by: Rogelio Mares

Posted: Dec 11, 2022 / 10:35 PM MST

Updated: Dec 12, 2022 / 11:49 AM MST

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DENVER (KDVR) — Since April, there have been 15 detections of a deadly strain of the bird flu in flocks of birds in Colorado.

There is a population of birds in Colorado whose function is solely to lay eggs for consumption.

This year’s outbreak of bird flu has impacted 85% of the total egg-laying bird population in the state.

“Four point seven million domestic poultry in the state of Colorado,” Dr. Maggie Baldwin, state veterinarian from Colorado’s Department of Agriculture, said.Holiday hazards: Top insurance claims during season

Back in 2014 and 2015, the country saw the largest outbreak of bird flu ever, impacting 50 million birds.

Baldwin said the current outbreak is exceeding those figures from eight years ago.

“We’ve experienced the largest foreign animal disease outbreak in not only our state’s history but in our nation’s history,” Baldwin said.

The 15 detections in Colorado of a deadly strain of the virus have occurred in both commercial and private flocks.

Ten of those detections have been in backyard flocks and five of those detections have been in commercial flocks.

Baldwin said there’s a typical, less deadly, strain of the virus that’s been detected in the state before.

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“We’ve never had highly pathogenic avian influenza in the state of Colorado before,” Baldwin said.

That highly pathogenic strain has been found in 47 of the 50 states in the country, in part because of infected wild birds.Boy severely injured in Belize able to get home thanks to donations

“People can also spread the virus. If we’re out interacting with wild birds,” Baldwin said, “if we’re out duck hunting, for example, and we go home and take care of our chickens at home, we can bring that virus home.”

The USDA has created a program called “Defend the Flock” aimed at providing resources for poultry farmers to keep the bird flu away from their flocks.

“It’s a really good self-assessment that a producer of any size can use,” Baldwin said.

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Wolf delisting derailed

By SCOTT SHINDLEDECKER
The Western News | December 12, 2022 4:25 AM

Wolf trappers are now free to begin their pursuit of the cagy canines in certain areas of Northwest Montana because grizzly bear activity has declined.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks made the announcement in a news release late Monday afternoon.

The areas of occupied grizzly bear habitat now open include areas in FWP Region 1, elk and deer hunting districts 100, 101, 103, 104 120, 121, 122, 123 and 124.

In Region 2, occupied grizzly bear habitat south of Interstate 90, or HDs 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216 and 217 is now open to trapping.

The occupied grizzly bear habitat in FWP Region 5 is also open. This includes areas northeast of Yellowstone National Park.

The rest of the occupied grizzly bear habitat in Montana remains closed to wolf trapping due to grizzly bear activity.

According to a chart provided by FWP, radio-collared grizzlies in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem, which includes HD 100 and 104, are either denned or at their dens. In addition, there have been no encounters, conflicts or sightings in the last week.

In the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem West Region 1, which includes HD 101 and 103, there were no encounters, conflicts or sights.

The only grizzly activity in NCDE West Region 1 included multiple grizzly tracks that were confirmed in the snow in the Northfork and Swan regions. Three of 12 collared grizzlies were still out.

There was a report of a black bear sighting in Kalispell with tracks and a bear getting into garbage in the Lawrence Park area.

Weather forecasts, which include snow and cold, also played a role in the agency’s determination to open wolf trapping season.

In August, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission approved wolf hunting and trapping regulations for the 2022 season, which ends March 15, 2023.

The regulations include a floating start date for wolf trapping in occupied grizzly bear habitat.

The intent of the floating start date is to avoid conflict with grizzly bears that haven’t denned for the winter. Wolf trapping in these areas opens Dec. 31 unless FWP opens it early due to a decline in grizzly bear activity.

FWP makes a decision opening trapping in occupied bear habitat each Monday in December with input from field staff on bear activity.

Wolf trapping is open in all other areas of the state. Hunters and trappers should note that wolf harvest quotas exist in each FWP trapping district and wolf management unit 313. Those harvest quotas can be viewed and followed on the FWP Wolf Dashboard.

Wolf hunters and trappers should make sure to be familiar with the 2022 Furbearer, Wolf and Trapping Regulations, which include maps of occupied grizzly bear habitat.

Conservationists want 30% of the ocean protected, but small-scale fishers and Indigenous people say a blanket ban punishes them for a crisis they didn’t create while commercial vessels can still trawl with impunity

by Karen McVeigh

Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by

About this contentSat 10 Dec 2022 03.00 EST

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/10/my-life-is-being-endangered-the-growing-struggle-against-fishing-bans

It is one of South Africa’s largest nature reserves, where hippos, elephants and endangered black rhinos live among wetlands, savannah and lakes. But iSimangaliso wetland park, a Unesco world heritage site favoured by wealthy eco-tourists for its biodiversity, is also the site of an increasingly deadly battle, between the people who live there and the conservationists ostensibly tasked with protecting it.

The rural Nibela community in KwaZulu-Natal province, one of the country’s poorest regions, have fished in Lake St Lucia for generations. It is their traditional land, but it is also a marine protected area (MPA), with regulations that restrict gillnet fishing and access to the lake. The park authorities generate income via tourists, who can pay 2,000 rand (about £100) for a deep-sea fishing trip. But the local fishers – who gain little or no benefit from the park and are not allowed fishing permits – say they are labelled poachers by armed park rangers who patrol the lake.

Last year, the conflict left a fisher missing, presumed dead – the second in two years from the same family. Police are treating as murder and attempted murder the death and disappearance of two brothers at iSimangaliso. On 12 November 2021, Thulani Mdluli, 24, went missing and is presumed dead after an altercation with rangers. The park authorities claim the rangers were shot at by poachers; the fishers protest they were unarmed. A little more than a year before, on 16 September 2020, Thulani’s brother, Celempilo Mdluli, 30, was shot dead, allegedly by rangers, as he fished.

“We depend on fishing to put food on the table,” says Thomas Nkuna, 68, a fisher and father of 10 from KwaZulu-Natal. He says the struggling community has always fished to feed their families – long before permits were needed – and have no choice but to continue, even without permission.

“We have to fish at night, to hide from the rangers. But rangers patrol the waters and confiscate our tools,” he says. “Sometimes we run away. Fishermen have been killed by the rangers.”

The deaths are an extreme example of what has become a common problem. As scientists warn that biodiversity loss threatens to tip the world into its sixth mass extinction, many are pushing for a global target to conserve one-third of the world’s land and sea by 2030. From Antigua to Zambia, more than half of the world’s governments back this 30×30 target, which could be adopted at December’s biodiversity negotiations at Cop15 in Montreal.

On Tuesday, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, warned that in its current form the 30×30 proposal was “a grave risk” to the rights of Indigenous peoples and to conservation. She urged world leaders in Montreal to place Indigenous communities at the heart of the agreement.

Far away from the international spotlight, small-scale fishing and Indigenous communities say they are being forced to pay for a biodiversity crisis they bear little responsibility for creating. From Colombia to the UK, they are fighting against marine protected areas and fishing bans, arguing they are being disproportionately affected compared with commercial fisheries.

Artisanal fishers tell us they have struggles with marine protected areas – in some cases they are being displaced in the name of conservation

Amélie Tappella, Crocevia Centro Internazionale

In Colombia, where shark fishing was banned in 2020 to help end the shark fin trade, artisanal fishers from Afro-Colombian communities who have fished shark for centuries for local consumption say the ban threatens their cultural heritage and food security. In Greenland, traditional hunters in remote areas who have fished for narwhals for generations are at loggerheads with scientists who say the animal is on the brink of extinction. Hunters criticise the scientists for not listening to their traditional knowledge and question their counting methods.In the ‘Bakhmut meat grinder’, deadlocked enemyforces slog it out

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In the UK, a vicar has led opposition to a marine protected area on the Holy Isle of Lindisfarne because, she says, it would have a “massive socio-economic” impact on locals who survive on fishing.

Hugh Govan, of the University of the South Pacific, who specialises in ocean governance, describes the 30×30 target as a “neocolonialist” approach.

“It imposes decisions on land and sea use on developing countries without evidence that these are the best tools to achieve their legitimate sustainability and development ambitions,” says Govan. “A bit rich coming from the countries that drive the global crises.”

He questions the real-world value of protection zones, which are often poorly governed.

“All too often, the most destructive fisheries are allowed or even subsidised to continue, while subsistence and community fisheries are criminalised,” he says.

Govan points to a controversial decision last year by Kiribati, which heavily relies on revenue from fishing licenses, to open the largest marine reserve in the world – the “no take” Phoenix Islands Protected Area – to commercial fishing. But the decision, Govan says, was based on research suggesting the MPA was doing nothing to conserve tuna. Instead, Kiribati argued, it would rely on an alternative method known as marine spatial planning to conserve ocean resources in a way that benefits its people. The approach has been used in Ecuador to balance conservation against moderate fishing, with inevitable compromises.

Imposed targets, such as 30×30, could even make things worse in developing countries, Govan argues, because it risks alienating coastal communities who, if involved in management, are adept at governing their own resources.

In the coral triangle of Indonesia, for example, a study in June comparing different management styles of MPAs found that allowing Indigenous people to participate in their management yielded more biomass than applying heavy-handed penalties. In the UK, the Sustainable Food Trust has found that small-scale fishers employ 10 times as many people as industrial fishers while having a lower environmental impact, using much less fuel and producing a fraction of the carbon emissions.

“Artisanal fishers from all over the world tell us they have struggles with marine protected areas – in some cases they are being displaced in the name of conservation,” says Amélie Tapella of Crocevia Centro Internazionale, an Italian NGO that acts as secretariat of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, a platform of grassroots farmers and small-scale fishers.

Not including these communities risks losing invaluable knowledge and expertise, she says. “If governments only focus on establishing marine protected areas, not consulting the artisanal fishing communities or even entrusting them with direct management, we will lose their unique knowledge that allows us to find the key to a world where man and nature coexist.”

One alternative approach to MPAs is being piloted in Port St Johns, in Eastern Cape, South Africa: a collaborative, “bottom up” project that will treat the community and government as equal partners in conserving resources. This pilot, lead by WWF South Africa, will offer the impoverished fishing community much-needed access to better markets for east coast lobster, a species that fetches a low price locally, in exchange for engaging in more sustainable fishing practices.

Craig Smith, senior manager of WWF South Africa’s marine programmes, who is leading the pilot, believes MPAs are necessary to reverse biodiversity loss. The problems arise, he says, when the needs of coastal communities are not taken into account as well.

“MPAs in South Africa have been very much a top-down approach,” says Smith. “The consultation process is a tick-box exercise. The government has set up MPAs, but does not have mechanisms in place where local communities can be accommodated. We don’t want to go down that road.”

Jones Thomas Spartegus, youth representative for the World Forum of Fisher People in India, says new restrictions in the Gulf of Mannar biosphere reserve in Tamil Nadu are squeezing the community’s fishing rights while commercial vessels continue to trawl the ocean.

“Here, people view the ocean for two purposes: one for the ‘blue economy’ and the other, by conservationists, for the species,” says Spartegus.

“But my life in a traditional fishing community is being endangered.”