft. Somehow some of the zoo animals must have escaped their pens in the ship’s hold, and he finds himself adrift with only an injured zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and Richard Parker—the 500 pound Bengal tiger—for company.
It’s during this portion of the movie that viewers are drawn in by its startling special effects; and it’s also when the main character learns that sometimes the world is no life of pie (my interpretation of the title, as a play on the expression “easy as Pie”).
Driven by hunger, the hyena soon feeds on the zebra and, as it turns on the orangutan, Richard Parker rushes out from under the lifeboat’s only cover (where he has stayed out of sight until now) and quickly dispatches the hyena. This chain of events is essential to the plot since, skipping ahead to the third act, it mirrors Pi’s “alternate” story: substitute the zebra for a deckhand, the orangutan for his mother, the hyena for the cook and Richard Parker for Pi’s alter-ego.
The symbolism here is that after witnessing the cook kill his mother, Pi summons his tiger-inner-self to kill the cook. And eat him. That’s right, to survive his 227 days at sea, Pi had to turn to cannibalism. Incredibly, though it’s critical to the story’s theme, nearly none of the film reviews I read even mentioned cannibalism, since most critics didn’t realize that the second “alternative” version of Pi’s plight was what must have actually happened. I thought it was pretty obvious when an adult Pi asked the writer, “So which story do you prefer?” to which the writer answered: “The one with the tiger. That’s the better story.”And so it goes with God” was Pi’s reply, meaning that, people believe what they want to believe. In order to cope with the sometimes harsh realities of life and death, in this case, resorting to cannibalism for sustenance—and still retain one’s sanity—people often cling to a fantasy world and make up stories which are easier to stomach.
Life of Pi is more than just a happy little special-effects film about a vegetarian boy and a computer-generated, 3-D tiger surviving on computer-generated, 3-D tuna and flying fish. It’s about the kind of anguish any sane person would go through when forced to eat the flesh of another human being. Perhaps the reason I could more easily relate to the story’s deeper meaning (that so many carnivorous critics failed to see) is because, having eaten only plant-based food for the past decade and a half, I feel that same sick revulsion every time I pass the meat isle in the neighborhood grocery store and imagine people actually consuming the flesh so brazenly displayed there.
http://truro.wickedlocal.com/news/20180209/critics-of-coyote-hunting-contest-plan-protest
Coyotes are back in the news following the promotion of a controversial hunting contest by Powderhorn Outfitters, a gun shop in Hyannis.
Profiled last week in the Cape’s daily newspaper after it caused a stir on social media, the contest offers prizes for the largest coyote killed and for the cumulative weight of each hunter’s harvest through the hunting season, which ends on March 12.
The contest, which is promoted on the store’s Facebook page but not on its website, quickly drew the ire of wildlife advocates such as Eastham’s Louise Kane.
Kane was featured in a report in The Cape Codder last year, when she started a Change.org petition to ban carnivore hunting in the Cape Cod National Seashore; as of this week, it had 6,630 supporters.
On Jan. 28 she posted this comment on Powderhorn’s Facebook page: “Please friends that love animals go to Powderhorn Outfitters facebook page and give them a one star rating and object to the coyote killing contest. Please take a moment for Cape Cod coyotes.”
The same day Dr. Jonathan Way, founder of Eastern Coyote/Coywolf Research, and author of “Suburban Howls: Tracking the Eastern Coyote in Urban Massachusetts,” also had harsh words for the contest, writing in his blog: “Here is the first coyote hunting contest that I am aware of in MA, and here on Cape Cod, MA. This is outrageous. Spread the word about who really gets to ‘manage’ our wildlife. Of course, MA Wildlife and local town laws do nothing to prevent this ‘tragedy of the commons.’” With it came a link to Powderhorn’s facebook page.
Way and Kane are planning an information and protest event this Saturday in Hyannis. (See details below.)
Hunters, or supporters of hunters, had their say on the gun shop’s Facebook page, too. Several decried the “one-star rating” tactic as unfair and some had choice words for “the anti-hunting leftists.”
On the Cape, Way is a leading expert for all things coyote (see easterncoyoteresearch.com). In a local magazine article two years back, he estimated there were between 200 and 250 coyotes – or coywolves, as he identifies them as a species – living on the Cape.
He puts the coywolf DNA profile at roughly 60 percent western coyote, 30 percent wolf and 10 percent dog.
The population, by his account and others, remains mostly stable from year to year, and is found in all areas of the Cape, indeed across the Commonwealth.
Dave Wattles, a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, said the Commonwealth is “pretty well saturated with coyotes.”
“They started to colonize [here] in the 1950s, and we’re now seeing the far end of that colonization. We now have coyotes in every mainland town in the state, and in relatively high densities. All available habitat is occupied by coyotes.”
Contrary to the popular image of the lone coyote howling at the moon on the open range, coyotes live in small family packs and have become established in urban and residential communities where they have access to even a small wooded area.
While coyote attacks on people are rare, they can prey on pet cats and small dogs.
“Coyotes will see small pets as potential prey items,” noted Wattles.
Gerry Tuoti contributed to this report.
Dr. Way’s advice: Ten do’s and don’ts
Regardless of whether you approve of a coyote hunting contest, the animals are widespread across the Cape and are frequently heard and sometimes seen in all of the towns. Here are some guidelines, provided by Dr. Jonathan Way’s web site (easterncoyoteresearch.com), to bear in mind when dealing with the region’s coyotes:
1. Do chase them away and make noise (bang pots and pans) if you don’t want them in your yard. Of course, if you don’t mind them then watch them from a window quietly as to not scare them away.
2. Do make noise when you are outside especially if coyotes are often in your area. They will often change their course of direction when they hear people. Bring a whistle or horn to scare them away from you.
3. Do not feed coyotes or other animals. Even if you are feeding birds or other animals coyotes will be attracted to your yard just like any other animal looking for an easy handout.
4. Do not feed your pets outside for the same reason as above.
5. Absolutely do not let your cat outside if you are truly concerned with its health. Coyotes are just one of many mortality factors for outdoor cats.
6. Do leash your dogs. Although coyotes may follow a leashed dog out of curiosity (to the concern of the person), it is extremely rare for them to actually get within contact of your pet.
7. Do not let dogs (especially small breeds) outdoors loose without constant supervision. Fences should be at least 5 feet tall and there should not be any places where coyotes can crawl underneath. While a fence does not guarantee total protection, it is a good deterrent to coyotes or humans who would snatch or harm pets left outside alone.
8. Do not leave dogs tied outdoors unsupervised in coyote-prevalent areas.
9. Do not leave dogs and cats outside for any period of time unsupervised, especially at night, even in a fenced enclosure.
10. Do enjoy their presence and the fact that having this wily predator adds to the mystique of your neighborhood.
Learn more
What: A talk by Dr. Jonathan Way When: Saturday, Feb. 10, noon to 1:30 p.m. Where: Hyannis Public Library, 401 Main Street Followed by: A protest of the coyote hunting contest by Powderhorn Outfitters (2 to 4 p.m.), at 210 Barnstable Road, Hyannis. RSVP: louise@kaneproductions.net
In Sacramento, a four-month-old puppy was found hanging from a tree after being beaten and shot with a BB gun. Animal Control Officers are calling it the worst case animal abuse they have ever seen. When the dog was found by a local resident, it was clear that the dog had suffered a serious beating before being shot and hanged. He had fractures “from nose to tail,” and when veterinarians checked his body out they said his liver looked like hamburger meat.
(KUTV) – Classic rocker Ted Nugent, in Salt Lake City on Friday, had no shortage of words for hunting, which he cast as an indispensable form of conservation.
“September, October, November, December, January, February are sacred hunting months,” said Nugent in a 2News interview Friday, before his talk at the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo. “Hunting, fishing and trapping is the last perfect activity that benefits the environment.”
Nugent, now 70, had praise for President Trump, condemned “political correctness,” and spoke of the power of a “hunter nation.”
“We never ever should waste our energies defending the political incorrectness of hunting and Second Amendment rights,” he said. “We should always celebrate them and promote them.”
Also at the expo, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed a “secretarial order” that he said would protect big game in “wildlife corridors.”
At least one environmental group, the Center for Western Priorities, derided the move, calling it an attempt by Zinke to “greenwash” an “abysmal record” on conservation.
Outside the Salt Palace, demonstrators protested over the Trump Administration downsizing of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National Monuments.
“I want to hear that he’s renegotiating and re-looking at what they’ve already set,” said Gary Bilger, who used to work in the energy industry, and joined the protesters. “They’re giving special interests a bigger ear, okay, oil, gas, and coal.”
Zinke bristled at the notion.
Zinke also said there’s “no chance” of revisiting the decision to shrink the sizes of the monuments, and claimed in the case of Bears Ears, safeguards are still in place.
“Here’s what you don’t hear, there isn’t one square inch of Bears Ears that was removed from any federal protection,” he said.
Lawsuits against the smaller monuments have been filed, and Terri Martin of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said the case her organization has joined is “pending” in a Washington, DC court.
Not to mention the mental health concerns…
Sara Farr
June 30, 2015
Although the concept of eating dog meat is completely unheard of in the U.S., in other parts of the world, it is regarded just the same as eating chicken or cow. In Vietnam, for example, approximately five million dogs are killed every year for meat, other places dog meat is eaten include Europe, Russia, Africa, Latin America, China, the Philippines, and South Korea.
The Yulin dog meat festival recently garnered international outrage as celebrities and animal activists joined together to raise awareness and call for an end to this faux “tradition.” Photos of dogs stuffed into cages and huddled in absolute fear before slaughter for the festival illustrate the cruelty involved in the dog meat trade. While the suffering of these animals is undeniable, there are also major human health concerns arising from the consumption of dog. The issues highlighted are critical concerns that could…
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