Ken GordonThe Columbus DispatchView Comments0:390:42https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.495.1_en.html#goog_576726997
One person died Saturday morning in a boating accident at Alum Creek State Park, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
A department release said four people were duck hunting on the west side of the lake early in the morning when their boat began taking on water.
Multiple fire departments respondedto the scene. According to a dispatch from Delaware County 9-1-1, divers were deployed to searchfor an elderly male.
ODNR said two boaters were taken to a hospital, whereone was pronounced dead.
A Claremore hunter broke both his legs after falling nearly 20 feet out of his deer stand and is now recovering.
He said it was terrifying, painful, and totally preventable. Colby Clark’s advice for hunters is to wear their harnesses. He said he’s been hunting since he was 8-years-old and knows what he’s doing but he missed a step getting out of his deer stand and now he won’t be able to walk for a whole year.
Colby Clark was in his element at the end of deer gun season, 18 feet up…
The presidential decree will create more than 23,000 square miles of newly protected ocean around one of the planet’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems — a place where penguins and tropical fish swim with sea turtles and sea lions, as migrating hammerheads and tuna maneuver through the cold waters to mate, spawn and feed. The protections will extend to Costa Rica’s southern maritime border.Website Content Hub – Single Source Content HubAdhttp://www.contentful.com/content/hub
The new reserve will “protect the submarine mountains” that extend northeast of the Galapagos Archipelago toward Costa Rica’s Cocos Islands, and keep fishing and long-lining out of an area that animals use as a “subway” to traverse this environmentally rich area, said Gustavo Manrique, Ecuador’s environment minister.
The new area will expand the 51,352-square-mile Galapagos Marine Reserve by nearly 50 percent, and bolster a chain of reserves that South American nations such as Cost Rica and Panama have built along the Pacific coast.
“It’s remarkable and incredible how these nations have come together to build this marine network,” said Matt Rand, senior director of marine habitat protection for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Forming these protected areas has been a focus of Ecuador’s new president, who was elected last year.
Ecuador has one of the largest Pacific fishing fleets in South America, and is the largest tuna producer in the Western Hemisphere, accounting for roughly 4% of the world’s total tuna catch.
“This decree is an incredible precedent,” said Norman Wray, the former president of the Government Council of the Galapagos, noting that the fishing industry worked with the government to create the reserves. It also “helps to reduce fishing pressure over the Marine Reserve of the Galapagos.”
The reserve has become a shelter and nursery for a wide variety of sea life. It is a place where fish, sharks and rays are protected from over- and incidental fishing, high-volume shipping traffic, and pollution. As a result, it is also a place where the fishing is good — and boats line up around the perimeter hoping to catch that bounty as animals migrate out.
“That’s how it should be,” said Rand of the Pew Charitable Trusts. “A healthy ecosystem is going to produce fish. It’s good for biodiversity and it’s good for a sustainable fishing fleet.”
Finland is joining Sweden and Norway in culling wolves this winter to control their population, as conservation groups appeal to the European Union to take action against the slaughter.
Hunters in Sweden have already shot dead most of their annual target of 27 wolves, while Finland is to authorise the killing of 20 wolves in its first “population management cull” for seven years.
Norway will kill about 60% of its wolves this winter – 51 animals – to maintain a maximum of just three breeding pairs in the country, with its population including animals living between Sweden and Norway limited to four to six breeding pairs.Advertisement
Conservationists accuse Nordic nations of creating the most hostile environment for wolves in western Europe and flouting EU laws that protect the species, which has made a comeback in recent years but remains endangered in many countries.
“Its a horrific situation,” said Siri Martinsen, chief executive of Noah, an animal rights group that is challenging Norway’s wolf hunts in its courts. “Norway’s wolf management is out of control and they are just shooting wolves because some people don’t like them. It is outrageous to hold a species at a critically endangered level.”
In Norway, 5% of the country is designated a wolf protection zone, where the protection of wolves is a priority. Despite this, 25 wolves will be killed inside the protection zone this winter, unless the court action by Noah, together with WWF Norway and Association Our Predators, is successful.
Wolves found outside the protection zone are not allowed to breed and are killed if a regional committee decides they “may pose a threat” to livestock or semi-domesticated reindeer.
Christian Anton Smedshaug, state secretary to Norway’s minister of climate and environment, said: “Keeping the Norwegian wolf population at this level is a political compromise reached by a majority in parliament in 2016 in order to keep both wolves and livestock production in Norway and bridge different societal views in Norway.
“The primary concern for managing large carnivores in Norway is to maintain livestock grazing, with as few losses as possible. Furthermore, husbandry also contributes to common goods like cultural landscapes and biological diversity.
“Wolves prey on game animals, and the presence of wolves may consequently affect hunting locally. Wolves may also pose a threat to dogs used for small and big game hunting. Reducing effects on hunting is, however, not a main objective behind the population target or a main focus in the management of large carnivores.”
In Sweden, wildlife groups say the 395 population estimate for 2020-21 could have fallen below 300 by that winter’s end.
“Sweden has promised the EU we should not go below 300 – that’s the bare minimum,” said Magnus Orrebrant, chair of the NGO Svenska Rovdjursföreningen. “We have informed the EU that 300 is way too low. We have habitat that could house more than 1,000 wolves.”
“The common denominator in Norway, Sweden and Finland is the strong hunting organisations which make the politicians worried,” added Orrebrant. “There are no farms near some of the packs they are hunting this winter. The wolves have not created any problems whatsoever but it’s an important place to hunt moose and hunters want a large moose population.”
Hunters also object to wolves because they kill much-prized hunting dogs, widely used in Nordic nations to track game and deer.
Finland’s wolf population of 300 is the highest for a century, according to Sami Niemi, a ministry of agriculture and forestry official tasked with wolf management.
“The long-term goal is to reach the genetic viability of the wolf population,” said Niemi. “When we set down the goal for the management hunt, we took into consideration we weren’t aiming for a population reduction. The goal for the management hunt is to increase the tolerance to the wolf population especially among people who share their environment with wolves.”
Of the argument a wolf cull reassures anxious rural communities that wolf populations are under control, and thereby reduces illegal killing, Sami Säynevirta of Luonto-Liitto, a Finnish wildlife charity, said: “This argument has been made for many years but we still have the problem of poaching. The authorities should really act to prevent it.
“There needs to be a change of attitude towards wildlife. It’s important to talk about the benefits of the wolf – they play a key role in a healthy ecosystem but news about wolves is pretty much concentrated on the negative side.”
Prof Fiona Matthews, founding chair of Mammal Conservation Europe, said: “It seems extraordinary that countries are blatantly doing things that are illegal under the EU habitats directive. You’d think these countries would be able to live with their predators particularly given their low population densities. It seems to be driven by hunting interests and the argument that wolves are a danger to hunting dogs.”
Wildlife groups in Finland and Sweden have appealed to the European Commission and the European court of justice to declare the wolf culls illegal but both national governments maintain that derogations from the habitats directive allow for legal culls.
In Norway, Martinsen called on other European countries “to intervene and file complaints with the Bern Convention so we can stop this situation where Norway is leading the way to tolerating an extinction policy and making these conventions not worth the paper they are written on”.
A major supplier of animal feed is still buying soya and corn from a farm linked to deforestation in the Amazon, despite having pledged to clean up its global supply chains.
Cargill, a giant agricultural multinational that sells feed to British chicken farms, buys crops from a farm growing soybeans on deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon.
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Greenpeace Unearthed, Repórter Brasil and Ecostorm uncovered Cargill’s links with the Brazilian supplier farm, Fazenda Conquista.
The farm in the Brazilian Amazon was responsible for eight sq km of deforestation since 2013, with multiple forest fires recorded in 2020. Its trading with Cargill includes supplying soya, and the farm has signed a deal to deliver 5,700 tonnes of corn to the company this year. It is not known whether the crops in question were grown on a recently deforested part of the farm.Advertisement
The findings raise questions about Cargill’s due diligence process. The company has pledged not to buy soya beans from land deforested in the Amazon after 2008, and last year committed to moving faster to eliminate “commodity-driven deforestation”.
But Cargill has also been repeatedly linked to deforestation. In 2020, the Bureau and Unearthed reported 800 sq km of deforestation and 12,000 fires since 2015 on land used by Cargill soya suppliers in the Cerrado, another protected biome in Brazil.
The company exports thousands of tonnes of Brazilian soya to the UK each year for use in animal feed. Campaigners said the findings highlighted the hidden environmental costs of cheap meat.
“Meat chickens are the most intensively farmed animals in the UK with over a billion slaughtered each year,” Lindsay Duncan, the campaigns manager at World Animal Protection UK, said.
“The growing demand for cheap chicken leads to the growing demand for soy, causing large-scale deforestation and devastating environmental degradation, which destroys the natural habitats of millions of wild animals.”
As much as 80% of all soya grown across the world is fed to livestock. The UK imported about 3.5m tonnes of soya beans in 2019, with roughly half of that ending up in chicken feed.
About a quarter of the UK’s imported soya comes from Brazil, and the vast majority of that is traded by Cargill.
Cargill said: “We are committed to eliminating deforestation from our supply chains in the shortest possible time, and we are accelerating our efforts.” Responding to the findings about Fazenda Conquista, the statement continued: “If fire has been used and has impacted the native forest or any irregularity is confirmed, we will take the appropriate measures.”
The state of the land in question before 2013 is disputed: Fazenda Conquista’s management said in a statement that the farm had permission from the local environmental agency to carry out a “controlled burn” on the land because it had originally been deforested in the early 1980s.
However, satellite imagery shows that the forest had been regrowing since then, and Brazil’s deforestation monitoring programme flagged the clearing in 2013 as deforestation.
The local environment agency, Sema, confirmed it had authorised a burn on the farm in 2012 to clear pasture with some degree of regeneration. But the agency said no licences for full deforestation inside the farm had been authorised, and admitted that although it had lacked high-resolution satellite imagery prior to 2019 to identify real-time deforestation, a recent analysis suggested there had been deforestation within the property. Sema said it would investigate further.
In an independent analysis of satellite imagery, the NGO Aidenvironment also deemed the land to have been deforested. This year the farm will be blacklisted under the Soy Moratorium, a voluntary industry agreement that bars the trade in soya beans on Amazon land deforested after 2008. The Working Group for Soya, which oversees the moratorium, said it had identified an area of deforestation that had been sown with soya in the last planting season.
A reporter from the Bureau visited the farm this year and saw soya beans growing on the land.
Destruction of the Amazon rainforest has serious consequences for the climate, with experts fearing the biome might soon cross a “tipping point” at which it begins to shift from lush rainforest into a drier savannah, releasing large quantities of stored carbon into the atmosphere.
According to Brazil’s space agency, Amazon deforestation soared 22% over the 12 months to July last year.
Major British food companies have adopted “zero deforestation” certification schemes to tackle the problem but “dirty” soya linked to deforestation continues to enter supply chains.
Wrestling camel Ozarslan Bey, adorned with colourful ornaments, takes part in the Camel Beauty Contest ahead of the annual 40th Efes Selcuk Camel Wrestling Festival, in the Aegean town of Selcuk, near Izmir, Turkey January 15, 2022. Picture taken January 15, 2022. REUTERS/Murad SezerRead More
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ISTANBUL, Jan 16 (Reuters) – A traditional camel wrestling festival in western Turkey that attracts thousands of people every year is drawing criticism from animal rights activists who say the big ruminants are abused and injured during the event.
The 40th International Camel Wrestling Festival was held in Selcuk, part of the Aegean province of Izmir, on Sunday with 152 camels sporting saddles and ornamental cloths and embroidery of various patterns and colours on their humps and necks.Report ad
The camels are brought into a sandy arena to tangle with each other, with referees and other personnel nearby, although they are made to wear muzzles to prevent bite wounds.
Thousands of people set up tables and chairs on a hill adjacent to the arena and cook on barbecues, eat and drink while they watch the animals go at it.
Gulgun Hamamcioglu, the Izmir representative for the Animal Rights Federation (HAYTAP), said goading animals to fight each other was a “big crime”.Report ad
“You see an animal, a live being fight in front of you and it is suffering, is wounded and maybe they kill each other. People enjoy this and maybe make a financial profit,” she said.
“Please let’s all together stop this picture of shame, this scene that makes us ashamed of humanity,” Hamamcioglu added.
Mehmet Falakali, former head of the tourism ministry’s Selcuk office, said the camels cannot seriously hurt each other and there were personnel to separate them if clashes become too intense.Report ad
“The people who are tasked with separating the camels pull them away from each other when the referee sees a (negative development),” he said.
“There is certainly nothing such as their breaking each others’ hooves or biting each other,” added Falakali, who has helped organise the festival for the past 35 years.
Necip Cotura, who has three camels and participates in the festival as a hobby, said the event was a longtime tradition. “It is something that is done with love. It is not a fight, it is wrestling – just like how humans wrestle,” he said.
Yahya Yavuz, another participant, said his family takes care of their four camels like their children and that his camels would not hurt others.
A new report has revealed that a record number of Americans are now alarmed about the climate crisis.
Thestudy, published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, found that Americans overall are becoming increasingly worried about global heating, more engaged with the issue and more supportive of finding solutions to the issue.
The study categorized Americans into six distinct groups based on their beliefs, attitudes, policy support and behavior about climate change.
The six distinct groups are: the Alarmed, who are the most engaged and very worried about global warming; the Concerned, who think global warming is a significant threat but prioritize…
Taking a page straight out of the Trump administration’s anti-conservation playbook, late last year the Biden administration quietly pushed forward a plan that would put two of Florida’s most beloved and endangered animals on the fast-track to extinction.
Despite President Biden’s directive that all federal agencies follow the best available science, buried in the administration workplan that sets the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s priorities is a proposal to strip protections for theKey deerand theFlorida panther.
This proposal flouts the undeniable reality that these animals face an escalating loss of habitat that threatens their existence.The best-available scientific information makes clear bothspecies need more protection, not less.
With only an estimated 200 individuals left, Florida panthers are considered among the most endangered big cats on Earth. Their limited habitat in southwest Florida…
Laughter is one of the most natural impulses in humans. Most babies start to laugh out loud at around 3 to 4 months, far earlier than they are able to speak or walk. Expressing enjoyment or delight comes naturally to us, but we’re not the only creatures who communicate with giggles.
Researchers at UCLA have identified 65 species of animals who make “play vocalizations,” or what we would consider laughter. Some of those vocalizations were already well documented—we’ve known for a while that apes and rats laugh—but others may come as a surprise. Along with a long list of primate species, domestic cows and dogs, foxes, seals, mongooses and three bird species are prone to laughter as well. (Many bird species can mimic human laughter, but that’s not the same as making their own play vocalizations.)
Primatologist and UCLA anthropology graduate student Sasha Winkler and UCLA professor of communication Greg Bryant shared their findings in an article in the journal Bioacoustics.
The authors explored various play vocalization sounds, recording them as noisy or tonal, loud or quiet, high- or low-pitched, short or long, a single call or rhythmic pattern.
But really, what we want to see is what animal laughter sounds like from various species, right? While the researchers said that it can be hard to document laughter in the wild, especially among animals with quieter vocalizations, we do have some examples captured on video.
Check out these foxes laughing like little kids:
Or maybe little kids on helium. How fun is that?
Ever seen a bonobo chimp laugh? Just as cute.
I’m not sure if tickling a baby bonobo is sweet or torturous, though these researchers surely know what they’re doing. It’s always delightful to see the instinctual playfulness of primates.
Laughter in some animals isn’t as audibly apparent as it is in these foxes and chimps, though. Researchers from Humboldt University of Berlin found that rats laugh when they are tickled—and appear to enjoy tickling, as they seek it out—but their vocalizations are ultrasonic, so it’s hard to hear them without special instruments.
The UCLA researchers shared that the study of laughter in animals can help us better understand our own evolutionary behavior.
“This work lays out nicely how a phenomenon once thought to be particularly human turns out to be closely tied to behavior shared with species separated from humans by tens of millions of years,” Bryant said, according to UCLA.
“When we laugh, we are often providing information to others that we are having fun and also inviting others to join,” Winkler said. “Some scholars have suggested that this kind of vocal behavior is shared across many animals who play, and as such, laughter is our human version of an evolutionarily old vocal play signal.”
Raise your hand if you just want to see a cow laughing for real now.
A North Carolina man is charged with multiple hunting offenses after an accident last week in which a woman was shot in the chest with an arrow as he was handing her a bow, authorities said.
