Watch: Zelensky warns Russians are being prepared for nuclear warfare
By Hugo Bachega and John Simpson
BBC News, Kyiv
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russian officials have begun to “prepare their society” for the possible use of nuclear weapons, but added he does not believe Russia is ready to use them.
In an interview with the BBC, President Zelensky denied having urged strikes on Russia, claiming that an earlier remark had been mistranslated.
“You must use preventive kicks,” he said, referring to sanctions, “not attacks”.
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian army has recaptured large swathes of territory in a successful counter-offensive that has forced Russian troops to abandon long-held positions. In what Kyiv describes as Moscow’s response to its defeats, President Vladimir Putin has incorporated four partially occupied regions of Ukraine.
The annexations, widely dismissed as illegal, have raised…
This May, nine wild birds (Eight Canada geese and one turkey vulture) were found dead of avian flu in Grand County. Colorado Dept. of Agriculture/Courtesy Image
Gov. Jared Polis has issued an Executive Order declaring a state of disaster emergency due to the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza rising among birds in Colorado. The emergency declaration will allow state agencies to coordinate together to mitigate the spread of the disease.
Also known as H5N1 or the avian flu, the disease affects both wild and domestic birds. It has a mortality rate of over 90%.
“Cases of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza are on the rise again across the country as migratory birds start their seasonal movement south. Right now, it’s critical that Colorado’s backyard and commercial poultry flock owners keep up the biosecurity measures they have been implementing since the beginning of the outbreak this spring,” said Colorado State Veterinarian Dr. Maggie Baldwin.
“(Avian flu) is a disease with high mortality that can wipe out entire domestic poultry flocks in less than 72 hours. The most important thing bird owners can do right now is limit interaction between their flocks and wild birds,” she added.
Cases of avian flu have affected commercial farms, domestic flocks and wild birds across the U.S. In Colorado, avian flu has struck 17 counties, including Grand County.
This May, Colorado Parks and Wildlife removed nine dead wild birds who had contracted avian flu locally.
“A word of advice, do not approach if you see dead birds. Please contact professionals to investigate the situation,” said Grand County Director of Public Health Abbie Baker after the incident.
In Colorado, there has been one case of an individual contracting avian flu from an infected bird. The case occurred in Delta County this April, when an individual came in direct contact with diseased poultry by doing culling at a commercial farm. The individual did not experience any severe symptoms, and there was no other transmission following this.
For a person to catch the avian flu, they must be in direct contact with a diseased bird. The virus can enter someone’s system through their eyes, nose, or mouth, so proper protection is necessary.
“Colorado Parks and Wildlife will use (personal protective equipment) to remove deceased birds, including masks, eye googles, and gloves in order to retrieve these birds,” said Baker.
So far, there has been no sign of a person contracting the disease in Grand County. Overall, the risk of humans catching avian flu is very low.
One of the area’s most popular family attractions will be closed on Thursday because of bird flu. The avian influenza virus was discovered in geese at the Deanna Rose Children’s Homestead in Overland Park.KCTV
OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (KCTV) — One of the area’s most popular family attractions will be closed on Thursday because of bird flu.
The avian influenza virus was discovered in geese at the Deanna Rose Children’s Homestead in Overland Park.
The hands-on, early 1900s, farm life experience closed two hours early on Wednesday. They’ll be using the time Wednesday to drain ponds, sanitize enclosures and quarantine the animals most at risk.
Parents and children flooded out to the sound of an intercom announcement apologizing for closing early. The announcement didn’t say why. Some were bewildered. Many were…
The proposal would see the same rules on drinking apply to hunters and motorists
A proposal to ban French hunters from drinking while out in the fields provoked a furious response from the country’s hunting lobby. Legislation proposed on October 3 aims to reduce hunting accidents which resulted in seven deaths last year.
The proposal was drafted based on the findings of an inquiry. The inquiry was held in response to petitions demanding tighter hunting regulations after 25 year old British Morgan Keane was accidentally killed by a hunter in 2020. During the inquiry, a cross-party committee investigated French laws on hunting and gun ownership, and observed a hunt before devising a proposal.
Legislation would subject hunters in France to the same rules as drivers on blood alcohol levels. Penalties for intoxicated hunters would be the same as for motorists.
Greater white-fronted geese are among the migratory birds in Oregon. (Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife)
The July 5 trip was routine: From the deck of an airboat, two wildlife biologists scanned the cattail marsh — one of many seasonal wetlands in the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge — on their weekly lookout for sick or dead birds. In the summer months, avian botulism is a major concern in California’s Central Valley, and removing carcasses can stem its spread. But this year, there was added worry: A new and devastating strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) had been creeping West across the continent since December 2021, affecting millions of poultry and countless wild birds.
That day, the biologists carefully collected several carcasses, including two Canada geese and two American white pelicans, and sent the remains on to the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center lab for routine testing. Days later, the lab and then the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed: The avian flu’s H5N1 strain had finally reached California.
This year’s avian flu epidemic — the first in North America since 2015 — is caused by a version of this virus unlike any that virologists and wildlife managers have ever seen. “It’s behaving by a different set of rules,” said Bryan Richards, emerging disease coordinator at the National Wildlife Health Center. For the first time, it’s spreading widely among wild birds, which has far-reaching implications for wildlife and human health.
Wildlife already face unprecedented stressors, from drought to wildfire to habitat loss. Now, emerging and widely infectious forms of avian influenza are yet another new and serious threat — one that wildlife biologists say requires a new approach to disease management on farms, refuges and landscapes nationwide. “We are in the midst of a completely unprecedented wildlife disease outbreak in North America,” said Rebecca Poulson, a University of Georgia research scientist who’s been studying bird flus for 15 years. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
BEFORE 1996, it was widely assumed that highly pathogenic avian influenzas only infected commercial poultry farms: These were virulent but contained outbreaks caused by on-farm mutations of a wild-bird-origin flu virus. While devastating to those farms, the mutated strains seemed unable to spread back into wild birds. This made outbreaks simple to manage with biosecurity prevention, isolation of exposed flocks, and swift culls.
In 1996, virologists first detected the H5N1 strain in domestic geese in Guangdong, China. That virus received global attention in 1997 when it sickened 18 people in Hong Kong, killing six. The outbreak prompted international fears of a human pandemic, but the virus never mutated in a way that enabled human-to-human transmission. International media paid less attention to the fact that, by 2002, H5N1 had acquired the ability to move from domestic flocks back into wild birds. The virus has been evolving ever since.
Today, several variants of HPAI are associated with “sporadic mortality events” in wildlife. In Newfoundland and Labrador in 2021, the current strain emptied seaside cliffs of thousands of gannets, puffins and murres. This August, it killed 700 black vultures at a Georgia sanctuary. Waterfowl, shorebirds, raptors and scavengers are at the highest risk. In Western states most recently hit by the virus, such species include threatened and endangered birds like the California condor and snowy plover, though agencies have not yet documented infections in either species. Common urban and suburban-dwelling Canada geese and corvids and nationally symbolic bald eagles are also at risk, as are the hundreds of millions of waterfowl whose migrations are beginning to peak now in Northern states and will continue south through late October.
I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg. We’re just sort of holding our breath to see what’s going to happen.
– Rebecca Poulson, University of Georgia research scientist
The last major outbreak — caused by a related strain, H5N8 — reached North America in 2014, causing $3 billion in losses to U.S. farmers, who had to cull 50 million chickens, turkeys and waterfowl. This year’s outbreak has so far affected a similar number of commercial birds, but it is orders of magnitude larger in wild landscapes. Via wild-bird transmission, it has reached nearly 10 times the number of backyard poultry, and while the 2014-15 outbreak was documented in just 18 wild bird species across 16 states, this year it’s been confirmed in at least 108 wild bird species, with cases in nearly every state. In another unusual development, many mammal-crossover cases and deaths have been confirmed, too, in foxes, skunks, opossums, raccoons, bobcats, minks, harbor seals, a juvenile black bear and one bottlenose dolphin. Labs are so overwhelmed that wildlife officials say they’ve stopped submitting carcasses of species that have already been documented in their county. They’re also only submitting a few birds per mortality event, making the official wild bird death figures a gross underestimate.
The next few months could be even worse. Flocks across the continent are migrating now toward Central and South America, home to the largest diversity of bird species on Earth. “I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg,” Poulson said. “We’re just sort of holding our breath to see what’s going to happen.”
AMONG WESTERN STATES THIS FALL, California is most likely to feel the brunt of the impacts: It’s one of the nation’s largest egg producers, and commercial poultry meat is the state’s sixth-largest commodity, worth $1 billion annually. California’s Central Valley provides essential migration and wintering grounds for wild birds: The Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex alone is visited by tens of millions of migrants each fall. It supports nearly 40% of the continent’s northern pintails (one of the most numerous duck species in the world), and hosts a total overwintering population of some 1.5 million birds.
This year’s drought means wintering flocks may be both unusually crowded and especially mobile, heightening the risk of viral spread, said Michael Derrico, the refuge’s lead wildlife biologist. Since the refuge’s wetlands are half their normal size, birds will be forced into closer proximity and may move frequently to find resources, which Derrico thinks may also push birds farther south.
Once a disease becomes established in a free-ranging population, then you really lose the upper hand.
– Bryan Richards, emerging disease coordinator at the National Wildlife Health Center
Derrico’s concern for birds in the Pacific Flyway is somewhat tempered by the fact that, so far, the country’s westernmost migratory channel doesn’t seem to have as much of the virus as other regions do. But he and other wildlife managers are also very limited in what they can do to mitigate potential impacts.
“Once a disease becomes established in a free-ranging population, then you really lose the upper hand,” said Richards, from his USGS home office near Madison, Wisconsin. “We’re really, really good at documenting disease on the landscape, but we’re less good at altering disease outcomes.” Instead, he said, “some of us are beginning to pivot towards a conversation of wildlife health as opposed to wildlife disease.”
Left, Adriaan Dokter/BirdCast, Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Right, National Wildlife Health Center/USGS
For Derrico, at the Sacramento refuge complex, promoting health instead of preventing disease might involve investing more in wetland management to ensure that birds have access to the largest habitat possible, and minimizing human disturbance to prevent scattering birds to new areas. In many parts of the country, bald eagles and other raptors are already experiencing widespread mortality from lead poisoning by bullets and fishing tackle, and Richards said that addressing that issue might be a better use of resources.
“That’s something we can control, right?” he said. Combined with improving biosecurity measures on farms, by tackling environmental factors that are within human reach, Richards believes wildlife managers may be able to increase bird resilience even in the face of deadly new diseases.
The pressure to change wildlife disease management is only increasing. “When you look globally at emerging infectious diseases, we’ve seen some pretty interesting trends,” Richards said. “We have seen more new diseases, larger disease outbreaks, more frequently, and with larger impacts.” That includes some with the potential to cause species extinction, and, as seen recently with COVID-19, ones that could mutate to become widely infectious and transmissible in humans. Virologists believe the risk of that happening in this H5N1 strain is low, but recommend that hunters, farmworkers and other bird handlers take extra precautions this year anyway. Of all the emerging diseases that threaten people, Richards said, a majority have originated in wildlife.
Dead birds being cleared from Staple Island, off Northumberland, where bird flu is devastating one of the UK’s most important seabird colonies, July 2022.Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
Catastrophic declines in the number of birds and other wildlife are likely if countries do not act urgently to change the way animals are farmed, wildlife health scientists have warned.
The unprecedented die-off of seabirds from highly pathogenic avian flu (HPAI) being witnessed in breeding colonies across Europe, North America and Africa has been traced back to a commercial goose farm in southern China where a relatively mild bird disease mutated into a killer in 1996.
After spilling into wild bird populations in 2007, HPAI has spread around the…
Generally, the right venue to warn that we face the biggest threat of Armageddon in 60 years wouldn’t seem to be a political fundraiser. But for whatever reason, that’s where President Biden on Thursday night decided to offersome of the scariest comments uttered by a U.S. presidentin decades.
Speaking at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event, Biden said that for the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use of the nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”
The major harm that mountain biking does is that it greatly extends the human footprint (distance that one can travel) in wildlife habitat. E-bikes multiply that footprint even more. Neither should be allowed on any unpaved trail. Wildlife, if they are to survive, MUST receive top priority!
What were you thinking??? Mountain biking and trail-building destroy wildlife habitat! Mountain biking is environmentally, socially, and medically destructive! There is no good reason to allow bicycles on any unpaved trail!
Bicycles should not be allowed in any natural area. They are inanimate objects and have no rights. There is also no right to mountain bike. That was settled in federal court in 1996: https://mjvande.info/mtb10.htm . It’s dishonest of mountain bikers to say that they don’t have access to trails closed to bikes. They have EXACTLY the same access as everyone else — ON FOOT! Why isn’t that good enough for mountain bikers? They are all capable of walking….
Why do mountain bikers always insist on creating illegal trails? It’s simple: they ride so fast that they see almost nothing of what they are passing. Therefore, they quickly get bored with any given trail and want another and another, endlessly! (In other words, mountain biking is inherently boring!)
A favorite myth of mountain bikers is that mountain biking is no more harmful to wildlife, people, and the environment than hiking, and that science supports that view. Of course, it’s not true. To settle the matter once and for all, I read all of the research they cited, and wrote a review of the research on mountain biking impacts (see https://mjvande.info/scb7.htm ). I found that of the seven studies they cited, (1) all were written by mountain bikers, and (2) in every case, the authors misinterpreted their own data, in order to come to the conclusion that they favored. They also studiously avoided mentioning another scientific study (Wisdom et al) which did not favor mountain biking, and came to the opposite conclusions.
Mountain bikers also love to build new trails – legally or illegally. Of course, trail-building destroys wildlife habitat – not just in the trail bed, but in a wide swath to both sides of the trail! E.g. grizzlies can hear a human from one mile away, and smell us from 5 miles away. Thus, a 10-mile trail represents 100 square miles of destroyed or degraded habitat, that animals are inhibited from using. Mountain biking, trail building, and trail maintenance all increase the number of people in the park, thereby preventing the animals’ full use of their habitat. See https://mjvande.info/scb9.htm for details.
Mountain biking accelerates erosion, creates V-shaped ruts, kills small animals and plants on and next to the trail, drives wildlife and other trail users out of the area, and, worst of all, teaches kids that the rough treatment of nature is okay (it’s NOT!). What’s good about THAT?
To see exactly what harm mountain biking does to the land, watch this 5-minute video: http://vimeo.com/48784297.
The latest craze among mountain bikers is the creation of “pump tracks” (bike parks). They are alleged to teach bicycling skills, but what they actually teach are “skills” (skidding, jumping (“getting air”), racing, etc.) that are appropriate nowhere! If you believe that these “skills” won’t be practiced throughout the rest of the park and in all other parks, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you! …
The common thread among those who want more recreation in our parks is total ignorance about and disinterest in the wildlife whose homes these parks are. Yes, if humans are the only beings that matter, it is simply a conflict among humans (but even then, allowing bikes on trails harms the MAJORITY of park users — hikers and equestrians — who can no longer safely and peacefully enjoy their parks).
The parks aren’t gymnasiums or racetracks or even human playgrounds. They are WILDLIFE HABITAT, which is precisely why they are attractive to humans. Activities such as mountain biking, that destroy habitat, violate the charter of the parks.
Even kayaking and rafting, which give humans access to the entirety of a water body, prevent the wildlife that live there from making full use of their habitat, and should not be allowed. Of course those who think that only humans matter won’t understand what I am talking about — an indication of the sad state of our culture and educational system. — Machine-Free Trails Association
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to humans (“pure habitat”). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8 years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)
Wildlife must be given top priority, because they can’t protect themselves from us.
Please don’t put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!
Stop obeying dictators and incompetent leaders from this time forward! Please share this message as widely as possible!
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — The Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead will temporarily close due to what’s believed to be an avian flu outbreak.
The Overland Park attraction said five birds — four geese and a wild duck — died earlier this week from avian flu, experts believe. Initial testing resulted in presumed positives for the H5 virus, better known as avian flu.
Deanna Rose staff quarantined the other birds in the same enclosure, which are being euthanized,according to a release from the city. The farm did not disclose how many animals in total will be affected.
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Staff said no other birds at the children’s farm have been in contact with the sick birds, and all birds are now being quarantined. Deanna Rose staff will drain and clean ponds and…
Women competitors eye their targets during the archery event in Mendota Heights, Minn. July 7.Jeffrey Thompson | MPR News 2015
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Archery is an ideal sport for beginners of all ages — you don’t have to be particularly strong, athletic or fast to hit a target. It just takes a lot of focus.
At least, that’s what Dana Keller teaches her students atA1 Archeryin Hudson, Wis. Keller is a Level 3 USA archery coach and bow hunter. And she’sbeen instrumental in training a growing number of women archers and hunters how to work a bow.
As Minnesota’s deer archery hunting season continues, Keller joined Minnesota Now to share tips for new archers.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Exposing the Big Game 