This class only happens a few times a year locally, so sign up now
A wolf trapper education class will be offered in Salmon on Saturday July 29, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Idaho Fish and Game office, 99 Highway 93 North.
Although this class is still months away, wolf trapper education classes are usually offered just a few times a year locally – so if you need a class, sign up now.
Here’s what you need to know if you wish to take a class:
Anyone intending to trap wolves in Idaho must attend wolf trapper education prior to purchasing wolf trapping tags.
Anyone intending to trap wolves that did NOT hold an Idaho trapping license prior to 2011 is required to take both trapper and wolf-trapper education courses. So, if that applies to you…
A major avian flu epidemic has been underway for about two years, causing the death of millions of birds and to a lesser extent some infections among mammals, including some humans. The situation is monitored by the main internationalhealthorganizations and in recent months analyzes have been published to evaluate the risk factors, important for understanding how much to worry about the epidemic. After three years of thecoronaviruspandemic, attention is quite high, but at the moment the situation seems to be relatively under control, at least as regards humanhealth.
Low and high There are many types and variations of viruses that cause bird flu. They circulate continuously among wild birds and usually do not cause particular diseases, to the point that infected specimens show no symptoms and their infection…
Usually, in this state, that carries a sports connotation.But this time it’s for the four-legged variety.
The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources announced Friday it will issue permits next month to hunt alligators in certain areas of the state.
The application process opens 8 a.m. June 6. The department said 260 permits, costing $250 each, will be issued, all to Alabamians with few exceptions.
The permits will be for those who are Alabama lifetime license holders ages 16 years or older. They must hold a valid game or small game Alabama hunting license. Alabama lifetime license holders may apply for an Alligator Harvest Permit, even if they have moved out of the state.
Hunters will be randomly selected by computer entry. Those who have applied multiple years and not…
That’s the fundamental principle behind Massachusetts’ Question 3, approved by voters in 2016 to protect farm animals and halt the use of extreme methods of confining them on factory farms. And it was that same principle that motivated proponents to qualify California’s Proposition 12, voted on just two years later.
The two voter-approved ballot measures took aim at gestation crates for mother pigs and battery cages for laying hens – confinement systems so severe and restrictive that the animals, standing shoulder to shoulder or wing to wing, cannot even turn around.
Due to a challenge from factory farming interests, the nation’s highest court took up the case and examined whether states have authority to restrict commerce in pork and eggs within their boundaries based on animal welfare and food safety concerns.
Our nation’s highest court determined, in rejecting a pork industry challenge to a voter-approved ballot initiative in California, that such an exercise of authority was constitutional under federal law.
Following that recent ruling, our nonprofits Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy immediately submitted a letter to the Massachusetts Attorney General to alert her office to take the necessary steps now to ensure that diligent enforcement of the prohibition in the sale of pork from cruelly confined pig operations is fully implemented in the coming month.
As we wait on a response, we encourage readers to read in full how Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, dismissed the pork industry’s challenge to Proposition 12 and said that the law is constitutional because it is fairly applied and it reflects core values related to the humane treatment of animals and food safety.
The National Pork Producers Council argued that California’s law – and by proxy, Massachusetts’ Question 3 – would impose “extra-territorial” effects and drive up production costs for farmers. But there are plenty of farmers and farm groups who see these laws as a market opportunity for those who practice humane husbandry. And significantly, more than 60 of the pork industry’s biggest food retail customers, including McDonald’s and Costco, said they oppose keeping pigs and laying hens in small cages and crates, and thousands of farmers are supplying them with what they want.
Anyone can get lost in the weeds over the legal wranglings inside the courts over these many months in relation to laws of commerce and states’ rights. But let’s not lose sight of the real issue at the heart of it all.
This issue is about sentient living beings, millions of them, unable to take a step or turn around because their 600-pound bodies are locked inside an iron cage called a gestation crate, measuring just 2 feet by 7 feet, or smaller.
If you want a front-row seat, read the book “Dominion,” by author Matthew Scully, who explains in a National Review opinion piece what it looks like from the inside: “Hundreds of crazed pigs engaged in stereotypical ‘vacuum’ chewing on nothing at all, and rooting with imaginary straw, and ‘nest building’ with straw that isn’t there for the piglets they’ll never get to care for. … In every industrial gestation facility, there is a ‘cull pen’ for the dead or dying, the weak who are slowing the system down or getting in the way, the ones who just couldn’t endure their ‘housing arrangements’ anymore. … Everywhere, you see sprained, fractured, and swollen limbs, never examined, never even noticed, because who cares as long as it doesn’t affect their productivity?”
It’s unquestionable that pigs, sheep, goats, chickens and cattle all have their feelings and their fears, and that it matters to them if they can gambol in a pasture and feel sunshine on the backs and stand on soil or grass.
But Prop. 12 and Question 3, and similar measures that preceded them, don’t even ask for those simple life pleasures. They just ask for a few feet of space for the animals. Nothing radical. Just basic decency.
The pork industry has fought to block any federal legal standards to make pigs more comfortable. Then they went for the jugular and tried to eviscerate the few state laws to protect these animals. Gorsuch’s opinion is a landmark ruling, and a commonsense one, to reject archaic thinking when it comes to the treatment of animals.
It’s imperative that more of us today comprehend the fundamental difference between traditional farmers as stewards of the land and custodians of the animals, and the routine miseries inflicted on animals living within warehouses and cages, unable ever to pull fresh air into the lungs.
The high court ruling warrants celebration, but now it’s time for Congress to act and end extreme and cruel practices. They’ve got a ready vehicle in new federal legislation, the Pigs Inside Gestation Stalls (PIGS) Act, to do that very thing.
Wayne Pacelle is president and Julie Marshall is national communications coordinator for Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy, based in Washington, D.C.
Assam Police on May 28 arrested one illegal rhino horn trader from Ghagrapara in Nalbari district.
Acting on secret information, a raid was conducted by a team of police led by Bhaskar Malla Patowary, the officer-in-charge of Rangia police station at the house of one Jeherul Islam (31) of Gargari village in Nalbari district.
During the raid, the team of police seized one rhino horn weighing 710 gms, two mobile phones, including one i10 vehicle bearing registration number ML05-H-9336.
Rangia police is currently interrogating Jeherul Islam for further links to the illegal rhino horn trading.
Bornean bearded pig population showing a rebound at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in recent months. (Pix courtesy Bring Back Our Rare Animals)
KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Wildlife Department has no immediate plans to lift the ban on wild boar hunting amid reports that their population is increasing with African Swine Fever (ASF) epidemic cases on the decline.
The department director Augustine Tuuga said the ban would remain as the Bornean bearded pig population still has to fully recover in the state.
“It (the population of wild boar) has not fully recovered. There are too few compared to what it used to be,” Tuuga said when contacted on Sunday (May 28).
He said the department felt that the ban should remain in place for another year before it was reviewed.
A man suffered non life-threatening injuries during an apparent hunting accident in rural Tasmania. (James Lane/AAP PHOTOS)
A man shot in the neck during an apparent hunting accident in rural Tasmania has been flown to hospital for treatment.
The 59-year-old Sandford man suffered non life-threatening injuries after being shot in the neck at a bush property in Tea Tree, west of Hobart on Sunday morning, police say.
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The man was hunting when he was shot, and police say the incident is not believed to be suspicious.
Another person who was at the scene is assisting police with their inquiries, according to the Hobart Mercury.
The Sandford man was taken from the scene by an emergency helicopter, and is in a stable condition.
A Colorado pilot claims he was confronted by the owners of the Iron Bar Ranch after he used a helicopter to fly over the property to hunt on adjacent public land. He might be called as a defense witness in the “corner crossing” lawsuit against four hunters.
A pilot who used a helicopter to access public land near Elk Mountain to hunt might called as a witness in the pending civil trial of the “corner crossing” case on the Iron Bar Ranch.
The defendants in that case want Kyle Scott of Weldona, Colorado, to testify on their behalf during the trial, which is set to begin at 9 a.m. June 26 in Casper, according to U.S. District Court records.
However, the plaintiffs in that case, Iron Bar Holdings LLC and owner Fred Eshelman of North Carolina, claim that Scott should not be…
Published:May. 25, 2023 at 11:16 AM PDT|Updated:May. 25, 2023 at 5:00 PM PDT
DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ore. (KPTV) – A Milwaukie man reported missing in the Douglas County area has been found, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday evening.
At about 5 p.m., deputies announced that 71-year-old Robert “Bob” Anthony Stern has been found safe and thanked people for their help.
According to deputies about about 10 a.m. Thursday, Stern was last heard from at about 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
The sheriff’s office said he had indicated he was going turkey hunting in the Umpqua Unit and deputies found an image of his vehicle taken in Myrtle Creek the same day around 2:50 p.m.
The sheriff’s office said Stern’s cell phone was off or out of service range.
It is my impression that mainstream media organizations may actively be sabotaging the effort to replace slaughter-based food products with plant-based, animal-free alternatives. But first: The good news is that, despite the gruesome display of animal carnage at every major food outlet, most now carry an impressive array of plant-based burgers, nuggets, cheeses, milks, and more, all free of animal ingredients.
You would think that any civilized person with a choice between food from a slaughterhouse versus foods made from plants would choose the plant-based versions. You’d think anyone with enough information to make an informed choice would embrace the opportunity to wash their hands of animal misery and be thankful to quit paying people to hurt and kill animals in one of the most dangerous, dehumanizing occupations on earth.
You would think, but as yet, you’d be wrong. A recent, glaring example of how the mainstream media seems bent on preventing society’s transition to plant-based food is an Opinion that was published on May 12th and again on May 15th by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post: “Fake meat failed. There’s a better way.”
In case you are wondering about this Board, we are told:
About the Editorial Board
Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.
You might wonder, as I do, why the Editorial Board of The Washington Post would pounce on plant-based meat replacements like brutes on a butterfly.
The gist of their case against “fake meat”
They say: The taste, texture and smell of “fake meat” are terrible, and if the amount of salt and fat is reduced to make it “healthier,” it tastes even worse. “Fake meat” is too expensive – for example, “fake” chicken products cost more than “real” chicken. (They neglect to mention that they are referring to standardized, mass-produced, factory-farmed chickens as opposed to the expensively-priced mass-produced, “pasture-raised,” “free-range” brands.) Given a choice, the Board goes on to imply, the average consumer prefers cholesterol and the risk of intestinal food-poisoning over the list of “chemical” ingredients on plant-based packaging. Moreover, consumers don’t like being “shamed” into eating more responsibly, even in response to information about the huge contribution of animal agriculture to the climate crisis. See “Does Animal Agriculture Cause Climate Change and Pandemics?”
Then too, the Board fusses that focusing on climate change fuels “culture wars” and consumer backlash in conservative communities hostile to plant-based options in their restaurants. Finally, says the Board, “fake meat” doesn’t suit American culture because the U.S. “has been a carnivorous nation” since Colonial times. (Finally, rails the Southern politician, abolition doesn’t suit American culture because the U.S. has been a slaveholding nation since Colonial times.)
The Board gives the obligatory nod to “balance” by conceding that “fake meat” could be better for the environment and reduce the use of antibiotics, but immediately shifts to “studies” showing that the average consumer is not impressed even by celebrity endorsement of what the Board calls “products impersonating animals.” Better to eat vegetables that taste like vegetables than to eat vegetables “pretending to be ground beef,” they say. However, the thrust of this Opinion is not a paean to “honest” vegetables; it’s a plug for the production and consumption of animals however disappeared the originals are into nuggets, hot dogs, beef, bacon, and whatnot.
Regarding the health issues, see the “Plant-Based Meat Fact Sheet,” by Michael Greger, M.D., updated February 7, 2023.
What does the Post’s Editorial Board recommend besides “genuine-article” vegetables?
They say: Those who care about climate change should “invest in ways to make real meat production more efficient and ethical.” If the Board members gave a thought to the coupling of “efficient” and “ethical” with respect to animal farming, they would know that these goals are mutually exclusive. The more “efficient” animal production is, the less ethical it can be. Treating hens and cows as “egg machines” and “milk machines,” breeding the modern “meat-type” chicken, turkey and Pekin duck to function as “steroidally-enhanced growth machines” – these ARE the efficiencies that produce the abundance of cheap animal products so dear to the Post’s “cost-conscious shoppers.”
Engineering animals to become pieces
Light years from “ethical” anything, we are entering the New Age of Agribusiness, the age of gene-edited animals who bear muscles specifically designed for consumption and who are genetically engineered to withstand “harsh” environments, all for the cost-conscious carnivore. Oh yes, the Board also pitches an idea for the environment: like, um, “reducing cows’ methane emissions or mastering lab-grown meat” (?).
So why would the Post’s Editorial Board use its bully pulpit to try to get people to reject plant-based alternatives to animal products? I will speculate: the Post gets a lot of money from animal agribusiness through advertising and perhaps less conspicuous sources as well. Another reason is the notable lack of empathy for the animals they consume, and perhaps also a sublimated craving for sacrificial lambs and the human domination of Nature. One thing is certain: No one who truly cares about animals as beings with feelings is working to undermine slaughter-free food. As for the animal-free products of Gardein, Beyond Meat, Morning Star Farms, Tofurky, Boca, and others: they cook, taste, broil, bake and fry, just fine. Don’t let confirmation bias and snarky opinionators spoil your appetite.
Illegal rhino horn trader Jeherul Islam falls in police net
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Exposing the Big Game 