Eight of the birds of prey are released into wild on island where use of poison bait has left them virtually extinct

Helena SmithMon 10 Oct 2022 00.00 EDT

They’re vital for the ecosystem, play a crucial role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and, for bird lovers, are an ecotourism delight. But in Cyprus, where prolific use of poison bait has made the Griffon vulture virtually extinct, campaigners are taking action.

“Island-wide, we had just eight,” says Melpo Apostolidou at BirdLife Cyprus, which is coordinating the EU-funded life with vultures project to boost what was once a thriving population. “That’s the lowest number of any country in Europe.”

The battle to revive the Mediterranean island’s most threatened bird of prey was turbocharged last week when eight Griffons, imported from Spain, were released into the wild. For ornithologists, the move has not come a moment too late. “There is no time to lose,” says Apostolidou. “Restocking is vital. We released 15 in September and will be bringing in another 15 next month before releasing them as well in the spring.”

Changing farming techniques and decreasing staples of available food are partly to blame for the decline of a bird whose scavenging role as a recycler of natural carcasses is deemed essential. So, too, is the loss of natural habitats and collisions with overhead power lines.

In Cyprus, a culture of using banned poisons to reduce perceived pests, especially foxes and dogs, is also seen as the greatest cause of the Griffon becoming critically endangered.

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Over the past year, numbers have dropped precipitously as the scavengers have fed off poisoned carrion. “It’s a serious problem,” said Nikos Kassinis, a senior officer at the island’s Game and Fauna Service.

After centuries of having Griffon vulture colonies nationwide, there is now only one nesting colony high up in the Episkopi cliffs in the British sovereign base area.

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Kassinis said authorities had also stepped in with the Game and Fauna Service setting up feeding stations for the birds. Earlier this year dog units – border collies specially trained to detect poison bait and poisoned victims – began patrolling rural areas.

Replenishment of the species would be good for nature and indicative of the local ecosystem’s overall health, conservationists claim. Recent studies have shown that vultures not only provide what the EU project described as “a cost-effective and environmentally beneficial carcass disposal service,” but play a central role in regulating the spread of diseases such as rabies.

Spain has Europe’s largest population of Griffon vultures, with the latest imports to be released from an acclimatisation aviary in the mountains north of the coastal city of Limassol. “We’ll be monitoring them closely,” said Apostolidou, adding that the Griffon have been tagged with GPS transmitters to track their movements.

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“The Spanish birds are juveniles, and it is very important that they mix and learn from the local birds. So far we’re pleased to report that although it’s still early, some of them are doing just that.”

Tales of the prowess of Griffon vultures are legendary. Ornithologists recorded one bird, named after the wine god Dionysus, watching over the egg of a would-be hatchling in the Greek Rhodope Mountains for 33 days after losing his female mate at the time of incubation. The feat was seen as indicative of the vultures’ parental skills.

In Greece as in Bulgaria, local populations, once also dangerously low, have gradually been restored. But with numbers so down in Cyprus, campaigners say they cannot afford to be sanguine.

“Imagine if we hadn’t brought in any birds at all,” says Apostolidou. “The Griffon vulture would be extinct, but dealing with the poisoning problem must also now be a priority.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/10/its-a-serious-problem-battle-to-save-griffon-vulture-heats-up-in-cyprus

A ruling against the state’s Prop 12 animal welfare law could affect a range of regulations across the country

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Marina BolotnikovaMon 3 Oct 2022 06.00 EDT

Next week, the US supreme court will hear oral arguments in a case that could put climate, public health and animal welfare regulations across the country on the chopping block – from California’s ban on gas-powered cars by 2035 to state bans on food packaging that contains BPA or lead.

The case will consider the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 12, a law that bans the sale of meat and eggs from animals raised using certain kinds of extreme confinement. The pork industry has been fighting Prop 12 since it passed by ballot measure in 2018 – with more than 62% of the vote and the backing of animal advocacy groups like the Humane Society of the United States – because it bans gestation crates: metal enclosures where pregnant pigs are kept for most of their lives that are so small that they can’t turn around or stretch their limbs.

The crates are standard practice in the pork industry even though, according to a supreme court brief filed by 378 veterinarians and animal welfare scientists, they “cause profound, avoidable suffering and deprive pigs of a minimally acceptable level of welfare”. According to a brief by the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and other groups, they can also contribute to disease spread to humans.

All of the pork industry’s legal challenges to Prop 12 so far have been unsuccessful, but in March, the supreme court agreed to hear its case. The US Department of Justice has since filed a brief backing the pork industry, a move that surprised many observers, especially since a group of 15 Democratic and independent senators previously urged the solicitor general to support Prop 12. (The Trump administration also briefed in favor of the pork industry when the case was being considered by a lower court.)

A decision is expected between December and next June.

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At issue is whether Prop 12 violates the constitution’s “dormant commerce clause” by imposing an unreasonable burden on interstate trade. While several states ban gestation crates within their borders, California’s law takes the added step of banning the sale of pork produced with gestation crates anywhere in the world. The National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation, the two lobby groups that brought the case, argue that because California imports almost all the pork it consumes from other states, Prop 12 would force the industry to overhaul its practices to cater to Californians.

Neither organization provided comment for this story.

That the supreme court took up the case at all surprised some court watchers, because the pork industry’s argument breaks with past precedent. “The constitution does not guarantee the right to pork producers to have an uninhibited national market,” said Kelsey Eberly, a legislative policy fellow at Harvard law school. “The whole idea behind the commerce clause is to prevent discrimination on interstate commerce,” she said; if, for example, California were holding out-of-state pork to a different standard than pork raised in-state, which is not the case with Prop 12.

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This could signal the court’s interest in putting stricter limits on states’ ability to regulate commerce. “A lot of the time, the United States supreme court hears cases not so much to resolve the dispute between these particular parties, but to announce doctrine,” said Mark Rosen, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, who co-authored a brief defending the constitutionality of Prop 12.

It’s common for state and local laws to regulate the sale of goods produced in other states, which means that if Prop 12 goes, these too could be at risk of invalidation. According to a recent Harvard Law School report by Eberly, these could include low-carbon fuel standards, state bans on carcinogenic ingredients in personal care products, and lead and BPA in food containers, among others. California’s planned ban on gas cars would also be at risk, as well as animal welfare laws, like California’s ban on fur sales and hundreds of cities’ bans on selling animals bred in puppy mills.

Lobby groups for other industries have filed briefs urging the supreme court to overturn Prop 12, including the pharmaceutical industry and producers of foie gras – a meat product made by force-feeding ducks to engorge their livers, which has been banned in California and New York City.

Part of the pork industry’s case relies on the argument that Prop 12 would force big changes throughout the entire industry, not just on farms producing pork for California, because, it argues, “it is impracticable, in the complex, multi-stage pork production process, to trace a single cut of pork back to a particular sow housed in a particular manner.”

But many observers have cast doubt on this claim, including the UC Davis agricultural economists Richard Sexton and Daniel Sumner, who have studied the economic impacts of Prop 12 with funding from the National Pork Board. “Not only are [the industry’s] arguments flawed as a reflection of basic economic incentives, but they are factually implausible,” Sexton and Sumner wrote in a brief to the supreme court.

Some pork sold nationwide is already labeled crate-free, a claim that requires tracing. “That’s modern agriculture,” Sexton said. “Products are being differentiated in a whole variety of ways: organic, GMO-free, different properties related to animal welfare, antibiotic-free.”

Less than 10% of North American pork production will need to convert to crate-free to satisfy California’s demand, Sexton said. “So it’s a much smaller infringement in reality on commerce and pork production in the US than is being claimed.”

While the pork lobby claims that Prop 12’s requirements are unreasonably onerous, large pork companies have told their investors a different story, indicating that they would be able to comply without difficulty. In a 2020 earnings call, the Tyson CEO, Donnie King, said Prop 12 represents only 4% of its production and that the company “can do multiple programs simultaneously, including Prop 12”. Hormel said in a statement that it “faces no risk of material losses from compliance with Proposition 12”. Smithfield, the country’s biggest pork producer, stated in its 2021 sustainability report that it would comply with Prop 12 and a similar law passed in Massachusetts. A representative from the California department of food and agriculture confirmed the “relatively straightforward” process of pig tracing after visiting pork producers across the country.

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Sexton and Sumner’s research found that California retail pork prices would increase about 7.2% as a result of Prop 12, but would slightly decrease elsewhere in North America. The law applies only to whole, uncooked pork cuts, like bacon and pork chops, not ground pork, combination products like hotdogs and pizzas, or pre-cooked products like deli meats. Pork products not covered by the law won’t see price increases.

While the supreme court’s pro-business inclination has made many advocates worried about Prop 12, the outcome is unpredictable. Two of the court’s conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, don’t believe the dormant commerce clause is appropriate doctrine, Rosen said, “and there may be others who haven’t yet declared themselves”.

“I’m hoping that the court, once it gets to oral argument, is rethinking the wisdom of granting this petition,” Eberly said. “Because the arguments on the pork producers’ side are just exceptionally weak.”