Country Singer Troy Gentry Kills Tame Bear

Crocodile Attacks Elephant

This particular clash of the titans had a happy ending—except perhaps for the hungry crocodile.

"The elephant managed to turn, but the croc was still hanging on," photographer Nyfeler said. "Then the little baby somehow stumbled over the croc, and the croc released the elephant.

"The croc went back into the water, and both elephants just ran away

T

New Self-Cloning Lizard Found in Vietnam Restaurant

What's more, the newfound Leiolepis ngovantrii is no run-of-the-mill reptile—the all-female species reproduces via cloning, without the need for male lizards.

Single-gender lizards aren't that much of an oddity: About one percent of lizards can reproduce by parthenogenesis, meaning the females spontaneously ovulate and clone themselves to produce offspring with the same genetic blueprint.

"The Vietnamese have been eating these for time on end," said herpetologist L. Lee Grismer of La Sierra University in Riverside, California, who helped identify the animal.

"In this part of the Mekong Delta [in southeastern Vietnam], restaurants have been serving this undescribed species, and we just stumbled across it."

Whales Kept for Abuse Larry King

World Association of Zoos & Aquariums: The dirty little secret

Sky news on dolphin slaughter

THE COVE EXTENDED CLIP

Please visit saveapandolphins.org to help

The Cove PSA

Animal Hoarding Often A Sign Of Mental Illness

One after another, the cages containing cats were off-loaded from a truck at the Denver Dumb Friends League. More than 80.

As of Thursday morning, 19 had been adopted into new homes, a good success rate considering the animals may be sorely in need of human socialization. Those problems are the results of people who may have said they loved animals more than anything. It's one of the great contradictions of animal hoarders.

A total of 157 cats were found in a home near Powell, Wyo., last week. That many animals would likely overwhelm local shelters, so they were spread out, some taken to Colorado shelters where there's a relatively high adoption rate. But it hardly solves the problem.

"These are cases that challenge the system almost at every level," said associate professor Philip Tedeschi of the Insitutute for Human - Animal Connection at D.U.'s Graduate School of Social Work.

Tedeschi has been looking at what triggers collecting or hoarding of animals. Often, it involves mental illness.

"From the animal welfare standpoint collectors, or hoarders are very serious animal abusers," said Tedeschi. "The causes are not criminal in nature."

Which makes it tough for our justice system -- designed to protect people, not animals -- to make the right moves to stop hoarding. 

It's very common for people to identify with the looks of animals. Human children have larger eyes, heads and other attributes that can make them more attractive to us. Domestic animals have that look (my dog's cuter than yours) that can get them attention and food.

"You take cats for example that have large eyes, have kind of the facial features of a child. Many hoarders and collectors identify with that animal as needing them and needing their protection."

It's often the act of "saving" is bigger than the keeping of the animals.

"In fact the response to the animal once it's been rescued is very different than the initial reaction to help that animal ... In many cases it might be a form of ignoring or neglect itself, there's even been evidence to suggest the individual might not even see the animal."

That may help explain some of the horrific conditions found in hoarding cases. People suffering almost a delusional level of not being able to recognize that animal is present can ignore the animals' basic needs. In Wyoming, the cats were locked in filthy rooms. The level of ammonia was so bad, rescuers had to wear respirators.

The owners -- an elderly couple (most often hoarders are middle-aged or older woman and frequently Caucasian) may not have been able to recognize the conditions that were right in front of them.

One of the owners told a Montana television reporter, "It's terrible, they're all gone."

The inability to see how bad it is, is common. It's "One of the reasons you might see one of these incredible landscapes within the household themselves where you might see the carcass of an animal or the skeleton of an animal," said Tedeschi.

For some the origins of the desire to help animals may be based in their childhoods.

"We have evidence that animals play an important role in kind of role in emotional support. In some cases for example in neglect cases where that animal takes on a primary role in preventing loneliness for a child."

If they turned that way for comfort in the past, they turn again later in life.

It's a mystery not likely to be solved with tougher enforcement of laws Tedeschi believes, but broader involvement of mental health in cases of hoarding to prevent repeats.

Shark Week

Shark Week

Pit bull bites Oakland 7-year-old in face

OAKLAND — A 7-year-old girl was bitten in the face by a pit bull in an Oakland neighborhood Saturday afternoon, just days after a Concord boy was mauled to death by a group of pitbulls.

The girl was taken to Children's Hospital where she was in stable condition Saturday night, said Lt. Chris Landry of the Oakland Fire Department. Oakland police and Alameda County animal services also responded at about 2:45 p.m. Saturday in the 2800 block of 82nd Avenue.

Police spoke to a neighbor who owned the dog, but it was unclear what happened to the dog, Landry said.

The incident occurred two days after a 2-year-old Concord boy was killed when he was attacked by three of his family's pit bulls in the garage of his home.

The boy's stepgrandfather was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment and owning mischievous animals that result in death. Steven Hayashi, 52, was being held in Contra Costa County Jail on $120,000 bail Saturday night.

Hayashi's five pit bulls were euthanized by Contra Costa animal services after the attack.

The county coroner's office identified the boy as Jacob Bisbee.

Gulf Oil Cleanup Crews Trample Nesting Birds

Standing on a white-sand beach at Florida's Gulf Islands National SeashoreThursday, blotchy stains from the Gulf oil spill could be seen creeping past the red-lettered "keep out" signs meant to protect nesting shorebirds.

And, according to conservationists, some well-meaning cleanup crews who unknowingly walk into nesting habitat may be doing more harm than the oil itself, experts say.

From April to August each year, rare shorebirds such as the snowy plover and least tern lay nests of two to three eggs directly on the softly undulating, open dunes about 40 feet (13 meters) from the water's edge.

Snowy plovers and least terns are considered threatened in Florida. When nesting, both species' survival depends on limited contact with people.

But with oil encroaching on Florida's coasts, an army of cleanup crews has descended on the seashore. About 44,300 people are now de-oiling roughly 450 miles (720 kilometers) of Gulf coastline, according to the website for theDeepwater Horizon Unified Command, the joint federal-industry task force responding to the Gulf oil spill.

With so many people working so close to breeding grounds, frightened adult birds are abandoning their nests, and adults and chicks are being inadvertently trampled. (See "Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Ten Animals at Risk.")

"Most of us know that the cleanup can do more damage than the oil could ever do," said Riley Hoggard, a resource-management specialist for Gulf Islands National Seashore (picture).

"Our bigger responsibility is to the [wildlife], whether it's to a turtle nest or nesting shorebirds. If we have to get cleanup teams off the beach, we'll do that—and deal with the oil cleanup later."

Genetically Altered Salmon Get Closer to the Table

The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.

The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.

Some consumer and environmental groups are likely to raise objections to approval. Even within the F.D.A., there has been a debate about whether the salmon should be labeled as genetically engineered (genetically engineered crops are not labeled).

The salmon’s approval would help open a path for companies and academic scientists developing other genetically engineered animals, like cattle resistant to mad cow disease or pigs that could supply healthier bacon. Next in line behind the salmon for possible approval would probably be the “enviropig,” developed at a Canadian university, which has less phosphorus pollution in its manure.

The salmon was developed by a company called AquaBounty Technologies and would be raised in fish farms. It is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic on-switch from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon.

Normally, salmon do not make growth hormone in cold weather. But the pout’s on-switch keeps production of the hormone going year round. The result is salmon that can grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years, though the company says the modified salmon will not end up any bigger than a conventional fish.

“You don’t get salmon the size of the Hindenburg,” said Ronald L. Stotish, the chief executive of AquaBounty. “You can get to those target weights in a shorter time.”

AquaBounty, which is based in Waltham, Mass., and publicly traded in London, said last week that the F.D.A. had signed off on five of the seven sets of data required to demonstrate that the fish was safe for consumption and for the environment. It said it demonstrated, for instance, that the inserted gene did not change through multiple generations and that the genetic engineering did not harm the animals.

“Perhaps in the next few months, we expect to see a final approval,” Mr. Stotish said.

But the company has been overly optimistic before.

He said it would take two or three years after approval for the salmon to reach supermarkets.

The F.D.A. confirmed it was reviewing the salmon but, because of confidentiality rules, would not comment further.

Under a policy announced in 2008, the F.D.A. is regulating genetically engineered animals as if they were veterinary drugs and using the rules for those drugs. And applications for approval of new drugs must be kept confidential by the agency.

Critics say the drug evaluation process does not allow full assessment of the possible environmental impacts of genetically altered animals and also blocks public input.

“There is no opportunity for anyone from the outside to see the data or criticize it,” said Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. When consumer groups were invited to discuss biotechnology policy with top F.D.A. officials last month, Ms. Mellon said she warned the officials that approval of the salmon would generate “a firestorm of negative response.”

How consumers will react is not entirely clear. Some public opinion surveys have shown that Americans are more wary about genetically engineered animals than about the genetically engineered crops now used in a huge number of foods. But other polls suggest that many Americans would accept the animals if they offered environmental or nutritional benefits.

Mr. Stotish said the benefit of the fast-growing salmon would be to help supply the world’s food needs using fewer resources.

Government officials and industry executives say the F.D.A. is moving cautiously on the salmon. “It’s going to be a P. R. issue,” said one government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the issue.

Some of these government officials and executives said that F.D.A. officials had discussed internally whether the salmon could be labeled to give consumers the choice of avoiding them.

The government has in the past opposed mandatory labeling of foods from genetically engineered crops and animals merely because genetic engineering was used. Foods must be labeled, it says, only if they are different in their nutritional properties or other characteristics.

It would seem difficult for the government to change that policy. And experts say the administration may not have the legal authority to do so.

One possibility could be voluntary labeling by those who sell the fish.

Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the F.D.A., said in a statement: “Labeling is one of many issues involved with the review of genetically engineered animals for use in food. As has been publicly reported, the AquAdvantage Salmon is under review by the agency, and as we move forward, we will share information with the public.”

Mr. Stotish of AquaBounty said his company was not against voluntary labeling, but the matter was not in its hands because it would only be selling fish eggs to fish farms, not grown salmon to the supermarket.

He said the company had submitted data to the F.D.A. showing that its salmon was indistinguishable from nonengineered Atlantic salmon in terms of taste, color, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, proteins and other nutrients.

“Our fish is identical in every measurable way to the traditional food Atlantic salmon,” Mr. Stotish said. “If there’s no material difference, then it would be misleading to require labeling.”

Virtually all Atlantic salmon now comes from fish farms, not the wild.

The F.D.A. must also decide on the environmental risks from the salmon. Some experts have speculated that fast-growing fish could out-compete wild fish for food or mates.

Mr. Stotish said the salmon would be grown only in inland tanks or other contained facilities, not in ocean pens where they might escape into the wild. And the fish would all be female and sterile, making it impossible for them to mate.

The F.D.A. is expected to hold a public meeting of an advisory committee before deciding whether to approve the salmon. Typically at such advisory committee meetings, much of the data in support of the drug application is made public and there is some time allotted for public comment.

But Gregory Jaffe, biotechnology project director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said such meetings often do not give the public enough time to analyze the data.

Stolen Zoo Animals

TORONTO - In a desperate bid to find out if their stolen camels and a tiger are alive and well, Bowmanville Zoo officials are offering $2,000 for pictures of the animals.

On its website Sunday, the zoo - which put up a $20,000 reward Saturday for information leading to the animals return - offered an additonal $2,000 for proof Jonas the tiger and Sean and Todd the camels are still alive.

"It's the best money they'll make off a digital photo in their life," zoo director Michael Hackenberger told QMI Agency.

While the truck that was stolen in Quebec early Friday was located, police and the zoo have yet to turn up the trailer that was attached or any sign of the exotic animals that were sleeping inside.

"I know the police are following up some leads in the stolen car industry," Hackenberger said. "Unfortunately, at this point, there is no further news as it relates to the animals."

Officials are extremely worried the animals may die if they aren't being cared for properly by the thieves who snatched them.

"It's becoming very dire," said Hackenberger, who added zoo officials are worried the thieves have not provided the animals with water.

Bowmanville Zoo veterinarian Dr. Wendy Korver said the camels will be "a lot more resistant to going without water."

"We are extremely concerned about Jonas," she said.

If the tiger hasn't had a drink yet, Korver said he would start to experience 8% to 10% body dehydration.

We have to save the coral

The future of our reefs are in grave danger we have to save them.  There are thousands and thousands of species that are in danger from this oil spill.  We have to save them.    

For the past three years, marine biologists at the Florida Aquariumhave taken damaged pieces of coral from reefs in the Florida Keys and nursed them back to health.

The process can take years, but once the coral is growing again, divers return it to the open water.

"The reality is, the work that we do is years and years in the growth process. It's a very slow process, but we need to do this," explainedThom Stork, president and CEO of the Florida Aquarium.

Stork wants to use the aquarium's coral farm to help preserve coral that could be impacted by the BP oil spill. He said the work being done here in Tampa could be integral in saving the coral, if the oil makes it as far as the Keys.

The aquarium is asking BP for $5.5 million to send its dive team to collect samples from the reefs. Stork said in a worst-case scenario, if the oil kills or damages most of the reefs, at some point, when the water is clean again, the coral species would still be alive to repopulate the Keys.

"It's a very Noah's Ark concept of taking these species in now and protecting them for the future and putting them back into the wild," he said.

The aquarium has hopes of collecting enough samples to cover an acre. It would need more space to house the coral. Stork said project organizers are looking for space now.

The aquarium said it could have a team of divers ready to go collect coral samples within a few weeks of receiving funding.

Published by tbo.com

Whale Wars

I watch these people and I'm torn on what to think are they pirates or are they heroes.  I mulled this over for a while and decided that they are a collection of people in search of a purpose. If that search for a purpose saves a few whales then more power to them.  I believe that while their efforts are valiant a more rewording effort changing the law is needed.  Their so called war will never end if the source of the war is never stopped.  As long as there is a demand for a product, in this case whale flesh, and the law allows for that product to be produced it will be.  You have to get the laws changed for it to work.  That is what I think

Curbs on Coral Trade Rejected at U.N. Conference

DUBAI, March 21 (Reuters) - A U.N. conference rejected on Sunday trade restrictions on red and pink corals used in jewellery in what environmentalists called a new setback for endangered marine species.

Delegates at the 175-nation meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Doha failed to back a U.S. and European Union proposal to limit trade in 31 species of corals, found from the Pacific to the Mediterranean.

"Vanity has once again trumped conservation," said David Allison of Oceana, which calls itself the world's largest international ocean conservation group, of the decision that would have affected trade worth tens of millions of dollars.

"Today is yet another example of CITES failing to protect endangered marine species," he said. On Friday, the March 13-25 conference also rejected a proposal to ban trade in bluefin tuna, prized as sushi in Japan.

Sunday's coral proposal fell short of the needed two-thirds majority by mustering 64 votes in favour with 59 against and 10 abstentions, delegates said.

The proposed restrictions would have stopped short of a trade ban but required countries to ensure better regulations and to ensure that stocks of the slow-growing corals, in the family coralliidae, were sustainably harvested.

CATCHES DROP

Catches have dropped to about 50 tonnes a year in the main coral grounds in the Pacific and the Mediterranean from about 450 tonnes in the mid-1980s, the U.S. and EU proposal said.

In Italy, top quality beads fetch up to $50 per gramme and neckaces sell for up to $25,000, it said. Main harvesting and processing centres include Italy, Japan and Taiwan. The United States is the largest market for red and pink corals.

Some nations objected it was complex to identify the red and pink corals at customs posts. But some rare corals, including black corals, are already protected by CITES.

The wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC and conservation group WWF said they were "deeply disapointed" by Sunday's vote. Measures to protect red and pink corals were also rejected the last time CITES met, in 2007.

"Without the trade control measures this would have introduced, the current overharvesting of these precious corals will continue unabated," said Ernie Cooper of TRAFFIC Canada.

Separately, CITES unanimously approved a proposal by Iran to ban all trade in Kaiser's spotted newt, a type of salamander from Iran, delegates said. The newt is under threat from trade agreed over the Internet by collectors.

3 tigers very ill at Chinese zoo where 11 starved

BEIJING — Zookeepers are scrambling to save three seriously ill Siberian tigers at a cash-strapped zoo in northeastern China where 11 of the big cats starved to death recently.




The three tigers were shedding fur, had lost their appetites and were listless, the official Xinhua News Agency reported late Monday.



Eleven of the 30 Siberian tigers at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo starved to death in the past three months, having been fed nothing but chicken bones as the facility ran into financial trouble, according to reports last week, although a zoo manager said unspecified diseases killed the animals.



Staff at the zoo who answered the phone Tuesday refused to answer questions or give their names. They referred calls to the local Communist Party press office, where an official, Zhang Qingyang, confirmed that three tigers were still very sick.



"We can only say that three of the tigers are in bad health right now, and we are actively working to save them," Zhang said but wouldn't elaborate. "Should we fail to save them, we'd let the public know right away."



After news broke of the mass tiger deaths last week, the local government pledged 7 million yuan ($1.03 million) to help save the remaining animals.



Since then, staff have cleaned and installed heating in the cold, damp tiger cages, given the animals nutritional supplements and started feeding them 6 pounds (2.5 kilograms) of beef and two hens per day, Xinhua said.



Siberian tigers are one of the world's rarest species, with an estimated 300 left in the wild, 50 in China. But more than 5,000 are held captive on farms and wildlife parks across China.



Several other protected animal species have also died at the zoo this year, including a red-crowned crane, four stump-tailed macaques, a rhesus monkey and a brown bear, Xinhua said over the weekend.

SMALL DOGS ORIGINATED IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Small dogs the world over can all trace their ancestry back to the Middle East, where the first diminutive canines emerged more than 12,000 years ago.

A new study, which appears in BMC Biology, focused on a single gene responsible for size in dogs. Researchers found that the version of the gene IGF1 that is a major determinant of small size in dogs probably originated as a result of domestication of the Middle Eastern gray wolf, which also happens to be smaller than many other wolves.

In terms of which came first, big dogs or small dogs, the answer is now the former.

"Archaeological studies suggest that ancient (dog) remains found in Belgium, Germany and Western Russia, which date to 13,000-31,000 years ago, were most similar in body size to the Great Dane, while those from the Middle East dating to about 12,000 years ago were most similar to a small terrier," lead author Melissa Gray told Discovery News.

For the study, Gray, a researcher in the Laboratory of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her colleagues traced the evolutionary history of the IGF1 gene. To do so, they surveyed a large sample of gray wolf populations, other wild members of the Canidae family, and numerous breeds of dogs.

Gray and her team first confirmed that all domesticated dogs trace their heritage back to gray wolves. She indicated the jury is still out as to when and where the world's first dog -- of any size -- emerged.

All small dogs, normally weighing 20 pounds or less, share the variant of IGF1 also found in Middle Eastern gray wolves, the scientists discovered. This means the gene must have surfaced early in the history of small dogs, but after dogs in general were first domesticated.

The DNA studies, combined with the archaeological record, then suggest that at least 12,000 years ago, the first domesticated small dogs entered the world, with humans playing a major role in the process.

Coral reefs in danger of being destroyed

All of the tropical coral reefs in the world will be disintegrating by the end of the century because of the rising acidity of the oceans caused by a build-up of man-made carbondioxide in the atmosphere, a study has found.

Coral reefs start to disintegrate when the acidity of the oceans rises beyond a certain threshold, and this point is likely to be reached before 2100, said Jacob Silverman of the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington.

Carbon dioxide in the air dissolves in the sea to form carbonic acid, which interferes with the ability of coral organisms to make their calcium carbonate shells which form coral reefs, Dr Silversman said. But once the shells stop forming, the reef quickly crumbles.

A mathematical model was used to study how 9,000 coral reefs from around the world would respond to rising levels of carbon dioxide and increasing ocean acidity, Dr Silverman told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

"A global map produced on the basis of these calculations shows that all coral reefs are expected to stop their growth and start to disintegrate when atmosphere CO2 reaches 560 parts per million – double its pre-industrial level – which is expected by the end of the 21st-century," he told the meeting.

"Thus these ecosystems, which harbour the highest diversity of marine life in the oceans, may be severely reduced within less than 100 years."

The findings were based on a detailed study of how increasing acidity affects the metabolism and growth of a large area of fringing coral reef in the northern Red Sea. The scientists found that the ability of corals to form their calcium skeletons was strongly dependent on acidity and, to a lesser extent, temperature.

Coral reefs are sometimes considered to be the "rainforests of the oceans" because they are home to a wide variety of fish and other wildlife, supporting about a quarter of all marine organisms. They also provide food for about 500 million people around the world. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are higher now than at any time in the last 650,000 years, and are continuing to rise as a result of the burning of fossil fuels. Between a third and a half of the CO2 produced since the start of the industrial revolution has dissolved in the oceans.

Scientists have estimated that some 118 billion tonnes of carbon released into the air as carbon dioxide between 1800 and 1994 has been taken up by the oceans.

Dr Simon Donner, of the University of British Columbia in Canada, said increasing ocean temperatures also make coral reefs more susceptible to "bleaching", caused by the loss of the photosynthetic algae on which the coral organisms depend.

Corals have a symbiotic relationship with the microscopic algae that live in their tissues. As well as giving coral its vibrant colour, the algae provide the reef creatures with most of theirenergy.