The prosecutor said witnesses saw the Hammonds illegally slaughter a herd of deer on public land.
“At least seven deer were shot with others limping or running from the scene,” Williams wrote.
He said a teenage relative of the Hammonds testified that Steven Hammond gave him a box of matches and told him to start the blaze. “The fires destroyed evidence of the deer slaughter and took about 130 acres of public land…
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan authorities have arrested three Maasai herdsmen for allegedly poisoning a famous pride of lions, killing two, in the Masai Mara Game Reserve after the lions killed two of their cows, officials said Tuesday.
A fourth suspect is still at large, said Moses Kuyioni, the reserve’s chief warden.
The lions attacked the herdsmen’s cattle in the park in western Kenya on Sunday night, Kuyioni said. The men are suspected of setting out poisoned meat for the lions. Two lions from a pride known as the Marsh Pride died, said the Kenya Wildlife Service.
The Marsh Pride was featured in the popular BBC television series “Big Cat Diary” which aired from 1996 to 2008. Zoologist Jonathan Scott, who co-presented the series and has been following the pride since 1977 mourned the deaths in a post on his website titled “The Marsh Lions: End of an Era.”
The poisoning not only affected the lions but will move through the food chain, said wildlife expert, Paula Kahumbu. Six vultures were found dead near the poisoned meat. Other scavengers such as jackals, hyenas, and smaller predators will be feeding on the dead animals, too, Kahumbu said.
Land division and urbanization have reduced the traditional grazing lands of the Maasai herdsmen who have responded by allowing their cattle to browse on the plains of the game reserves.
Kenya’s lion population has declined to about 2,000, largely because of human wildlife-conflict, said Kahumbu.
“Lions generally cannot coexist with humans, which is why protected areas are so vital. Sadly in Mara the pastoralists are entering the reserve nightly to graze livestock, so of course lions get killed,” Kahumbu said.
In order to conserve Kenya’s remaining lions, Kahumbu said, there should be zero tolerance for cattle grazing in parks.
Last night we watched a movie that turned out surprisingly good considering I had no idea what to expect. No doubt it had a surprise, tragic ending, but that was part of what made it interesting.
The 1976 film, Robin and Marian, starring Sean Connery as a grey-bearded Robin Hood and Audrey Hepburn as Marian, was not your typical fable furthering the standard hero myth about Robin Hood and the “merry men.” In this tale, Robin, or, “Rob,” as he was referred to by his side-kick, Little John, was returning from 18 years of bloody battles in the Crusades against the Muslims (the ones fought while attempting to capture the “Holy Lands,” in the Ninth Century A.D, not the one started recently), back home to Sherwood Forest in the not-so-civilized country of England.
The first thing Robin and Little John come across is Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck, two of the fabled merry men, with a freshly poached deer. Through them Rob discovers that Maid Marian is in a nearby nunnery, where she’s been since Robin left her to do the king’s bidding in battle.
(The king, Richard the Lionheart, played by Richard Harris, is killed by an arrow symbolically thrown that ends up hitting him in the neck. Those damn things must have been sharp, even then.)
Long story short, the story ends after Robin and the Merry Men go into battle with the Sheriff of Nottingham (played by Robert Shaw of Jaws fame) and his troops. Robin and the Sheriff face off against one another with broadswords in the agreement that the loser’s men would be spared. But after Robin Hood receives a potentially lethal blow and the Sheriff backs off, Robin runs him through in an underhanded, unsportsmanlike end to the “contest.” As Robin is being helped off the battlefield by Marian and Little John, the Sheriff’s troops ride into the forest to slay the rest of Robin’s men.
They take Robin to Marian’s convent, where she promises to give him medicine to ease his pain. There he boasts to Little John about how he’ll heal up and be back in “glorious battle” in no time. It turns out that the “pain killer” she gives him and takes herself is poison instead, and as they’re dying she tells him how she loved him “more than God.” While we’re seeing Robin Hood come to terms with the reality that he’s not going to live, we’re forced to have to realize that she just couldn’t take the thought of him constantly going into bloody battle and see him suffer and die a violent death at the hands of someone like him. Perhaps she just couldn’t take hearing him sum himself up as nothing but a killer, obsessed with a love for doing glorious, violent battles. She had seen something more in him that may have faded during all those brutal, destructive years in the Crusades.
Ultimately, Robin and Marian was an anti-war film; one of several to come out at the time. The question is, how long will humans play out these scenarios before they finally get it?
HAMILTON – Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials are hoping the public will help them track down people who killed two elk on a game range and left one to rot Wednesday.
FWP Warden Capt. Joe Jaquith said someone killed two elk on the Three Mile Game Range northeast of Stevensville either late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
The poachers drove behind a closed sign to retrieve one of the elk and left the other cow elk behind.
“We are hoping to talk with anyone coming in or out of the game range (Wednesday) morning who saw a vehicle with an elk in the back,” Jaquith said. “We are interested in getting any information that people might be able to provide about that.”
Jaquith urged anyone with information to call the TIP-MONT hotline at 800-847-6668.
Anyone providing information that leads to an arrest in the case will be eligible for a reward. Those providing information can remain anonymous.
BREAKING: The US House of Representatives just voted to pass H.R.2494, the Global Anti-#Poaching Act. Special thanks to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce and Ranking Member Eliot Engel for introducing the Act and championing it through to a vote. Building off the momentum from the Enough Project’s event on the Hill last week, this act is a crucial step in the effort to break the links between wildlife trafficking networks and mass atrocities. This is an incredible victory, and one YOU made happen! This is truly Justice For Cecil The Lion!
The illegal killing of an albino deer in Boone County has been solved thanks to social media, according to the West Virginia Natural Resources Police
Natural Resources Police Officer Dakoda Chattin got a call Monday from Boone County 911 about an albino deer killed in someone’s yard along W.Va. 17.
The incident was posted on the National Resources Police Facebook Page where it was seen by nearly half a million people and was shared by more than 7,000. Information received following the post helped Officer Chattin locate three suspects.
Suspects have been charged with hunting without a license, hunting during closed season, carrying a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, shooting from a motor vehicle, shooting from a public road and illegal firearm for deer hunting.
“We continue to be impressed with how we’ve been able to solve crimes with the public’s help,” Natural Resources Police Col. Jerry Jenkins said. “The response has been beyond what we anticipated when we began using Facebook earlier this year. It’s become a valuable tool for us to gather information about crimes and suspects. It shows how deeply the community of hunting and fishing enthusiasts in West Virginia cares about protecting wildlife and enforcing laws.
“We encourage anyone who sees anyone violating the state’s wildlife laws to call 911 or their closest DNR district office.”
There are around 300 colorful, flightless takahe birds left in the world, but thanks to a hunting snafu in New Zealand, there are now four fewer of the critically endangered species.
New Zealand’s Department of Conservation had allowed hunters to target a similarly colored—but significantly smaller and more aggressive—bird called the pukeko on Motutapu Island, a predator-free site established to protect the takahe. The common pukekos can overtake takahe habitat and threaten the rare birds’ survival, and culls are one way to manage pukeko numbers.
But authorities discovered the wrong birds had been killed when they found four dead takahe peppered with shotgun pellets on Monday.
“We weren’t formally notified; we actually found the birds when my team were out on the island checking the transmitters,” Andrew Baucke, the DOC’s conservation services director, told Radio New Zealand. “Each of the transmitters have a mortality function on them, so that’s how they picked up the dead birds.”
The department had hired experienced hunting members from the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association who were “carefully briefed” on how to differentiate between the two bird species, Baucke said in a statement.
Before the shooting, the island was home to 21 takahe. Most of the birds alive today survive in sanctuaries, with only about 70 or 80 remaining in the wild.
It’s not the first time the rare flightless birds have been mistaken for pukekos by hunters, as a similar bird cull seven years ago on Fiji’s Mana Island ended in a takahe shot.
Baucke said the deaths are “deeply disappointing” for the department, and Bill O’Leary, president of the Deerstalkers Association, said he is appalled by the incident.
“I share with the department a concern that the deaths will affect efforts to save an endangered species,” O’Leary said in a statement. “I apologize to the department and to the country at large.”
For now, all pukeko hunts are off, the department announced.
Pukekos, which can fly, number well over 1,000 on Motutapu Island, located 10 miles east of Auckland. Their arrival and expansion continues to threaten native birds like the takahe—a species that’s been slowly recovering since the birds once thought extinct were rediscovered on New Zealand’s South Island in 1948.
If pukeko numbers aren’t managed, they could overrun Motutapu—one of the sancturies established by the department’s takahe recovery program, which hopes to have 125 breeding pairs at secure sites by 2020.
Now, the New Zealand Herald is reporting the Maori people of New Zealand’s South Island are angry with the department’s conservation tactics.
“There’s no way that they would send their treasured takahe to a sanctuary for it to be slaughtered,” Rino Tirikatene, a member of the New Zealand parliament, told the Herald. “There are even calls for the return home of those birds. There is a lot of goodwill that goes with these gifts to improve the biodiversity, and to see that they’ve needlessly been bowled over by some deer hunters is just really disappointing.”
Ted Nugent has risked angering animal rights campaigners by branding the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe “a lie.”
Dentist Walter Palmer sparked outrage this week when it emerged he had shot and killed the popular beast during a $50,000 hunting trip at the Hwange National Park.
It is alleged the big cat had been lured out of a protected zone in the region, but Nugent is adamant the hunt was a legitimate form of animal population control.
In a post on Facebook.com, he writes, “The whole story is a lie. It was a wild lion from a ‘park’ where hunting is legal & essential beyond the park borders. All animals reproduce every year & would run out of room/food to live w/o (without) hunting. I will write a full piece on this joke asap. God are people stupid.” [Look who’s talking–stupid is as stupid say!]
When other users of the social networking site disagreed with his stance on the controversy, Nugent angered them further by branding them “ignorant.”
The controversial rocker was fined $10,000 in 2012 and banned from hunting in Alaska after pleading guilty to transporting an illegally killed black bear.
(CNN)Two men arrested in the death of Cecil the lion — a case in which an American dentist has also been accused, unleashing a torrent of anger online — were released Wednesday by a court in Zimbabwe on $1,000 bail each.
Theo Bronchorst, a professional hunter, and Honest Trymore Ndlovu, a land owner, both Zimbabweans, said through their attorney that they were innocent of poaching charges, which officials said could bring a sentence of 10 years in prison.
Zimbabwean authorities said that Walter J. Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, paid at least $50,000 for the hunt. Palmer has said he relied on the expertise of local guides “to ensure a legal hunt.”
But the lion that he and his local guides killed wasn’t just any lion, according to Zimbabwean officials.
The hunters lured him out of the sanctuary of the park with a dead animal on top of a vehicle, the conservation group said.
Palmer, officials said, then shot the lion with a crossbow, a method for which he is known. But Cecil survived another 40 hours until the hunters tracked him down and shot him with a gun.
Walter J. Palmer, left, a U.S. hunter wanted in the killing of Zimbabwe’s Cecil the lion, poses with a dead ram.
Cecil was skinned and beheaded, and the hunters tried to destroy the GPS collar that Cecil was wearing as part of research backed by Oxford University, the group said.
“I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt,” Palmer said Tuesday in a statement. “I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.”
The dentist said in his statement that no authorities in Zimbabwe or the United States had contacted him but that he would assist them in any inquiries.
“I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion,” Palmer said.
The dentist said in his statement that no authorities in Zimbabwe or the United States had contacted him but that he would assist them in any inquiries.
“I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion,” Palmer said.
Dentist’s enthusiasm for hunting with bow and arrow
But Cecil’s killing doesn’t appear to be the first time Palmer has got into trouble while hunting.
A man by the same name and age, and from the same town, illegally killed a black bear in Wisconsin several years ago, according to court documents.
That individual pleaded guilty to making false statements knowingly to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and was sentenced to one year on probation and ordered to pay a fine of nearly $3,000, records show.
A New York Times article in 2009 that profiled Palmer and his hunting methods said he had served a year of probation over the false statements case.
Palmer, right, poses with a dead black-tailed deer. The dentist said he “deeply” regrets killing Cecil the lion.
The Times article detailed Palmer’s skill and enthusiasm for using archery rather than firearms to slay animals.
He is “said to be capable of skewering a playing card from 100 yards with his compound bow,” it said, recounting his killing of a large elk with an arrow in Northern California.
Exposing the Big Game 
