After years of fertility treatments, we got pregnant the day we adopted two beagles.
Keep reading We gave laboratory beagles a home, they gave us a baby
 For the first two years they’re going to just kill as many deer as they can, regardless of gender. Then they’ll switch to killing 3 does to every 2 bucks. Killing bucks doesn’t really do anything to the population; one buck will mate with many does. They could kill a lot fewer animals if they would lean more heavily on the does–and right from the start. Keep reading Coyotes Couldn’t Control Valley Forge Wolves, Critics Say. Tell that to Yellowstone Elk  An ID judge relisted the gray wolf as an endangered species, saying the USFWS can’t keep them endangered only in WY just because that state is crazy. Keep reading Wolves Out West Get Back Endangered Species Protection  “The new front on deer wars is really the suburbs or the exurbs,” says biologist Tom Rooney says. Keep reading Deer Wars: Coming Soon to a Suburb Near You  The whole technique is crude and clumsy; even for wildlife-hating Agriculture Department, which almost always just scares away Canada geese and only kills them 4% of the time. Keep reading Feds Gas 400 Prospect Park Geese Instead of Chasing Them Away  Jolly, a handsome, neutered dog New York State is about to cut off spay-neuter funds. It’s a short-sighted idea that leads to more strays and more government spending–like stopping vaccines to save a few bucks. Who would propose such a change? How about Patrick Hooker, a guy who got into the office lobbying pro-horse slaughter, pro veal and is generally not so keen on animal welfare. Right now the change is buried on page 171 of a nearly 600-page state budget, billed deceptively as “dog licensing reform.” Search for spay or neuter. You won’t find it. I don’t know much about the byzantine Albany budget process, so I turned to the Times Union, where Brad Shear wrote an excellent column explaining that the provision was recommended by the Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets, Patrick Hooker and already approved by David Patterson. In 2008 the embattled governor, he notes, “stole $1 million from the fund and put it in the general fund.” Hooker got the job in 2007 after working for 16 years as a lobbyist for the New York Farm Bureau. His state bio says he was the “farm advocacy organization’s top lobbyist, serving as Director of the Public Policy Division.” He’s also a hunter and maple syrup producer. The Daily News reports he gets a $1,622 farm subsidy himself. While Hooker was the chief lobbyist for the Farm Bureau, it was fighting for horse slaughter and against bills that would outlaw the practice. The only Keep reading Why is the Guy Who Promoted Horse Slaughter Recommending NY Stop Spay-Neuter?  Republicans have a new animal to hate as a liberal mascot: the threatened desert tortoise. Energy entrepreneurs want to put solar plants in the seemingly barren deserts of the southwest, especially on cheap government land. But conservation groups say this is the last hold-out of what they call a charismatic animal that used to all the way to Los Angeles. Early settlers could have found as many as 1,000 turtles per square mile. That means if you had a football field with endzones, you’d probably find a couple of them. The uselessness of this land is what makes it so wonderful for the tortoises, which have been decimated by cattle grazing, auto accidents, off-roading, an illness caught from released pets, rattlesnake roundups and just general development. It’s also what seems to infuriate conservatives, who don’t want this animal–which you can barely see because it spends 95% of its life underground–messing up the first decent attempts at massive solar plants. “If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put it,” California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asked. Heavy equipment would crush the underground dwellers. If you move them, they try to go back to their old home and get eaten by coyotes. The Army tried to move about 1,000 of them when it expanded Fort Irwin and it was a disaster. So far there isn’t an overall policy, so we’re likely to see these skirmishes with every one of Keep reading Is the Desert Tortoise the New Spotted Owl?  ,The Australian Government collects photos for a potential court case. When the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru 2 mowed down Sea Shepherd’s Ady Gil they ticked off an already anti-whaling Australia. The incident seems to have pushed Australia to threaten Japan with legal action this week, but Australia has been grinding its teeth and preparing for battle for years after watching Japan flout international whaling rules off its shores. The outcome will turn on Australia’s claim over its nearby waters and which international body has jurisdiction. This week prime minister Kevin Rudd gave Japan a November deadline to cut its whaling quota to nothing. New Zealand may join the fight, too, it announced Feb. 22. Australia is holding some undoubtedly awkward talks with Japanese diplomats this weekend. Some Australians fear a court case could solidify a lack of Australian control over nearby waters. Australians says they can head to the International Court of Justice at The Hague or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Germany to get an injunction against whaling. Japan, meanwhile, plays down the fight as “unfortunate” and threatens to appeal to the International Commission on Whaling. They banned whaling in 1986 but let Japan continue under the fig leaf of “research,” even in an area Australia considers a whale sanctuary. The first signs Australia had reached its limit were just after the Sea Shepherd’s skirmishes when Bob Brown, head of the Green Party, started pushing for international court action. He called Rudd’s Keep reading Australians Geared Up For Years to Fight Japanese Whaling; Sunken Vessel Just Ticked Them Off to Do It  A jaguar has been confirmed living–or at least roaming–within 30 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico. The Cougar Network, which tracks big cat sightings, sent out word that the Sky Island Alliance has two photos of jaguars eight days apart about 90 miles north of where everyone thought they lived in Sonora. Conservation groups like the Northern Jaguar Project, have worked for years to bring back the big, spotted cat that once ranged as far north as the Grand Canyon across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and possibly Louisiana. The find would be significant because last year the last known U.S. jaguar died under circumstances that increasingly look dodgy. Arizona Fish and Game caught Macho B in a trap they said was for bears or cougars. They tranquilized and collared him. Days later the then-sluggish cat was euthanized. The capture and drugs may have hastened his death. Just last month investigators found that the capture was intentional, a possible felony since the jaguar (Panthera onca) is endangered. Just last month the Fish and Wildlife service reversed a 2006 decision and determined that the jaguar deserves a critical habitat. Even the known population in the Northern Jaguar Preserve, 135 miles south of the border, is cut off by hundreds of miles from the the main population. The motion-activated game cameras showed the jaguars from different sides, so no one is sure if it’s the same cat, Sergio Avila, an alliance biologist in Tucson, told the Arizona Daily Keep reading Jaguars, Extinct in US, Found Within 30 Miles of Border  A Wolf SmilesCourtesy of SigmaEye Wolf advocate Lynne Stone tried to find a way to get Idaho Fish and Game to count the wolves they shoot for killing livestock towards the hunting total. She knew where officials shot down the alpha female of the Basin Butte pack in November. So she bought a hunting tag ($11) and claimed it has her own, the Times-News of Magic Valley says, hoping it would count towards the region’s total. One more wolf claimed for the hunting total means one less wolf cold be legally shot. Not so fast, Fish and Game said. They confiscated the wolf and gave Stone a warning. Because hunters enjoy a great deal of legal protection, they had to sell her another tag. (She had asked permission beforehand to use the tag like that and only got unclear answers.) Stone heads the Boulder White Clouds Council, which wants permanent protection for the area, so she obviously isn’t going to go hunting for real. Stone is so well known in the area and the frequent subject of harassment from anti-wolf activists. Isn’t it derogatory to call them anti-wolf? No, amazingly, that’s what they call themselves. And they vow to eradicate the “Canadian gray wolf” like it was some illegal immigrant taking jobs away from American wolves. Idaho hunters are about two-thirds of the way to bagging this year’s quota of 220 wolves. The Sawtooth region where this wolf lived has a hunting quota of 55, with 30 already dead and Keep reading Idaho Wolf Activist Cleverly Undermining Wolf Hunting Quota |
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