Nine people were arrested at Aintree racecourse after a large number of protesters attempted to gain entry to the track – delaying the start of the Grand National, Merseyside police has said.
Dozens of activists climbed fences at Aintree, with at least two affixing themselves to a jump using glue and lock-on devices, climate and animal rights group Animal Rising said.
The protesters breached security fences as National runners were in the parade ring, causing a delay of 12 minutes.
Merseyside police said that nine individuals who managed to enter the course were arrested.
The force said: “Just after 5pm, a large number of protesters attempted to gain entry on to the course. The majority were prevented from breaching the boundary fencing, but the nine individuals who managed to enter the course were later arrested by officers.”
Sarah McCaffrey, a shopworker and student – and one of those disrupting the track – said: “Whether it’s for food or for fun, our use of animals and nature is symbolic of a relationship beyond broken.
“We’re a nation of animal lovers, but the pain these beautiful creatures experience daily does not do that label justice. We need to find ways of loving animals that don’t hurt them.
“I truly believe that we are a nation of animal lovers, every one of us. I know everyone coming to Aintree to view the races today would say they love the horses; however, the suffering experienced by them should shock us all.
“That’s why I’ve decided to put my body between those horses and death on the racecourse, rather than gamble with their lives.”
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PETITION TARGET: New York Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation
Lured by fake distress calls or bait, then gunned down indiscriminately with high-powered rifles by participants seeking to kill for cash or other prizes, hundreds of defenseless wild animals in New York each year are dying painful deaths without dignity — with their corpses often tossed like trash.
Each year, New York is home to at least 29 wildlife killing contests, which award “prizes” to participants who kill the most animals, the heaviest animals, or the largest animals.
Victims include coyotes, foxes, crows, bobcats, squirrels, rabbits and woodchucks, according to legislation that seeks to ban this brutal travesty by prohibiting any event whose objective is killing wildlife — whether for prizes or “entertainment.”
The bills, A0219 and S04099, note there is no evidence that these killing contests are effective in “managing” wildlife populations — and, rather, run counter to science-based wildlife management principles.
Meanwhile, wildlife killing contests are undeniably cruel — allowing participants to use unethical devices such as distress calls, lures, or bait, and leaving orphaned babies likely to die from exposure, predation, or starvation, according to the legislation.
“Wildlife killing contests are a wanton waste of New York’s wildlife resources, which belong to all state residents,” the legislation states. “These organized competitions treat animals as disposable pieces in a game to win cash and prizes.”
Eight other states have banned these gruesome contests, which glamorize and glorify the killing of sentient beings — and it’s time for New York to do the same.
Sign our petition urging New York legislators to whole-heartedly support and quickly pass this legislation, which will save countless innocent lives while sending a strong message that killing — especially glamorized killing for people’s greed or “entertainment” — will NOT be tolerated.
Officials are warning Montanans to keep themselves and their pets away from dead birds, as a bird flu outbreak now in its second year starts to infect more mammals.
In Montana,close to 82,500 domestic birds have been culledfrom the ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, since the state saw its first case in a poultry flock last April.
But on top of the losses for farm-raised birds, the outbreak has also taken a harder toll on wild birds than in years past. That’s ledat least…
Officials are warning Montanans to keep themselves and their pets away from dead birds, as a bird flu outbreak now in its second year starts to infect more mammals.
In Montana, close to 82,500 domestic birds have been culled from the ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, since the state saw its first case in a poultry flock last April.
But on top of the losses for farm-raised birds, the outbreak has also taken a harder toll on wild birds than in years past. That’s led at least 12 mammals in Montana to succumb to the disease, which experts say they likely got from eating infected wild birds.
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RELATED NEWS: – “Inflation has peaked”: Colombia Finance Minister
Colombia’s Finance Minister, Jose Antonio Ocampo, believes annual inflation, which accelerated for a 10th straight month to 13.34%, peaked in March. He spoke with Bloomberg’s Shery Ahn from DC.
“Inflation has peaked”: Colombia Finance Minister
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It’s meant a busy year for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and the state’s Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, which are sampling and testing animals to see how the H5N1 strain has spread across species.
According to lab data as of March 31, employees have confirmed one black bear, two grizzly bears, two raccoons, one red fox, and six striped skunks as “non-negative” for bird flu. The samples are then sent to a national lab in Iowa where they are confirmed positive.
The lab also confirmed the influenza strain in three bald eagles, five turkey vultures, 13 red-tailed hawks, and 21 great horned owls.
The situation is much different than the last time an HPAI outbreak roiled the country, said Erika Schwarz, the clinical veterinary microbiologist who’s in charge of leading the bird flu testing for the state lab.
That outbreak, which spanned from December 2014 to June 2015, killed more than 50 million birds across the country. Cases went down as the weather got warmer.
But this time around, animals continued to contract the virus through the summer. A year later, the outbreak has killed 58 million domestic birds in the U.S. and counting, and impacts to wild birds and mammals have been more severe too, Schwarz said.
Montana’s lab didn’t test mammals for bird flu during the last HPAI outbreak or at start of this one, according to Schwarz.
That changed in October, when Montana officials started hearing of mammals contracting bird flu in other states.
The lab had saved samples from two grizzly bears, and a black bear originally misidentified as a grizzly, who were all euthanized for neurological problems. Originally, officials thought the bears had rabies, but those tests were negative.
Schwarz said a few weeks later, on a whim, the lab thought to test those samples for bird flu and were startled to see them come back positive.
Clinically, the symptoms for rabies and bird flu are the same, Schwarz said. Animals will show signs of neurological distress, like abnormal movements and circling, tremors, seizures, and not fearing humans.
Since the bears, the lab has started to test any animals with those symptoms for both rabies and bird flu.
It’s a heavy workload for the lab’s employees, but Schwarz said they’re trained to handle high amounts of testing. Cases have slowed a little this winter, but they’re expecting them to pick back up again, Schwarz said.
“This outbreak and how long it’s persisted is unusual,” Schwarz said. “It’s left a lot of scientists just baffled.”
In the last outbreak, Montana didn’t see wild bird die off so there weren’t infected dead birds on the landscape for other animals to get into, said FWP wildlife veterinarian Jennifer Ramsey. That’s changed now.
Last week, three domestic cats — two in Nebraska and one in Wyoming — contracted the virus after eating wild birds. A dog in Canada died of bird flu the week prior.
“It’s not something new — mammals have been infected with avian influenza viruses in the past,” Ramsey said. “We just haven’t dealt with it to this extent here before. It’s concerning.”
People should make sure to keep their pets away from dead birds, and always wear gloves if they have to handle a carcass, Ramsey said.
U.S. health officials are monitoring how the virus is changing overtime, Ramsey said. The longer the virus circulates and the more species it infects, the easier it is to mutate.
So far, there’s no evidence of the virus spreading from mammal to mammal, which would cause significant concern, Ramsey said. A handful of humans who worked closely with infected birds got the virus in 2022 but recovered.
The threat of mammal to mammal spread was amplified when animals at a Spanish mink fur farm died from bird flu in January. But Schwarz said those animals were in such close proximity to each other, allowing a greater opportunity for the virus to spread quickly through many animals.
“When we think about the types of mammals that we see acquiring the virus here, they are mostly solitary or semi-solitary carnivores and mesocarnivores,” Schwarz said. “So the risk of seeing this kind of rapid mammal-to-mammal spread would probably be quite a bit lower.”
People should report any unexplained animal mortalities to FWP, Ramsey said. While the state has limited resources, and tries to focus testing on areas and species where bird flu hasn’t been confirmed yet, reports help officials better understand where the virus is.
Cases in mammals have been concentrated in places like Bozeman and Missoula, where there are more people to report mortalities. But that’s not to say other parts of the state don’t have similar amounts of virus that’s going undetected, Ramsey said.
“Montana is a very large, rural state… if I’m sitting here at my desk in Bozeman, I have no idea what somebody may be seeing in another town,” Ramsey said. “So having those calls and reports is helpful.”
Animal welfare and wildlife conservation advocacy group The Fur-Bearers says there are more reports of pets in British Columbia being caught in wildlife traps than in any other Canadian province or territory.
Over a four-year period, between 2017 and 2021, there were 56 pets in B.C. reported to have been ensnared by a trap, whereas Albertan authorities reported 30 incidents and data in Ontario was unrecorded.
However, although fur trapping is licensed, the reporting of pet animals caught in traps remains unregulated, so the group suspects the incidents to be much greater.
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“Companion animals have become the collateral damage of the commercial fur…
GLYNN COUNTY, Ga. — A Georgia hunter pleaded guilty to shooting and killing a teen whom he had mistaken for a deer. Officials say he was high on meth at the time of the shooting, according to local reports.
In Sept. 2019, Hector Romero-Hernandez shot 17-year-old Bobby Lane in a wooded area in Glynn County. Police said the two knew each other and met in the Myers Hill area to hunt together.
Much of the southern Greenland Ice Sheet, shown here, will melt irreversibly if we emit about 1000 gigatons of carbon, according to models in a new Geophysical Research Letters study. Credit: NASA GSFC
Once we emit about 1000 gigatons of carbon, much of the massive ice sheet will melt irreversibly. We’ve emitted 500 gigatons so far.
The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 1.7 million square kilometers (660,200 square miles) in the Arctic. If it melts entirely, global sea level would rise about 7 meters (23 feet), but scientists aren’t sure how quickly the ice sheet could melt. Modeling tipping points, which are critical thresholds where a system behavior irreversibly changes, helps researchers find out when that melt might occur.
Based in part on carbon emissions, a new study using simulations identified two tipping points for the Greenland Ice Sheet: releasing 1000 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere will cause the southern portion of the ice sheet to melt; about 2500 gigatons of carbon means permanent loss of nearly the entire ice sheet.
Having emitted about 500 gigatons of carbon, we’re about halfway to the first tipping point.
“The first tipping point is not far from today’s climate conditions, so we’re in danger of crossing it,” said Dennis Höning, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who led the study. “Once we start sliding, we will fall off this cliff and cannot climb back up.”
The study was published in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters, which publishes short-format, high-impact research spanning the Earth and space sciences.
When Greenland’s ice sheet melts, it loses elevation and is exposed to warmer air. The warmer air then increases melt further. Credit: NASA GSFC
The Greenland Ice Sheet is already melting; between 2003 and 2016, it lost about 255 gigatons (billions of tons) of ice each year. Much of the melt to date has been in the southern part of the ice sheet. Air and water temperature, ocean currents, precipitation, and other factors all determine how quickly the ice sheet melts and where it loses ice.
The complexity of how those factors influence each other, along with the long timescales scientists need to consider for melting an ice sheet of this size, make it difficult to predict how the ice sheet will respond to different climate and carbon emissions scenarios.
Previous research identified global warming of between 1 degree to 3 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) as the threshold beyond which the Greenland Ice Sheet will melt irreversibly.
To more comprehensively model how the ice sheet’s response to climate could evolve over time, Höning’s new study for the first time used a complex model of the whole Earth system, which includes all the key climate feedback processes, paired with a model of ice sheet behavior. They first used simulations with constant temperatures to find equilibrium states of the ice sheet, or points where ice loss equaled ice gain. Then they ran a set of 20,000-year-long simulations with carbon emissions ranging from 0 to 4000 gigatons of carbon.
From among those simulations, the researchers derived the 1000-gigaton carbon tipping point for the melting of the southern portion of the ice sheet and the even more perilous 2,500-gigaton carbon tipping point for the disappearance of nearly the entire ice sheet.
As the ice sheet melts, its surface will be at ever-lower elevations, exposed to warmer air temperatures. Warmer air temperatures accelerate melt, making it drop and warm further. Global air temperatures have to remain elevated for hundreds of years or even longer for this feedback loop to become effective; a quick blip of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) wouldn’t trigger it, Höning said. But once the ice crosses the threshold, it would inevitably continue to melt. Even if atmospheric carbon dioxide were reduced to pre-industrial levels, it wouldn’t be enough to allow the ice sheet to regrow substantially.
“We cannot continue carbon emissions at the same rate for much longer without risking crossing the tipping points,” Höning said. “Most of the ice sheet melting won’t occur in the next decade, but it won’t be too long before we will not be able to work against it anymore.”
Reference: “Multistability and Transient Response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions” by Dennis Höning, Matteo Willeit, Reinhard Calov, Volker Klemann, Meike Bagge and Andrey Ganopolski, 27 March 2023, Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1029/2022GL101827
The Biden administration on Thursday approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a document showed, prompting criticism from environmental groups over the approval of another “carbon bomb”.
The US energy department approvedAlaskaGasline Development Corp’s (AGDC) project to export LNG to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, mainly in Asia. Backers of the roughly $39bn project expect it to be operational by 2030 if it receives the required permits.
The project, for which exports were first approved by the administration of Donald Trump, has been strongly opposed by environmental groups.
ByCarter Williams, KSL.com|Updated- April 13, 2023 at 4:22 p.m. | Posted – April 13, 2023 at 3:02 p.m.
An undated photo of female California condor “409” at Zion National Park. Federal wildlife officials say avian influenza has likely killed 18 California condors in the Arizona-Utah flock over the past month, though all the cases have been in Arizona so far. (National Park Service)
SALT LAKE CITY — The avian influenza outbreak that has impactedmillions of birdsacross the U.S. for over a year is now taking a toll on efforts to save a severely endangered species found in Utah and other parts of the Southwest.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said Wednesday that six free-flying California condors in the Arizona-Utah flock have died from the influenza outbreak, while 12 more have died…
SEOUL, April 14 (Reuters) – North Korea announced on Friday it had tested a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a development set to “radically promote” its forces, which experts said would facilitate missile launches with little warning.
Leader Kim Jong Un guided Thursday’s test, and warned it would make enemies “experience a clearer security crisis, and constantly strike extreme uneasiness and horror into them by taking fatal and offensive counter-actions until they abandon their senseless thinking and reckless acts”, North Korean state media said.
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Analysts said it was the North’s first use ofsolid propellantsin an intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missile, a key task to…
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Exposing the Big Game 