House Bill 372 would enshrine trapping as a Montana constitutional right. This makes no sense. Once in the Constitution, it would be very hard to get rid of. This awful bill would make lethal hunting, trapping and fishing the sole means of managing Montana’s wildlife.
Thanks to having some of the healthiest fish and wildlife populations in the nation, Montana has a great heritage of hunting and fishing. But do we need to trap our native wildlife as well?
Trapping means catching wild animals in metal jaws. Animals may suffer in terror and pain for hours. Many are maimed when they try to escape.
In a word, trapping is torture. Few people actually engage in this anachronistic pursuit, nor is fur fashionable.
Bobcats, ermine, martens, wolves, coyotes, mink, otters, muskrats and many other species are caught…
In a recent survey of Vermonters’ attitudes towards furbearer management commissioned by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, 71% of respondents polled said they enjoy having river otters in their area. Only 1% of those polled regarded otters as a nuisance, which is why I found it so surprising and upsetting that Vermont allows unlimited trapping of otters for several months each year.
These magnificent creatures are usually trapped in body-crushing kill traps purported to kill the animal quickly. However, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s “Best Management Practices” (BMPs) for trapping allow trapped animals to suffer for up to five minutes in “kill” traps before losing consciousness and still meet their BMP criteria. These same best management practices allow 30 percent of trapped animals to suffer for an undetermined period of time before…
PostedWed, Mar 15, 2023 at 4:19 pm CT|UpdatedThu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:08 am CTReply
The last time a coyote was captured and killed in Wauwatosa was in early 2022, a city spokesperson said. A recent trapping attempt in February did not capture any coyotes, the spokesperson said.(John Quinnies/Patch)
(John Quinnies/Patch)
WAUWATOSA, WI — A group of animal rights activists and Wauwatosa residents gathered outside of city hall Wednesday morning to protest the trapping methods used by the city to control nuisance coyotes.
The last time a coyote was trapped and killed in Wauwatosa was in early 2022, according to Eva Ennamorato, the city’s communications manager.Five coyotes were captured, Patch reported at the time. The city’s management plan requires a verified pet…
Last summer, the highly contagious strain of bird flu that had been spreading through North American birds made its way into marine mammals, causing a spike in seal strandings along the coast of Maine. In June and July, more than 150 dead or ailing seals washed ashore.
Now a study provides new insight into the outbreak. Of the 41 stranded seals tested for the virus, nearly half were infected with it, scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. It is likely that wild birds introduced the virus to seals at least twice, the researchers concluded. In several seals, the virus had mutations that are associated with adaptation to mammals.
The risk to humans remains low, and the seal outbreak waned quickly, the scientists said.
The avian influenza virus is currently having a large strain outbreak called H5N1, which researchers confirm can infect various species
With the possibility of another pandemic at hand, a global outbreak of avian influenza, mostly from wild birds, has raised concern amongst scientists, who label the H5N1 strain as ‘one of the more deadly strains’.
Concerning egg producers and backyard farmers, the spread of the virus is already affecting higher egg and poultry prices in the west and is raising alarms for fear of another human pandemic.
Causing sporadic outbreaks since the late 1990s, the outbreak of avian influenza H5N1 has led to the disease becoming endemic in some birds, currently spreading to wild and captive mammals and, in some cases, infecting humans also.
How does H5N1 evolve, and whom does it affect?
H5N1 evolves in two ways; one is through a linear series of mutations that makes the virus more efficient at spreading through a particular animal species.
The other is through recombination, which, according to researchers, is when two different strains of the virus affect host cells at the same time and swap genes, leading to greater evolutionary leaps.
The avian influenza virus can be transmitted by contaminated feed, food, and trucks.
The World Organisation for Animal Health noted that a rising number of cases had been reported in mammals in the west, “causing morbidity and mortality” in species such as otters and seals.
How is the H5N1 strain affecting the west?
The H5N1 strain originated in intensive poultry farms in Asia but has already spread around the world.
Now, in both the UK and US, governments have made plans to roll out a bird flu vaccine in poultry. In the UK alone, the disease has had an increasing impact on wild birds over the past two years, with 65 species affected.
In the UK specifically, the government are coming up with more plans for those who own 50 or more birds, such as chicken farmers, who will now have to register their flock with the government.
In France, there are plans to begin vaccinating farmed birds in September. Reports of infections in farmed mink in Spain have also raised concerns due to cases involving large numbers of animals kept close to one another exacerbated the risk of wider transmission.
Elsewhere, Ecuador has also unveiled plans for two million inoculations.
Avian influenza has been detected in the U.S. in crows, storks, robins, ravens, owls, egrets, and many other bird species across 2022 and 2023, according to records kept by the United States Department of Agriculture.
According to Gov.UK, these are the signs of avian influenza and bird flu:
Birds infected with the most serious strain of bird flu, called highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), usually show some (or all) of the following signs.
Sudden death
Swollen head
Closed and runny eyes
Lethargy and depression
Lying down and unresponsiveness
Lack of coordination
Eating less than usual
Lethargy
Sudden increase or decrease in water consumption
Head and body shaking
Drooping of the wings
Dragging of legs
Twisting of the head and neck
Swelling and blue discolouration of comb and wattles
Haemorrhages and redness on shanks of the legs and under the skin of the neck
Breathing difficulties such as gaping (mouth breathing), nasal snicking (coughing sound), sneezing, gurgling or rattling
The Summers Place Dodo skeleton dates from around the 16th century.
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Beth Shapiro has been getting the same question ever since she started her research on ancient DNA, more than two decades ago.
“Whenever we would publish a paper, it didn’t matter what the paper was, what the animal was, how excited we were about the ecological implications of our results or anything like that. The only question that we consistently were asked was, how close are we to bringing a mammoth back to life?” she says.
Shapiro is a leading expert on paleogenomics and a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Santa Cruz. As we explored in yesterday’s episode, she has been in the thick of the field’s recent big advances.
But she still gets that question – she even published a book to try to answer it.
“Once a species is gone, once it’s extinct, it is not possible to bring back an identical copy of that species. But there are technologies that will allow us to resurrect extinct traits, to move bits and pieces of genes that might be adapted to a large animal like an elephant living in the Arctic.”
That is exactly what companies like Colossal Biosciences and Revive and Restore are trying to do, with Beth’s help. Her hope is that the technologies these de-extinction companies are developing will have applications for conservation.
As Beth sets her sights on one major conservation priority, protecting vulnerable species of birds, she’s also leading the effort to resurrect another iconic animal — one she has a special relationship with.
“I happen to have a dodo tattoo,” she says.
In today’s episode we bring you the second part of our conversation with Beth Shapiro: How her initial work mapping the dodo genome laid the groundwork to bring back a version of it from extinction, and how the knowledge scientists gain from de-extinction could help protect species under threat now.
Beth Shapiro’s most recent book, Life As We Made It, explores how humans have been reshaping nature since the very beginning.
A young Dutch political party seeking to push back on the government’s climate agenda achieved a stunning victory Wednesday as it won the most seats for a single party in theDutch Senate.
“This isn’t normal, but actually it is! It’s all normal citizens who voted,” party leader Caroline van der Plas said. “But today people have shown they can’t stay at home any longer. We won’t be ignored anymore.”
The Farmer-Citizen Movement Party, known as BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) in Dutch, built its victory on the back of protests against the government’senvironmental policies, which aim to slash nitrogen emissions by dramatically cutting back on…
The H5N1 strain of bird fluhas left the U.S. reeling as it tries to manage the deadliest bird flu outbreak in history. The PBS NewsHour’s William Brangham joined Nicole Ellis to explain the significance of this avian flu, the severity of the outbreak, and how it will affect people across the country.
Watch the full conversation in the video player above.
What is the bird flu?
Birds carry flu in their stomachs all the time, Brangham said, and it typically doesn’t cause any problems for them or us. But, “Every now and then, one of those viruses” — like H5N1 — “becomes super contagious amongst birds and becomes deadlier to birds,” Brangham said. This specific strain has been circulating among birds for…
The country’s summer, which technically runs from December to February, was by far the hottest on record, according to Maximiliano Herrara, a climatologist who tracks extreme temperatures across the globe.
And, so far, March has offered no relief.
Temperatures during the first 10 days of March were 8 to 10 degrees Celsius (14 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal in east-central Argentina, according to the country’s National Meteorological Service.
These temperature anomalies, which have persisted over huge areas, are unprecedented, Herrara…
Hunter Chris Mardles has pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm after trampling a sab with his horse. Mardles was the whipper-in of the Pytchley with Woodland Hunt when he injured the sab in September 2020.
Mel Broughton, a member of Northants Hunt Saboteurs, suffered from a collapsed lung, six broken ribs, a broken collar bone and a shattered shoulder blade. He had to be airlifted to hospital.
Mardles pleaded guilty to the section 18 GBH offence, meaning that he has admitted to intending to injure the victim. He will be sentenced on 25 April 2023. The maximum sentence for section 18 GBH is life imprisonment.
The last time a coyote was captured and killed in Wauwatosa was in early 2022, a city spokesperson said. A recent trapping attempt in February did not capture any coyotes, the spokesperson said.(John Quinnies/Patch)
(John Quinnies/Patch)
Exposing the Big Game 