Lolita has been held captive at the Miami Seaquarium for decades, and Kate del Castillo thinks plans to retire her to a sanctuary must begin immediately.
Source: Kate del Castillo Joins the Effort to Send Lolita to a Sanctuary
Monthly Archives: January 2017
Norway’s Seals Can Breathe a Sigh of Relief
For the first time in centuries, not a single Norwegian boat is heading out to kill seals this winter.
Gasoline Poured Into Burrows of Wildlife in Texas: Speak Out Now!
Please remind TPWD officials that gassing is inhumane, indiscriminate, and harmful to the environment and urge them to ban this practice.
Source: Gasoline Poured Into Burrows of Wildlife in Texas: Speak Out Now!
Urge Department Store Bon-Ton to End Fur Sales
Department store Bon-Ton is complicit in the torture of fur-bearing animals. Urge it to stop selling fur immediately.
Petition · Tell Neutrogena to stop all animal testing · Change.org
Trump Orders Massive Rollback of Environmental Protections
News Release from Center for Biological Diversity
Trump Orders Massive Rollback of Environmental Protections
Order Contains Dangerous, Illegal Requirement to Cut Two Rules for Every New One
WASHINGTON— In a major effort to dismantle environmental protections, President Donald Trump today signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to repeal two regulations before implementing a new rule.
This unprecedented and illegal restriction would hamstring every federal agency’s efforts to implement laws and dramatically curtail the federal government’s ability to protect human health, wildlife and the environment from emerging threats.
“This new policy is as dumb as it gets,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “How does this ‘one-step-forward-two-steps-back’ order work? So you’ll protect my drinking water but only in exchange for allowing oil drilling in national parks and more lead in my paint?”
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Petition · Sign: Justice for Dog with Ears Cut Off for Selfies · Change.org
Petition · CNN: Stop Promoting Animal Torture on Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Parts Unknown’ · Change.org
Following Trump’s “Utterly Alarming” DAPL Order Would Violate Law, Tribe Warns | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
Petition · Feld Entertainment and Ringling Brothers – Do the Right Thing and Retire Your Animals in TRUE Sanctuaries · Change.org
Petition · Representative Ryan Zinke: USFWS Lead Ban is about Saving Wildlife not the 2nd Amendment ! · Change.org
Petition · U.S. Senate: Tell Congress to Dump the “DAIRY PRIDE Act” · Change.org
Conservationists Eye Kazakhstan To Give Tiger Second Chance
Conservationists Eye Kazakhstan To Give Tiger Second Chance
January 28, 2017
Antoine Blua
Returning tigers to Central Asia would involve using the Amur tiger from the Russian Far East, a subspecies that is nearly identical genetically to the extinct Caspian tiger.
The Caspian tiger, one of the biggest cats that ever lived, roamed sparse forest habitats and riverine corridors from Turkey to northwestern China before it was killed off by humans in the second half of the 20th century.
Plans to reintroduce tigers to Central Asia, using the Amur tiger from Russia, have been a topic of discussion for about a decade.
But the idea got a scientific boost earlier this month when a study published in Biological Conservation laid out the options for restoring tigers to that region and identified a “promising site” in Kazakhstan that could support nearly 100 wild tigers within 50 years.
Officials from the conservation group WWF say they hope to sign an agreement with the Kazakh government this year that would pave the way for the implementation of a tiger-restoration program. But they also warn that it could take years before important challenges are adequately addressed and big cats start roaming the area again.
“It’s a long-term project. Our model just showed that it can require up to 50 years for reintroducing tigers,” says Mikhail Paltsyn, who oversaw analytical aspects of the study, by researchers from WWF and the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York.
The Caspian tiger, a fierce predator that can be up to 3 meters long and weigh more than 140 kilograms, was last seen in the wild in the early 1970s and there are none in captivity, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).
“The Caspian tiger formerly populated quite a huge area, about 13 countries,” says Mikhail Paltsyn (left). “But in the middle of the 20th century it gradually disappeared from all the habitat because of extermination, habitat degradation, and prey degradation.”
Returning tigers to Central Asia would involve using the Amur tiger from the Russian Far East, a subspecies that is nearly identical genetically to the extinct Caspian tiger.
“The Caspian tiger formerly populated quite a huge area, about 13 countries,” says Paltsyn, an ESF doctoral candidate. “But in the middle of the 20th century it gradually disappeared from all the habitat because of extermination, habitat degradation, and prey degradation.”
In the former Soviet Union, the tigers’ disappearance was accelerated by bounties paid until the 1930s to promote the poisoning and trapping of the animals.
Meanwhile, a critical tiger habitat — the tugai, a riparian ecosystem of trees, shrubs, and wetlands that occurs in semiarid and desert climates — vanished as a result of massive agricultural and irrigation projects, leading to the disappearance of the cats’ quarry.
The new study identified two habitat patches in western Kazakhstan that are potentially suitable for their establishment: the Ili River delta and the adjacent southern coast of Balkhash Lake.
Potential tiger habitat includes flooded dunes in the tugai and reed ecosystems. (Photo: Harmut Jungius, WWF)
Potential tiger habitat includes flooded dunes in the tugai and reed ecosystems. (Photo: Harmut Jungius, WWF)
It suggested that the 7,000-square-kilometer area could support a population of between 64 and 98 tigers within half a century if 40 to 55 tigers are introduced.
Paltsyn says the area is “only slightly degraded” and still has “considerable cover of tugai woodlands and reed-thicket ecosystem, the same ecosystem the tigers populated until the end of the 1950s” as well as a “low population density” of fewer than two people per square kilometer.
The area also has animals that tigers might typically prey on — wild boar, Bukhara deer, and roe deer — although their populations are “low due to poaching,” he adds.
As a result, prey populations would need to be brought up to “sustainable levels,” a process that Paltsyn says could take from five to 15 years.
Other challenges include ending uncontrolled fires set by local herders looking to turn the landscape into pastures, and addressing human safety and socioeconomic benefits for local populations to provide a sustainable future for both tigers and people.
Kazakhstan and China would also need to agree on regulating water consumption from the Ili River in order to maintain sufficient water levels in Balkash Lake for riparian ecosystems, conservationists say.
Reed jungles could provide tigers with appropriate habitat. (Photo: Olga Pereladova, WWF)
WWF and Kazakh government officials have been working for years on a tiger-restoration plan, but it has been delayed since the country’s budget was hit hard by falling oil prices and the impact of Russia’s economic crisis.
WWF-Russia director Igor Chestin, who was also involved in the latest study, says Kazakhstan appears to be ready to commit to the program, adding that top Kazakh officials were “very enthusiastic” about it during a meeting with WWF officials last year.
He says WWF hopes to reach an agreement with the government as early as this year and attract $20 million from donors over 10 years for the project’s implementation, but funding from Astana will also be needed.
“The first thing to start the program is to establish a [protected] national reserve,” he says. “It has been designed, planned, and it’s actually waiting for the approval of the Kazakh government. So I hope that the reserve will be formally established this year or very early next year. This will mark the real start of the program.”
Chestin also says Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed readiness last year to provide Amur tigers for the reintroduction program, but only if scientists confirm it won’t harm the tiger population in Russia.
The number of Amur tigers in the Russian Far East has increased in recent decades, with up to 540 animals estimated to be living in the wild there.
The study says that moving some of them to Kazakhstan could be enough to eventually establish a wild population without harming the Russian population.
Chestin insists that the program would primarily use orphaned tigers that are being kept at a rehabilitation and reintroduction center in the Primorsky region.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty © 2017 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
STOP Sizewell C – consultation ends on 3rd Feb -please write
There is a consultation going on for three new reactors in Suffolk. These would be next to the already dangerous situation at Sizewell.
There is a letter below from Radiation Free Lakeland – please feel free to use this for ideas to write your own objection. Email your comments to: info@sizewellc.co.uk
More info: Together Against Sizewell C and Shut Down Sizewell
From: RADIATION FREE LAKELAND
SIZEWELL C – CONSULTATION 2
Radiation Free Lakeland is a voluntary nuclear safety group based in Cumbria.
INTRO
Radiation Free Lakeland unequivocally opposes the proposal for three new nuclear reactors at Sizewell. The existing reactors and associated nuclear sprawl already constitute an unacceptable hazard. Given this already intolerable hazard and ongoing radiological damage inflicted on the people of Suffolk, plans for new nuclear build should be scrapped.
NUCLEAR FUEL
Sizewell’s accumulating nuclear waste starts its journey in the North West of…
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PETITION: Give a 5 year minimum jail term if convicted of setting up/attending dog fights- Only British citizens or UK residents Can Sign
Petition: Block Trump’s Climate Chaos Agenda
Nuclear Rip and Ship; Radioactive Waste Dilution- Lethal Underbelly of Private Nuclear Waste Revealed in US Lawsuit Against Trump Large Donor’s Corp.; Comment Deadline Friday 11.59 pm ET= NY-DC Time
Private Nuclear Waste “Interim” Storage Facility Comment by Friday, 27 Jan. 2017, 11.59 PM Eastern Time(NY-Boston-DC-Atlanta, Miami, etc.) This is one minute till midnight; one minute till Saturday. Comment here: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=DOE_FRDOC_0001-3256 ID: DOE_FRDOC_0001-3256. It is easy and can still be anonymous. It is important for the public record. It says that there have been no comments but there have actually been two: https://www.energy.gov/ne/downloads/private-isf
As one feisty and intelligent response points out:
“Then, there is the interesting aspect of private enterprise being used to “safely store” the waste. Gee, do we have any examples of for-profit companies cutting corners? Do they ever go bankrupt and cease operations? Do they ever leave the general public holding the bag for poisoned, played-out mines? Do they ever fail in due diligence on safety matters? Bhopal, for instance, comes to mind. For how long could we trust a private company to care…
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Why You Should Care: Trump’s Order on the Border Wall
GR: In the midst of the greatest mass extinction in Earth history, the U. S. government is stepping in to do even more to disrupt wildlife movements and put more pressure on survival.
Wall on the Mexico Border
“Wildlife and habitat are on the line because of impacts of the new administration’s immigration policy.
“Today, President Trump ordered the construction of a Mexican border wall — the first in a series of steps intended to crack down on immigration and bolster national security. The executive order to finish the remaining 1,000 miles will have a huge impact on biological unity, connectivity along the border, and habitat disruption.
“While being constructed to stop people from illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, the border wall actually does more to prevent wildlife – not humans – from migrating and connecting with different populations across vast natural southwestern habitats.
“Maintaining connected habitats is important for…
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INTERPOL- Launches New Project Targeting African-Asian Wildlife Crime Links
20 January 2017
INTERPOL launches new project targeting African-Asian wildlife crime links
KATHMANDU, Nepal – A new project to identify and dismantle the organized crime networks making billions in illicit profits behind wildlife trafficking between Africa and Asia has been launched by INTERPOL.
Targeting high profile traffickers in Asia sourcing wildlife from Africa, the project will provide a strengthened law enforcement response in source, transit and destination countries, particularly those linked to the illicit trade in ivory, rhinoceros horn and Asian big cat products.
With environmental crime estimated to be worth up to USD 258 billion and linked to other criminal activities including corruption, money laundering and firearms trafficking, the project led by INTERPOL’s Environmental Security programme will draw on the expertise of other specialized units.
These include the Anti-Corruption and Financial crime unit, the Digital Forensics Lab for the extraction of data from seized equipment, the Firearms programme for weapons tracing and ballistics analysis and the Fugitive Investigations unit to assist countries locate and arrest wanted environmental criminals.
INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock said the project embodied the added value of INTERPOL to help countries more effectively target specific crime threats.
“Protecting the world’s wildlife heritage is our collective responsibility, as global citizens and as international law enforcement,” said Secretary General Stock.
“It is essential that decisive action is taken to combat environmental crime and this project targeting the organized crime links between Africa and Asia will enable all involved actors to unite in their efforts, and provide a blueprint for future actions elsewhere in the world,” added the INTERPOL Chief.
A recent INTERPOL-UN Environment report showed 80 per cent of countries consider environmental crime a national priority, with the majority saying new and more sophisticated criminal activities increasingly threaten peace and security.
Supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in collaboration with the International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC), the INTERPOL initiative will draw on the intelligence gathered from existing projects including Wisdom, Predator and Scale.
In addition to expanding the level of investigative cooperation between the involved countries, the project will also provide increased analytical support for activities both in the field and for online investigations.
Fisheries crime will also be targeted as part of the project. Due to the increasing value of fish as a commodity, the last decade has seen an escalation of transnational and organized criminal networks engaged in this type of crime.
In addition to undermining the sustainability of marine resources, illegal fishing is also often linked to human trafficking with crews subjected to labour and human rights abuses, fraud in regulatory systems and corruption, damaging legitimate businesses and economies.
© INTERPOL 2017. All rights reserved.
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