https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/florida-man-stole-alligator-from-golf-course-beat-it-cops/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

By Joshua Rhett Miller

July 16, 2021 | 11:44amhttps://players.brightcove.net/4137224153001/6aIMRO3kiI_default/index.html?amp=1&videoId=6263962360001&nypostPlaylistType=iris&playsinline=true

A Florida man stole an alligator from a mini-golf course and tried to heave the reptile onto the roof of a building to “teach it a lesson,” authorities said.

William “Bubba” Hodge, 32, was arrested early Thursday in Daytona Beach Shores, where cops spotted him attempting to launch the gator onto the roof of a business by its tail, police said.

Cops spotted Hodge, of Ft. Myers, slamming the animal against an awning as he attempted to hurl it atop the Metz Lounge, WOFL reported.

He also threw the alligator on the ground and stomped on it twice, the outlet said.

Hodge, who immediately surrendered when cops approached him, told officers he hopped a fence to an alligator enclosure at Congo River Golf in Daytona Beach and stole the beast, according to an arrest report obtained by the station.https://11316115a599474c8f7e7b3fca5fe1dd.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0

Asked why he was throwing the alligator in the air by its tail, Hodge told cops he was “teaching it a lesson,” the arrest report shows.

“The alligator was returned to management of Congo River Golf from where Hodge claimed to have stolen it after a brief wrestling match,” the Daytona Beach Shores Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

A photo posted by the department on Facebook shows the small alligator on a sidewalk as officers take Hodge into custody.

The gator, meanwhile, is expected to survive, WESH reported.

Hodge remains in custody as of early Friday at the Volusia County Jail on charges including animal cruelty, alligator poaching, burglary of an unoccupied dwelling, criminal mischief and petit theft.

His bond is set at $4,500, online records show. It’s unclear if he’s hired an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

While in custody of the Daytona Beach Shores Department of Public Safety, Hodge also tried to flood a holding cell by stuffing paper into a toilet and a drain while threatening to flood the entire facility, WKMG reported.

An employee at Congo River Golf referred The Post to a manager who did not immediately return a message seeking comment early Friday. Guests at its eight Florida locations can feed dozens of alligators during their visit, according to its website.

“Grab a pole and step right up to try a gator feeding experience like no other,” the site reads. “It’s always an adventure at Congo River Golf!”

Photos © Jim Robertson

https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/election-matters/ted-nugent-hired-as-spokesman-for-group-that-pushed-for-wisconsins-gray-wolf-hunt/article_4ae061ea-fe5f-5f65-89fa-bf1eae1c9575.html

• Jessie Opoien | The Capital Times
• Jul 15, 2021

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Jessie Opoien | The Capital Times

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The Kansas-based hunting rights group that successfully sued to force Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources to hold a wolf hunt in February has a new spokesman — the Motor City Madman himself, Ted Nugent.

Hunter Nation is headed by Luke Hilgemann, of Marshfield — a veteran of Wisconsin politics and the former CEO of Americans for Prosperity.

“Ted Nugent has been an icon in the hunting and outdoor community for decades and no one has fought harder to protect the rights of hunters than Uncle Ted,” Hilgemann said in a statement. “We are beyond excited to officially partner with Ted to help us grow our army of hunters, increase our impact on policy and continue to activate millions of American hunters to vote their values and protect our traditions.”

In addition to speaking on the organization’s behalf, Nugent will be appear in a daily “Nightly Nuge” segment that will appear on the group’s website.

Hunter Nation’s influence in Wisconsin is controversial, depending on one’s views on the gray wolf hunt. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted federal protections on the species in January after determining it no longer met the criteria for a threatened or endangered species. The decision allowed states to take population management into their own hands, including the use of hunting and trapping seasons.

The Wisconsin DNR voted against holding a hunting season a month after the wolf was delisted, planning instead to wait until the coming fall to allow for time to update its wolf management plan and consult with tribes and the public. Represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Hilgemann and Hunter Nation succeeded in overturning the agency’s decision.

Wisconsin hunters harvested 218 wolves in February, causing the DNR to end the hunt early. The overall quota set for the hunt was 200 wolves, although 81 of those were allocated to the Wisconsin Ojibwe tribes, which chose not to participate in the hunt.

Like the wolf hunt and its advocates, Nugent himself is controversial — earning notoriety over the last few decades for his racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments. 

Endangered Elk Starve While the National Park Service Stands By

By Ingrid L. TaylorJuly 15, 202

This summer, as California is experiencing some of the hottest conditions on record, around 293 endangered tule elk isolated on the Point Reyes National Seashore are in a fight for their lives—with no help from the National Park Service, the organization tasked with their protection. Confined behind an eight-foot fence erected by the Park Service to keep the elk away from nearby cattle ranches and within a 2,600-acre parcel known as the Tomales Point Elk Reserve, many of these elk face painful, lingering deaths due to disappearing water and food resources. On the other side of the fence, over 5,500 cattle graze on National Parks land—land that the native tule elk cannot access.

“It’s bad,” says Skyler Thomas, a documentary filmmaker who has been closely following the plight of the tule elk. He’d just returned from three days in the Point Reyes preserve, where he observed sick and starving elk whose hind ends were caked with dried fecal matter, as well as major sources of their water that were either completely dry or had shrunk to small, muddy pools. On previous visits to the National Seashore, Matthew Polvorosa Kline, a photographer who’s raised awareness about the elk’s situation, showed Thomas several dead elk, including one whose antlers were caught in the fence. Kline has identified up to 18 elk corpses since last summer. Thomas notes, “The ribs are showing. The animals are barely moving. I was watching an animal that was eating while starving to death… they’re dying.”Play00:00-1:17:09MuteSettingsEnter fullscreenhttps://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/z9OEQOy3v0E?autoplay=0&controls=0&disablekb=1&playsinline=0&cc_load_policy=0&cc_lang_pref=auto&widget_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fsentientmedia.org%2Fendangered-elk-starve-while-the-u-s-national-park-service-stands-by%2F&noCookie=true&rel=0&showinfo=0&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fsentientmedia.org&widgetid=1Play

National Park Service sued over negligence

Thomas, along with other California residents and The Animal Legal Defense Fund, are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that’s been filed by Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic demanding immediate relief for the suffering elk and asserting that the National Park Service has been negligent in its management of the tule elk herds trapped at Tomales Point. The legal action seeks to compel the National Park Service to intervene on behalf of the elk, including providing emergency food and water resources to prevent massive deaths similar to those in 2013-2015, when nearly half of the population succumbed to starvation and dehydration, dropping their numbers from 540 to 283. In 2020, another 153 elk died from lack of adequate food and water. 

The lawsuit also challenges the National Park Service’s failure to update the 1980 General Management Plan and the 1998 Tule Elk Management Plan in the face of ongoing drought and diminishing resources. Jack Gescheidt, another plaintiff for the lawsuit, suggests that the National Park’s management strategies are “designed to actually kill elk to reduce their numbers because that’s what ranchers want, which just shows ranches and the private cattle operations’ interests now dominate National Park policy for Point Reyes.” 

Harvard Law attorney Kate Barnekow says, “The most obvious issue here is just the absolute lack of humanity with how the Park Service has been handling this issue…this is the worst way that an animal could die. It’s a slow death. It’s painful and it’s horrific.”

Animals suffering at Point Reyes National Seashore

The wild tule elk are not the only animals suffering at Point Reyes. Animals on dairy and ranching operations run by some of the biggest names in the state occupy 18,000 acres of Point Reyes on land that could be used by elk and other native species. South of the fence at Tomales Point, rows and rows of small plastic huts line what should be pristine coastal preserves. Inside these huts are calves who have been taken from their mothers so the milk meant for their nourishment can be sold. In other parts of the rich seaside, thousands of cattle roam, creating deep ruts in the land, consuming 50 pounds of forage daily (an elk consumes around nine pounds), using over 150,000 gallons of water, contaminating native pastures with their manure, and creating toxic runoff into the surrounding waterways and beaches. Two small free ranging tule elk herds also live on the peninsula. These herds have come under fire from the ranchers and dairies, who contend that they damage fences and compete with cattle for grazing, despite the fact that cattle operations have resulted in significant environmental degradation and dangerously high levels of fecal contamination (40 times the state health standard) on the seashore. 

The National Park Service claims, however, that these dairy operations, which pollute the environment and cause immense animal suffering, are cultural and historical resources that must be preserved. When the National Seashore was established in the 1960s, these “historic” cattle ranchers sold their land to the federal government to the tune of around $57 million ($382 million in current dollars) and then were allowed to lease the land for decades. The National Park Service has elected to extend their leases repeatedly. As a result, cattle operations on Point Reyes National Seashore benefit from cheaper grazing fees and no property taxes, all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers on land that was intended to be preserved for wildlife and public enjoyment.  

And even though the 2020 Environmental Impact Statement commissioned by the National Park Service admits the land would benefit from removal of the cattle operations, the 2021 budget justification for the National Park Service reaffirms its commitment to maintaining the ranches and dairies, and this doesn’t bode well for the elk at Tomales Point. As Barnekow puts it, “the cultural resources that need to be protected and preserved are the wildlife and the wilderness in the area, not a much more modern invention that confines animals, tortures animals, and is entirely unnecessary.”

National Park Service abdicates its duties  

While the National Park Service has repeatedly maintained the Tomales Point elk are dying from starvation rather than dehydration, in June 2021, they placed three water troughs at the south end of the fenced area, in just one area of the park far removed from the elk’s natural water sources. In the meantime, Thomas has observed elk become ensnared in mud while searching for water at their usual locations. He’s also noticed decreasing native plants and plant diversity. Some elk, desperate for food, have perished from eating poisonous plants, and yet the National Park Service has no plans to provide emergency forage for the elk or remove the fence to allow them to seek additional sources of food and water. 

Cristina Stella, an attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, contends that the National Park Service must urgently be held accountable for the endangered tule elk. “The elk have a right to that land,” she says, “and the Park Service is required to care for them. It’s absolutely inappropriate and irresponsible to elevate the interest of cattle ranchers with which they have a financial relationship over the interest of the elk that they are legally required to protect.” 

A National Park Service representative declined to comment.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that 15 dead elk have been observed on the Point Reyes National Seashore since last summer. The correct number is 18.Read More

24 Animals That Are Going Extinct, and Why It’s Happening

We Need to Protect Marine Life Before It Disappears

A Conservationist’s Guide to Protecting the Oceans

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0715-pandemic-warning-signs-20210714-fqmdet3v55ehbjzgkm5nopp73u-story.html

By RONN PINEOFOR THE BALTIMORE SUN |JUL 14, 2021 AT 11:36 AM

We should have seen it coming. There had been too many near misses for devastating human pandemics: the Ebola virus, beginning in 1976; the “bird” flu H5N1, first appearing in 1997; SARS in 2003; Zika, beginning in 2007; MERS, starting in 2012. There were others.

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And yet it seemed to take us by surprise. We were not ready. We had not learned the lessons of prior pandemics. We had failed to follow the advice of those who work most closely on these issues. Indeed, the Trump administration actually cut off funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s pandemic early warning system, known as “PREDICT,” just months before the first case of COVID-19.

Several factors are making pandemics like the one we’re in more likely in the future. Climate change is spreading the range for vectors that convey disease. As the atmosphere heats up, new homes have appeared for the aëdes mosquitoes that spread Zika, chikungunya, dengue and yellow fever, and for anopheles mosquitoes, the vector for malaria.

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Modern commercial animal compounds pack together nearly identical species that can easily infect one another. Chickens, which at the turn of the last century were more of special treat, are now a main source of protein in the human diet; chickens today outnumber humans by more than three to one. Hogs and cattle live their brief lives crammed together end to end — eating, defecating, cheek to jowl. Injected with antibiotics to promote quick fattening, the feed lots offer up a rich microbial soup. Trouble is being cooked up there.

Since 1950 the world population has tripled. At 7.8 billion people and counting, we are pushing our numbers all over the globe, just at a time when some regions are becoming too dry and hot for people to safely live there. As humans claim more and more territory, we have moved into animal habitats heretofore left alone. Zoonoses, animal diseases, are increasingly spilling over from wild creatures into humans. And because there are so many more humans now, maintaining a chain of infections is becoming more likely. Microbes mutate. As they pass into humans, if one stray mutation can readily reproduce, more of it will follow.Advertisement00:0003:08https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.471.1_en.html#goog_797246750https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.471.1_en.html#goog_797246752https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.471.1_en.html#goog_797246754

Once that happens anywhere, it happens everywhere. Traveling halfway around the world, once the stuff of wild flights of imagination, now takes 16 hours flying time. People infected with a novel zoonosis that morning can easily be spreading the same microbe anywhere else in the world that very evening. We are all only as safe as the least protected person.

The wealthy nations and developing societies have different experiences. It is mainly about financial resources. Wealthy nations have better fed populations. Wealthy nations have superior sanitation and potable water infrastructure. Wealthy nations have stronger vaccination programs.

During the current crisis wealthy nations could better afford pandemic relief programs. The wealthier nations led the way in vaccine development, and they have begun to use the vaccines for their own populations first.

So, this pandemic is ending in parts of the wealthier nations, although not yet in much of the less developed world.

But then the next one won’t be long in getting here. We should see it coming.