DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 8, 2016

Time to Ban the Ivory Trade

Commitment made last year met by U.S. now it’s up to China.

Your move, China. That’s the message sent by the Obama administration on Thursday in announcing a near total ban on commercial sales of African elephant ivory, set to take effect in July.

The U.S. is the world’s second-largest market for trafficked ivory, with most sales occurring in New York, California, and Hawaii, according to one recent report.

Now conservationists hope the world’s biggest consumer of illegal ivory will respond in kind.

Last September, President Xi Jinping of China jointly promised with President Obama to end domestic ivory sales, aiming to curtail a slaughter that is wiping out, by some estimates, almost 100 wild elephants a day.

But the Chinese government has yet to follow through, said Leigh Henry, a policy adviser with the World Wildlife Fund.

Farewell Bretagne

Yes, I'm a sucker for dog related stories.  They are the wild that lives with us.  They willingly give us their service.

When it was time to say goodbye, she was given a hero's farewell.

Firefighters and rescue workers lined the sidewalk as her body, draped in an American flag, was carried out. Tears streaked down some faces.

Bretagne, believed to be the last surviving 9/11 Ground Zero search dog, was euthanized Monday.

The golden retriever was 16. Old age had slowed her down, and it was time to put her to sleep.

War Against Zoos Heating Up

Harambe's death adding fire to the debate over the purpose and value of zoos.

For primatologists and conservationists who devote their lives to studying the great apes and to doing what they can to help protect the rapidly vanishing populations of the primates in the wild, a linked set of ethical and practical dilemmas looms almost unbearably large.

As research continues to reveal the breadth of our genetic, emotional and cognitive kinship with the world’s four great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans — many primatologists admit to feeling frankly uncomfortable at the sight of a captive ape on display, no matter how luxe or “natural” the zoo exhibit may be.

America is a Land of Immigrants

It's just that some of our politicians are ignorant of that fact.

The bones of giant steppe bison and clues left by their ice age hunters have led scientists to conclude that people likely colonized North America south from Alaska along the Pacific coast, and not through the Rocky Mountains, according to a new study.

The first ancient people in America are believed to have arrived from Siberia, across a land bridge now submerged under the Bering Strait. Exactly when that crossing was made and how the people then spread across the Americas are still mysteries – if not for want of tantalizing hints.

Those hints are spread across two continents and suggest a complicated, even contradictory, story about how people conquered the west. Evidence of human societies has been found as far east as the Florida panhandle, dating 14,500 years ago, and as far south as Chile, dating more than 15,000 years ago.

Who Will Clean-up Coal's Mess

Once the companies go bankrupt, guess who will foot the bill?   And, what happens when the oil companies go out of business?

Regulators are wrangling with bankrupt coal companies to set aside enough money to clean up Appalachia’s polluted rivers and mountains so that taxpayers are not stuck with the $1 billion bill.

The regulators worry that coal companies will use the bankruptcy courts to pay off their debts to banks and hedge funds, while leaving behind some of their environmental cleanup obligations.

The industry asserts that its cleanup plans — which include turning defunct mines back into countryside — are comprehensive and well funded. But some officials say those plans could prove unrealistic and falter as demand for coal remains weak.

Some Americans Take Pride in Ignorance

Why won't our presidential candidates discuss science and technology?  Maybe they want us to be ignorant.  The uneducated are easier to control and manipulate.

We’ve heard the presidential candidates weigh in on matters such as marriage and bathroom use. But are these truly the pressing issues of our day? Shawn Otto thinks they should be talking instead about science. The next president is going to be dealing with agriculture and clean water supply, health care and pandemics, energy policy and the impacts of climate change, and myriad other matters that depend on science for solutions — yet few candidates are willing to even talk about it.

“Science has a huge PR problem. We need to re-educate the public and the media about science in order to solve most of the problems we will face in the near future,” said Otto. “We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. The world is beginning to see catastrophic flooding and fires due to climate change. Clean water is becoming a global scarcity. This country loses $300 billion every year to mental health issues. Mike Osterholm is worried that Ebola is going to make a comeback in Kinshasa — a city with 11 million people — and Obama just moved funding away from the fight against Ebola and put it into Zika because Congress wouldn’t approve enough Zika funding. All of these issues come back to science. We need to talk about it if we are going to solve these problems.”