Right now our planet is in the midst of what science says is an unprecedented rate of change, unlike anything seen in tens of millions of years. Overconsumption, unsustainable practices and the release of immense amounts of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels are altering our life-sustainingclimateat a dangerous pace, oceans are acidifying and losing oxygen, andspecies are dying off.
But this is not the first time that life on our planet has faced an epic challenge. The worst came a little over 250 million years ago — before dinosaurs walked the earth — in an episode called the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, or the Great Dying, when 90% of life in the oceans and 70% of life on land vanished.
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Recently, two groundbreaking studies on the Great Dying reveal…
The Cherokee Nation recently purchased more than 4,000 acres in Sequoyah County for its first hunting and fishing preserve, seen March 1.
JOSH FOURKILLER/CHEROKEE PHOENIX
Tribal Councilor Mike Shambaugh, left, and Deputy Chief Bryan Warner talk March 1 at the site of the Cherokee Nation’s first hunting and fishing preserve in Sequoyah County.
CHAD HUNTER/CHEROKEE PHOENIX
As Cherokee Nation leaders look on, Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. prepares to sign the Park and Wildlands, Fishing and Hunting Reserve Act of 2021 on March 1 in Sequoyah County.
SEQUOYAH COUNTY – On a breezy afternoon in Sequoyah County, tribal leaders gathered at a newly purchased swath of countryside as Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. signed into law the Park and Wildlands, Fishing and Hunting Reserve Act of 2021.
“This is a big and beautiful place. This legislation is even bigger,” Hoskin said March 1. “This is the beginning of a new era in the Cherokee Nation of conservation of our lands, of setting aside lands to use for the Cherokee people for hunting, for fishing, for gathering. This is only the beginning, this 4,000-acre tract.”
Backed by the Tribal Council, the act establishes policy for preserve lands. The goal, Hoskin said, was “to do something more than just acquire land, but to manage it in a way that creates hunting preserves, fishing preserves and wildlands for gathering traditional medicines and engaging in traditional practices.”
“We also have an opportunity to construct some cabins here as we continue to deal with the pandemic,” he added. “So getting people a place to isolate in Sequoyah County – as we’re looking across the reservation to do – is important. But long term, this legislation is really about managing our lands in a way that can benefit the Cherokee people the most.”
The first tract of land in Sequoyah County should be available to CN citizens within a few months, said tribal officials.
“This property is around 4,300 acres of pristine hunting and fishing preserve land,” said Secretary of Natural Resources Chad Harsha, who will oversee the program.
CN leaders said the sprawling property is home to deer, squirrel, rabbit, turkey, dove, quail, waterfowl and fish, along with mushrooms, wild onions, wild berries, hickory nuts, wild greens and more.
“It’s been used for hunting for a number of years,” Hoskin said. “This body of water behind me is an impounded creek that’s created just a wonderful place for fishing and recreation.”
Regulations and a map are expected to be available this spring under the Natural Resources tab at cherokee.org.
“When we open this to our citizens, people will best be able to find it by going to Akins, to the Akins store off Highway 101,” Hoskin said. “It’s just a short drive off that highway. We’ll make sure on our website that information about accessing this park is made available.”https://cbc47685d864261b810bb9b4aa4af7b4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
Future tracts of trust property are also being considered for hunting and fishing, cultural use or archery.
“We’ve actually identified some other parcels that we already owned that will be designated as hunting and fishing preserves under this act,” Hoskin said. “One is in Adair County. The other is in Craig County.”
Harsha sees the program as a way to “enhance and expand” outdoor activities and recreation for Cherokees.
“It also is a unique opportunity to provide conservation and protect traditional practices for Cherokee citizens,” he said. “This is the first step of many.”
The state’s Department of Natural Resources granted permits to about 1,500 hunters to kill 119 wolves, but 216 were shot
Wisconsin was home to about 1,195 wolves in 256 packs at the end of 2020, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources.(John and Karen Hollingsworth/USFWS)
Hunters and trappers participating in Wisconsin’s fourth wolf hunting season killed almost 100 more animals than was allowed under the state’s quota, Paul A. Smith reports for theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The state’s Department of Natural Resources issued 1,486 tags to hunters with a quota of 119 wolves. Hunting was closed at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and hunters had 24 hours to report their kills. The final count: 216 wolves, according to data released by Wisconsin DNR on Thursday.
“It’s easy at this point in the game to say, yeah, maybe we…
Several years ago, when Cecil the lion was killed by Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, the slaughter sparked an international outcry that shined a light on the atrocities committed by trophy hunters. The revulsion may have been in part because Cecil had a name. Every lion, rhino, bear or other species that is hunted purely for a trophy is a Cecil in some way. They may not be famous but they are sentient beings with families, killed for an ornament to be hung on a wall.
When animals are killed abroad, it is legal to ship their trophies back to the U.S. We are a country of people who care about animals and can now use our voice to ban this senseless cruelty. Please urge your Congress member to support the reintroduction of…
I’ll keep this short and to the point. I applaud all of our county commissioners and the other letter writers who wrote enlightened and reasonable letters in the Feb. 19 Express. Trapping is inhumane. Period. The proponent organizations with benevolent-sounding names are complicit in the cruelty of trapping, as is Fish and Game, which claims that even sign posting is too burdensome. Are they kidding?
Blaine County especially objects to trapping, as evidenced by the unanimous opinions of our county commissioners who represent us. Trapping might be justified in the Alaskan bush where there are no groceries or clothing stores, but not in a civilized state and county where one can buy anything they need locally or online. I also expect that our tourist economy will suffer when visitors don’t want to spend their money in a place that allows such immoral activity that is a clear danger to recreationalists and their kids and dogs. This is the 2020s, not the 1800s.
Dear new and current residents of our beautiful Montana:
I just wanted to let you know there are countless opportunities to enjoy our outdoors and public lands. You might see a moose, a bear or, if you are lucky, hear the wolves howl in Yellowstone. The ecosystem needs all of its players to stay viable.
Oh, but wait! You should be aware that there are traps, yes traps, in many public areas. Also snares— lethal wire nooses. They lie waiting, like land mines, to kill or maim anything that happens to encounter them. They don’t play favorites. They are not choosy. They are vastly unmonitored and under-regulated. They are secretive and cruel.
No, you did not step back in time to 1825; sadly, this is happening now.
Less oxygen dissolved in the water is often referred to as a “dead zone” (in red above) because most marine life either dies, or, if they are mobile such as fish, leave the area. Habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts.NOAA
By Shana Gallagher
What comes to mind when you think of Tyson Foods? A chicken nugget? A big red logo?
How about the largest toxic dead zone in U.S. history? It turns out the meat industry—and corporate giants like Tyson Foods—are directly linked to this environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, and many others.
Industrial-scaleagricultureto support America’s livestock is the number one source of water pollution in the country. But while industrial agriculture to feed animals raised for meat is currently resource-intensive and ecologically destructive, it doesn’t have to be. Solutions exist…
Mink look out from their cage at the farm of Henrik Nordgaard Hansen and Ann-Mona Kulsoe Larsen as they have to kill off their herd, which consists of 3000 mother mink and their cubs on their farm near Naestved, Denmark, on November 6, 2020 (MADS CLAUS RASMUSSEN/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)Facebook56TwitterRedditEmailcomments
Scott Beckstead remembers the mink that died from terror.
She was a beautiful female with a bluish shade to her coat — they’re known as “sapphires” in the mink industry — and he was at a mink farm owned by his grandfather. Beckstead describes his grandfather as a “kind, wonderful, generous man” who “sincerely tried to give his animals the best life he could.” That said, Beckstead recalled sadly, “there are some realities about mink farming that are just unavoidable.”Advertisement:https://fcbb08fbe086f07cd554333b80283d53.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html
This was one of them.
“The foreman pulled out this sapphire female, and she struggled and she screamed,” Beckstead told Salon, describing an incident occurred in one of the last year that he visited his grandfather’s southern Idaho mink farm. “Then she went limp. She literally died. There is no doubt that she was terrified. She had watched what was happening to the mink next to her. I think, honestly, the only explanation is that she died of sheer terror.”
His grandfather “cursed” when he saw that; “the sapphires are so fragile,” he rued. Beckstead was struck by the fact that his grandfather was genuinely upset at how that mink died. Though she was to be killed for her fur ultimately, he did not want her life to end in the way that it did.Advertisement:
Beckstead is now the director of campaigns for animal wellness action at the Center for a Humane Economy. The organization, a non-profit that tries to change how businesses behave in order to create a humane economic order, is supporting a recently-proposed bill that would ban mink farms in Oregon. There are many reasons to ban mink farms strictly from the perspective of animal rights, but a new reason has incentivize that movement: The COVID-19 pandemic.
For biological reasons, the novel coronavirus is particularly prevalent among mink, as mink and other mustelidae such as ferrets are notorious for unwittingly serving as virus mutation factories. Mink are so prone to developing COVID-19 infections that outbreaks have repeatedly disproportionately cropped up in areas with mink farms. The problem is extremely serious, to the point that last year Denmark ordered thousands of mink to be killed and buried in shallow graves to halt the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This led to the unappealing sight of bloated, decayed mink carcasses literally rising out of their graves as their corpses filled with gas.
“When they’re put in confinement, they are in this very unnatural situation,” Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Salon. Unlike pigs, cows, chickens and other animals that have spent generations being domesticated, mink don’t have that history; they still think and behave like wild animals. This is not to say that factory farms aren’t already vectors for disease and pollution (they are), or that mink won’t already be particularly prone to illness from living in such close quarters (they will).
In any case, minks strongly resist being held captive in small cages. And those wild instincts exacerbate matters.Advertisement:
“They’re extremely stressed in those situations,” Burd explained. “Because that confinement is so unnatural, mink are extraordinarily good escape artists.” There was already one instance where an Oregon farm had a COVID-19 outbreak and, despite being under quarantine, three of the mink managed to escape. Of those mink, two tested positive for COVID-19.
“We don’t have any exact numbers on the percent of mink that escape, but it’s obvious that escapes are common,” Burd explained. “They happen even when the facility is supposed to be under a strict quarantine.”
Not surprisingly, Oregon mink farmers are fighting against Senate Bill 832, which would ban mink farms in the state. Burd told Salon that to address this reality, the bill would offer assistance to people who would lose their jobs as a result of the ban. Yet many Oregon officials seem inclined to sweep the issue under the rug.Advertisement:
“They said, you know, ‘Don’t worry about it. We have everything under control,'” Burd recalled when describing how Oregon authorities reacted after her organization contacted them with concerns about mink farming and COVID-19 outbreaks. “That very day, the first outbreak at an Oregon farm was reported.” The Center for Biological Diversity reached out again to express concern that mink could spread the disease to wild animals, which subsequently happened.
Despite their concerns being validated, however, the facility ended its quarantine after testing a “minuscule” percentage of the mink and found them to be negative.
“Workers can come and go freely,” Burd told Salon. “Mink breeding is continuing and we’re very, very concerned because just because a few of the mink tested negative. [That] does not mean it’s not in this facility and COVID-19 in mink is unpredictable in its manifestations.”Advertisement:
Beckstead echoed Burd’s concerns, describing how the mink farming crisis has reached a new level of urgency because the conditions there make them ripe for COVID-19 outbreaks. He also spoke from the heart about how, when one understands the mind of a mink, it is easy to see how the farming practices are inherently cruel.
“This is an animal that has the instinct to be out roaming over vast territory,” Beckstead explained. “The animals are semi-aquatic, so they have a strong instinct to spend a lot of time in the water. To take a wild species and raise it on factory farm conditions is inherently cruel, which I think is why the animal welfare community has long wished that they would eventually become obsolete or extinct.”
He recalled another story from the days on his grandfather’s mink farm, the fact that he was not allowed to visit the mink yard when the females were having their babies because “the slightest disturbance would cause them to cannibalize their litters.”
“Those kinds of stories just speak to me of how unnatural of a setting these mink farms are,” Beckstead explained. “This is not a species that belongs on factory farms. I mean, no species belongs in factory farms, but to factory farm an inherently wild species, I think, adds an additional layer of suffering and misery.”
In the plethora of issues that the Pakistani government has to deal with, the reemergence of bird flu is threatening to induce further complications. With the virus reaching Russia even, transmission seems to be taking on a formidable character. Instead of waiting to deal with the problem as it comes, we need a preventative strategy in place that protects the country from the imminent disaster that the bird flu, coupled with Covid-19, could bring.
While Pakistan has not yet experienced any cases of this new variant of the bird flu, H5N8, neighbouring countries seem to be elbow deep into the crisis. India and Iran reportedly culled over 1.4 million poultry birds to contain the transmission of the virus. Unfortunately, the virus seems to have been transmitted to humans as Russia has reported its first case. Clearly, there is an immediate need for precautionary measures to be implemented to protect…
Christmas Island forest skink and 12 mammals on list, which also includes the desert bettong, broad-cheeked hopping mouse and Nullarbor barred bandicoot
The Christmas Island forest skink is the first reptile known to have gone extinct in Australia since European colonisation. More than 10% of the 320 land mammals known to have lived in Australia in 1788 are extinct. Photograph: Hal Cogger
The Australian government has officially acknowledged the extinction of 13 endemic species, including 12 mammals and the first reptile known to have been lost since European colonisation.
The addition of the dozen mammal species confirms Australia’s unenviable position as the world’s capital for mammal extinction, lifting the total number of mammals known to have died out to 34.
None of the 13 is a surprise. All but one of the mammal extinctions is historic, with most having disappeared between the 1850s and 1950s.
As Guardian Australia has reported, the last Christmas Island pipistrelle, a species of bat, died in 2009. It was followed by the sole remaining Christmas Island forest skink – the first Australian reptile known to have become extinct – in 2014. Both extinctions have previously been recorded by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The now extinct Christmas Island pipistrelle. Photograph: Lindy Lumsden
The updated list means more than 10% of the 320 land mammals known to have lived in Australia in 1788 are extinct.Advertisement
The Wilderness Society’s Suzanne Milthorpe said there was “not another country, rich or poor, that has anything like this record” in mammal extinction. She said Haiti was next on the IUCN list for mammal extinctions with a total of nine.
Prof John Woinarski, a conservation biologist at Charles Darwin University who helped record the plight of many of the newly listed extinct species in two books, said the listings were “humbling and sobering”.
He said it was a reminder that extinction was a “likely event” after a species was listed as threatened if not enough was done to save it. “It is important to acknowledge that the losses have occurred and it’s a reminder that if we don’t manage our threatened species then extinction is the end result,” he said.
The confirmed historic mammal extinctions are the desert bettong, the Nullarbor dwarf bettong, the Capricorn rabbit-rat, the broad-cheeked hopping mouse, the Liverpool Plains striped bandicoot, the marl, the south-eastern striped bandicoot, the Nullarbor barred bandicoot, the long-eared mouse, the blue-grey mouse and the Percy Island flying fox.Morrison government’s new environment commissioner ‘toothless’, conservation groups sayRead more
Woinarski said in almost all cases the most plausible explanation for their extinction was predation by feral cats, though introduced foxes, habitat destruction and fire may have played a role. “No other country has suffered anywhere near that number of mammal species extinctions over the past 200 years,” he said.
He said as museums had few-to-no records of the species, recording the extinctions often relied on knowledge shared by Indigenous elders living in remote parts of the country who had experienced them first-hand.
About 100 endemic Australian species have been listed as extinct by the government or the IUCN, but Woinarski said the real number was likely to be more than 10 times that once extinct invertebrates were counted. At least 50 invertebrate species on Christmas Island alone had not been seen for more than a century and were likely to be extinct, he said.
He said the first recorded modern extinction of an Australian reptile was “obviously a really lamentable landmark”. The Christmas Island forest skink was almost certainly killed by the accidental introduction of a predator from Asia, the wolf snake, in the 1970s.
He said the Christmas Island pipistrelle’s extinction was a result of a lack of government action, as it had been clear it was in rapid decline for two decades before it went extinct and the response was insufficient. There had never been an inquest or inquiry to find out what went wrong, he said.
“That was one we really should have been able to save,” he said.
Milthorpe, the Wilderness Society’s national environment laws campaign manager, said the updated list was a “devastating reality check on Australia’s environmental performance”. “It cements our reputation as the global leader in mammal extinctions,” she said.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t seen a full response to the review from the Morrison government yet, only a disjointed attempt to devolve their environmental responsibilities to the states,” Milthorpe said. “Without the full package [of recommendations], Samuel made clear that extinction and a decline of our iconic natural areas will continue.”
Ley’s spokesperson said the minister had overseen a comprehensive review of the historical extinction list to accurately reflect the state of Australia’s mammals and provide an important record that could help improve the management of native plants and animals.
They said the government had “mobilised” more than $535m for projects to support threatened species and ecological communities since 2014, was preparing a 10-year threatened species strategy and introducing new predator-free safe havens.
“We are working to manage threats to native animals and plants on Christmas Island and across the rest of Australia, including supporting the recovery from the catastrophic black summer bushfires,” the spokesperson said.
Labor’s environment spokeswoman, Terri Butler, said the Coalition was presiding over an “accelerating and disastrous extinction crisis”, and had slashed environment department funding since coming to power. “They have no solutions to this crisis and they just don’t care,” she said.
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Mink look out from their cage at the farm of Henrik Nordgaard Hansen and Ann-Mona Kulsoe Larsen as they have to kill off their herd, which consists of 3000 mother mink and their cubs on their farm near Naestved, Denmark, on November 6, 2020 (MADS CLAUS RASMUSSEN/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
