The US Fish and Wildlife service, another agency that seems ripe for pruning, has decided that it’s okay for greenies to kill rare Condors.

Rare meaning 226 left in the wild, many the product of an expensive government program to prevent extinction.

Federal wildlife officials took the unprecedented step Friday of telling private companies that they will not be prosecuted for inadvertently harassing or even killing endangered California condors.

In a decision swiftly condemned by conservationists and wildlife advocates, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said operators of Terra-Gen Power’s wind farm in the Tehachapi Mountains will not be prosecuted if their turbines accidentally kill a condor during the expected 30-year life span of the project.

So windmills have a license to kill. Contrast that to US Fish and Wildlife’s decision regarding hunting not-so-endangered species in Texas.

Daily Caller

A court case filed by one animal rights group may cause three endangered species to become extinct.

The three species of African antelope — the scimitar-horned oryx, the addax and the dama gazelle — are already nearly extinct in their native Africa. But they are thriving on the plains of Texas, mostly on ranches where hunters pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of hunting them.

For decades this practice has meant roughly 10 percent of the herd on any given ranch is culled annually, with the proceeds allowing the ranchers to continue to feed and breed these animals.

But animal rights activists generally oppose all hunting, including hunts on exotic game ranches. They have successfully sued to have it stopped, and now the ranchers are faced with a dilemma: How do they continue to support animals which they have no economic reason to keep, but are prohibited from killing?

Since 2005 an exemption to the Endangered Species Act has allowed ranchers to raise the three species, and hunters to stalk them, without a special permit. In all, Texas ranchers had about 1,800 of the animals in 2004. With the exemption in place, those numbers swelled to more than 17,000 by 2011.

CBS News aired a “60 Minutes” feature story about the controversy on Jan. 29. Priscilla Feral, president of the animal rights group Friends of Animals, told correspondent Lara Logan that she has waged a seven-year legal battle to get the exemption overturned.

Feral won. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a new regulation, scheduled to go into effect on April 4.

On that date, the agency says, “the three antelope species will be treated the same as all other captive-bred endangered species in the United States.

Got that? The hunting ranches kept rare species alive without federal grants or intervention. Now a busybody uses the federal government to end hunting because it offends her sensibilities.

Hear this, Obama: “…voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems…”

Yes, we’re talking about you and yours.

More animal humor from Zefrank

Julie Cart in the LA Times

Federal authorities intend to remove endangered species protections for all gray wolves in the Lower 48 states, carving out an a exception for a small pocket of about 75 Mexican wolves in the wild in Arizona and New Mexico, according to a draft document obtained by The Times.

The sweeping rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would eliminate protection for wolves 18 years after the government reestablished the predators in the West, where they had been hunted to extinction. Their reintroduction was a success, with the population growing to the thousands.

Ah, the word extinction just rolls off the lips/keyboard with no thought to its meaning.

UPDATE: The author of the story emailed to say they were extinct in the lower 48.

As usual from zefrank, a mix of interesting facts and mild, comic vulgarity.

Friesian horses, via Susan Gertson

Via Pleated Jeans

Gerard Vanderleun with another fine piece of writing:

I’m a man who doesn’t like cats. I don’t understand why women and certain men don’t get the simple axiom: “Dogs? Cool. Cats? Not.” It is one of the universal truths that no sane man can deny. And yet the chicks and chestless men persist in promoting this most useless of animals which steadfastly resists domestication, becoming an agreeable amusement, and is next to useless if not downright nauseating when sauteed or roasted, grilled or boiled, or even deep-fried.

There was one cat, however, that I did come to admire; Fatso.

Fatso arrived in my life like most cats arrive in the lives of men — attached to a woman. Indeed, Fatso was one of three cats attached to this woman, and he was the least promising at the outset. The other two cats were: 1) “Spotty” — an utterly coal black cat whose only “spot” was directly under his tail, and 2) “Oswald LeWinter” — a cat who was so utterly gay that he could have been the reincarnation of Liberace. And then there was…. “Fatso” — a cat so utterly beaten down and scabrous that on him a sucking chest wound would have looked good. When this particular woman arrived in my life the cats were all firmly established in hers so it was a done deal if I wanted her to stick around which, at the time, I did…

At least they can’t text. Yet.

FOX 35 News Orlando

Click image to view a gallery. Open your browser wide.

I went to the Ventura Pier in Ventura California yesterday to shoot a background shot for an upcoming annual report cover.

I arrived early and heard a hubbub down the beach — a lot of birds were making a lot of racket — so I switched to a telephoto lens and walked down to investigate.

Pelicans are common at the beaches here. Normally you see them gliding along solo or in squadrons of up to 30. But this was something rare, most likely a feeding frenzy. The tide was quite low, a negative tide in fact, which made it easier to get close to the show.

As you can see from the image above, and the images in the gallery, there were hundreds of pelicans and a few gulls. They were located in two spots about 30 yards off shore. A fisherman told me the action had been going on for 2-3 hours.

A local surfer with a craggy face told me he’d never seen anything like it before, at least this close to shore. Visitors gathered to speculate what was taking place. Food was the obvious answer, but I didn’t see birds flying in and out — it was mostly the same flock. How many fish could they eat and not sink?

Someone else guessed they were mating, but that would be awkward. Besides, they are known to mate on Anacapa, one of the Channel Islands in the background of some of the images.

A woman speculated — I loved this — that it had something to do with earth’s magnetic pull and maybe global warming. Her fella wasn’t so sure, but was sure human beings were going to wipe themselves out eventually.

Farther down the beach I met a woman who was shaking a clam shell like a rattle. We talked. She explained that she comes from Chumash Indians and that they would know what the pelicans were up to. I am sure she’s right. When you make/take your living from your immediate environment, you know these things.

I enjoyed watching people enjoying the scene and taking pictures. I’ve started taking pictures of people taking pictures, and may do a series someday.

As I left, I spotted two young teenage girls holding hands and spinning around, oblivious to the show just down the beach.

A new book showcases the best of diving dogs.

Maybe they need a nitwit driving sign to warn others.

Bjorn Lombord rips the recent sensational “study” on the dangers of genetically modified foods.

…Supplying an abundance of pictures of rats with tumors the size of ping-pong balls, Séralini certainly captured the public’s attention. France’s health, ecology, and agriculture ministers promised a prompt investigation and threatened to ban imports of Monsanto’s GM corn to the European Union. Russia actually did block imports of Monsanto corn.

But Séralini’s research posed many problematic issues. For starters, the Sprague-Dawley strain of rats that he used is naturally prone to tumors. Studies of Sprague-Dawley rats show that 88-96% of those that serve as experimental controls develop tumors before they reach two years of age. But the public saw only pictures of tumorous rats that had consumed GM corn and Roundup. If the public had seen the similarly grotesque tumors that grow on untreated rats, officials most likely would not have acted so hastily.

Séralini used only 20 rats as a control group to be fed ordinary corn with no Roundup. Of these, five died within two years, which is unusual, because studies of thousands of untreated Sprague-Dawley rats show that about half should have died in that period. Using his low death rate as a base, Séralini claimed – with no statistical analysis – that the higher death rate (just below 40%) for the remaining 180 rats fed with GM corn and Roundup was suspicious.

Moreover, Séralini’s results contradict the latest meta-study of 24 long-term studies (up to two years and five generations), which found that the data do “not suggest any health hazards” and display “no statistically significant differences” between GM and conventional food.

Oddly, Séralini permitted access to his paper to only a select group of reporters, and demanded that they sign a confidentiality agreement preventing them from interviewing other experts about the research before publication. But, while the first round of articles read like press releases, the scientific community has since spoken out forcefully. The European Food Safety Authority, for example, has now concluded that the “design, reporting, and analysis of the study, as outlined in the paper, are inadequate.”

The study was partly funded by CRIIGEN, a group that campaigns against biotechnology. CRIIGEN’s scientific board is headed by none other than Séralini, who has also just released a book (in French) and a documentary film decrying GM food.

This debacle matters because many GM crops provide tangible benefits for people and the environment. They enable farmers to produce higher yields with fewer inputs (such as pesticides), so that more food can be produced from existing farmland. That, in turn, implies less human encroachment into natural ecosystems, enabling greater biodiversity. But, of course, Séralini’s pictures of cancer-addled rats munching GM corn have instead been burned into the public imagination…

Photographer Theron Humphrey took his coon hound Maddie on a cross country trip and shot a series of straddling pictures.

The LA Times has a fun slideshow of dogs having fun in Huntington Beach,California at the 2012 Surf City Surf Dog contest.

Not people, apparently. Raccoons:

The bandit lay curled up in a metal cage, its drowsy expression turning to wariness, then narrow-eyed aggression as Trautmann-Winter approached.

“They look very smart, but I think they are very dangerous,” she said, as the captive hissed and bared its teeth. “And they are a problem for us.”

A big one, it turns out. A species first imported from the United States in the 1930s, Germany’s raccoon population is exploding and encroaching on the human environment more than ever before. That has many residents here up in arms — literally, in the case of hunters strapping on their rifles and heading into the woods to help stem the tide of hungry ring-tailed pests.

But they’re fighting a losing battle. Their furry, fertile and firmly established enemy fills an unoccupied niche in the local ecology, unmolested by natural predators, and has successfully colonized this country in less than a century since arriving from its faraway native habitat.

…

“We’re getting 50 calls a day…. I know of at least 500 raccoon families in the city,” Ehlert said. “They are the most intelligent mammals in Europe. They’re very quick.”

Unlike, say, the French.

The LA Times editorial page.

(My wife and I have adopted all of our dogs from shelters and loved them all.)

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote within a month on an ordinance to ban pet stores from selling dogs (as well as cats and rabbits) obtained from any supplier other than a shelter or rescue group. Though we are usually reluctant to support government-imposed constraints on what businesses can buy or sell — and we would ordinarily prefer to see the issue dealt with by tougher regulation — in this case we think the ordinance is justified.

Most dogs sold at commercial pet stores across the country come from large-scale commercial breeders, many or most of which are so-called puppy mills that put profit over the well-being of their dogs, according to animal welfare advocates.

Hearsay from partisans.

But something must be done! Let’s put pet stores out of business!

Such facilities are legal and must be licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but studies show that many meet only the minimally allowable levels of care, housing, exercise, veterinary attention and record-keeping set by the federal Animal Welfare Act, if that. Some of the most egregious of these operations — where dogs are injured or found dead or conditions are highly unsanitary — are closed down or cited by authorities. But many bad operators continue to exist, overbreeding females in back-to-back heat cycles to the point that their bones break and their teeth fall out. Dogs and puppies alike end up crammed into filthy cages with little opportunity for exercise or socialization. Even the USDA urges breeders to exceed the law’s standards.

What’s more, the federal law is woefully under-enforced, according to a 2010 audit by the USDA’s Office of Inspector General. Animal care inspectors failed to sanction appropriately, or quickly, breeders holding dogs variously infested with ticks or sores, suffering injured limbs, living in fetid cages, unsheltered from cold or hot weather, or using water and food dishes covered in vermin. During the three-year period of the audit, USDA officials made 8,289 inspections and found that 5,261 licensed dealers were in violation of the act. Since the audit, the USDA says the inspection program has been improved.

In the best of all worlds, federal and state laws governing breeding facilities would be overhauled to mandate better conditions for animals. But laws tightening up rules face powerful opposition from the pet industry and legislative allies of breeding businesses. Neither California nor Los Angeles, both of which have been early adopters of animal welfare laws and policies, have the ability to regulate out-of-state businesses.

So, then we’ll just trump the legal order and impose our will by fiat.

Until better laws can be passed, the only way for a city to thwart these operations is to stop the flow of their animals into local pet stores. Most stores list the provenance of the animals for sale on cards attached to the kennels — but without actually visiting those breeding facilities, it’s almost impossible to know what conditions are like there. Pet store industry representatives argue that some L.A. pet stores get their animals from small, relatively local breeders the retailers trust. Again, there’s no way to know for sure what kind of breeding operation it is without visiting it — something that responsible breeders welcome and even request. Reputable breeders rarely sell to pet stores.

Los Angeles’ measure is a drastic one, but it would expire in three years, giving officials an opportunity to monitor its effect and decide whether to extend the law, revise it or drop it altogether. If it passes, individuals would still be allowed to buy directly from breeders, and pet stores would be allowed to sell dogs, cats and rabbits that come from shelters, humane societies and registered rescue groups.

Each year the city’s shelters euthanize thousands of cats and dogs that might have made wonderful pets. Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization, has already helped some conventional pet stores transition to a humane model and is offering the same assistance to any L.A. stores if the ordinance goes into effect.

First, I get a photo assignment at the county animal shelter. Next thing you know, we have yet another dog.

Which reminded me of this 1947 Pluto cartoon. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, advance to around 3:50 to see how he learns to sing.

Lewis Page in the UK Register.

My favorite part is the work done by the elephant seals, seen below playing off the coast of California. These are young males of the northern species.

Twenty-year-old models which have suggested serious ice loss in the eastern Antarctic have been compared with reality for the first time – and found to be wrong, so much so that it now appears that no ice is being lost at all.

“Previous ocean models … have predicted temperatures and melt rates that are too high, suggesting a significant mass loss in this region that is actually not taking place,” says Tore Hattermann of the Norwegian Polar Institute, member of a team which has obtained two years’ worth of direct measurements below the massive Fimbul Ice Shelf in eastern Antarctica – the first ever to be taken.

According to a statement from the American Geophysical Union, announcing the new research:

It turns out that past studies, which were based on computer models without any direct data for comparison or guidance, overestimate the water temperatures and extent of melting beneath the Fimbul Ice Shelf. This has led to the misconception, Hattermann said, that the ice shelf is losing mass at a faster rate than it is gaining mass, leading to an overall loss of mass.

The team’s results show that water temperatures are far lower than computer models predicted …

Hatterman and his colleagues, using 12 tons of hot-water drilling equipment, bored three holes more than 200m deep through the Fimbul Shelf, which spans an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey. The location of each hole was cunningly chosen so that the various pathways by which water moves beneath the ice shelf could be observed, and instruments were lowered down.

The boffins also supplemented their data craftily by harvesting info from a biology project, the Marine Mammal Exploration of the Oceans Pole to Pole (MEOP) effort, which had seen sensor packages attached to elephant seals.

“Nobody was expecting that the MEOP seals from Bouvetoya would swim straight to the Antarctic and stay along the Fimbul Ice Shelf for the entire winter,” Hattermann says. “But this behaviour certainly provided an impressive and unique data set.”

Normally, getting sea temperature readings along the shelf in winter would be dangerous if not impossible due to shifting pack ice – but the seals were perfectly at home among the grinding floes.

Overall, according to the team, their field data shows “steady state mass balance” on the eastern Antarctic coasts – ie, that no ice is being lost from the massive shelves there. The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

This is good news indeed, as some had thought that huge amounts of ice were melting from the region, which might mean accelerated rates of sea level rise in future

Via Drudge.

Story here

We have laws to protect endangered species from going extinct, which is good. It’s wrong for the last few of anything to be hunted into extinction.

But suppose you imported a few endangered animals, bred them into thriving herds, growing their numbers, then allowed limited hunting in order to pay the costs of maintaining the herd?

Can’t do it, thanks to a self-righteous busybody who used the levers of government to stop something she just doesn’t like. Her opinion, her rules. Period. (By her reasoning, vegetarianism should be federal law because killing animals is “unethical.”)

Liberal fascism, folks.

For background, here is the “60 Minutes” report from Jan. 29.

This week, it became official– the feds say the hunting has to stop. So there will be no economic basis for preserving the endangered animals.

Nice one.

It’s of a piece of Obama wanting to raise capital gains rates for reasons of fairness, even though it will be mean less revenue to the treasury.

David Lynch directed this anti-littering spot in 1991. Who knew rats ate paper?

Looks like an evil grin to me.

via Reddit