Photo by Unparalleled Suffering, Feb. 18, 2023

https://upc-online.org/entertainment/230321_urge_wyoming_officials_to_oppose_unlawful_chicken_roping_contest.html

United Poultry Concerns is urging Wyoming officials and animal protectors to join us in opposing a chicken-abusing event that we seek to eliminate. The event is a chicken roping contest conducted in a bar & grill called Dewey’s Place in Moorcroft, Wyoming. This year the chicken roping contest, which has been going on for nine miserable years, was held on Saturday night, February 18th and we sent an investigator to document it.

Participants included men, women and children as documented in text, photographs and video showing how the chickens were tormented by inebriated adults yelling and carrying on as loud music blared in a display of unabashed sadism directed at the defenseless birds on the floor at their feet. One child can be heard in the video yelling: “You’re probably killing that poor bird.” Our investigator reported:

One of the highlights of the evening was the repetition of chokings that the birds had to endure again and again. Who in the world would want to have a cord or a rope around their neck and then be hoisted into the air? What can that be other than torture? Even Renee Jean, the pro-animal exploitation Cowboy State Daily writer who published an article about this event began her article with “Saturday was not a good night to be a rooster in Moorcroft” and later on stated “it’s clearly a stressful night for them.” See It’s Not Quite Cheyenne . . .

At our request, veterinarian Dr. Nedim Buyukmihci and veterinarian Dr. George Bates reviewed the video footage and photographs and wrote to the Wyoming State Veterinarian and the Moorcroft Police Chief. Their letters can be read in full here:

• Dr. Nedim Buyukmihci VMD letter
• Dr. George Bates DVM letter
• Dr. Karen Davis PhD letter

From Dr. Buyukmihci’s letter:

I viewed a video of this event and observed the following treatment of the chickens:

1. purposeful shaking and poking of an individual (presumably to agitate them)
2. chasing and lassoing of individuals (especially around the neck)
3. lifting of individuals off the ground, the weight of their bodies supported only by their necks
4. pulling of individuals along the ground by their necks
5. stretching individuals between a lasso around the neck and one around the legs

I consider all the above to be inhumane for the chickens and cruel behaviour on the part of the people. Observations 2-5 represent extreme inhumanity and cruelty. Not only were the chickens frightened and struggling to get away, they were being put at risk of severe injury, particularly of the neck, possibly even resulting death. Some of the chickens lay flat on the ground after being lassoed and hoisted into the air and dropped, no longer struggling. I could not determine if this was due to injury or the tonic immobility seen in chickens who are highly stressed or distressed.

From Dr. Bates’s letter:

I am writing out of concern about “chicken roping” contests being held at Dewey’s Place in the town of Moorcroft, Wyoming. I have reviewed testimony from an observer and video images of the event taken on 18 February 2023. In my judgment, based on what I’ve seen and heard, what is going on here clearly constitutes animal abuse. The chickens used in the event are handled inappropriately and are no doubt traumatized by being dragged and/or suspended by their necks from a rope. This, according to a witness at the event, happened multiple times to individual birds during the course of the evening on February 18. No mammal or bird, not excluding human beings, appreciates having their necks stretched by a rope and their breathing impeded or stopped by compression of the airway. Strangulation, even when it does not result in death, is never an appropriate animal handling practice, most especially when it is done purely for entertainment purposes.

The chickens in the video are clearly frightened and anxious as they are being chased around by adult men and women, and some appear at times to be stunned and unresponsive, possibly due either to hypoxia from being choked or tonic immobility (“scared stiff”). As a veterinarian I am disgusted to see any animal handled in such a cruel fashion let alone one handled that way for the sake of amusement. Were this to be done at a similar venue to more familiar domesticated animals like dogs, cats, rabbits, or parrots I’m sure the overt cruelty would become apparent to even the patrons at Dewey’s.

What Can I Do?

Not only is the chicken roping contest intentionally cruel and inhumane: it violates WY § 6-3-1002. Cruelty to animals: (iii) Knowingly carries an animal in a manner that poses undue risk of injury or death.

Please write a polite but urgent letter to the Wyoming State Veterinarian and the Moorcroft Police Chief urging them to uphold the WY state law that is violated by the chicken roping contest. Even if the chicken roping did not violate the law, which it clearly does, it could not and should not ever be condoned by law enforcement or anyone else. It is nothing but ugly bullying and mistreating of small, defenseless birds and teaching children to take pleasure in deliberate cruelty.

Contact:

Dr. Hallie Hasel
Wyoming State Veterinarian
Wyoming Livestock Board Office
1934 Wyott Drive Cheyenne, WY 82002
Phone: (307) 777-7515
Website: https://wyagric.state.wy.us/divisions/admin/contact-us
Email: hallie.hasel@wyo.gov

Bill Bryant, Police Chief
Moorcroft Police Department
104 North Big Horn Avenue
PO Box 70
Moorcroft, WY 82721
Phone: 307-756-9504
Fax: (307) 756-3323
Website: http://townofmoorcroft.com/police.aspx
Email: police@townofmoorcroft.com

Learn more about this animal abuse including our success in halting a chicken roping contest in New Mexico in 2000: Chicken Roping Contests.

Thank you for speaking out on behalf of
the littlest roping victims of inhumanity.
– United Poultry Concerns

Photo by Unparalleled Suffering, Feb. 18, 2023

One child can be heard in the video yelling:
“You’re probably killing that poor bird.”

Photo by Unparalleled Suffering, Feb. 18, 2023

• Alerts
• Chicken Roping Contests

More From UPC

Urge Wyoming Officials to Oppose Unlawful Chicken Roping Contest

False Equivalencies Between Humans and Other Animals

Do Chickens Mind Seeing Other Chickens Killed in Their Presence?

Anthropomorphism as Activism: How to Promote Animal Liberation

Boo, a Dearly Beloved Rooster: Happy Valentine’s Day!

Can We Assume Consciousness or Happiness in Other Animals?

Vet Record: ‘The veterinary profession should not condone killing animals by heatstroke’

MIXING WITHOUT PAIN:
Animal Rights and/or Deep Ecology by Karen Davis

UPC Winter 2023 Poultry Press ‑ Volume 32, Number 3

FOR THE BIRDS
“Can Only Be Described with Superlatives”
– Animal Culture Magazine

Alliance to End
Chickens As Kaparos

EndChickensAsKaporos.com

Vegan Starter Kit
Great Recipes & More
Order Printed Copies!

United Poultry Concerns

www.upc-online.org

NEWS PROVIDED BY

AMB

March 17, 2023, 15:26 GMT

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

    https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/622820551/killing-coyotes-is-an-ineffective-management-tool-and-has-contributed-to-expansion-of-coyote-territory

A coyote basks in the sun. Credit: Dan Licht Cinematographer

Study of coyotes in new documentary ‘American Bolshevik’ shows human-provided food sources drive conflicts; lethal control often results in greater conflict.

When you have unsecured food sources associated with people, coyotes like to hang around, especially when you have some closet feeders embedded in the neighborhood.”

— Dr. Numi Mitchell

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, March 17, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — ‘American Bolshevik,’ the award-winning documentary from Lemon Martini Productions, explores conflicts with coyotes and the forces that have caused the expansion of their territory throughout the United States. The film is available on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, and VUDU in the US, Canada, and other countries.

The feature length film reveals that conflicts are primarily driven by human activities such as intentional or inadvertent feeding of coyotes, which can condition these wild animals to lose their fear of humans and results in greater numbers of coyotes.

“Coyotes reproduce more and have more offspring if they have a lot of food. If they don’t have a lot of food they drop their own population,” states Dr. Numi Mitchell of the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study (NBCS) in Rhode Island. The study found that the food that was making coyotes so abundant was being provided by local residents. “We found piles of dead livestock on farms that would sustain a coyote group all winter long. Feral cat colonies were a surprise. Coyotes learned, just as the cats do, that the lady comes every day and drops off food. Coyotes also eat garbage and compost. When you have unsecured food sources associated with people, coyotes like to hang around, especially when you have some closet feeders embedded in the neighborhood.”

The NBCS began nearly two decades ago in response to an increase in sightings and conflicts with coyotes on Aquidneck Island, which encompasses the tony resort city of Newport, Rhode Island, known for its sailing, polo, and music festivals. As a result of this ground-breaking study, each of the towns on Aquidneck Island have enacted “no-feeding ordinances” to ensure that residents are not conditioning coyotes to overcome their natural wariness of humans. The towns also actively educate residents on strategies to reduce conflict, including “hazing” to limit future contact.

Woven between this modern-day conflict with coyotes, American Bolshevik tells the story of the coyote’s expansion into New England long after the slaughter of the native wolf species. The film follows a century of escalating attempts to eradicate the species as detailed by historian Dan Flores, The New York Times best-selling author of Coyote America.

“Coyotes are fission-fusion animals,” explains Dr. Flores in the film, meaning that they are one of only a few species that can function either within groups or as individuals. “Whenever they go into fission mode as a result of being persecuted, what they often end up doing is scattering across the landscape and colonizing new places. By wiping out wolves in Eastern America we had basically opened up the niche for a mid-sized canid predator. And when the attempt to poison coyotes in the West had triggered their fission-fusion reaction, coyotes had begun colonizing into the South and the East where this niche for a mid-sized predator remained open.”

Today an estimated 500,000 coyotes are slaughtered annually in the United States in the name of “wildlife management,” often through inhumane killing contests and practices such as leg hold traps, aerial shooting, and poisoning, according to Camilla Fox, Executive Director of advocacy organization Project Coyote. “Killing coyotes has never, and will never work to manage them,” states conservation biologist Chris Schadler, Co-Founder of the New Hampshire Wildlife Coalition, who recounts her years of successfully farming sheep amidst coyotes. The adverse effects of lethal control on the local level is explained by Dr. Mitchell of NBCS. “The alpha male and alpha female are the primary defenders of the pack territory. If you bring a hunter in and shoot coyotes, it’s basically shooting holes in the fence. If a resident bunch is shot out, it’s anarchy. All those coyotes start flowing into the void and you end up with more coyotes than you had to begin with,” says Dr. Mitchell. There is also a biological response to killing coyotes, she notes, as coyote litter sizes will increase to compensate.

According to the experts interviewed in the film, coyotes can bring many benefits to their communities, and there are evidence-based strategies for successful coexistence with coyotes. These include diligently eliminating human-provided food sources, hazing to reinforce fear of humans, and ensuring pets are kept on leashes, particularly during denning season.

Lila Kerns
AMB

From elephants to tigers, study reveals scale of damage to wildlife caused by transformation of wildernesses and human activity

Robin McKie Science Editor

Sat 18 Mar 2023 13.07 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/18/a-wake-up-call-total-weight-of-wild-mammals-less-than-10-of-humanitys

The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet.

A study by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, published this month, concludes that wild land mammals alive today have a total mass of 22m tonnes. By comparison, humanity now weighs in at a total of around 390m tonnes.

At the same time, the species we have domesticated, such as sheep and cattle, in addition to other hangers-on such as urban rodents, add a further 630m tonnes to the total mass of creatures that are now competing with wild mammals for Earth’s resources. The biomass of pigs alone is nearly double that of all wild land mammals.

The figures demonstrate starkly that humanity’s transformation of the planet’s wildernesses and natural habitats into a vast global plantation is now well under way – with devastating consequences for its wild creatures. As the study authors emphasise, the idea that Earth is a planet that still possesses great plains and jungles that are teeming with wild animals is now seriously out of kilter with reality. The natural world and its wild animals are vanishing as humanity’s population of almost eight billion individuals continues to grow.

“When you look at wildlife documentaries on television – for instance of wildebeest migrating – it is easy to conclude that wild mammals are doing quite well,” lead author Ron Milo told the Observer.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.563.0_en.html#goog_410565102

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.563.0_en.html#goog_1997401990

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.563.0_en.html#goog_879700715House Republicans rally to Trump’s defense with callfor DA Alvin Bragg to testify – live

“But that intuition is wrong. These creatures are not doing well at all. Their total mass is around 22m tonnes which is less than 10% of humanity’s combined weight and amounts to only about 6lb of wild land mammal per person. And when you add all our cattle, sheep and other livestock, that adds another 630m tonnes. That is 30 times the total for wild animals. It is staggering. This is a wake-up call to humanity.”

The study, The Global Biomass of Wild Mammals, also reveals that those that do best – such as the white-tailed deer in the US and wild boars – are those that find it easier to adapt to the presence of humans. Both species can be found near settlements and are occasionally treated as pets. “Even within the wild, the fingerprints of humanity are obvious,” added Milo, whose team’s study is published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As part of the paper, researchers Lior Greenspoon and Eyal Krieger collected biomass data on about half of all known mammals and used machine-learning computational models on other zoological samples to calculate the other half.

The grim figures for land mammals were matched by those found in the oceans. The total mass of marine mammals was calculated to be around 40m tonnes. Fin whales have the largest total biomass with sperm whales and humpbacks coming into the second and third slots, respectively.

Domesticated-to-wild mass ratios emphasise the active role humans play in shaping the abundance of mammals on Earth

Study

Common pet species were also found to be major contributors to humanity’s planetary impact. Domestic dogs have a total mass of around 20m tonnes, a figure close to the combined biomass of all wild terrestrial mammals, while cats have a total biomass of around 2m tonnes, almost double that of the African savanna elephant. “These domesticated-to-wild mass ratios emphasise the active role humans play in shaping the abundance of mammals on Earth,” the researchers state in their paper.

Biomass studies are not the only way to quantify the animal world. Numbers of species are also revealing. As an example, it has been found there are 1,200 species of bats that account for a fifth of all land mammal species and two-thirds of all individual wild mammals by head count. However, they make up only 10% of the biomass of wild land mammals.

“Biomass is complementary to species richness and other diversity metrics, and can serve as an indicator of wild mammals’ abundance and ecological footprint on a global scale,” the researchers state.

Estimates made two years ago by the team suggested there were about 50m tonnes of wild mammals on Earth. The new figure, calculated using a host of techniques including AI, indicates that the crisis facing the planet’s wildlife appears to be much worse than first appreciated. Just how quickly the depletion of wild mammals is proceeding now needs to be assessed as a matter of urgency, they say, and is the focus of the study’s next phase which will assess how much of the biomass loss occurred over the past 100 years.

IPCC report says only swift and drastic action can avert irrevocable damage to world

• Analysis: Humanity at the crossroads
• Timeline: The IPCC’s reports

Fiona Harvey Environment editorMon 20 Mar 2023 09.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c

Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday.

The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”

In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems.

Monday’s final instalment, called the synthesis report, is almost certain to be the last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.

Kaisa Kosonen, a climate expert at Greenpeace International, said: “This report is definitely a final warning on 1.5C. If governments just stay on their current policies, the remaining carbon budget will be used up before the next IPCC report [due in 2030].”

More than 3bn people already live in areas that are “highly vulnerable” to climate breakdown, the IPCC found, and half of the global population now experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. In many areas, the report warned, we are already reaching the limit to which we can adapt to such severe changes, and weather extremes are “increasingly driving displacement” of people in Africa, Asia, North, Central and South America, and the south Pacific.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2022/11/temperature-zip/giv-6562F1H3UQGm5JrH/

All of those impacts are set to increase rapidly, as we have failed to reverse the 200-year trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions, despite more than 30 years of warnings from the IPCC, which published its first report in 1990.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.563.0_en.html#goog_365258564

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.563.0_en.html#goog_1373844383

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.563.0_en.html#goog_331176528Russia-Ukraine war live: US warns world ‘should notbe fooled’ by Xi’s ‘peace’ proposal as Chinese leader meets ‘dear friend’ Putin

The world heats up in response to the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, so every year in which emissions continue to rise eats up the available “carbon budget” and means much more drastic cuts will be needed in future years.

Yet there is still hope of staying within 1.5C, according to the report. Hoesung Lee, the chair of the IPCC, said: “This synthesis report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a livable sustainable future for all.”

Temperatures are now about 1.1C above pre-industrial levels, the IPCC found. If greenhouse gas emissions can be made to peak as soon as possible, and are reduced rapidly in the following years, it may still be possible to avoid the worst ravages that would follow a 1.5C rise.

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Every bit of warming avoided due to the collective actions pulled from our growing, increasingly effective toolkit of options is less worse news for societies and the ecosystems on which we all depend.”

Guterres called on governments to take drastic action to reduce emissions by investing in renewable energy and low-carbon technology. He said rich countries must try to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as close as possible to 2040”, rather than waiting for the 2050 deadline most have signed up to.skip past newsletter promotion

Sign up to Down to Earth

Free weekly newsletter

The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential

https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/anchor?ar=1&k=6LdzlmsdAAAAALFH63cBVagSFPuuHXQ9OfpIDdMc&co=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tOjQ0Mw..&hl=en&type=image&v=Trd6gj1dhC_fx0ma_AWHc1me&theme=light&size=invisible&badge=bottomright&cb=3oq76u315zizPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

after newsletter promotion

He said: “The climate timebomb is ticking. But today’s report is a how-to guide to defuse the climate timebomb. It is a survival guide for humanity. As it shows, the 1.5C limit is achievable.”

John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said: “Today’s message from the IPCC is abundantly clear: we are making progress, but not enough. We have the tools to stave off and reduce the risks of the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but we must take advantage of this moment to act now.”

Monday’s “synthesis report” is the final part of the sixth assessment report (AR6) by the IPCC, which was set up in 1988 to investigate the climate and provide scientific underpinning to international policy on the crisis. The first three sections of AR6, published between August 2021 and April 2022, covered the physical science behind the climate crisis, and warned irreversible changes were now almost inevitable; section two covered the impacts, such as the loss of agriculture, rising sea levels, and the devastation of the natural world; and the third covered the means by which we can cut greenhouse gases, including renewable energy, restoring nature and technologies that capture and store carbon dioxide.

The “synthesis report” contains no new science, but draws together key messages from all of the preceding work to form a guide for governments. The next IPCC report is not due to be published before 2030, making this report effectively the scientific gold standard for advice to governments in this crucial decade.

The final section of AR6 was the “summary for policymakers”, written by IPCC scientists but scrutinised by representatives of governments around the world, who can – and did – push for changes. The Guardian was told that in the final hours of deliberations at the Swiss resort of Interlaken over the weekend, the large Saudi Arabian delegation, of at least 10 representatives, pushed at several points for the weakening of messages on fossil fuels, and the insertion of references to carbon capture and storage, touted by some as a remedy for fossil fuel use but not yet proven to work at scale.

In response to the report, Peter Thorne, the director of the Icarus climate research centre at Maynooth University in Ireland, said next year global temperatures could breach the 1.5C limit, though this did not mean the limit had been breached for the long term. “We will, almost regardless of the emissions scenario given, reach 1.5C in the first half of the next decade,” he said. “The real question is whether our collective choices mean we stabilise around 1.5C or crash through 1.5C, reach 2C and keep going.”