Nearly a century later, at age 101, she’s still doing it. The oldest lobster fisher in the state and possibly the oldest one in the world, Oliver still faithfully tends to her traps off Rockland, Maine, with her 78-year-old son Max.
Oliver started trapping lobsters at age 8, and these days she catches them using a boat that once belonged to her late husband and bears her own name, the “Virginia.” She said she has no intention to stop, but she is concerned about the health of Maine’s lobster population, which she said is subject to heavy fishing pressure…
V. Paul Reynolds writes that it’s tough to say how much honesty should be incentivized, but he wonders if Maine’s fish and wildlife commissioners have too much power to render judgments.BY V. PAUL REYNOLDSOUTDOORS COLUMNIST
In Michigan last fall, a guided elk hunter holding a cow tag accidentally shot a bull elk. Upon discovering the mistake, the hunter and his guide immediately notified a state conservation officer.
After a thorough investigation, it was concluded that, indeed, it was an “honest mistake.” The hunter did not have his rifle confiscated or go to jail, but he ultimately paid a $1,000 fine and had his hunting license revoked.
V. Paul Reynolds, Outdoors Columnist
The bull elk was confiscated by the state and the meat was donated to a worthy charity.
This incident begs the question: Did the punishment fit the…
‘In creating fields of identical wheat, we abandoned thousands of highly adapted and resilient varieties.’Photograph: uchar/Getty Images
It’s not just animals that are at risk of dying out, the world’s crops are in rapid decline. Here’s why it matters what is on your plateDanSaladinoFri 17 Sep 2021 07.00 EDT
In eastern Turkey, in a golden field overshadowed by grey mountains, I reached out and touched an endangered species. Its ancestors had evolved over millions of years and migrated here long ago. It had been indispensable to life in the villages across this plateau, but its time was running out. “Just a few fields left,” the farmer said. “Extinction will come easily.” This endangered species wasn’t a rare bird or an elusive wild animal, it was food, a type of wheat: a less familiar character in the extinction story now playing out around the world, but one we all need…
Meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement will require completely eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants like this one in Adamsville, AlabamaANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
The United Nations is warning that most countries have failed to uphold promises to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas pollution, in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate, countries are required to submit details oftheir plansto cut greenhouse emissions, called “Nationally Determined Contributions,” or NDCs, to the UN, which then calculates their total impact. The goal is to keep average global temperatures from rising beyond 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), and ideally, no more than 2.7 degrees, compared to pre-industrial levels.
“We need about a 45 to 50 percent decrease by 2030 to stay…
Crews continue to battleCaliforniawildfires that have burned into some groves of ancient giant sequoias, the world’s largest tree.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a weather watch for critical fire conditions in the Sequoia national park in the Sierra Nevada, where the Colony fire was burning about a mile from Giant Forest, a grove of 2,000 sequoias.
Firefighterswrapped the base of the General Sherman Treein fire-resistant aluminum of the type used in wildland firefighter emergency shelters and to protect historic wooden buildings, fire spokeswoman Rebecca Paterson said.
Firefighters pose next to the General Sherman Tree after wrapping it in fire-resistant blanket on 17 September.Photograph: National Park Service/EPA
The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world…
Court papers have revealed that Talley’s deepwater fishing division, Amaltal, has shifted the blame for illegally bottom trawling in the Hikurangi Marine Reserve off Kaikōura, a year after the company was found guilty of the breach.
But despite both the skipper and Talley’s subsidiary being initially found guilty of the illegal trawls, the conviction of the fishing company was set aside by the High Court.
Greenpeace says this ruling shows loopholes that must be closed, to ensure commercial fishing companies don’t get away with trashing protected areas of the ocean.
“What we have seen with Talley’s historically is a pattern of bad behaviour: repeated charges of their vessels illegally trawling in protected areas, followed by attempts to evade responsibility by blaming the skippers or observers,” says Greenpeace’s Ellie Hooper.
“Talley’s has washed their hands of it and taken no responsibiltiy.”
In January 2021, a further illegal trawl incident by a New Zealand vessel was highlighted at the meeting of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), but officials have not released further details.
What information has been shared, suggests a vessel trawling on a seamount likely destroyed a vulnerable marine ecosystem, which may have been the only one of its kind in the area.
Greenpeace says there is a clear pattern of illegality in the bottom trawling industry, with every company given high seas permits this year having been recently convicted of offences.
“The softly-softly approach from the government obviously hasn’t worked,” says Hooper.
“Talley’s and other commercial fishing companies are doing damage to vulnerable parts of the ocean, but are still being issued permits to continue trawling.
“Marine Reserves should protect the most precious and biologically diverse parts of the ocean – like Hikurangi – but this case shows that companies can too easily dodge their responsibilities.”
Greenpeace and the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) are calling for better protection of seamounts from bottom trawl fishing. They demand that:
– Bottom trawling is banned on seamounts and similar features to protect these hotspots for vulnerable marine life.
– The Marine Reserves Act is strengthened to ensure that commercial fishing companies are held accountable for illegal fishing.
– The current Parliamentary inquiry into illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing brings our laws up to standard to tackle this threat to the ocean.
– Fisheries New Zealand stops issuing high seas permits to companies that have recently been convicted of illegal fishing.
The animal rights group Sea Shepherd says it hopes that pressure will build from within the Faeroe Islands to end its traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubberBy APWednesday, Sep 15, 2021 10:10
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – The international animal rights group Sea Shepherd said Wednesday it hopes that pressure will build from within the Faeroe Islands to end its traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water, where they are slaughtered for their meat and blubber.
A local activist published gruesome video footage of Sunday’s slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins on the central Faeroese island of Eysturoy in the North Atlantic archipelago. The number of dolphins was so large – much higher than in previous years – that it appears participants may not have been able to follow regulations to minimize the suffering of the mammals.
“It was a complete disaster, completely unprecedented in fact, it could even be the largest single hunt of cetaceans in documented history anywhere in the world,” said Robert Read, campaign director for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Environmental activists have long claimed the practice is cruel. But this year even people on the Faeroes who defend the four-century-old practice have spoken out amid fears that this year’s slaughter will draw unwanted attention.
“We must admit that things did not go as we would like to,” said Hans Jacob Hermansen, the former chairman of the Faeroese association behind the drives. “We are going to evaluate if anything went wrong, what went wrong and why, and what can we do to avoid that in the future.”
Sea Shepherd says it is hoping for “much tighter restrictions” around such hunts and, if not, “at least a ban on the killing of the Atlantic white-sided dolphins.”
Faeroese hunters are used to criticism from animal rights groups and push back at what they see as an interference in a cultural practice.
Each year, islanders drive herds of the mammals – chiefly pilot whales – into shallow waters, where they are stabbed to death. A blow-hole hook is used to secure the beached whales and their spine and main artery leading to the brain are severed with knives, turning water in the bay red with blood. The drives are regulated by law and the meat and blubber are shared on a community basis.
“The killing of pilot whales is not very much different from killing cattle or anything else. It’s just that we have an open abattoir,” Hermansen told The Associated Press. “Everyone can see it but if a cow also doesn’t die immediately, you don’t stop killing cattle.”
The white-side dolphins and pilot whales are not endangered species.
But Read said Sunday’s slaughter was “completely indiscriminate. The entire pod is killed and pregnant mothers, calves, everything.” He added that residents used “power boats and jet skis to chase dolphins and pilot whales for hours on end, they really have no chance of escape.”
Fisheries Minister Jacob Vestergaard said everything this year was done by the book in the dolphin hunt. The Faeroes – 18 rocky islands located halfway between Scotland and Iceland – are semi-independent and part of the Danish realm.
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David Keyton in Stockholm contributed to this report.
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not commercial and is authorized, but environmental activists claim it is cruel. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not commercial and is authorized, but environmental activists claim it is cruel. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not commercial and is authorized, but environmental activists claim it is cruel. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not commercial and is authorized, but environmental activists claim it is cruel. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not commercial and is authorized, but environmental activists claim it is cruel. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
In this image released by Sea Shepherd Conservation Society the carcasses of dead white-sided dolphins lay on a beach after being pulled from the blood-stained water on the island of Eysturoy which is part of the Faeroe Islands Sunday Sept. 12, 2021. The dolphins were part of a slaughter of 1,428 white-sided dolphins that is part of a four-century-old traditional drive of sea mammals into shallow water where they are killed for their meat and blubber. The hunt in the North Atlantic islands is not commercial and is authorized, but environmental activists claim it is cruel. (Sea Shepherd via AP)
FROM THE WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is reminding waterfowl hunters to follow best safety practices as they hit the water this upcoming season.
It’s important for hunters to follow these safety tips to prevent boating accidents and deaths:
Be aware that water temperatures are rapidly cooling at this time of year. A fall overboard can turn dangerous quickly as hypothermia sets in. Wearing a life jacket can keep individuals on the surface and allow energy to be used to keep warm rather than to stay above the water.
Remember to protect canine companions on the water – they need life jackets, too.
Never overload the boat. If hunting on a large river or lake, use a boat that is big enough to handle rough water.
Balance the boat evenly and keep weight low for stability.
Be on the lookout for elements outside of your control, such as changing weather, or a slightly submerged stump, rock, sandbar or floating debris.
If in a boat or canoe with a hunting partner, establish and communicate a safe fire zone; do not stand to shoot if a partner is shooting from a seated position.
Always carry a cellphone so communication can happen in case of an emergency.
“Waterfowl hunters should keep in mind that hunting dogs can get excited and start jumping all over the boat, increasing the risk for capsizing. Hunting boats also tend to be smaller and less stable than average boats,” said Lt. Darren Kuhn, DNR Boating Safety Administrator. “This can be a recipe for trouble, so waterfowl hunters should always wear their life jackets.”
Hunters should also be aware of the danger of waders on the water. If a boat capsizes and the hunter is ejected, the waders would fill with water, creating suction around the hunter’s legs and feet making it difficult to remove the waders. This added water weight greatly increases the risk of drowning and wearing a life jacket can help keep hunters afloat.
One wearable life jacket is required for each person on board a boat and must fit properly. In addition to the wearable life jackets, a throwable personal flotation device, such as a ring buoy or standard seat cushion, is required for every boat longer than 16 feet.
Exposing the Big Game 