Dear friends & readers: Shotgun blasts boomed out across the Saratoga Passage, almost directly below our home three short blocks away as we started down toward Hidden Beach with our dogs, Teddy, a young Jack Russell/Shi tzu mix, and Bo, an old cattle dog mix. A startled flock of surf scoters hurried out across the […]
Finches found in hair curlers: trafficked to sing, or to fight?
Singing said to be behind smuggling busts, but the money may be in fights among caged finches NEW YORK, N.Y.––Circumstantial evidence hints that some or perhaps all of a parade of men caught in the act of allegedly bootlegging Guyanese seed finches into the U.S., purportedly to sell for use in high-stakes singing contests, might […]
Why vultures are not circling over the drought-parched world
It isn’t that vultures don’t feel the threat from global warming GABORONE, Botswana––Scarce over much of drought-parched India, Central Asia, and Africa, vultures still converge over dead livestock and wildlife in Botswana, stripping the corpses of even elephants and hippos down to the bones within hours––but for how much longer? The Botswana Department of […]
Wild Kingdom star Jim Fowler, 89: the truth behind the legend
Florida roadside zoo showman starred on TV for 50 years NORWALK, Connecticut––Few viewers of the NBC nature documentary television series Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom during the original run of the program, 1963-1971, might have expected that host Jim Fowler would die quietly at home at age 89––but he did, on May 8, 2019, in […]
Earth Day dilemma: enviro agencies addicted to deadly chemicals
Catherine de Medici might have considered wildlife poisoning schemes medieval Let me tell you about the birds and bees, and the cats and the rats, and the possums and the pigs, and the chemical-addicted descendants of Catherine de Medici at USDA Wildlife Services, Threatened Species Strategy of Australia, and Zero Invasive Predators of New Zealand, […]
Why killing cats on remote islands will not help biodiversity
And why killing dogs, rats, pigs, goats, mice & mongooses too would be mainly make-work for exterminators SANTA CRUZ, California––Appealing for funding to kill cats, dogs, rats, pigs, goats, and mongooses on at least 107 islands belonging to 34 nations, in the name of promoting biodiversity, the previously obscure 25-year-old organization Island Conservation scored […]
Can scary drones save birds from massacre?
The test of what works up above may come Down Under ADELAIDE, Australia––Little corellas, the smallest of the cockatoo family, are again under the gun as purported avian pests in South Australia. Their cousins, long-billed corellas, are under attack in West Australia. Another cousin, the allegedly invasive sulphur-crested cockatoo, native to New Guinea, has […]
No apology from Olbermann for selling turkey sandwiches
Apologized for asking Twitter followers to make turkey hunter’s life “a living hell,” but made point of pitching pit bulls KILN, Mississippi––Sports announcer, broadcast journalist, and political commentator Keith Olbermann, 60, on March 27, 2019 apologized “unreservedly” for calling upon his Twitter followers two days earlier to make the rest of Hunter Waltman’s life […]
Killing contests: culture war losers flip the bird
The whole point is to be part of a gang doing the socially unacceptable To non-hunters, little could present a worse advertisement for hunting than the photographs, widely distributed via social media, of the 149 corpses of coyotes hung by their tails from a barbed wire-topped chain link fence outside American Legion Post 76 in […]
Study: killing cormorants tripled losses of salmon & steelhead
“This goes down as one of the really significant failures in wildlife management in recent decades.” PORTLAND, Oregon––Cormorant massacres at East Sand Island, near the mouth of the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington, not only did not save any salmon and steelhead from predation in 2015 through 2017, but may have tripled predation losses, […]
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