“General licenses” mean open season on 22 non-game species LONDON, Edinburgh––Birds are in steep decline over Europe, as they are over the U.S. and Canada, reports the British-based organization BirdLife International, monitoring bird populations since 1922––but the chief cause of the European bird crash appears to be simply that hunters, including the British royal family, […]
Who killed 2.9 billion birds since 1970? Not cats, says a look through the glass!
Who killed cock robin? Clues are transparent. CORNELL, N.Y.––The Southern Tier city of Corning, New York, noted for glassmaking since 1868, may hold one of the key clues to the loss of 2.9 billion birds from U.S. and Canadian habitat in just under 50 years. Corning lies at one end of the Finger Lakes, […]
Concern for rare birds of the Bahamas rises after Hurricane Dorian
Little chance yet to assess the losses––but the Abaco parrot almost certainly survived CAPE FEAR, North Carolina––Hurricane Dorian, downgraded to Category 2, with peak gust speed dropping by half to a still dangerous 110 miles per hour, killed five people as it pushed north past the Carolinas, but as of midnight on September 5, […]
Feral cats poop where someone feeds them––& that’s the big problem
Two studies confirm skepticism of waiting for studies to confirm the obvious LOS ANGELES––The unacknowledged takeaway lesson from two new studies of neuter/return feral cat control, published respectively by the City of Los Angeles and the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, may be that by the time academia, the courts, and public policymakers […]
What you do when duck hunters start shooting up a county beach?
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 […]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 10
- Next Page »