State of New Mexico Continues Its War on Mexican Gray Wolves
Federal wildlife managers will not be
allowed to release any Mexican gray wolves into the wild unless they get
permission from the state of New Mexico.
A U.S. district judge ruled Friday in favor
of the state’s request to stop the releases as New Mexico and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service battle over permits and the revamping of a recovery plan for
the troubled species.
The state took legal action in April after
federal officials released a pair of captive-born pups into a wild wolf den in
southwestern New Mexico despite having no permit.
State Game and Fish Director Alexandra
Sandoval said she was pleased with the ruling.
But, How Does the Beer Taste?
Heinekens are now
brewed with clean energy. The global beer company’s Göss Brewery in Austria is
the first carbon-neutral brewery of its scale in the world.
The facility, which
kicked off its green upgrades back in 2003, has now met 100 percent of its
energy needs via clean power sources including hydropower, solar thermal energy
from a 1,500-square-meter photovoltaic array and biomass district heating, in
which 40 percent of the brewery’s heat requirements comes from surplus heat
discharged from a neighboring sawmill.
What Are Zoos Good For – Once Again
Really, we have to assume that the anti-zoo crowd is either
stupid or they are in favor of species extinction.
After facing extinction for nearly two decades,
the Pacific pocket mouse may now have a fighting chance.
A four-year-old program at the San Diego Zoo
Safari Park near Escondido is preparing to introduce into the wild its first
batch of this mice species bred in captivity.
About 130 of the rodents are being raised at
the park. Fifty of them are scheduled to be moved early next week to the Laguna
Coast Wilderness Park in Orange County.
The program is being coordinated with the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“The long-term goal is to find other
compatible areas for the Pacific pocket mouse,” said Jenny Mehlow, a
spokeswoman for San Diego Zoo Global, the nonprofit that operates the zoo.
“We’re in the early stages.”
Alaska’s War
on Wildlife Continues
Killing on Federal land continues unabated. Republican allies in Congress want to expand
the killing.
In 1994, Alaska adopted an intensive
“predator control” policy designed to dramatically reduce the number of wolves,
bears and other native carnivores on the land so that more prey animals –
mainly moose and caribou – are available for game hunters. In recent years, the
state has greatly expanded the reach of this effort, and now allows more
aggressive predator control in more locations than ever before. The program
authorizes extreme non-subsistence hunting practices for bears, wolves and
other iconic carnivores, including trapping, baiting, aerial gunning and even
killing mothers and their young.
The policy has clear and severe impacts on
our wildlife. On the Kenai Peninsula near the state’s main population center,
two years of state-sanctioned brown bear baiting resulted in a kill rate six
times higher than the previous 50-year average, and Kenai brown bear
populations dropped 18 percent.
Alaska’s program is inappropriate for
wildlife management anywhere. But on national wildlife refuges, it is unthinkable.
Animals Adapting to Humans
More than two years after the launch of
Guardian Cities, it seems high time for a round-up of all the animal-related
stories that have kept us amused along the way. Here’s our top 10…
Some examples:
More than two years after the launch of
Guardian Cities, it seems high time for a round-up of all the animal-related
stories that have kept us amused along the way. Here’s our top 10…
Four feral cats, named after the original
Ghostbusters, are being “employed” in a Chicago brewery to guard the grain from
rats. In exchange, they are paid a daily rate in the only currency they
understand: dry cat food.
Lima, Peru has a rubbish dumping problem so
topographically dynamic that it actually needs to be mapped aerially. So what
better animal to track garbage mounds from the skies (caw!) than a vulture?
Lima’s black vultures, or gallinazo, are
also large enough to wear Go-Pro video cameras, and well-trained enough by
Alfredo Correa at Lima’s Huachipa zoo to return with said cameras.
Moscow’s city workers are nominally meant to
keep the city’s “commuter dogs” out of the city’s metro system. In practice,
however, staff allow the city’s strays free rein to hop on the trains, scavenge
for food and cop a few winks.
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