A man left two headless bull elk to waste in Montana, officials said. Now he’ll pay thousands. The 37-year-old Missoula man pleaded guilty to poaching two bull elk in October, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said. Officials said the man shot two bull elk on private property in the Little Snowy Mountains. He didn’t have permission or a necessary permit to kill the elk, wildlife officials said. TOP VIDEOS × The man shot the two bull elk from the road and drove onto private property to get the elk, officials said. “Later, (the man) discarded the elk keeping the heads, resulting in the wasting meat charge,” Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials said in a news release. Get unlimited digital access Subscribe now for just $2 for 2 months. CLAIM OFFER The man was banned from hunting, trapping and…
An unusual elk with an antler protruding from his forehead was spotted on a trail camera in Tampico on Sunday.
Tampico is about 15 miles west of Yakima in eastern Washington.
Sam Montgomery, a representative with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told KIRO 7 News the antler abnormality, while uncommon, is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Montgomery did say she has never seen an antler quite like this one.
Antler growth of this type is usually attributed to an injury – either directly to the antler or an injury that would have an effect on antler development – or genetics.
Hormones can also play a role in antler development.
Just looking at the photos, Montgomery said this growth is likely genetic.
An unusual elk with an antler protruding from his forehead was spotted on a trail camera in Tampico on Sunday.
Tampico is about 15 miles west of Yakima in eastern Washington.
Sam Montgomery, a representative with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told KIRO 7 News the antler abnormality, while uncommon, is a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Montgomery did say she has never seen an antler quite like this one.
Antler growth of this type is usually attributed to an injury – either directly to the antler or an injury that would have an effect on antler development – or genetics.
Hormones can also play a role in antler development.
Just looking at the photos, Montgomery said this growth is likely genetic.
Montgomery said the antler does not appear to be causing harm, but it may hinder the elk’s ability to feed.
However, the elk does appear to be in good shape.
The abnormality may also hinder the elk’s success at reproduction.
Montgomery also said the pedicle, where the antler grows from, is in an abnormal location, meaning when this antler eventually drops off, a new one will likely regrow in the same place.
Wildlife killing contests are barbaric events that offer cash and prizes for slaughtering unsuspecting animals who play vital roles in their ecosystems. Coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, foxes, and wolves are callously gunned down en masse by individuals of all ages and discarded like trash soon after. The blood-fueled events serve no ecological purpose and perpetuate violence against living beings. Urge your legislators to outlaw heartless killing contests to protect America’s most iconic wild carnivores.
Wildlife killing contests award individuals who inflict pain and suffering upon wild animals with no other purpose than inflicting violence for personal gain. Hunters are given cash and prizes for killing the most, the largest, or sometimes the smallest animals over a specified time period. Coyotes are the most commonly targeted species for these heinous, blood-fueled events. Bobcats, mountain lions, foxes, and wolves are also caught in hunters’ crosshairs and subjected to violent, agonizing deaths.
Killing contests are made even more reprehensible due to the use of electronic calling devices, which lure animals to an area by imitating the sounds of young, distressed members of the species. Animals are shot on arrival, making the killing of intelligent animals even easier for hunters who already come equipped for violence with guns, rounds of ammunition, and weapons. The animals are often left to struggle for prolonged periods due to inaccurate shots, and young offspring are orphaned and left to fend for themselves. After all the blood is spilled, the animals’ bodies are often discarded like trash.
The Prohibit Wildlife Killing Contests Act of 2022 (HR 7398) would require the federal government to enact regulations to ban wildlife killing contests on public lands. Killing contests are already widely opposed across the country, as evidenced by statewide bans in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington.
Now, we must take urgent action to protect America’s wild carnivores from brutal killing contests on 500 million acres of public lands. Act now to urge your U.S. representative to support HR 7398 to end barbaric wildlife killing contests nationwide.
1. Make a Call. Contact your one U.S. representative. To find your representative’s phone number, click the link below, enter your information, and click the federal tab.
When you call, you may personalize the following script:
“Wildlife killing contests perpetuate the cruel and unnecessary killing of America’s wild animals for personal gain. Please outlaw these violent events by supporting the Prohibit Wildlife Killing Contests Act of 2022 (HR 7398).”
2. Send a Letter. Contact your U.S. representative by filling out the form on this page. Personalization is highly encouraged.
Sign our alert to immediately deliver your comments to:
Each supporter’s one U.S. representative
In Defense of Animals fully expects and strongly urges all people involved in this campaign to act responsibly and lawfully and to respect the personal interests and privacy rights and concerns of any individuals who may be affected by, or become the subject of, your protests or related efforts.
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It’s been a good week for beavers. On Monday, the New York Times ran an article highlighting the rodents’ position as “highly skilled environmental engineers” capable of mitigating threats like wildfires and drought. The same day, the San Francisco Chronicledubbed beavers “one of California’s best chances to fight climate change.” And on Tuesday the Los Angeles Timesreported that the Golden State is seeking applications for its brand-new beaver restoration unit to protect this “untapped, creative climate solving hero.”
And it’s not just California; pro-beaver policy changes are happening across the US. Here’s the Times:
Beavers, you might say, are having a moment. In Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management is working with partners to build beaver-like dams that they hope real beavers will claim and expand…In Maryland, groups are trying to lure beavers to help clean the water that flows into Chesapeake Bay. In Wisconsin, one study found that beavers could substantially reduce flooding in some of the most vulnerable areas of Milwaukee County.
All of this beaver buzz prompted my editor-in-chief, Clara Jeffery, to ask via Slack, “is…it possible that beavers got a publicist?”
Beavers, after all, have long been seen as a nuisance among some landowners, pests that cause flooding and property damage. According to a federal report, the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program exterminated nearly 25,000 wild beavers in 2021. (Authorities employ various methods to eliminate beavers, including trapping, shooting, and snaring. Back in the ’70s, researchers at Auburn University attempted to investigate whether alligators could be used to slim down beaver populations, but after an increase in alligator attacks on humans in Florida at the time, the study was discontinued.)
So, what changed? When I (half-jokingly) asked Ben Goldfarb, author of the 2018 book, Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter if beavers have a new PR agent, his answer was yes—kind of.
To be sure, beaver fans have been around for centuries, if not longer. As Goldfarb writes, many Indigenous groups have long recognized beavers’ value. The Blackfeet tribe, for instance, viewed beavers as a sacred species and prohibited killing the animals. And after Europeans hunted beavers to near extinction to make stupid-looking hats, American naturalist Enos Mills wrote in his 1913 book In Beaver World that beavers were actually “useful to man” and should be viewed as the “original Conservationist.” “This notion of beavers as valuable and good has always been with humans in some form,” Goldfarb says.
Advertise with Mother Jones“They improve water quality, they create salmon habitat, they store water in the case of a drought, and they help mitigate flooding.”
Goldfarb points to one particularly influential study: In 2020, California State University Channel Islands environmental scientist Emily Fairfax co-published research showing that beavers and the wetlands they create could help prevent forest fires. It was a phenomenon that scientists had observed before, but hadn’t fully described it in the scientific literature—until Fairfax documented it. “Emily’s wildfire research broke through into popular culture in a way that no other beaver research previously had,” he says.
On a personal level, Fairfax has also in recent years spoken out in favor of beavers, including by advocating for the US Forest Service to change its mascot to Smokey the Beaver and producing a stop-motion video illustrating her research that ended up going viral. (See below.) “Emily is a really prominent beaver voice,” says Goldfarb, who covered Fairfax’s work for National Geographic in 2020. “I think a lot of the media boom is really thanks to Emily.”
Fairfax herself has no qualms about speaking for the beavs. “I kind of joke that you can’t spend a whole lot of time with me before you also become a beaver expert because I talk about it so much,” she says. She is quick to note that messaging from grassroots community groups and individual landowners has made a difference too. “We’re reaching that critical mass, there are enough people who have taken that chance and gambled with beavers and found it successful that the message is really—pardon my pun—spreading like wildfire.” Clearly, the work of Fairfax, Goldfarb, and other so-called “Beaver Believers” is working.
In the US, it’s rare for rodents to achieve any kind of all-star status; critters like mice, rats, gophers, squirrels, and porcupines have yet to secure their spot as environmental heroes in the eyes of most Americans or the media. (Has anyone, for instance, referred to a gerbil as “highly skilled” at anything?) But in the case of the beavers, they are finally getting the rebrand they deserve.
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TARKINGTON, Texas– Alligator hunting season in Texas started out with a bang as a man caught one that was more than 13 feet long.
Bluebonnet News reportedthat Shane Lee was hunting for alligator Tuesday on a deer lease near Tarkington along with his nephew and a friend. That was when they came across the massive reptile in the water he usually uses for duck hunting.
“We are out there in that water all the time duck hunting, and we never knew that alligator was even in there,” Lee told Bluebonnet News. “We didn’t know there was one that big in there. We had never seen him before.”
Lee said they used a dead raccoon as bait, and they came back later to find the tree their pole was…
ELY — The reward has grown to $10,000 as authorities continue to search for the killer or killers of five wild horses shot last fall in eastern Nevada bout 70 miles west of the Utah line. Four horses, including one with an aborted fetus attached, were found dead within 600 yards of each other on Nov. 16 in Jakes Valley about 30 miles west of Ely and 2 miles south of U.S. Highway 50. A fifth horse was still alive but wounded so severely it had to be euthanized, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said. The bureau announced on Thursday the American Wild Horse Campaign was adding $5,000 to the $5,000 reward the agency earlier offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the horses’ deaths.“We hope that increasing this reward will help lead to an arrest and conviction for this cruelty,” said Holly Gann Bice, director of government relations for the campaign. The horses, with ages ranging from about 18 months to six years, were killed on or about the day a member of the public reported their discovery on Nov. 16, the bureau said. Anyone with information should call the BLM’s crime hotline at 775-861-6550.
They called it the “Goddess of the Yangtze” – a creature so rare that it was believed to bring fortune and protection to local fishermen and all those lucky enough to spot it.
But overfishing andhuman activitydrove it to the brink of extinction and it hasn’t been seen in decades.
“The baiji, or Yangtze River dolphin, was this unique and beautiful creature – there was nothing quite like it,” said Samuel Turvey, a British zoologist and conservationist who spent more than two decades in China trying to track the animal down.
“It was around for tens of millions of years and was in its own mammal family. There are other river dolphins in the world but…
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has declared a state of disaster Saturday as a powerful storm threatens huge swaths of the state’s western coastline.
Towns are facing strong winds and flooding, and bracing for possible power outages caused bya stormforecasters are calling one of the worst in the state’s recent history.
The storm systems continued to “produce a potentially historic and long-duration storm surge, and damaging high winds across southwestern and western Alaska,” the National Weather Service said Saturday.
The remnants of Typhoon Merbok are expected to bring moderate to heavy rainfall to the region until Sunday morning. On Saturday morning, a “very angry sea” brought storm surge into the community of Port of Nome, the Weather Service station…
An unseasonably wet storm will bring rain relief to California this weekend.CNN WeatherCNN —
A wet weekend in central and northern California has helped firefighters better contain the Mosquito Fire, the state’s largest fire of the year.
The Mosquito Fire, which has burned nearly 75,000 acres, is now 34% contained, a significant jump from the 20% containment on Friday, according to a Sunday morning update on InciWeb.
The update said that fire behavior overnight was “minimal” because all areas of the fire received precipitation.
“Rain is expected to be light and sporadic Sunday morning, but by the afternoon and evening, rain showers will be heavy and widespread. By Monday morning, most of the fire could have received more than an inch of rain,” the update said.
“Rain changes the firefighting strategy to some degree but does not change the priority of improving conditions in evacuated areas such that residents can be allowed to return.”
The storm system represents an early and substantial rain event that experts believe could help slow the ongoing fire season – at least temporarily.While rain and cooler temperatures this weekend may help with immediate fire containment in the short-term, the long-term drought persists across the state.
“Fuels are still critically dry, near record levels, and a period of warmer, drier weather will likely follow the rain,” the National Weather Service sin Sacramento tweeted. “But the good news is that any rain will help ongoing or new fires!”
Nearly the entire state of California remains under drought conditions and dry conditions are likely to continue to fuel the development of new fires later this month and into October.
Caitlin Ochs/Reuters
An aerial view of Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona, on April 20. The Department of the Interior said on August 16 it is prepared to take action to limit the water releases from Lake Powell to prevent it from plunging below 3,525 feet above sea level by the end of 2023. Below that level, the Glen Canyon Dam, which forms the reservoir, cannot produce hydropower.
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The Mosquito Fire has become the largest fire in California this year since igniting more than a week ago in the forest between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The heaviest rainfall from the system is likely to occur Sunday through Monday, when widespread rainfall totals of 0.3 inches along the coasts to 3 inches up in the mountains are possible.
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To put the unseasonably high rainfall totals in perspective, San Francisco and Sacramento average less than a tenth of an inch of rain for the month of September.
San Francisco last saw rain on August 1, but it was a measly one hundredth of an inch. It has been a dry year for The Golden City with only 1.9 inches of rain recorded since January 1, putting the city nearly 11 inches below normal rainfall so far this year.
The last time Sacramento saw measurable rain was more than three months ago on June 5. They have only seen 2.17 inches of rain this year, which is about 10 inches below normal to date.
September is also the third-driest month of the year for these cities, behind August and July, which lines up with the peak of northern and central California’s fire season of September-October.
A Level 1 of 4 risk for excessive rainfall has been issued for Sunday, across coastal portions of northern and central California, as rainfall rates of a half inch per hour are possible, which could lead to flooding.
“Though much of the rainfall may be beneficial, some isolated runoff issues may occur in urban areas and/or in areas of steep terrain,” the Weather Prediction Center said.
The low-pressure system is likely to linger off the West Coast through early next week, keeping rain chances in the forecast through at least Tuesday.
Rain will not be the only benefit from this storm. Temperatures will also plummet to well below normal through the weekend with highs only in the 60s and 70s for much of central and northern California.
Temperatures may actually be cold enough in the Sierras at elevations above 8,000 feet, for some light snowfall to accumulate Sunday into Monday night.
CNN Weather
The NWS office in San Francisco said the weekend temperatures are “definitely a welcoming site given the record-breaking heat much of the area experienced just last week.”
The unseasonable weather pattern is a welcome relief, but it is not expected to last long.
“Warmer and drier weather is then forecast for the area during the latter portion of next week as most [weather models] show high pressure over the Northeast Pacific trying to develop,” the NWS office in Eureka said.
The Climate Prediction Center 8- to 14-day outlook also shows indications of warmer and drier weather returning the last week of September into October.
CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar and Cheri Mossburg contributed to this report.
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Exposing the Big Game 