Exposing the Big Game

Forget Hunters' Feeble Rationalizations and Trust Your Gut Feelings: Making Sport of Killing Is Not Healthy Human Behavior

Exposing the Big Game

Monthly Archives: May 2019

Elephant Remembers Old Trainer in Emotional Reunion

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/good-news/elephant-remembers-old-trainer-in-emotional-reunion/ar-AAB5qoG?OCID=ansmsnnews11

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Elephant Reunites With Old Trainer

As the adage goes — an elephant never forgets.After 35 years, Kristy the Asian elephant still has fond memories of her former zookeeper, Peter Adamson. He was Kristy’s trainer in the early ’70s and ’80s, when she lived at a zoo in Scotland that is now closed.

The pair reunited at the Neunkircher Zoo in Germany while Adamson was visiting friends in Germany.

He found out Kristy was still alive at 52 years old and still healthy. The average lifespan for Asian elephants is 48 years.

Adamson contacted the zoo and officials arranged the emotional reunion.

As that reunion unfolded, a pair of baby elephants got a second chance at life.

a close up of a man: Kristy the Asian elephant was reunited with her trainer after more than 30 years.© Provided by CBS Interactive Inc. Kristy the Asian elephant was reunited with her trainer after more than 30 years.The calves somehow slipped into a pit in Sri Lanka, struggling there for three hours before wildlife officials brought in an excavator to dig an escape route.

It took a little upper body strength, some wiggling and a little bit of help before both tots were able to climb out.

Wildlife officials used loud crackers to chase the calves back into the wild, so they could run right back to their mothers — capping an adventure they may never forget, either.

Weeds Help Climate

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Most people see weeds as a problem. But one farmer has found they can help make dry, damaged land lush again – not to mention absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

  • By Georgina Kenyon

10 May 2019

More than 60 years ago, when he was a child, farmer Peter Andrews saw his first dust storm. He still remembers it. “The noise was horrendous,” he says. “We hid in the house waiting for it to pass. The whole sky was dark. And the damage we saw the next day was even more terrible.”

The wind had ripped many of the trees on his family’s property completely bare. Some of their horses and cattle asphyxiated, unable to breath in the dust.

That early experience has led him to a particular calling: trying to regenerate Australia’s land, since dust storms occur in hot, arid regions where there is little vegetation to anchor the…

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Greencastle teen soccer player lost leg in hunting accident, community raises money for recovery efforts

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Exposing the Big Game's avatarCommittee to Abolish Sport Hunting Blog

Jim Hook, Chambersburg Public OpinionPublished 8:12 a.m. ET Dec. 20, 2018 | Updated 9:34 a.m. ET Dec. 24, 2018

Check out the top stories in Franklin County. Chambersburg Public Opinion

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GREENCASTLE —  Kylee Long wants to play soccer again in her senior year.

The 16-year-old defender just needs a leg.

Kylee’s right leg was amputated above her knee after a hunting accident on Nov. 27.

“There’s no pity party when you’re in her room,” said her father, Adam Long. “It’s been pretty incredible. She has a super awesome outlook. I don’t understand it. She’s casual with it, like it’s a splinter.”

Kylee, a straight-A student at James Buchanan High School, is ready to stride on down the road to recovery.

Word is that Kylee can come home Thursday. Adam was eagerly awaiting her official discharge from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

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Kim Jong Un tells N. Korea military to keep “full-combat posture” after second missile launch in week

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kim-jong-north-korea-military-full-combat-posture-second-missile-launch-in-week/

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has told his military to maintain a “full-combat posture” as tensions continue to rise with the U.S. His order follows the firing of three missiles Thursday, the second missile launch in a week.

North Korea says the test was part of its regular military training. South Korea claims they may be part of a new weapons system. As North Korean missile tests go, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer says Thursday’s was less a show of force than an attempt to grab attention.

North Korean state media released pictures Friday morning showing a gleeful Kim apparently watching those missile launches — the second such drill he had observed in five days.

North Korea’s state media avoided specifying what the weapons were, but the U.S. military says they were three short-range ballistic missiles.

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President Trump said it was not enough to ruin his relationship with…

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Climate change: Scientists test radical ways to fix Earth’s climate

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By Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News
  • 10 May 2019
A villager walks on a dried up dam in West Java province, Indonesia. Photo: September 2018Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionJust cutting carbon emissions will not be enough to prevent damaging climate change, scientists warn

Scientists in Cambridge plan to set up a research centre to develop new ways to repair the Earth’s climate.

It will investigate radical approaches such as refreezing the Earth’s poles and removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

The centre is being created because of fears that current approaches will not on their own stop dangerous and irreversible damage to the planet.

The initiative is the first of its kind in the world and could lead to dramatic reductions in carbon emissions.

The initiative is co-ordinated by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir David King.

“What we do…

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Extinct species of bird came back from the dead, scientists find

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By Rob Picheta, CNN

Updated 12:00 PM ET, Fri May 10, 2019

The white-throated rail colonized the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean -- twice.
The white-throated rail colonized the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean — twice.

(CNN)A previously extinct species of bird returned from the dead, reclaiming the island it previously lived on and re-evolving itself back into existence, scientists have said.

The white-throated rail colonized the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean and evolved to become flightless, before being completely wiped out when the island disappeared below the sea around 136,000 years ago.
But researchers found similar fossils from before and after that event, showing that the chicken-sized bird re-appeared when sea levels fell again a few thousand years later, re-colonized the island and again lost the ability to fly.
The flightless rail can be found on Aldabra to this day.
The extremely rare process is known as iterative evolution — the repeated evolution of a…

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Coyote Hunting Contests In Massachusetts Prompt Concern, Conversation

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By ADAM FRENIER • MAY 8, 2019
  • A coyote.
    A coyote.
    GD TABER / CREATIVE COMMONS / FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/SNOWMAIL
Some animal rights activists are calling on Massachusetts wildlife officials to ban coyote hunting contests in the state. 
State officials say they are only aware of three hunting contests for coyotes across the state. And there are no specific regulations governing them besides the normal hunting laws.

Elizabeth Magner is with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which is one group pushing for these events to be outlawed.

“They’re essentially blood sport events that serve no wildlife management purpose at all,” Magner said.

And as to whether these contests help manage the coyote population, Magner said they go against modern wildlife control principles, and have the “potential to damage the reputation of ethical and responsible sportsmen and sportswomen.”

The Fairview Sportsmens Club of Granby…

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Senator tried to ease hunting ban on preserve, years after dad killed a gator there

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https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article230184034.html

BY SAMMY FRETWELL

MAY 08, 2019 06:37 PM, UPDATED MAY 08, 2019 06:38 PM

The Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center near Georgetown, S.C. was left to the state as a sanctuary for birds and other animals in the will of the late Boston Red Sox owner, who died in the mid 1970s. PHOTO BY SAMMY FRETWELL/THE STATE

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State Sen. Stephen L. Goldfinch Jr. says he was looking out for the public when he pushed legislation that would keep wildlife officers from enforcing hunting laws on part of the Yawkey wildlife sanctuary, a 24,000-acre coastal preserve near Georgetown where hunting is illegal.

But Goldfinch, a Murrells Inlet Republican, isn’t saying much about a run-in his father had with state wildlife agents on the Yawkey preserve six years ago.

In 2013, the state Department of Natural Resources fined Stephen L. Goldfinch of Aynor $470 for illegally hunting an alligator at South Island on…

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WA state official supports delisting wolves in all Washington

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  • NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press

Posted: May 09, 2019 12:41 PM PDT

Updated: May 09, 2019 12:41 PM PDT

https://www.yaktrinews.com/news/wa-state-official-supports-delisting-wolves-in-all-washington/1076662650

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – A Washington state official says wolves should be removed from the federal endangered species list in the entirety of the state.

Washington Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind in April wrote a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in support of the proposal to delist wolves in the Lower 48 states.

Susewind calls the proposal “appropriate and timely” as wolves are recovering.

Wolves in the eastern third of Washington are already delisted.

The Center for Biological Diversity criticized the letter, saying the idea of stripping federal protections from wolves is “appalling.”

The environmental group…

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Game and Fish proposes reduced wolf hunt quota

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https://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/news/wyoming/article_1ff5ed2d-cc11-5844-a41a-aedd86998f2d.html

  • By Joy Ufford Sublette Examiner Via Wyoming News Exchange

PINEDALE – One of the anticipated changes to this year’s hunting season regulations will be the trophy-game gray wolf quota set by Wyoming Game and Fish each year.

This year, with most trophy wolf hunt areas opening on Sept. 1, Game and Fish is proposing a lower harvest of 34, compared to the quota of 58 set in 2018. The proposed wolf hunts as well as changes in furbearing, falconry, firearm cartridges, archery and mountain lions regulations will be discussed and are open for comment through June 17.

The proposed 2019 wolf quota appears conservative, with some quotas almost halved from 2018, but large carnivore biologist Ken Mills of Pinedale said the end-of-year objective remains at about 160 wolves. Higher human-caused mortality rates are expected – and much larger litters are expected, he added.

“The main data from which the mortality limits are derived include the number of wolves in the Wolf Trophy Game Management Area and the estimated mortality rate required to move the population toward the end-of-year objective,” he said.

Last year ended with an estimated 152 wolves within the trophy-game management area, eight below the wildlife agency’s objective. Balancing all of the factors includes gaining eight more wolves to be right at 160.

“We had at least 152 wolves in the WTGMA, which is 28 percent less than what we had at the start of 2018,” Mills explained. “However, we estimate a much higher human-caused mortality rate will be required to offset population growth (49.5 percent this year vs. 25.8 percent last year) because the population is lower and should reproduce at a higher rate.”

Mills added, “Note we are proposing the same end-of-year population objective as we did last year, 160 wolves, which means a slight increase in the population (eight wolves) to be sure we continue to remain above minimum recovery criteria, mostly the 10 breeding pairs.”

Mills said Game and Fish will keep the “same approach to depredation response as usual, not more or less aggressive.”

In 2018, predator conflicts declined but about the same number of wolves were removed as in 2017.

“We usually have had around 23-percent human-caused mortality, which includes lethal control in addition to hunting since 2009, so (it is) pretty constant.”