animal welfare

Global warming could mean disease and dehydration for pets

Maybe you've been wondering about how rapid climate destabilization will effect pets. No? Well, maybe you should. This article in the latest issue of City Tails magazine broke the story recently, and according to them, it's not just the long-hairs that face a sweaty future. All domestic animals will be facing off against more disease vectors than ever before. So, if you know someone who can't countenance any so-called "sacrifice" to do their part, just bring their beloved Fido into the frame. Why fight fair?

Northwest sea lions granted stay of execution

Sea lions all set to gobble their last salmon supper at a Northwest dam have been granted a stay of execution by a U.S. appeals court. Judges granted an injunction, requested by the Humane Society, that a lower court had denied last week. It’s only a partial victory for the Humane Society, however, as the […]

Judge denies Humane Society injunction, OKs sea-lion trapping

Denying an injunction sought by the Humane Society, a federal judge has given the go-ahead to Oregon and Washington state officials to trap and kill salmon-gobbling sea lions near the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam. The animal-rights group sued after the National Marine Fisheries Service OK’d sea-lion culling last month. An official hearing on the Humane […]

Congress has a chance to protect sharks from finning

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the U.S. Court of Appeals' decision to throw out penalties against a fishing vessel carrying 64,695 pounds of shark fins in U.S. waters. Shipping a cargo full of shark fins without sharks is illegal in the United States, but the King Diamond II sailed through a loophole that allowed it to carry fins it had gathered from other ships.

Something good has come out of this: The decision has galvanized pressure to end the brutal practice of shark finning, which kills tens of millions of sharks annually, including many species already threatened by extinction.

Late on Wednesday, Delegate Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam) introduced the Shark Conservation Act of 2008, which will not only require all sharks to be landed with their fins, but also require any other sharks imported into the United States to have the same protections. It's an intermediate step in ensuring protection for sharks worldwide, but it's a vital step all the same.

Photosynthesis and invertibrate sex

Two new studies may upend previously accepted understanding of photosynthesis. A widespread type of cyanobacteria may not use as much carbon dioxide in photosynthesis as presumed, meaning the oceans are capable of less carbon dioxide absorption than scientists had thought ...

... in other cyanobacteria news, scientists discovered that viruses may play a key role in prompting the phytoplankton to consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen ...

... the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dropped buoys into the water off the coast of Massachusetts that will record sound for the next 30 months in an attempt to understand the effect of ocean noise on marine wildlife ...

Bush administration ignoring environmental laws, building border wall anyway

Ocelot.

Photo: Andrew Nicholson

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced yesterday that he will use authority Congress gave him to waive all environmental laws that will impede construction of 670 miles of border wall between the United States and Mexico.

The wall threatens the rare wildlife of the Southwest like ocelots, jaguars, jaguarundis, and others with extinction because it will prevent animals from reaching breeding populations in Mexico.

Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, released a statement saying,

Thanks to this action by the Bush administration, the border is in a sense more lawless now than when Americans first started moving west. Laws ensuring clean water and clean air for us and our children -- dismissed. Laws protecting wildlife, land, rivers, streams, and places of cultural significance -- just a bother to the Bush administration. Laws giving American citizens a voice in the process -- gone. Clearly this is out of control. It is this kind of absolute disregard for the well-being and concerns of border communities and the welfare of our wildlife and untamed borderlands that has forced Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club to take a stand and say "No more!"

The Bush administration is aiming to complete the wall before it leaves office, likely because all three presidential candidates have expressed some degree of opposition to it.

The only hopes for stopping the wall at this point are a Supreme Court case by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife challenging the Bush administration's authority to waive environmental laws, a so-far anemic effort sponsored by Congressman Raul Grijalva to get Congress to change the law, or civil disobedience in the border region aimed at stopping or slowing the wall.

Wolf recovery chief Ed Bangs talks about the species’ delisting

The gray wolf population in the northern Rocky Mountains is being dropped from the federal endangered species list on Friday, and on Thursday I just happened to run smack into Ed Bangs, the wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Such is life at the Aspen Environment Forum.) Bangs oversaw the celebrated […]

Not anytime soon, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals

The brutal practice of shark finning got a boost this week as the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a Hong Kong company should not have lost the proceeds from 64,695 pounds of shark fins seized by the Coast Guard in 2002.

Let me repeat that figure: 64,695 pounds of shark fins alone were on that boat. That's the weight of more than eleven Cadillac Escalades. Or eight female African elephants. Or 470 Oxford dictionaries.

How to green your pet

Without pets, the world would be such a pale, less playful version of itself. No Wallace and Gromit videos. No Fluffy purring in our laps or Fido fetching his Frisbee. No cheerful creatures welcoming us home and adoring us unconditionally. (OK, we’d still have mom.) So we love them, there’s no getting around it. But […]