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!

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.

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.

Since January, 13 percent of the Changra goats has been wiped out, threatening the lucrative Pashmina industry in the Kashmir Valley

This summer, Pashmina shawl weavers like Ashiq Ahmed have a tough choice to make. They can either buy raw wool at inflated rates or abandon the 600-year-old weaving craft.

In 2006, the ban on Shahtoosh (woven with the hair of the Tibetan antelope) left 50,000 weavers and an equal number of traders in the lurch in the Kashmir Valley. Now, the rise in the price of Pashmina wool after the death of 27,000 goats is threatening the industry's very existence.

"The price of 1 kg of Pashmina wool has gone up from Rs 9,000 to Rs 12,500. It will continue to rise. Thousands of shawl weavers, who earn just Rs 5,000 a month, will think twice before buying raw material at such prices," says Ahmed.

The crisis started in January when heavy snowfall in the Changthang hills of the Ladakh region in Jammu & Kashmir killed nearly 27,000 goats (13 percent of the total population), threatening supplies of silky Pashmina wool used to make fine and expensive shawls and scarves.

Changthang is located 175 km to the east of Leh on the border with China. The average altitude of the area is 14,600 ft above sea level. This area is also known as Rupsho Valley where the main occupation of the nomads is rearing yaks and Changra goats. The unforgiving winter makes the goats grow extremely warm and soft veneer, which is six times finer than human hair and is used to make Pashmina wool.

Usually, Changthang receives only 5 cm of snow in winters when temperatures dip to as low as -35°C. This year, it witnessed 121 cm of snowfall, which many say is a direct result of climate change.

Ascension Island - Over the last few weeks we have been recording high numbers of dead fish washing up onto the beaches around the Island.

The same thing happened, at the same time of year, in 2008. A report was published recently, called 'Reef fish mass mortality event in an isolated island off Brazil, with notes on recent similar events at Ascension, St Helena and Maldives' by Hudson Pinheiro, Joao Gasparini and Jean-Christophe Joyeux. The report states that 'it is possible that blooms of toxic algae, under certain conditions, caused cascading intoxication along the trophic web. Toxic algae occur in other Atlantic oceanic islands and there are reports of algal blooms occurring in remote areas that suffer low human impact. A second hypothesis is that seasonal upwelling events of anoxic or hypoxic waters may be involved (the low oxygen content would be due to the resuspension of sediment and organic matter deposited at geological scales) often heavily loaded with hydrogen sulphide. Oxygen-poor waters of the Benguela upwelling have been reported to affect the southeastern Atlantic continental shelf and these waters, in years of strong Benguela upwelling, can even reach the Mid-Atlantic Ridge island of St Helena.' The full report is available to download from our website.

We are currently consulting with contacts in the UK and Falklands. I have sent them as much information as I have, including species affected, numbers, symptoms and photographs. They will be able to offer advice on the best course of action. I have also been in touch with one of the authors of 2010 report, this was his response.

Scientists still don't know why hundreds of baby southern right whales are turning up dead around Patagonia, a decade after observers first saw signs of the worst die-off on record for the species, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

With no evidence of infectious diseases or deadly toxins in whale tissue samples, scientists are scrambling to determine a cause of death. Some are even pointing a finger at blubber-eating birds.

The whales come to the peaceful Atlantic bays around Peninsula Valdes along Argentina's Patagonian Coast to give birth and raise their young. At least 605 dead right whales have been counted in the region since 2003, WCS officials say.

Of those, 538 were newborn calves. Last year, the mortality event was especially severe, with a record-breaking 116 whale deaths, 113 of them calves.

Despite extensive investigations, researchers have not been able to pinpoint why so many of those calves have been washing up dead at the region's remote beaches.

Results from dead swans could take two weeks
It could take up to two weeks to identify the cause of death of 32 swans found at New Lake, Dunganaghy.

The swans were sent to the Department of Agriculture's Regional Veterinary Laboratory in Sligo for analysis.

A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine told Donegal Now that the samples had only arrived on Tuesday. He said it was still too early to say what had caused the multiple deaths.

"It will probably take about 10 to 14 days to really understand what happened to them," he said.

Meanwhile members of the public are advised not to touch any dead birds they come across.

Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation's food supply.

Multiple factors - pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition - are believed to cause the losses, which were officially announced today by a consortium of academic researchers, beekeepers and Department of Agriculture scientists.

"We're getting closer and closer to the point where we don't have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands," said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines.

Beekeepers lost 31 percent of their colonies in late 2012 and early 2013, roughly double what's considered acceptable attrition through natural causes. The losses are in keeping with rates documented since 2006, when beekeeper concerns prompted the first nationwide survey of honeybee health. Hopes raised by drop in rates of loss to 22 percent in 2011-2012 were wiped out by the new numbers.

Pittsylvania, Co., VA - The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been bombarded with reports of dead bird sightings throughout the Southside. Most of the birds were found Tuesday in Danville and Pittsylvania County.

Barbara Scott was shocked when her business's parking lot became a graveyard for more than 100 birds.

"That freaked me out," said Scott, manager of Penny-Wise Cleaners.

Scott says first she noticed feathers stuck to the front door, before she learned that was just the start.

"I was thinking this was crazy. How in the world did the bird fly into the door is what I was thinking," said Scott.

The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries received several reports of dead birds littering that parking lot and a number of others throughout Danville and Pittsylvania County.

"It's kind of a rare occurrence for song birds to end up being found dead from a natural incident," said Dan Lovelace, Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Still, Lovelace suspects the deaths can be attributed to the strong storms mixed with the bird's migration patterns.

"This time of year, the warblers and other birds are migrating at night so it's a good chance it is a weather related phenomena," said Lovelace.

Lovelace explains they have no reason to believe the deaths were caused by a toxin and at this point, people should not be concerned.

"I feel better but there still there is the question of why, how?" said Scott.

While most of the birds have now been cleaned up from the lot, Scott just hopes this will never happen again. After all, she says it can't be good for business.

Lovelace collected several birds from different locations and sent them to a lab to be tested. He says he cannot know the exact cause of death until he gets those results back.