Government agency gets license to kill...owls

Usually we have to prioritize, and keep track of the big issues... which in politics means we don't deal with anything less than a trillion dollars. Bank bailouts, the various new and old undeclared wars, the Federal Reserve printing money to buy our own Treasury bonds; that sort of thing.

But today I'm going to look at the US government's approach to a small thing: an owl. Namely, the Barred Owl, which has through hard work, saving and investment (in-nestment?), managed to extend its range even in this recession. The owl is a great neighbor to humankind and a boon to our parks and forests, spending most of its time hunting and destroying rodents that carry bubonic plague fleas. It is a beautiful predator with a haunting, tourist-attracting call. So naturally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (a bureau of the DOI) has started a million-dollar program to... terminate the owls and their owlets without mercy.

Yes, your taxes are even now paying for empty-eyed Department of the Interior owlinators to go from nest to nest with 12-gauge shotguns and copies of Peterson's Field Guide to the Birds, with the Barred Owl picture highlighted like Sarah Connor's name in an LA phone book. Night vision scopes, thermal imaging, and Predator drones (well, in this case, anti-predator drones) give the owls little chance. The first stage of the plan is to blast about 9,000 owls and their families into small bloody pieces of fluffy down, but the program is open-ended. Listen, and understand: The Department of the Interior is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until those owls are dead!

Scott and Robin Spivey had a sinking feeling that something was wrong with their home when cracks began snaking across their walls in March.

The cracks soon turned into gaping fractures, and within two weeks their 600-square-foot garage broke from the house and the entire property - manicured lawn and all - dropped 10 feet below the street.

It wasn't long before the houses on both sides collapsed as the ground gave way in the Spivey's neighborhood in Lake County, about 100 miles north of San Francisco.

"We want to know what is going on here," said Scott Spivey, a former city building inspector who lived in his four-bedroom, Tudor-style dream home for 11 years.

Residents 'devastated' after ice from Dauphin Lake pushed ashore

A local state of emergency has been declared in a western Manitoba municipality after homes in Ochre Beach were destroyed and seriously damaged by a wave of lake ice.

Area officials told CBC News the wind pushed built-up ice off Dauphin Lake on Friday evening and caused it to pile up in the community, located on the lake's southern shore.

The piles of ice, which were more than nine metres tall in some cases, destroyed at least six homes and cottages, according to the Rural Municipality of Ochre River.

Another 14 homes suffered extensive damage, with some structures knocked off their foundations.

Clayton Watts, Ochre River's deputy reeve, said it's a miracle no one was hurt.

Melbourne -- The search for answers presses on about why high-profile wildlife are dying in the Indian River Lagoon.

"It's one thing to die a quick death," said Megan Stolen from Hubbs SeaWorld Research Institute. "It's another to sort of waste away."

That's why there's a sense of urgency for biologists, who are trying to figure out why 30 dead dolphins have turned up since the beginning of the year in the Indian River Lagoon of Brevard County.

"We do see a few patterns in that the dolphins that we have found in the lagoon are very skinny, but aside from that, we don't see anything that really connects them," Stolen said.

Most of them are decomposed, limiting on what researchers can learn.

Many of the dolphins have been found with near-empty stomachs.

"We really don't know what they've been eating, that takes a whole new level of scientific inquiry," Stolen said.

Meanwhile, researchers are looking for a possible connection to other wildlife turning up dead in the lagoon.

Approximately 100 manatees have died since July 2012 due to a common, but unknown cause.

Of the more than 130,000 people forced to flee their homes in rioting between Buddhists and Muslims over the last year in western Myanmar, around half are living in low-lying camps near the sea, the United Nations says.

Human rights organizations have issued repeated warnings that the displaced people are at risk of disease and hunger during the rainy season, which begins this month and continues until around September.

"We're definitely very concerned," said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency. "We are working around the clock, trying to get as many people out of low-lying areas and into decent shelters."

Projections on Saturday by the United States Navy Marine Meteorology Division estimated that the cyclone would reach land around Wednesday. According to the same calculations, the center of the storm will be just south of Chittagong, a major city in Bangladesh, and rain and strong winds would also hit areas in Rakhine State in Myanmar, where the camps are.

Although the storm could change direction or lessen in intensity, aid groups say even heavy rains would create very difficult conditions for the displaced families, who are camped out in muddy fields vulnerable to tidal surges.

Myanmar is prone to violent tropical storms. A cyclone in 2008 killed more than 150,000 people in the country's Irrawaddy River delta. Another storm in 2010 in western Myanmar, in roughly the same areas as those under threat now, displaced tens of thousands and killed more than 100.

A locust plague of epic size is devastating the island nation of Madagascar, threatening the lives of 13 million people already on the brink of famine.

Billions of locusts are destroying crops and grazing lands across half the country. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects the plague to get worse, with two-thirds of the country likely to be affected by September.

The FAO says $22 million is needed by the end of this month to control the plague. And with each female locust laying up to 180 eggs, another $19 million will be needed to stop the plague recurring.

"We know from experience that this plague will require three years of anti-locust campaigns," says Annie Monard, who coordinates the FAO's locust response.

Living so close the ocean, residents at The Moorings at Squantum Gardens are used to the full spectrum of sea scents wafting over to their building.

"Maybe occasionally you get bad smells, but it was never this constant, six weeks of this now," said Don Duggan, who's lived in the apartment community for seniors since it opened in 2007. "You can smell it walking the hallway."

The mysterious odor - a potent mix of sulfur and rotten eggs - hits the nose at the intersection of Quincy Shore Drive and East Squantum Street. The city has hired chemists from UMass Boston to test water samples for the presence of any bacteria that could contain clues about the smell's origin.

"The city immediately took bacteria samples to see if it was sewage; those tests came back negative," city spokesman Christopher Walker said. "But we're still waiting to determine exactly what it is."

Walker said preliminary indications are that the smell is linked to a naturally-occurring phenomenon, perhaps red algae.

"Unfortunately, it appears to be something at this point that's occurring in nature and doesn't have an immediate remedy, other than waiting for nature to run its course," he said.

Event Time
2013-05-11 20:46:56 UTC
2013-05-11 08:46:56 UTC-12:00 at epicenter

Location
17.944°S 175.075°W depth=205.4km (127.6mi)

Nearby Cities
139km (86mi) NW of Neiafu, Tonga
353km (219mi) N of Nuku'alofa, Tonga
576km (358mi) SW of Apia, Samoa
613km (381mi) ESE of Lambasa, Fiji
613km (381mi) SW of Tafuna, American Samoa

Technical Details

For the second year running, a spring die-off of hundreds of spawning-age red drum has occurred in Mobile Bay.

Alabama Marine Resources Department personnel, who surveyed the situation on the water Thursday, estimate finding nearly 400 floating in the bay with about 100 dead hardhead catfish mixed in.

Red drum are commonly called redfish, with the larger specimens known as bull redfish because of their hard-charging fighting ability when hooked by fishermen.

A die-off involving the same size and number of redfish and catfish happened during the last couple of days in April 2012.

It's a rite of spring, birds flying back to the Northland after a long winter.

But an especially long winter this year has caused big problems for the loon population.


"He needs a much larger area to achieve lift," said Erica LeMoine, Program Coordinator for LoonWatch, of a lone loon in a pond near Ashland.

The loons are turning up grounded because many Northland lakes, the bird's springtime landing pads, are still frozen.

"This late spring definitely has a detrimental effect. Especially when we have this type of weather," said LeMoine, "They found a loon in a wet, paved parking lot, in farm fields down by Rhinelander."

The loons are grounded, unable to move on land due to the mechanics of their body.

Raptor Education Group, Inc. has rescued 57 loons so far this spring.