Wolf Forum, Dec. 3

This article says it nicely, so I won't try to splice an argument together...forgive me if I copy/paste.
From the Alamagordo Daily News:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will present a public meeting on the Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Program Monday, Dec. 3, at the Tays Center from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The program is about a long-debated issue that has raised concerns among ranchers and farmers, while winning support among environmental groups.
"It's important to me, as an environmentalist, to have wolves as a valuable and necessary part of our ecosystem," animal advocate Steven Diehl said in an interview Wednesday. "They are not a threat to humans and they are not an economic detriment to anyone at least not the southwestern sub-species. Any ranchers that have livestock taken by wolves are reimbursed by Defenders of Wildlife for the full market value of their losses."
Diehl said if ranchers modify their livestock husbandry practices, they can greatly reduce depredation.
"It's less than one percent depredation as it stands," he said. "It would be even less with such a modification."
Diehl thinks part of the problem is a land use issue.
"It's not an economic problem," he said. "And it's not a danger issue, as there has never been even one authenticated case of a wolf ever killing a person in the wild in North America. So it has to be something else."

Click the link to read the rest of the article.

My uncle lives in Alamagordo. Lovely place.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ah, Thanksgiving. The day of...giving...thanks. Yeah. And Turkey. Unless you're vegan, and then its the day of tofu shaped into a turkey. Whatever floats your gravy boat, folks! Thanksgiving is only the beginning of the season of giving, and in my opinion one of the best things you can give to someone else is a gift that symbolizes a lasting future. To this end the World Wildlife Fund has opened a new gift shop where you can find just the right gifts for the important people in your life, and help WWF reach their conservation goals at the same time. In the Adoption Center there are literally dozens of rare and endangered animals to choose from - from pandas and polar bears to tigers and tamarins. With adoption prices starting at $25 your symbolic endangered animal 'adoption' can net your loved one everything from a photo and adoption certificate to plushie likenesses of your chosen animal, framed photo and adoption certificate and a map showing the locations of all 80 adoptable species nicely packaged in a special WWF gift box. If your someone special is a child with conservation aspirations the "Endangered Species Adoption of the Month" club might be just the gift for them. According to the WWF website: "With the WWF Endangered Species Adoption of the Month, you adopt a different endangered animal every month for a full year. Your generous one-time gift creates a lasting foundation for our conservation action around the world. What a terrific way to help preserve wildlife and show the next generation the importance of conservation." A new plushie will arrive every month, along with photo and adoption certificate and a fact sheet to help your little future conservationist learn everything there is to know about our endangered species.
Teenage girls and ladies will love the "Earring of the Month Club", featuring twelve endangered species the WWF is working to protect, and including a beautiful pewter earring tree for display. You can also purchase earrings seperately in the Apparel and Crafts section, along with tote bags, pajama pants and WWF t-shirts. Whatever you choose from the new World Wildlife Fund store, the WWF and the environment will thank you!
Speaking of thank yous, here is a part of the thank you card I recieved today from Defenders of Wildlife:

Defenders members and activists are now one million-strong and growing. And thanks to the support of dedicated folks just like you, we were able to:

• Pass the Global Warming Wildlife Survival Act in the House, vital legislation to ensure the long-term survival of polar bears and other wildlife as global temperatures rise;
• Introduce the Protect America’s Wildlife (PAW) Act to stop Alaska’s senseless wolf slaughter from the skies;
• Stop Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s gruesome wolf paw bounty plan;
• Protect rare condors in California from the threat of lead ammunition in their habitat; and much more.

So with these wonderful accomplishments and future goals in mind, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Support the PAW Act and save Alaskan Wolves

I said I was tired of having to talk about it. That doesn't mean I'm going to STOP talking about it. Every step we take in the right direction brings us closer than ever to ending Alaska's aerial hunting forever.
A couple of months ago California Congressman George Miller (D) introduced the PAW (Protect Americas Wildlife) Act. Since then more than 100 thousand people have written to their representatives asking them to support Congressman Miller's proposed legislation, and Defenders of Wildlife secured donations to run a series of ads and mini-documentaries highlighting the horrors of Alaska's wolf 'management' plan. Donor support has helped the PAW Act gain crucial support in Congress, but there is still much work to be done before the legislation can be put to work. To this end Defenders is running an ad in Congress Daily and they need your help!
Click here to view the ad.
Already Alaskan officials are handing out wolf hunting permits. Licenses to kill in a most heinous and unsportsman-like fashion.
Don't let this go on for another season of death. Help Defenders of Wildlife stop it, now!

Slightly off topic: Border Fence

Yes, I'm going slightly off topic today, but this subject kind of irks me.
Its the proposed (and in some places already being implemented) Border Fence between the US and Mexico.
I will be perfectly honest about my opinion. While I do think that steps must be taken to secure our borders for various reasons, I think the idea of the wall is just plain STUPID. How many times have we seen pictures on the news of people simply climbing over similar structures? What exactly are we expecting to accomplish other than altering our natural environment, probably damaging protected habitat (remind me to tell you more about the ocelots), ticking people on BOTH sides of the border off, and making something really really ugly?
Not only will the proposed fence cut farmers and ranchers off from the much needed resource of the Rio Grande, but it will ruin the natural beauty of what to me are some of the most beautiful states (Sorry folks, I may be a Marylander by birth, but I've spent a whoooole lotta time in Arizona and sorry if I think its purtier.)
The fence will also cut native wildlife off from both water, and natural migration routes. Sonoran wolves and Desert Pronghorn populations are on the verge of collapse, and this sort of meddling can have only dire consequences. (See, I told you I was only SLIGHTLY off topic.)
A big ugly fence is NOT the answer. Until the US and Mexico and fix their economy nothing is going to change, except we'll have spent a whole lot of money one a useless en devour.
As always, just my opinion.

PMU foal disaster on wheels

On the night of October 27th a double-decker semi truck was involved in what might have been a minor accident involving a pickup truck on a road in Wisconsin. Might have been, if not for the nearly sixty young Belgian Draft Horse foals loaded into the two-level cattle/pig trailer. The driver of the semi was uninjured and the driver of the pickup suffered non-life threatening injuries. The real victims of this accident were the 59 PMU (Pregnant Mare Urine) foals who should not have been on that truck in the first place.
Warning, the images contained in this web page might be hard to view. These horses had to be cut out of the trailer, which had flipped, blocking the doors. Some were already dead. Others severely injured. If you have a weak stomach, you might not want to look. The pictures are here.
At press time it appeared that 45 of the horses were still alive, but I'm unclear about how many will continue to survive, or how many might still succumb to life threatening injuries. To me the real tragedy is not so much this accident, as horrific as it is, but the fact that these foals were brought to such an ill-fated existence in the first place. They can thank the Pregnant Mare Urine industry for that.
For those of you who might wonder what the heck pregnant mare urine is good for, ask the multi-billion dollar drug corporation Wyeth. They use hormones gleaned from the urine of pregnant mares to manufacture hormone replacement drugs for menopausal women such as Premarin and Prempro. How do they do this? Well here's the gist of it. They get a bunch of mares, mostly drafts (larger animal, more water intake...you get the idea) and they turn them out to pasture with a stallion. Now, admitted some of the contracted ranches do make some effort to at least get a nice enough stallion to breed some passable, even really nice babies. But with an estimated 7000 mares still involved in PMU production (It was ten times that at its peak!) do you really think there are homes for 7000 even nice draft cross foals every year in a horse market that is already saturated with such crosses, as well as every other grade horse you can imagine? So anyway, now we have 7000 pregnant mares. Who get tied in a five foot wide stall for the next 10 months, their movement purposely restricted so that they're forced to pee in a cup tied under their tails. Just for comparison, the basic minimum size stall a horse should have as 12 x 12 feet. Remember the article on Factory Farming? Same deal. This sort of restriction should constitute CRUEL CONFINEMENT and be CONDEMNED. The process by which such drugs as Premarin are made creates a by-product which is in fact a living, breathing, feeling creature... a precious little foal. Just like puppies and children, no domestic horse should be born into this world without people waiting to love it. And more than love it CARE FOR IT PROPERLY. I've been a little disappointed in searching for PMU foals on rescue sites and finding many of them to be upwards of 3 years old with no apparently training for any career other than pasture ornament, and no qualifications besides being 'big' and 'flashy paint cross!'
Mind you I am in no way bashing the rescue organizations. If not for them the majority of these horses would have gone the way of those 59 Belgians. With or without the trailer accident, they would have come to a gruesome end.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I don't understand how women who might otherwise be emotionally fragile due to low hormone levels can sleep at night knowing that they are taking a prescription drug (which is not the only hormone replacement on the market, and has performed poorly in clinical trials) that is gleaned from the death and suffering of innocent animals, just to avoid hot flashes.

Wolf Awareness Week

Author's Note: Having blogger issues, sorry for no pictures. This article is a repost, and some links may no longer be active. To sign the latest petitions concerning wolves visit the Defenders of Wildlife main page and navigate to the wolf section, or click here to send a letter to your local representative supporting the PAW Act and an end to aerial gunning. First, let me repeat in case anyone has somehow managed to miss the bulletin: There is not a single case of a healthy wild wolf fatally attacking a human being in North America. I'm not even sure we have any actual documented attacks, period. Unlike mountain lions, bears, heck even a really grumpy seal will take a bite out of you. So why does the wolf get such a bad rap? I'll tell you, its a mystery to me. Now the mountain lion, you'll never see him coming. He attacks from ambush, pouncing from a ledge or hiding within sprinting distance on the downwind side of a trail. The mountain lion is solitary, and it seems to placate people to think that when they have a problem with a mountain lion they can just shoot that lion and the problem is gone. But wolves are pack animals. Even taking out the alphas might not solve a problem, if the whole pack has learned an aberrant behaviour, such as killing livestock. And wolves stalk their prey. Maybe that's what people find so disturbing about them. The cunning, the study, the psychological game of cat and mouse that the wolf likes to play. Maybe there's something in the personality of wolves that reminds us of ourselves, and people find that offensive. <-Ain't he go-jus? Whatever it is, its something that the people of North America brought over with them when they came from Europe and Asia. When North America was first settled wolves ranged the entirety of the continent, excluding only the deepest parts of the south. Before they were protected in the 1960's they were trapped and killed nearly to extirpation (or local extinction, as there were still plenty of wild wolves in Canada, Alaska, and parts of Europe) with as much as a 14 dollar bounty on their heads. Early trappers didn't much care what else they killed either, and some used poison laced carrion (usually strychnine) which could kill fifty wolves in one night, not to mention the ravens, coyotes and other scavengers it attracted. Sometimes the poison seeped into the ground and even poisoned the grass, long after the carcass was gone, and deer and elk would die. Long after that the bones of the dead animals might be chewed by another, and it too might die. By the time wolf recovery came around wolves were holding out in a very small population in northern Minnesota, but had been otherwise removed from the lower 48 states. Today helped in part by Defenders of Wildlife's program which reimburses ranchers who lose stock to depredation wolf populations in the two main reintroduction sites in Yellowstone Natl. Park and Idaho are well up, and I'm proud to be a member of their "Adopt a wolf pup" program. I've also adopted a Bison, but though I am heartened that wolves have once again begun hunting their most fearsome natural prey in Yellowstone, I hope my wolf pup and my bison never meet! So what is to stop the Grey Wolf from spreading further? Habitat encroachment for one. Game Hunting for another. In Alaska and Canada its still legal to hunt or trap wolves, but not so in the lower 48. So aside from wolves killed through the 'lethal control' plan which eliminates stock killers and other potential problem animals, wolves have to deal with human hunters sharing their food source. Only to the average human hunter it isn't a food source, is it? Its just a pretty rack of antlers to hang on the wall. I've actually had someone spot my 'adopt a wolf pup sticker' and read me the riot act about how wolves kill elk, which rightfully belong to human hunters. Right buddy. There ARE people who still hunt for food. And for them I'm sorry if Mr. Wolf got there first. But before we go shooting wolves for killing elk, why don't we say...limit hunting licenses for SPORT hunter's first? I mean, my god, what would you poor big game hunters do if you couldn't go out and kill something? Maybe play a video game. Try Deer Hunter. As for those of you out there who appreciate our wolves, I urge you to go to the Defenders of Wildlife's 'take action!' page and help stop them from exterminating wolves in the lower 48, and stop the barbaric aerial gunning in alaska! We still need 100,000 actions for halting aerial gunning to reach our goals!

Hooray for progress!

California Congressman George Miller (D) introduce the PAW (Protect America's Wildlife) Act last week and motivated 14 thousand+ new activists to speak out against Aerial Gunning in Alaska, and generated scads of media coverage on the topic. Defenders of Wildlife has posted several ads and mini-documentaries on their YouTube account exposing the gruesome secrets behind the bloodthirsty sport of aerial gunning.
I'll be honest with you, I couldn't watch the whole video myself. To see those beautiful animals running in fear from something they have no hope of escaping is more than I can bear. I also learned something disturbing from this video...all along I have been assuming that aerial gunners were using high powered rifles to gun the wolves down...not so. The distant blast of a 12 gauge shotgun is often not as potent as a single high caliber bullet. Wounded and frightened, the wolves often run until they bleed to death, or pain and fear wear them out, and the plane lands for the final blow. Then the wolves are dismembered or strung up as trophies.
While I wouldn't like to see even the lowliest toad strung up in such a manner, it pains me to no end to see such magnificent creatures as our wolves treated so poorly.
Help us continue to speak out against aerial gunning, inviting your congressmen to support the PAW Act, and provide crucial funding for Defenders to continue to run their life-saving Anti-Gunning ads.