Americans today are more aware than ever before about the horrors that big cats endure in captivity at the hands of exhibitors and roadside zoo owners. Photo by the HSUS236SHARES
A bill that would prohibit public contact with big cats like tigers, lions and leopards and ban the possession of these animals as pets was swiftly reintroduced in the U.S. House today, suggesting that the measure is poised for early action in Congress.
The Big Cat Public Safety Act had already passed the House in the last Congress with nearly two-thirds of members supporting it but the session ended before it could be taken up by the Senate. It was reintroduced today by Reps. Michael Quigley, D-Ill., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn, the original sponsors of the bill, and we will be working with all of our might to ensure it becomes law.
Americans today are more aware than ever before about the horrors that big cats endure in captivity at the hands of exhibitors and roadside zoo owners like Joe Exotic, Tim Stark, Kevin “Doc” Antle and Jeff Lowe. Cub-petting activities offered by these ramshackle operations provide baby tigers, lions and other big cats for the public to pet, feed, play with and be photographed with. Some exhibitors haul big cat cubs to fairs, festivals, shopping malls and other random venues and charge people to interact with the babies.
As Humane Society of the United States undercover investigations have revealed, these practices inflict cruelty and suffering on so many levels. Tigers are bred continually in order to provide a steady supply of infants. The cubs are torn from their mothers at birth. They are fed irregularly, constantly woken from their sleep, and physically abused when they resist being endlessly handled. When the cubs reach three to four months of age and are too big for public contact, they are typically warehoused at roadside zoos or pseudo sanctuaries, or sold as pets to make way for more infant cubs. This constant cycle of breeding and dumping big cats is why we have such a large surplus of captive big cats in the United States.
Conservationists have also long feared that tigers discarded from the cub petting industry may be feeding the illegal market for animal parts used in traditional Asian medicine.
The pandemic has provided yet another reason to ban cub petting. The coronavirus has been found in tigers, lions and snow leopards in captivity, leading the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue a rare advisory to big cat exhibitors to discontinue hands-on encounters with wild cats in the interests of public safety and animal welfare.
There is neither doubt nor debate among a majority of Americans that we need the Big Cat Public Safety Act to become law. This is commonsense legislation and it is long overdue. No one needs a pet tiger or lion in their backyard or garage, and no one needs to take a selfie with one, especially at such tremendous cost to the animals and at such risk to human and animal safety. Please join us in urging your U.S. Representative to cosponsor and push for the passage of this bill without delay.
Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.
Double-crested cormorants—once killed so frequently that only 250 birds remained in the Great Lakes area—are again in danger of mass killings, despite federal protections.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is considering a new rule that would authorize lethal control of these majestic and federally protected birds in Ohio. Under this proposal, birds could be shot, their necks could be wrung, or they could be shoved into gas chambers—dark boxes in which severely crowded animals often slowly suffocate while convulsing and desperately trying to escape. Furthermore, lethal control has proved to be ineffective at “managing” wild populations, as more animals simply move in to replace those who were killed.
Click here to urge APHIS to oppose the proposal to allow lethal control and urge it to seek humane alternatives to human-animal conflicts. Comments on this proposed rule will be accepted until Friday, January 15, so please act promptly!
A tipping point is a moment when a small change triggers a large, often irreversible, response.
Professor Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute (GSI) at the University of Exeter, has previously warned the world is “dangerously close” to several tipping points that could accelerate climate change.
But in a new paper in the journalClimate Policy, Professor Lenton and Simon Sharpe, a Deputy Director in the UK Cabinet Office COP 26 unit, identify tipping points in human societies that could rapidly cutcarbon emissions.
They highlight examples of such tipping points that have contributed to the world’s fastest low-carbon transitions inroad transportand power generation—and say “small coalitions of countries” could trigger “upward-scaling tipping cascades” to achieve more.
The nutrients produced by whales when they poo has been found to fertilize the interior of forests around the world.
Big animals have the power to change the face of our planet: they sculpt woodlands, power ecosystems and can even help to fertilize the interior of rainforests.
Conservation is working to prevent the largest animals on Earth from sliding into extinction — and saving them could be more important than we ever realized.
Humans have been altering the environment for tens of thousands of years. One of the starkest consequences of this is the loss of many large animals, known collectively as megafauna, from much of the planet.
When people spread out of Africa and first arrived in places like the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, the land was dominated by some truly huge animals.
Giant ground sloths and armored glyptodons roamed across the savannas of South America, huge mammoths and cave bears were trampling around the chilly landscapes of Europe, while truly enormous wombat-like diprotodons and moas were to be found across much of Australia and New Zealand.
These species had a significant impact on the habitats in which they lived, and when they were driven to extinction, they left an ecological hole. But this wave of extinction is not over.
Those large animals that did survive the first round are now facing a similar threat. Elephants, rhinos, and some species of whales are all balancing on the edge of extinction.
It is only relatively recently, however, that we have begun to understand just how wide reaching the influence of these animals is on the natural world. Once we know more, it could change the way we go about protecting them.
Big animals are influencing environments such as the Amazon not only on national or international scales, but even global ones. Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT/CIFOR
Ken Norris, Head of Life Sciences at the Museum, has published a piece with colleagues that raises the question of how conservationists could think more globally.
“These big animals are iconic in a conservation sense and we are not arguing that we shouldn’t conserve them in their own right,” explains Ken. “But there are also a lot of fundamental things these animals do ecologically, and we are only just beginning to understand the really massive scales on which they operate.
“Currently we are not conserving those systems at scales large enough to protect and restore these key ecological roles. That is the point.”
Large animals, such as elephants and whales, are often referred to as ecosystem engineers. This is because as they go about their day-to-day business, these huge animals alter their environment in such dramatic ways that they help to create and maintain entirely new habitats.
Elephants, for example, are so big that they will regularly push down trees to get to food from the upper branches, and as a result open up woodlands that allow understory plants to thrive in the sunshine. They are also known to help sustain entire rainforests as they spread the large seeds of fruit trees over vast distances before depositing them in little piles of natural fertilizer.
In the depths of the African rainforest, elephants create and maintain huge forest openings known as bais, which are then used by an array of other species from bongo antelopes to gorillas. Credit: Michelle Gadd/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
But these big animals have an impact on a much larger scale even than this.
“We didn’t realise until a few years ago just how important large animals are to large scale earth system processes,” explains Ken. These are the systems in which nutrients are cycled through the environment on a global scale.
“For example, there is research we cite which shows how important nutrients from the oceans are for massive biomes like the Amazon. You wouldn’t realize it, but there is a nutrient pump that exists which comes from the ocean up the rivers and onto the land.”
Animals such as whales and fish poop nutrients into the water. These nutrients help to fuel the plankton, which make their way into smaller fish. The fish are then either eaten by seabirds which in turn deposit their own poop on land, or feed larger migratory fish.
These fish then travel up the river systems and deep inland through the vast network of waterways. They will then be eaten by predators such as birds of prey and big cats, or simply die in the rivers, and as a result spread these nutrients that originated in the oceans over the land and deep within the forests.
“In recent years, some people have estimated how degraded those nutrient systems are because of the loss of large animals, and the impact has been massive,” explains Ken. “They estimate that certain nutrient pumps may have declined by over 80%, in part because of the removal of large animals such as whales.”
Migratory fish that originated in the oceans can be found spread across the forest floors, distributing nutrients far inland and feeding the forest. Credit: anttler (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Global cooperation
When it comes to protecting nature, conservation movements have tended to focus on saving specific species in particular locations.
Recently, scientists have been thinking more broadly. For example, transboundary conservation initiatives have been created which straddle multiple countries. But Ken and his colleagues argue that, while this is undoubtedly moving in the right direction, if we want to take into account the scale at which these nutrient cycles operate, we need to think bigger still.
“There are some examples of this emerging, but we are still not up at the necessary levels of scale,” says Ken. “For example there is one of these transboundary conservation initiatives in the north west US and the west of Canada called Y2Y, where they have reintroduced wolves but conservation at these scales may still not be large enough.
“We need to be looking at ecosystems such as the Amazon which are millions of square kilometers.”
This might seem like an impossible challenge, but environmental initiatives of this scale have been achieved before, such as when the world’s governments came together to agree to fix the hole in the ozone layer or the international ban on whaling.
“It is an enormous challenge to reinstate these systems, but the impacts of not doing anything about it could be really severe,” says Ken. “We simply don’t know enough about this.
“We know that losing big animals is ecologically problematic at these massive scales, but we don’t know the exact impacts of losing them. How long have we got to sort out those issues, and what could be done about them?
“This is really a call to get people thinking about these problems and issues.”
President Donald Trump’s supporters descended on the nation’s capital on Jan. 5-6 to cheer his baseless claims of election fraud….MORE(Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — Under battle flags bearing Donald Trump’s name, the Capitol’s attackers pinned a bloodied police officer in a doorway, his twisted face and screams captured on video. They mortally wounded another officer with a blunt weapon and body-slammed a third over a railing into the crowd.
“Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists chanted as they pressed inside, beating police with pipes. They demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts, too. They hunted any and all lawmakers: “Where are they?” Outside, makeshift gallows stood, complete with sturdy wooden steps and the noose. Guns and pipe bombs had been stashed in the vicinity.AdvertisementSkip Ad
Only days later is the extent of the danger from one of the darkest episodes in American democracy coming into focus. The sinister nature of the assault has become evident, betraying the crowd as a force determined to occupy the inner sanctums of Congress and run down leaders — Trump’s vice president and the Democratic House speaker among them.
This was not just a collection of Trump supporters with MAGA bling caught up in a wave.
That revelation came in real time to Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who briefly took over proceedings in the House chamber as the mob closed in Wednesday and the speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, was spirited to safer quarters moments before everything went haywire.
“I saw this crowd of people banging on that glass screaming,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Looking at their faces, it occurred to me, these aren’t protesters. These are people who want to do harm.”AdvertisementSkip Ad
“What I saw in front of me,” he said, “was basically home-grown fascism, out of control.”
Pelosi said Sunday “the evidence is that it was a well-planned, organized group with leadership and guidance and direction. And the direction was to go get people.” She did not elaborate on that point in a “60 Minutes” interview on CBS.
The scenes of rage, violence and agony are so vast that the whole of it may still be beyond comprehension. But with countless smartphone videos emerging from the scene, much of it from gloating insurrectionists themselves, and more lawmakers recounting the chaos that was around them, contours of the uprising are increasingly coming into relief.
Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. (Julio Cortez/AP)
The staging
The mob got explicit marching orders from Trump and still more encouragement from the president’s men.
“Fight like hell,” Trump exhorted his partisans at the staging rally. “Let’s have trial by combat,” implored his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose attempt to throw out election results in trial by courtroom failed. It’s time to “start taking down names and kicking ass,” said Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama.
Criminals pardoned by Trump, among them Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, came forward at rallies on the eve of the attack to tell the crowds they were fighting a battle between good and evil and they were on the side of good. On Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri gave a clenched-fist salute to the hordes outside the Capitol as he pulled up to press his challenge of the election results.
The crowd was pumped. Until a little after 2 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was at the helm for the final minutes of decorum in partnership with Pence, who was serving his ceremonial role presiding over the process.
Both men had backed Trump’s agenda and excused or ignored his provocations for four years, but now had no mechanism or will to subvert the election won by Biden. That placed them high among the insurrectionists’ targets, no different in the minds of the mob than the “socialists.”
“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” McConnell told his chamber, not long before things spiraled out of control in what lawmakers call the “People’s House.”
The assault
Thousands had swarmed the Capitol. They charged into police and metal barricades outside the building, shoving and hitting officers in their way. The assault quickly pushed through the vastly outnumbered police line; officers ran down one man and pummeled him.
In the melee outside, near the structure built for Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a man threw a red fire extinguisher at the helmeted head of a police officer. Then he picked up a bullhorn and threw it at officers, too.
The identity of the officer could not immediately be confirmed. But Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who was wounded in the chaos, died the next night; officials say he had been hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Capitol Police sent an alert telling workers in a House office building to head to underground transportation tunnels that criss-cross the complex. Minutes later, Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to a secret location and police announced the lockdown of the Capitol. “You may move throughout the building(s) but stay away from exterior windows and doors,” said the email blast. “If you are outside, seek cover.”
At 2:15 p.m., the Senate recessed its Electoral College debate and a voice was heard over the chamber’s audio system: “The protesters are in the building.” The doors of the House chamber were barricaded and lawmakers inside it were told they may need to duck under their chairs or relocate to cloakrooms off the House floor because the mob has breached the Capitol Rotunda.
Even before the mob reached sealed doors of the House chamber, Capitol Police pulled Pelosi away from the podium, she told “60 Minutes.”
“I said, ‘No, I want to be here,’”she said. “And they said, ‘Well, no, you have to leave.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not leaving.’ They said, ‘No, you must leave.’” So she did.
At 2:44 p.m., as lawmakers inside the House chamber prepared to be evacuated, a gunshot was heard from right outside, in the Speaker’s Lobby on the other side of the barricaded doors. That’s when Ashli Babbit, wearing a Trump flag like a cape, was shot to death on camera as insurrectionists railed, her blood pooling on the white marble floor.
The Air Force veteran from California had climbed through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby before a police officer’s gunshot felled her.
Back in the House chamber, a woman in the balcony was seen and heard screaming. Why she was doing that only became clear later when video circulated. She was screaming a prayer.
Within about 10 minutes of the shooting, House lawmakers and staff members who had been cowering during the onslaught, terror etched into their faces, had been taken from the chamber and gallery to a secure room. The mob broke into Pelosi’s offices while members of her staff hid in one of the rooms of her suite.
“The staff went under the table barricaded the door, turned out the lights, and were silent in the dark,” she said. “Under the table for two and a half hours.”
On the Senate side, Capitol Police had circled the chamber and ordered all staff and reporters and any nearby senators into the chamber and locked it down. At one point about 200 people were inside; an officer armed with what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon stood between McConnell and the Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Authorities then ordered an evacuation and rushed everyone inside to a secure location, the Senate parliamentary staff scooping up the boxes holding the Electoral Collage certificates.
Although the Capitol’s attackers had been sent with Trump’s exhortation to fight, they appeared in some cases to be surprised that they had actually made it in.
When they breached the abandoned Senate chamber, they milled around, rummaged through papers, sat at desks and took videos and pictures. One of them climbed to the dais and yelled, “Trump won that election!” Two others were photographed carrying flex cuffs typically used for mass arrests.
But outside the chamber, the mob’s hunt was still on for lawmakers. “Where are they?” people could be heard yelling.
That question could have also applied to reinforcements — where were they?
At about 5:30 p.m., once the National Guard had arrived to supplement the overwhelmed Capitol Police force, a full-on effort began to get the attackers out.
Heavily armed officers brought in as reinforcements started using tear gas in a coordinated fashion to get people moving toward the door, then combed the halls for stragglers. As darkness fell, they pushed the mob farther out onto the plaza and lawn, using officers in riot gear in full shields and clouds of tear gas, flash-bangs and percussion grenades.
At 7:23 p.m., officials announced that people hunkered down in two nearby congressional office buildings could leave “if anyone must.”
Within the hour, the Senate had resumed its work and the House followed, returning the People’s House to the control of the people’s representatives. Lawmakers affirmed Biden’s election victory early the next morning, shell-shocked by the catastrophic failure of security.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Ca., told AP on Sunday it was as if Capitol Police “were naked” against the attackers. “It turns out it was the worst kind of non-security anybody could ever imagine.”
Said McGovern: “I was in such disbelief this could possibly happen. These domestic terrorists were in the People’s House, desecrating the People’s House, destroying the People’s House.”
Associated Press writers Dustin Weaver in Washington and Michael Casey in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report. Reeves reported from Birmingham, Alabama.
Harrison SilcoxPublished: Jan 11, 2021 11:57 AM | Updated: Jan 11, 2021 1:06 PM
BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY, Ind.– The Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is investigating an apparent hunting accident that claimed the life of a Bartholomew County man.
When a hunter failed to return home Sunday morning, a family member went to look for him and found him unresponsive. Conservation officers were dispatched to the 9200 block of South State Road 58 at 9 a.m.
John Walker, 54, of Columbus, was found with a gunshot wound that initial investigation suggests came from an accidental discharge of his firearm. Walker was pronounced dead at the scene.
DNR is awaiting autopsy results and the investigation remains ongoing.
Have you ever spoken to your pet thinking you went crazy? You can now calm yourself down since studies have shown that talking to your pet doesn’t mean you are nuts but smart.
Pet owners often talk to their beloved furry companions. Many who don’t own pets might think that people who talk to their pets should go check themselves. But it’s now official, people who speak to their pets are smarter than those who don’t.
Studies have shown that people who have conversations with their pets considered to be of higher intelligence. Anthropomorphizing is the act of attributing human characteristics and purposes to inanimate objects, animals, plants, etc.
Nicholas Epley, a professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago said: “Historically, anthropomorphizing has been treated as a sign of childishness or stupidity, but it’s actually a natural byproduct of the tendency that makes humans uniquely smart on this planet,”.
The most common way humans anthropomorphize is giving pets human names. While Anthropomorphizing can also be attributing of human characteristics to inanimate objects, your brain would get confused for a second if you see human eyes on a door.
Anthropomorphism is a sign of intelligence and creativity and it higher your pet intelligence as well. Speaking to your pets, teaches them words and gestures, think about it, does your dog know when you are angry with him? As a by-product of anthropomorphism, they notice that you’re angry and manipulate you with a sad face.
Ariana Quesada, 16, holds a photo of her father, Benito Quesada, with her little brother, Aldrin, as she stands in front of the RCMP detachment in High River, Alta. Her father died after becoming one of hundreds of workers at Cargill’s High River meat-processing facility to contract COVID-19. (Justin Pennell/CBC)
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Ariana Quesada, 16, walked into the RCMP detachment in High River, Alta., on Friday and filed a formal complaint asking police to investigate potential criminal negligence in the death of her father.
Benito Quesada, a 51-year-old immigrant from Mexico supporting a wife and four children, was hospitalized with COVID-19 in mid-April, one of hundreds of workers at the town’s Cargill meat plant infected with the coronavirus.
He had been in a coma and on a ventilator when he died on May 7. His family had been barred from visiting — except to say goodbye.
The Quesadas are demanding accountability from Cargill, alleging the company didn’t do enough to protect Benito from the coronavirus.
“We have filed a complaint … to finally bring justice to my dad … to finally hold Cargill accountable for what they did,” Ariana Quesada said, fighting back tears.
“I spent Christmas with one less person to hug,” she said. “And all the executives and general managers, everyone at Cargill got to spend Christmas with their loved ones. And I did not get that.”
Workers prepare beef to be packaged at the Cargill facility near High River, Alta., before the pandemic was declared. The plant is the site of what was at one point the largest COVID-19 outbreak in North America. (Name withheld)
The RCMP confirmed it has now opened an investigation. The probe is the first known instance in Canada of police investigating a workplace-related COVID-19 death.
“We have created a file, so to speak. An investigation has commenced,” Staff Sgt. Greg Wiebe, the detachment commander, told CBC News late Friday, noting the matter is in its preliminary stages as the RCMP review the complaint and assigns appropriate resources.
“It’s not going to be your routine investigation, certainly. There’s probably a lot of moving parts to it,” Wiebe said.
At least 950 staff at the Cargill plant — nearly half its workforce — tested positive for COVID-19 by early May in what remains the largest workplace outbreak in Canada.
As part of the national food supply chain, slaughterhouses and meat-processing facilities were deemed essential by governments, and Cargill stayed open as the pandemic worsened. It continued operating until April 20, when it was shut down for two weeks because of the surging outbreak among its staff.
Cargill spokesperson Daniel Sullivan declined to comment without seeing the complaint to police. But in an email on Saturday, he said that safety is a top priority for the company and that since the beginning of the pandemic, it has worked closely with provincial health and occupational health and safety officials.
“Maintaining a safe workplace has long been one of our core values, and we recognize that the well-being of our plant employees is integral to our business and to the continuity of the food supply chain throughout Canada,” the statement read.
Cargill is also facing a proposed class-action lawsuit on behalf of individuals who had close contact with Cargill employees. They allege the company operated without adequate safeguards despite public health warnings.
Across Canada, at least 33 compensation claims for work-related deaths have been accepted by provincial insurance boards for people who contracted COVID-19 on the job, according to figures obtained by CBC News.
But the real number of workplace deaths from the illness is likely far greater, given that not all cases are reported and not all workplaces are covered by provincial compensation plans.
WATCH | Ariana Quesada hopes to ensure other families won’t suffer:
Daughter lays police complaint in COVID-19 work death
2 days agoVideo0:59Family prompts COVID-19 police probe into Alberta meat plant — Canada’s largest workplace outbreak. 0:59
But there are other similar cases from the first wave of the pandemic that police have been asked to investigate.
A union representing front-line health-care workers in Ontario has called for investigations into the COVID-19 deaths of three personal support workers in the Greater Toronto Area who allegedly didn’t have adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) in the early weeks of the health crisis.
The cases raise questions about the strength and effectiveness of Canada’s occupational health and safety system and its ability to protect essential workers from exposure to the virus.
Pressure to work despite positive COVID-19 tests
The complaint filed on Friday against Cargill cites the Westray Law, a Criminal Code provision named after a deadly mining disaster in Nova Scotia in 1992 that imposes a duty on all employers to take “reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm” to workers.
The Quesadas allege that Cargill failed to heed early public health warnings and failed to protect workers from a known, deadly threat.
“Employers need to do far better than what happened in High River in the spring,” said Michael Hughes, a spokesperson for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has been helping the Quesada family.
Cargill’s meat-processing facility in High River, Alta., on Jan. 8. The company is facing an RCMP investigation and a proposed class-action lawsuit following a large COVID-19 outbreak at the plant. (Justin Pennell/CBC)
Hughes said that for a company such as Cargill, which reported revenue of $113.5 billion US in 2019, the threat of fines for labour and safety violations isn’t necessarily a strong deterrent, which is why the complaint was made to police.
“I think what the situation at Cargill really exposed is that there are severe limits to accountability” under current workplace rules, he said.
The written complaint suggests Benito Quesada died due to criminal negligence and alleges the following failures by Cargill to prevent the spread of the virus:
The company failed to provide adequate PPE.
Workers on production lines were not physically distant.
Lunchrooms were crowded, with tables less than half a metre apart.
Company medical personnel cleared workers for duty despite positive COVID-19 tests or symptoms.
Workers faced unpaid, temporary layoff if they didn’t report for work out of fear of the virus.
Workers were promised a $500 bonus for not missing a shift over a two-month period.
The family says that while Benito Quesada isolated at home as a precaution and told family members to stay away from him, he continued to go to work, motivated by the $500 that would have made a big difference for the family of six.
The RCMP investigation is now in its preliminary stages and no charges have been laid. The allegations have not been tested in court.
The CBC’s own investigation last spring found numerous workers who said they continued to work elbow to elbow and felt pressured to show up when sick as Cargill tried to keep its meat-processing lines moving.
Four workers said they were pushed to report for shifts or even cleared for duty by a company nurse, despite testing positive for COVID-19 or continuing to exhibit symptoms.
Provincial health and safety inspectors did not conduct in-person inspections at the Cargill plant in the first few months after the pandemic was declared.
Alberta Occupational Health and Safety instead conducted an inspection via video link on April 14 — around the same time Benito Quesada was admitted to hospital.
Officials allowed the plant to remain open. Alberta Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen reassured staff the worksite was safe during a telephone town hall on April 18.
But two days later, with at least 360 confirmed cases among its workers, Cargill announced a complete shutdown for two weeks.
The Quesada family’s police complaint alleges Cargill managers failed to provide an accurate picture of conditions inside the plant during the province’s video inspection.
Cargill’s spokesperson said in a statement that provincial officials have been on-site multiple times during the pandemic and have approved of the company’s actions. The spokesperson also said the company’s operations meet or exceed federal health and safety standards.
Police probes sought in Ontario
Police in Ontario have been reluctant to step in after receiving formal requests for criminal negligence investigations in the deaths of three front-line health-care workers.
Arlene Reid, 51, Sharon Roberts, 59, and Christine Mandegarian, 54, were all personal support caregivers who contracted COVID-19 in April. They worked in the homes of elderly patients or inside long-term care facilities.
Their union filed complaints last spring with police in Toronto and Peel Region against their three employers alleging criminal negligence and failure to provide adequate protective equipment to staff. The union also accuses provincial health and safety officials of failing to ensure that the essential workers were safe.
Arlene Reid, 51, Sharon Roberts, 59, and Christine Mandegarian, 54, were personal support caregivers in Ontario who died after contracting COVID-19 in April. They worked in the homes of elderly patients or inside long-term care facilities. (Submitted)
“A worker inside a home, a nursing home, happens to be a woman, and happens to be a woman of colour, dies because of an infection that she contracted at work. If this was a construction site, it would have been shut down immediately and investigated,” said Sharleen Stewart, president of SEIU Healthcare, which represents more than 60,000 front-line health-care workers in Ontario.
Stewart said health-care facilities in Ontario should have been much better prepared for COVID-19 given the recommendations that came from the public inquiry into the deadly SARS outbreak of 2003.
All three employers expressed sadness and offered condolences to the families of the workers who died. But they also flatly rejected the union’s claims, arguing each closely followed public health advice and infection control protocols.
“Facing the first wave of a global pandemic of the scale of COVID-19, Downsview Long Term Care Centre did everything possible to protect the health and safety of our workers and our residents,” James Balcom, chief operating officer at GEM Health Care Group, which owns the facility where Sharon Roberts worked, said in a statement to CBC News.
“These allegations by the union are false and highly irresponsible.”
Unlike the RCMP in Alberta, police in these three cases have not opened criminal investigations and have instead deferred to provincial coroners and the Ontario Ministry of Labour. Criminal charges carry more serious penalties than the provincial charges the ministry can impose.
Labour inspector investigations are ongoing in all three cases.
Health and safety system swamped by complaints
Katherine Lippel, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, says provincial health and safety inspectors across Canada struggled to do their jobs in the early days of the pandemic.
She called it a “catastrophic” situation in which essential industries scrambled to protect workers while the provincial health and safety system was swamped by a wave of employee complaints stemming from fears of exposure to the virus.
Katherine Lippel, a workplace safety law expert at the University of Ottawa, says ideally, provinces would have more trained inspectors in the field to prevent workplace deaths. (Submitted by Katherine Lippel )
“On paper, the laws look pretty good. But in practice, there is no assurance on a day-to-day basis that we’re prepared for something like COVID-19,” Lippel said in an interview.
While asking police to investigate is serious business, Lippel said, Canada has a poor track record of actually prosecuting and convicting employers under the Westray Law for failing to protect workers. There have been only six convictions or guilty pleas under the law since it was passed in 2004.
Ideally, she said, provinces would have more trained inspectors in the field to prevent workplace deaths in the first place.
“The police tend to look for a criminal. They don’t look for the cause of the crime,” Lippel said. “And what we really need, if we’re going to have adequate prevention, is competent and numerous inspectors who are looking at the cause of the catastrophe.”
A tiny mouse-like animal has been spotted on Santa Catalina Island off Southern California for the first time since 2004, showing that the species is not extinct.
A Catalina Island Shrew was spotted in a photograph taken by a remote “camera trap” during a major effort to detect the diminutive animal early last year, the Catalina Island Conservancy said Wednesday.
(Photo by Catalina Island Conservancy)
“We have been looking for the Catalina Island Shrew for years,” said conservancy wildlife biologist Emily Hamblen said in a statement. “I thought, and really hoped, that they still existed somewhere on the Island.”
The Catalina Island Shrew was listed as a species of special concern by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in 1996.
An adult shrew is just 3.74 inches (95 millimeters) long…
The gray wolf has been removed from the federal Endangered Species List, allowing the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and other state agencies to assume management of the species.
The delisting decision, announced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in late October and published in early November, became effective Jan. 4.
The change allows lethal measures to be used on the animals, including the killing of wolves that cause depredation of livestock as well as the use of hunting and trapping seasons to manage populations of the native predators.
In a statement, the DNR said it has “successfully managed gray wolves for decades and will continue to do so in accordance with the laws of our state and the best science available.”
The state most recently held management authority over wolves from 2012-14, when it held three hunting and trapping seasons and killed 528 wolves. A federal judge returned wolves to the Endangered Species List in Dec. 2014.
Wisconsin law requires a wolf hunting and trapping season to be held when the species is not under protections of the Endangered Species Act. The DNR plans to begin the next wolf season Nov. 6.
The agency also said it is working to complete a 10-year wolf management plan to help guide future management decisions for the species in Wisconsin.
Although delisted, it remains unlawful to shoot a wolf unless there is an immediate threat to human safety. Or, if on private land, a wolf can be shot and killed if it is in the act of killing or wounding livestock or a domestic animal such as a pet.
Under state management, the payouts for wolf depredations will also be delayed until the end of the year, and could be pro-rated based on available funds, said Brad Koele, DNR wildlife damage specialist.
State statute allows payments of $2,500 to hound hunters and others who have lost dogs to wolves. But that could be reduced if insufficient funds are available.
Wolf depredations in Wisconsin were running higher in 2020. A DNR report through the end of October showed 90 confirmed or probable wolf depredations, compared to full-year depredations of 82, 73 and 61 in 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively.
No wolf depredation of a farm animal or pet has occurred in Wisconsin so far in 2021, according to state data.
The DNR estimated the 2019-20 Wisconsin wolf population at a modern-era high of 1,195 animals and 256 packs.
No case of a wolf attack on a human has been verified in Wisconsin history.
If wolf depredation is seen or suspected, the public should contact USDA-Wildlife Services at (800) 228-1368 in northern Wisconsin and (800) 433-0663 in the rest of the state.
To assist with the investigation, USDA-Wildlife Services recommends not moving or unnecessarily handling a carcass as well as preserving any evidence at the kill site by using a tarp to cover a carcass to discourage scavengers and preserve any tracks, scat and other material.
The delisting was opposed by American Indian tribes and many environmental and animal protection organizations.
Several groups, including Defenders of Wildlife, have vowed to overturn the delisting through legal action.
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