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Wildlife organisation accused of enabling hunting
Trapping, not for faint of heart
By
Megan Barton, publisher, Cody Enterprise, Dec. 4
Trapping season is underway in Wyoming and now is as good of time as any to make sure you know what you’re doing, ethically and legally.
In short, trapping is not for the faint of heart. To manage a successful trapping season you must endure the weather, hike into areas of land that go untouched by human interaction for a good majority of the year and then harvest the trapped animal. However, the end result is not guaranteed and can end up being quite the headache for most.
Legally, you must check your traps regularly. As “quick kill” devices, snare traps must be checked at least once per week, according to Wyoming Game and Fish, to ensure the probability of the animal’s suffering or having to endure the cold temperature is slim. However, ethically and morally, most trappers check these types of traps every 24-48 hours. The most commonly used traps are foothold or “restraining traps” which require a 72 hour check.
Each trap must be labeled. Your information, name, address, phone number, must be present and/or your trapper identification number on each individual trap. This is required should Game and Fish have to contact the trapper.
Additionally, you must obtain a Wyoming furbearing trapper’s license and educate yourself on the areas in which trapping is allowed.
On the other side of this sport, it is illegal to tamper with traps of any sort and could result in a fine.
Trapping does uphold a good bargain. For your time and effort, which are required, you could walk away with a decent paycheck. Again, not guaranteed. On top of that, wildlife conservation comes into play. Trapping plays a part in predator control and helps maintain the balance of the system throughout the year.
Though trapping is not respected by many, it is a way of life for a number of people in our community.
As we all live in an area that is heavily trapped, we should take the time to educate ourselves on the dos and don’ts of trapping, the impact it has on our wildlife and why it’s needed in our community.
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Bird Flu Poised To Spark The Next Global
A Single Mutation Could Send a Catastrophic Contagion From Birds to Humans
What could happen if avian flu crosses the species barrier?By Tim NewcombPublished: Dec 09, 2024 3:33 PM EST
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- A new study by biologists from the Scripps Research Institute shows that a bird flu virus is just a single mutation away from having human-ready receptors.
- If the H5N1 virus does make the switch, it could lead to widespread infection rates in humans.
- Thus far, the virus has been limited in humans.
According to a new study published in the journal Science by Scripps Research Institute biologists, the avian H5N1 virus has the potential to quickly shift from a bird flu to a human flu. The authors wrote that the pathogen, which first popped up in North America in 2021, is just a “single mutation” away from being able to infect humans with the same efficacy it can currently infect other animals.
“In nature, the occurrence of this single mutation could be an indicator of human pandemic risk,” according to an editorial note attached to the paper. The study showed that just one mutation—the amino acid glutamine transforming into leucine, specifically at “residue 226 of the virus hemagglutinin”—was enough to make the switch from avian to human.
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According to the Los Angeles Times, study coauthor James Paulson said that the discovery “really surprised us.” And Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenzas in Animals and Birds, who was not involved in the study, said that this news “will likely cause a stir. I think most of us thought it would probably need more than one change.”
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Each virus has a certain kind of cell that it is best at infecting. In order to latch onto a host, that host has to have the proper receptors for the virus to attach to. Birds and humans have different receptors on their cells, which means that a virus requires just the right match to pick the lock of the cell, so to speak, to be easily transferrable.
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Since its discovery in 2021, the H5N1 virus has been able to bond with receptors in avian species, marine mammals, and even (occasionally) humans. By 2024, that virus was spreading widely in the country’s dairy cattle population, causing mild cases in over 50 people.
Those human infections raised concerns about the capability for bovine-to-human (or even human-to-human) transmission, despite the fact that the virus was still best suited to avian receptors. The concern, understandably, is the potential for a pandemic if the disease becomes broadly and easily transmissible to and between humans.
“For a new pandemic H5N1 virus, we know that it has to switch receptor specificity from avian-type to human-type,” the study authors wrote. “So, what will it take?” Apparently, just one mutation.
“The initial infection is what we’re concerned about to initiate a pandemic,” Paulson said, according to Scientific American, “and we believe that the weak binding that we see with this single mutation is at least equivalent to a known human pandemic virus.”
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The Paulson-led research team synthesized the genetic sequence for the strain of bird flu found in a Texas dairy worker—the first human known infected with the H5N1 virus—and then examined proteins on the outer surface of the virus, where it links to the cell membrane of its host. To find the right docking equipment, so to speak, the team researched past examples of the avian flu jumping to humans, and found that a change from glutamine to leucine in position 226 would switch the virus into a mode compatible with easily infecting human biology.
Many of the human cases of the virus came from dairy workers repeatedly exposed to the virus, which likely overpowered the cells by entering through the eyes and nose in great numbers. For a quick and easy spread, the virus must transmit via infected droplets traveling in the air from a sneeze or cough. “In this context, the virus needs to be able to recognize human-type receptors to bind to cells in the human airway in amounts sufficient to cause infection,” Paulson said.
While this hasn’t yet happened in the H5N1, it has occurred in the past. And if the change does occur now, it could spark a quick-moving avian flu virus ready-made for humans to pass along to one another.
Plenty of variables remain—including whether this mutation will ever even occur—and predicting the severeness or concern over the H5N1 is only speculative. But it’s good to know what we’re up against, should that one little switch occur.
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Killer whales bring back wearing salmon hats, but it’s not for fashion
Killer whales bring back wearing salmon hats, but it’s not for fashion
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Story by Jonathan Edwards
• 21h • 4 min read
Killer whales bring back wearing salmon hats, but it’s not for fashion
Stop trying to make dead salmon hats happen. It’s probably not a thing.
People have been buzzing for weeks because scientists and a whale watcher this fall on separate occasions spotted two killer whales with dead salmon atop their heads while swimming in Puget Sound in Washington state.
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That sparked several proclamations that so-called dead salmon hats were back “in vogue,” a retro revival of a trend from the 1980s when seemingly fashionista orcas from the same community exhibited the behavior. But scientists don’t believe killer whales are sporting dead salmon in the same way people rock a Stetson, baseball cap or a beret. While they don’t have enough data to determine the reason orcas are doing it, their prevailing theories are more prosaic than showing off on the runway: saving food for later or to share it with another orca.
An adult female Southern Resident killer whale (J16) swims with her calf (J50) in September 2015.
The first sighting happened on Oct. 25 at Point No Point, Washington, where photographer Jim Pasola captured a shot of J27 Blackberry with a salmon on his head. Blackberry, a 33-year-old male orca, is a member of 72 Southern Resident killer whales, a long-suffering, ever-dwindling population perhaps most famous for the plight of J35 Tahlequah, a female orca who in 2018 mourned her dead calf by carrying its body for at least 17 days.Related video: “Killer Whale Keeps Asking Researcher For “”Help”” – Then The Animal Does Something Unexpected” (See To Believe)
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Two weeks after Pasola’s sighting, Deborah Giles, science and research director at the nonprofit Wild Orca, was aboard the organization’s research vessel Cheena in water just off the northern Seattle metro area when she looked over her right shoulder and saw an orca balancing a salmon on her head — long enough to notice but not long enough for Giles to identify the whale or for her field assistant to wheel around and get a photograph.
Still, it was the second time in as many months that the behavior had been documented, something that hadn’t happened since 1987. That summer, a female killer whale started wearing a dead salmon on her head, kick-starting the so-called “salmon hat” trend, according to the conservation nonprofit ORCA. Within weeks, killer whales in her pod and two others were doing the same.
The trend was exciting because it showed how nonessential behaviors could be learned — that orcas could create a culture. Giles cited hundreds of incidents over the past five years in which a small group of killer whales have rammed more than 650 vessels off Europe’s Iberian Peninsula.
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“They’re good at social learning,” Giles said. “We know that you can see these things kind of explode.”
But they can also just as quickly die out, which is what happened to the salmon-hat craze of 1987. While observers caught the occasional salmon-on-head moment over the ensuing decades, they were few and far between, never reaching the heights of the late 80s.
In 2018, a drone operated by the Center for Whale Research captured one of the southern resident orcas with a salmon on its head, center research director Michael Weiss said. They documented several more in the ensuing years, but they were always one-offs.
Then came October and November and multiple sightings within weeks of each other, Giles said.
“That’s why people are getting excited about it again is because it wasn’t a one-off,” she said.
Giles said she’s trying to use the moment to highlight the plight of the southern residents, which were endangered in 2005 under the Endangered Species Act when the group had 83 members. In the nearly two decades since, those numbers have only continued to decline — to 72 — as they’re plagued by three main threats: lack of prey, contaminants such as DDT and PCBs in their food, as well as vessel noise and disturbance as they communicate using echolocation and hunt for food, according to Giles.
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Giles said her recent research shows that, although female killer whales are getting pregnant and giving birth at relatively high rates, fewer than a third of those calves survive, which Giles attributes to the ever-present threats plaguing the southern residents, particularly that they are normally in “chronic stages of being hungry.”
“There’s a huge amount of calf mortality in the first year,” she said, adding: “These females are not getting enough to eat overall long term. And so their pregnancies are failing.”
Putting salmon on their heads could be tied to a temporary reprieve of hunger. Just like in 1987, the southern resident orcas are enjoying an abundance of chum salmon in the winter. With their bellies full and still more salmon at the ready, whales could be storing them to eat later or saving them for a particular killer whale they might see later.
But, Giles added, scientists don’t know. Wearing a salmon might feel good against an orca’s skin. They might be playing.
“It’s a mystery,” she said.
But they are probably not wearing it as a hat insofar as they are showing off their fashion sense or expressing their individuality, she added. That interpretation probably reveals more about the humans doing interpreting than the behavior itself.
“That’s a human construct,” she said.
Weiss agreed and expanded on Giles’s opinion.
“People like stories about animals, and especially whales and other like charismatic animals that we can see ourselves in,” he said, adding: “How we talk about them and think about them and the things we find interesting about them are so much about the mirror effect, about us seeing something about ourselves in them.”
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