“If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change, the highest priority must be to reduce CO2 pollution to zero at the earliest possible date,” Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA, saidBy Morgan SmithJune 08, 2021 03:27 PMhttps://3cd329176f5fdaeebc6c012a2cf17e7c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlhttps://3cd329176f5fdaeebc6c012a2cf17e7c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlADVERTISEMENT
CREDIT: NICOLÒ CAMPO/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY
Despite many people staying indoors and off the roads for the past year amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,new datafrom the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows carbon dioxide levels have soared to a record high, alarming many scientists that the climate-change crisis is quickly getting worse.
Theresearch, published Monday by a group of scientists from NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, measured carbon dioxide levels, the chief human-caused greenhouse gas, at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in May, when carbon levels in the air peak.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide saw a monthly average of 419…
Customers select seafood at a wet market in Dandong, Liaoning Province, China, in 2017. (Philip Wen/Reuters)
Speaking of wet markets, a new research paper offers the results of an exhaustive review of the animals sold in the wet markets in Wuhan before the outbreak of COVID-19. Perhaps most surprisingly, the review of more than 36,000 animals of 38 species in 17 wet market shops concludes that pangolins and bats were not sold in the wet markets of the city. But the study cannot rule out that some other species of animal sold in the city’s wet markets was the source of the virus.
The investigation of the animals sold sounds pretty thorough:
X.X. was granted unique and complete access to trading practices. On each visit, vendors were asked what species they had sold over the preceding month and in what numbers, along with the prices and origin of these goods (wild caught or captive bred/ farmed). Additionally, to substantiate interview data, the number of individuals available for sale at the time of each visit was noted, and animals were checked for gunshot wounds (from homemade firearms—gun ownership is strictly regulated in China) or leg-hold (snap) trap injuries, indicative of wild capture.
Across all 17 shops, vendors reported total sales of 36,295 individuals, belonging to 38 terrestrial wild animal species, averaging 1170.81 individuals per month Including species sold by weight inflated this total to 47,381 individuals. Notably, no pangolin or bat species were among these animals for sale.
But this information doesn’t completely slam the door on the wet market theory, because bats and pangolins are not the only species that could have carried the virus.
Almost all animals were sold alive, caged, stacked and in poor condition. Most stores offered butchering services, done on site, with considerable implications for food hygiene and animal welfare. Approximately 30 percent of individuals from 6 mammal species inspected had suffered wounds from gunshots or traps, implying illegal wild harvesting. Thirteen of these 17 stores clearly posted the necessary permits from Wuhan Forestry Bureau allowing them to sell legitimate wild animal species (e.g., Siamese Crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis), Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus), Common Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) and Amur hedgehog (Erinaceus amurensis)) for food; four shops had no such permit. Species names were given in Chinese only, with no clear taxonomic binomial designation. None of the 17 shops posted an origin certificate or quarantine certificate, so all wildlife trade was fundamentally illegal. Notably, vendors freely disclosed a variety of protected species on sale illegally in their shops, therefore they would not benefit from specifically concealing pangolin trade or the trade in any particular species, and so we are confident this list is complete.
So which other animals have been found with SARS-CoV-2? This March, Nature listed “cats and dogs, to pumas, gorillas and snow leopards in zoos, and farmed mink” as animals that have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 after encountering an infected human being. Another study noted, “sporadic SARS-CoV-2 virus cases have been recorded in kept ferrets in Slovenia and in Spain.”
The new study reports that on average, each month the city’s wet markets collectively sold 38 racoon dogs, and ten minks. The original SARS virus was found in civet cat cages, and the markets sold about eleven masked palm civets per month. And if SARS-CoV-2 is contagious in a lot of varieties of small mammals… the markets sold on average of 332 amur hedgehogs, 168 Chinese hares, 43 Chinese bamboo rats, 30 red foxes, and a wide variety of others each month. That’s a long list of suspects.
“It almost felt as if they had a holy aura around them,” said Adam Chang, who was hired to deliver corn and pineapples to the elephants.00:49 /02:43TAP TO UNMUTE
June 11, 2021, 7:20 AM PDTBy Robbie Hu and Zeerak Khurram
A herd of elephants traipsing through southwest China has captured the imagination of millions.
Monitored by hundreds of police officers assisted by drones, the massive animals reached Kunming in southern Yunnan province earlier this week after traveling some 300 miles from their native nature reserve, state-owned media reported.
Adam Chang was hired to deliver corn and pineapples to the elephants, which on average stand 11 feet tall and weigh 11,000 lbs.
He said what he saw was amazing.
“I saw them picking apart the corn with their trunks,” he told NBC News over the messaging and social media app WeChat.
“They are just so much more lively than those I saw in the zoo. It almost felt as if they had a holy aura around them,” he said.
A migrating herd of elephants roam through a neighborhood near the Shuanghe Township, in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province, last week. Yunnan Forest Fire Brigade / AP
While news of their migration has spread across China and gone viral online, with many expressing wonder and fascination, experts warned that this rare journey could indicate the inevitable and damaging consequences of human encroachment on the elephants’ natural habitat.
The herd reached Kunming on June 2, despite efforts from police to lure them back home. The animals took their time crossing what would have been busy thoroughfares, eating and stumbling into irrigation ditches before going to sleep in woods nearby.
After trending on social media in late May, many netizens were awestruck, while some complained about the destruction left in their wake.
Jason Cao, owner of a Yunnan mining company contracted by the government to deliver their feed, said he didn’t think the damage they caused was serious.
“Elephants are holy animals that can bring fortune and peace in Chinese culture, so we are very happy the elephants came,” he said.
Both Chang and Cao declined to offer their given first names because they had not been given permission to speak to the media by local officials and feared retribution. Instead they asked to be identified with their “American” names.
The herd first came to the attention of outsiders in March 2020 when they left their home in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in southwest Yunnan at the border with Myanmar and Laos. A calf was born in November and two elephants split off from the rest in April 2021, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
Officials and experts say they don’t know why the herd is migrating.
According to Tammie Matson, zoologist and research fellow at the University of Rwanda and director of Matson and Ridley Safaris, elephants can travel long distances if there isn’t enough habitat to meet their needs.
“Some may be driven to move away to get access to these resources to avoid competition,” she said.
Experts have warned that this rare journey could indicate the inevitable and damaging consequences of human encroachment on the elephants’ natural habitat.Yunnan Forest Fire Brigade / AP
Xinhua has reported that the Asian elephant population in Yunnan has ballooned from 180 in the 1980s to 300 in 2021. So it is possible that as numbers grew, a subgroup began searching for new habitat, got lost and just kept traveling, according to Nilanga Jayasinghe, manager of the wildlife conservation team at WWF, an international nongovernmental organization that specializes in wildlife preservation.
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
Netizens have plenty of theories as to why the elephants are migrating, blaming global warming and deforestation.
Asian elephants inhabit forests and grassland, so deforestation rates in Xishuangbanna, which reached an annual average of 4.1 square miles in 2010, may have contributed to the herd’s migration.
Still, long-distance treks are not unknown for the animals, according to Raman Sukumar, professor of ecology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, India, with similar migrations having happened in India and Sri Lanka.
These trips can have a negative impact on a herd’s health, he warned.
Wild Asian elephants lie on the ground and rest in Jinning district of Kunming, Yunnan province, China on June 7, 2021. A herd of 15 wild elephants has trekked hundreds of kilometers after leaving their forest habitat in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, according to local media.China Daily / via Reuters
“I would expect that the stress levels in the elephants would start going up because the elephants are in a totally different kind of terrain,” he said. “It is very densely populated … It’s not so easy for them to navigate through a city.”
For Hannah Mumby, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Biological Sciences, it is important to address the root cause of their departure, otherwise this behavior could be repeated.
The China Central Television News Agency has captured signs of a second herd of elephants attempting to migrate across a river in Xishuangbanna.
In the meantime, those who have seen the elephants say the experience is more than memorable.
“Before this encounter I just felt curious about animals, now I think I would volunteer in animal rights groups to preserve those giant creatures,” Chang said.
Organization says the Southern Ocean consists of the waters surrounding Antarctica, out to 60-degrees south latitude
Scientists have long known that the waters surrounding Antarctica form a ‘distinct ecological region defined, by ocean currents and temperatures’. Photograph: British Antarctic Survey/Reuters
Anyone who thought the world had four oceans will now have to think again, after the National Geographic Society announced it would recognize a new Southern Ocean in Antarctica, bringing the global total to five.
The National Geographic, a non-profit scientific and educational organization whose mapping standards are referenced by many atlases and cartographers, said the Southern Ocean consists of the waters surrounding Antarctica, out to 60-degrees south latitude.
National Geographic Society geographer Alex Tait said scientists have long known that the waters surrounding Antarctica form a “distinct ecological region defined, by ocean currents and temperatures”.
Tait told the Washington Post that the span of water is yet to be officially recognized as an ocean by the relevant international body: “But we thought it was important at this point to officially recognize it.”Advertisement
“People look to us for geographic fact: How many continents, how many countries, how many oceans? Up until now, we’ve said four oceans,” Tait said, referring to the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific.
The US Board of Geographic Names, a federal body created in 1890 to establish and maintain “uniform geographic name usage” through the federal government, already recognizes the Southern ocean as occupying the same territory, but this is the first time the National Geographic has done so.
Attempts to ratify the boundaries and name of the Southern Ocean internationally have been thwarted.
The concept was proposed to the International Hydrographic Organization, which works to ensure the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted, in 2000, but some of the IHO’s 94 members dissented. Despite that, Tait said it was important that the National Geographic christen the water area.
“We think it’s really important from an educational standpoint, as well as from a map-labeling standpoint, to bring attention to the Southern Ocean as a fifth ocean,” Tait told the Post.
“So when students learn about parts of the ocean world, they learn it’s an interconnected ocean, and they learn there’s these regions called oceans that are really important, and there’s a distinct one in the icy waters around Antarctica.”
Bill ConnersOutdoorsView Comments0:360:36https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.464.0_en.html#goog_1130724161
Since the first Junior Hunter Pheasant Huntwas held by the Federation of Dutchess County Fish and Game Clubs in 1995, the hunt has been held every year since, except two.About 10 years ago extremely poor weather conditions left the fields flooded and forced the cancellation, and then last year — a year I’m sure none of us will ever forget — COVID restrictions left organizers no choice but to cancel the hunt.
Now called the David Wohlbach Memorial Hunt, it was the passion of Wohlbach until his untimely passing just weeks ahead of the event in 2014. The hunt is now organized by Anthony Pittore, also of the Dutchess Federation.
I recall conversations with Wohlbach when he was organizing the first hunt.He told me that he hopedthat it would be the first of many that would be held well into the future, and it…
BY CARSON MCCULLOUGH (COURTHOUSE NEWS)JUNE 9, 2021
(CN) — Wildlife advocates asked the U.S. Forest Service to double-up on protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana following recent pushes to dramatically cut wolf populations.
The petition, submitted to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Wednesday, comes shortly after two of the most wolf-rich states in the nation passed a slew of laws making it easier for hunters and trappers to kill the four-legged predators.
Montana passed measures that greatly expanded the trapping and killing capabilities for wolf hunters, while Idaho passed a law that calls for the killing of up to 90% of the state’s wolf population. Idaho also recently allowed their hunters to peruse the animals after hours with the help of night vision googles and ATVs.
While wolves were once classified as endangered, reintroduction efforts in the Northwest have proven extremely successful and have sent population numbers skyrocketing…
A man charged with criminally negligent homicide in connection to a deadly hunting incident last fall pleaded not guilty in Grand County District Court on May 27, setting his case for trial in October.
Harry Watkins, 52, is accused of shooting and killing 26-year-old Simon Howell of West Virginia on Nov. 9 while they were hunting outside Kremmling.
Few details about the incident have been publicly provided, but 14th Judicial District Attorney Matt Karzen indicated in November that the charges were brought because prosecutors believe Watkins’ behavior was reckless.
“The rules of hunting safety exist to keep this exact kind of tragedy from happening,” Karzen said in a news release announcing Watkins’ charges. “Complacency and lack of discipline is all it takes for someone to be killed.”
However, Watkins’ attorney, David Jones, described the case…
Using and consuming honey taken from bees is not vegan. All the latest research suggests that bees are sentient individuals whose lives matter to them. In keeping with the many other species whose lives and bodies are ‘farmed’ by humans, honey bees are artificially-bred agricultural animals.
I know you’ll sometimes read that it’s a ‘controversial’ subject. It’s not. The denial of nonhuman sentience and the disregarding of their interests are familiar tactics in a nonvegan world that values others only in terms of what humans can take from them by force and use to make money. Those with vested interests will always jump on this bandwagon so as to safeguard their profits and attempt to silence criticism.
While the 6th mass extinction proceeds unchecked, the related insect apocalypse is ringing yet another alarm bell in a biodiversity crisis accelerating as the planet’s human population grows. This crisis is increasingly…
Only in the past decade have scientists been able to estimate the amount and sources of these emissions, allowing a greater understanding of the difference reducing methane pollution can make for climate change.
How do methane emissions contribute to climate change?
