Nara, Japan, Treats its Deer Like Sacred Cows; Other Cities Worldwide Contemplate Reduction

Nara Deer Accost Tourist, by petitshoo

The sika deer in Nara, Japan, have it made: they are treated like the sacred cows of India, allowed to wander everywhere and eat pretty much whatever they want. James Dorsey writes in the LA Times that the deer have learned to bow to visitors. Vendors and vending machines sell "deer courtesy crackers" (鹿煎餅 Shika-senbei)  and outdoor restaurants provide diners with the biscuits so they can get the deer to leave them alone.

Japanese writer Noboru Ogata says that the sitka deer (Cervus nippon) have been around the Kasuga Shrine (near Osaka) since the 12th Century and were considered a good omen from the gods. Since they were literally sacred gift, people were put to death for killing them. Now they are officially a national treasure. About 1200 roam the city park. They have an annual Shika Tsuno Kiri festival to trim the deer's horns.

The Nara deer are probably some of the best treated in the world. Especially when you consider some ways people have been trying to handle their deer lately:

England: The Brits generally love their deer and even have deer parks with deer safaris. But lately they've had a bit much of them, Wildlife Extra says. Populations of all species--two native, four introduced--are on the rise. Wildlife minister Huw Irranca-Davies, declared the diminuitive muntjac deer, deer non grata. The Duke of Bedford once kept the tiny deer as pets, but, the British Deer Society says, they now roam south and central England and Wales. Here's their handy map.

Austin, TX, wants to trap deer, send them to a butcher and donate the meat to charity.

Suburban Chicago Will County wants to start allowing hunting in forest preserves.

For decades Pennsylvania managed its deer population to produce more deer to hunt. Now it wants to reduce deer numbers (and car accidents) by forcing hunters to shoot does instead of bucks. But a group of hunters objects, saying the state really has a deer shortage, Philly.com reports.

Where to Go to See Unusual Deer

Idaho Wolf Activist Cleverly Undermining Wolf Hunting Quota

A Wolf Smiles
Courtesy of SigmaEye

Wolf advocate Lynne Stone tried to find a way to get Idaho Fish and Game to count the wolves they shoot for killing livestock towards the hunting total. She knew where officials shot down the alpha female of the Basin Butte pack in November. So she bought a hunting tag ($11) and claimed it has her own, the Times-News of Magic Valley says, hoping it would count towards the region's total.

One more wolf claimed for the hunting total means one less wolf cold be legally shot. Not so fast, Fish and Game said. They confiscated the wolf and gave Stone a warning. Because hunters enjoy a great deal of legal protection, they had to sell her another tag. (She had asked permission beforehand to use the tag like that and only got unclear answers.)

Stone heads the Boulder White Clouds Council, which wants permanent protection for the area, so she obviously isn't going to go hunting for real. Stone is so well known in the area and the frequent subject of harassment from anti-wolf activists. Isn't it derogatory to call them anti-wolf? No, amazingly, that's what they call themselves. And they vow to eradicate the "Canadian gray wolf" like it was some illegal immigrant taking jobs away from American wolves.


Idaho hunters are about two-thirds of the way to bagging this year's quota of 220 wolves. The Sawtooth region where this wolf lived has a hunting quota of 55, with 30 already dead and 15 more allowed to be shot by March 31. This area has the biggest wolf population and legal and illegal kills. They did count one illegal kill against the quota.

At minimum they should count all the illegal kills against the quota so that legal hunters have an incentive against poachers. In a state that hunts Sandhill Crane I don't really expect much revulsion at someone hunting wolves out of season.

Stone's clever plan is more provocative because she was willing to pay to have a wolf not killed. Hunters have long claimed that they support conservation and wildlife departments through their hunting tag dollars. America's 71 million wildlife watchers far outspend versus the 12.5 million hunters, ($46 billion versus on animal watching versus $23 billion on hunting), according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.What if we all were allowed to pay $11 to save a wolf?

Idaho Wolf Population: about 800
Dead in 2009: 273
Hunted: 135
State Control Action: 87
Illegally Hunted: 13
Other (such as natural causes or car accidents): 8
Shot in Defense of Livestock: 6
Source: Idaho Fish and Game 

Go with White Clouds to See Wildlife in Idaho

Where to Go to See Wolves and Coywolves Near You

Feds Overlook Wildlife Watchers Again in New Conservation Panel

Sarah Palin - Caribou Hunt,
courtesy  Grizzly Bay by way of Kinship Circle.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar created a new panel for citizens to tell the federal government what to do about conservation and wildlife. But, instead of having the Wildlife Hunting and Heritage Council include the growing portion of Americans who just want to watch animals, not gun them down, he geared it to the dwindling minority of hunters.

More Americans have fun watching wildlife than shooting it (71 million wildlife watchers versus 12.5 million hunters), according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Hunters already have advocates in the NRA. State wildlife a encourage hunting. The Pittman Robertson Act makes sure of that. As any NRA member can tell you, there's a 10-11% tax on guns that supports wildlife and conservation. That tax makes the agency beholden to hunters. Seven states have commissions that specifically require hunters or anglers, the HSUS says.

What NRA members won't tell you is that the tax is on all guns, not just those used in hunting. The NRA tells members that the tax is on "sporting arms" Which weapons does the NRA consider sporting? Pretty much all of them. (I think it's their effort to get hunters--by far the most respectable and respectful gun contingent--in on the government-fearing bandwagon.) The tax on pistols and revolvers is 10%. What percent of handguns do you suppose are used for hunting? Very few. But the portion of the gun market that buys for self protection, crime or militia purposes doesn't have a strong lobby. Hunters do, so they keep the tax on handguns and do with it what they want. A big hunk of the money goes towards hunter education--that is, the official government encouragement of hunting.

Shouldn't the tax on handguns go to support shooting victims? Harvard estimates that gunshot wounds
cost Americans $400 million to $1.2 billion a year.

Hunters did play a huge role in conservation. But they've been sitting on their laurels for a long time. Already have many, many seats at the table. It's time instead for the federal and state governments to let animal watchers move from the kiddie table to where the grown-ups are talking and making decisions.

Where to go to See Wildlife


View ANIMALTOURISM.com in a larger map

• More Americans have fun watching wildlife than shooting it (71 million wildlife watchers versus 12.5 million hunters), according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
• We spend way more money ($46 billion versus on animal watching versus $23 billion on hunting).
• More than half of all hunters and anglers watch wildlife, too..
• 23 million wildlife watcher go to see animals away from home.
• We are birders, too. About 50 million of us feed, watch or photograph birds. That's 87% of us. But 70% of us also watch mammals.
• We spent $13 billion in 2006 on wildlife watching trips.

4 Budget Cuts that Save U.S. Taxpayers $280 Million AND Help the Environment, Animals and Wildlife Watchers

President Obama wants to freeze the tiny part of the federal budget that applies to programs in the environment, parks, education and transportation. I've seen this movie before and know this political gimmick doesn't have a happy ending for wildlife. But here are four easy way to cut the federal budget by $280 million a year and help the environment, wildlife and animal watchers.

Discount Grazing on Public Lands: $121 million
Wild Horse-Roundups and Permanent Holding:  $85 million a year
Killing Coyotes, Starlings and other "Bad" Animals: $71 million a year
Rounding up Yellowstone Bison $3 million

1) Stop Cattlemen Welfare $121 million Cattlemen get to graze on federal land for about one-tenth the cost they would have to pay the private sector. This is a program both the left and right hate. The CATO Institute calls it "land-use socialism."

Ranchers now pay about $1.35 per animal unit per month (AUM), compared to $13.50 in the real world. Just to break even the federal government should be charging between $7.64 and $12.26, a GAO report found. We could stop losing $121 million by charging market rates.

I'm a meat eater and amid the myriad choices of grass-fed and dry-aged, I've never gotten a special deal on federal land beef. If the massive federal lands were put on the free market, it would probably drive down costs for all ranchers--and consumers.
(Photo courtesy of Sharat Ganapati)

2) Stop rounding up wild horses : $85 million a year

We really have more wild horses in captivity that we know what to do with--about 33,000. The Bureau of Land Management started amassing mustangs under Bush, then proposed selling them to slaughter in 2005. The public was repulsed.

Each horse costs about $333 to round up (based on the $900,000 the BLM spent to catch 2,700 horses). Then it costs about $500 a year each to keep them.

But, we're still rounding up horses--another 12,000 this year. That will put nearly two-thirds of the wild horse population in federal custody at a cost of about $85 by 2012.

3) Stop Killing Coyotes and Starlings: $71 million a year
The federal government spent a stunning $71 million in FY2010 on the widely discredited science of killing 2.4 million predators and "nuisance" animals. The predators taken are quickly replaced by other animals moving into the territory. Wyoming spent $2.2 million federal tax dollars in 2007 to kill 11,000 coyotes, 300 foxes, 1,000 pigeons, 600 ravens and 55 wolves (among other animals they decided were bad).
Whether you think these animals should survive or not, you have to question whether federal tax dollars should be spent removing them.

The federal government also paid to dispatch (partial list)
1,177,00 starlings
335,000 cowbirds
90,000 coyotes
86,000 pigeons
16,000 cormorants
13,000 mourning doves
13,000 raccoons
6,000 squirrels
500 stray dogs
1,100 prairie dogs
1,110 feral cats
6,000 rabbits
876 robins (including 776 shot on purpose in Mississippi)
400 otters

344 wolves (including four critically endangered Mexican gray wolves that you are also paying the Fish and Wildlife Service to bring back)
336 cougars
84 mockingbirds
52 pelicans (including one brown pelican, then classified as endangered, intentionally shot in Florida)
43 Sandhill cranes
1 flamingo

4) Stop Rounding up Yellowstone Bison $3 million

Again, lay this one on the cattlemen. The various government agencies (parks, forest service, USDA) say they needs to limit bison because they might give a disease to 200 neighboring cattle.
"The U.S. government spends about $3 million a year to manage wild buffalo like livestock inside Yellowstone Park through its capture, quarantine, and vaccination program, all intended to prevent buffalo's natural migration to adjacent National Forest lands and on private lands where people want and respect them as wildlife," says Buffalo Field Campaign habitat coordinator Darrell Geist. He also points out that doesn't even count crop and livestock subsidies, giveaways to mining companies and gifts to
oil and gas interests. 

They could just stop giving out the money-losing grazing rights to the land in the valley. Remember, it's a money losing proposition anyway. But on top of that, we're paying to round them up and ship them off. Even though seeing bison is one of the reasons Americans like going to Yellowstone. BFC's. Habitat Coordinator Darrell Geist says they could probably buy out the cattle for about $1 million.


Where to Go to See Wolves
Places You Can See Bison

429 Dead Manatees found Last Year out of Population of 4,000; Only 37 Called Natural Deaths

A record 429 manatees were found dead off Florida last year out of a delicate population of just about 4,000. Could it be good news, reflecting a growing population? After all the the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission counted a record 3,807 manatees in their aerial surveys last year.


Not so fast, says the FWC:  "The situation is not that simple. Both the carcass totals and the annual counts from statewide aerial surveys are considered minimum numbers only, and they cannot be used to calculate long-term population trends." In other words, both the 400 and 4,000 are wild-ass guesses (WAG)--though maybe scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG).

Last year was really cold, so the manatees crowded the power plants and springs like never before, making for stunning pictures (like the one here by  Tom Reinert) and high counts. But that's not a complete or accurate count. The cold was a big factor: 56 died from cold stress, more than double the five-year average.

But there were record deaths from other factors, too. The data show only 37 were found to have died of natural causes. That doesn't mean people killed all the rest. Humans were directly tied to 97 from boats, 5 from locks and gates and 7 from other human-related causes. The rest are somewhat a mystery and manatee advocates think humans are tied to many more. 114 were described as "perinatal," just meaning they were very young, and they believe many are really tied to people.

What are we doing to stop killing manatees? The Fish and Wildlife Service is thinking about expanding manatee protection areas. Predictably speed boaters hate that and so does the U.S. Navy. FWS spokesman Chuck Underwood intimated to the LA Times that any big expansion is more or less dead in the water.

Where can you can see manatees?

Where can you see more wildlife down south?

More Manatee News

Will the FWS protect manatees from annoying tourists? 

Meet the Manatee profiler

The Last Wild Horses in the Bahamas

The Bahamas are down to only six wild horses. Genetic tests show they're Spanish Barbs who improbably survived for generations in pine forest and scrub.

Then logging companies came--clearing forests, bringing hunting dogs and flushing the horses into view, according to Equiworld.net. "The road put in by the logging company opened the area up to local hunters. When a child died due to her own misbehavior with a horse, locals tried to slaughter all the horses.  Three were rescued and placed on the [Bahamas Star Farms] and as their numbers grew they were released back into the regenerating forest," say Milanne Rehor who founded  Wild Horses of Abaco. 

Rehor desrcribes herself as a once "horse crazy child," set out to find them after reading of them in a sailing guide. She eventually found that they were real, but about to disappear. 
In 1982 there were 35 Abaco horses. In 2005, the Bahaman government claims it shut down Bahamas Star Farms because of a citrus canker; Rehor says the area was clear cut. Now a mysterious illness is killing off the horses. "It has been invaded by Brazilian pepper and Lantana Sage, the latter deadly to animals. The horses know to not eat it, but it became so thick in one forage area that two ingested it by accident and died," Rehor says. "The area has been closed off and there have been no more loses."

Here's the group's emergency plan.

If this rare population is going to survive, they need help.

If you go to the Bahamas, Wild Horses of Abaco will be happy to take you out to see the survivors for a donation of $35 per person.

See how you can help out the Wild Horses of Abaco

Wild horse herds are all over the world. Here's an animaltourism.com map of where you can find them

2,700 Wild Horses Fight Eviction in Federal Court

Today a federal judge in Washington will hear wild horse advocates argue that 2,700 wild horses in Nevada shouldn't be rounded up and held indefinitely in holding pens. Seems like an obvious choice, but under the antiquated U.S. wild horse protections, it's not.

Wild horses in America are like a beleagured employee who has somehow gotten stuck with a totally inappropriate manager who doesn't understand their charm or why he can't just get rid of them. Horses somehow fall under the The Bureau of Land Management, despite its mission to provide land for energy producers, cattle ranchers and miners. Since 2000 the BLM has gone on a spree of rounding up wild horses, creating what has become a vast, money-sucking collection of 11,000 in corrals and 22,000 in Midwestern pastures--the same number that run wild. In 2008 the BLM started openly talking about mass euthanasia for mustangs. (To save them, Madeleine Pickens proposed a private sanctuary.)

The BLM announced its final decision Monday to remove 2,700 horses near Reno in what it calls the Calico Complex Round-up, which includes five herd management areas: Black Rock Range East and West, Calico Mountains, Granite Range, and Warm Springs Canyon. The BLM decided the right amount of horses for the area is 600-900 and it counts about 3,000 out there.

If they don't round up the horses, some might die, the BLM threatens. Well, yeah, they're wild animals. That's what they do. It's not as if this is a magical species that would continue to multiply until there were 42 million horses in Nevada, trampling the state into dust. Populations go through cycles; predators like coyotes and coywolves step up--unless you mess with the cycle. The anti-horse, pro-cattle contingent the BLM supports seems to have taken matters into its own hands, shooting six mustangs, whose carcasses were found this month.

Horse advocates don't trust their target number, their count, their management of public lands (they've been steadily eroding the horses' range) or their intentions. Wild horse ecologist Craig Downer and In Defense of Animals are suing to stop the round-up and stop the BLM's perpetual short-changing of horses in the way it manages land. A bill that passed the house this spring would fix some of these very problems with the BLM's management of wild horses (though still leave them to the BLM). Pickens and other horse lovers are trying to get it passed in the Senate right now.


See In Defense of Animals' action center for wild horses
Help Madeleine Pickens pass horse management reform in the Senate
See Wild Horses out in the wild

Siberian Tiger Disappearing But At Least Putin's Cat is Okay

Just when news is breaking that Chinese poachers are wiping out 10-16% of the critically endangered Siberian tiger population each year, Vladmir Putin's tiger went missing. Russians had grown to love (or at least geographically track) this female tiger through Putin's tiger website. But her collar hadn't pinged in three months, exciting worries of poachers, who are wiping out tigers worldwide. The Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is in special trouble from  poachers who use tiger parts for traditional medicine.

But, Putin's spokesman announced, the only thing that died were the batteries in her collar. She's fine and so is a cub she had recently. 

Which of Putin's tigers is this? It's hard to keep track since Putin has a special relationship with (at least) two tigers. This is the 5-year-old female one he shot with a tranquilizer dart last summer while touring the Usuri Reserve. The other one was a two-month old tiger he got as birthday present.

The first incident with this tiger -- it apparently escaped from trap just as Putin approached, was hit by another dart, but not felled till Putin shot her again -- prompted speculation that it was a dramatic stunt to show off Putin's toughness. But no one questions his fondness for tigers, which he sees as a symbol of Russia. While this tiger slept he talked gently with her, shook her paw and then said good-bye by kissing her on the forehead.

It's certainly good news for the tigers to have Putin as a friend. The Russian Academy of Sciences  (near Vladivostock) is tracking the Siberian or Amur tiger, the world's largest subspecies of tiger. Once considered a big environmental success story because the population recovered to about 500 from only 50. But now scientists fear the number has dropped down to 300 because of Chinese poachers, who leave explosives smeared with fat for the rare cats to swallow. (As usual, no one is sure about the numbers.)

Putin is going to host a worldwide tiger summit in Vladivostock next year as part of a $1 billion drive with the World Wildlife Foundation to double the world's tiger population to 6,500 by 2022. The tigers (and even more endangered Amur leopards) live in a tiny area near the Sea of Japan.

Wanna visit? Russian travel agencies do offer a few options--but not the type of ecotourism Americans may be used to with spas and massages. If you don't get a tip from a park ranger on where a tiger is, this tour guide warns you may have to wait for days in an isolated "hide-out tent" for the tiger to show. Well, at least there's room for ecotourism to grow to support the Amur Tiger.

Want to see big cats? Here's an AnimalTourism.com map and guide to places to see lions, tigers and cougars around the globe

Map of Russian Tiger Hotspots

The jaguar photo was contributed by the Russian Academy of Sciences’ permanent exhibition


View AnimalTourism.com Big Cats in a larger map

Meet the Coywolf, the New Canine Predator of North America

You can spend thousands of dollars watching wolves in Yellowstone or $50 - $200 to get a much closer and scientific view of the new canine species that is replacing the wolf: the coywolf. And if you'll have trouble getting to Cape Cod by dusk or dawn, you can even stay in the house of wildlife biologist Dr. Jon Way so he can take you out to see the animal he studies.

Way can take you along for field work when he's using his radio collars to track the animals that are laregely taking on the role of predator across the east, where the wolf was wiped out. He describes his accomodations as "rustic casual:" you sleep in the basement and eat with his family. But the real attraction is the coywolf  and Way, one of its strongest advocates. He is pushing to change the way the coywolf is classified and treated.

Some state wildlife agencies (in the mid-Atlantic) have been treating these coywolves, which are conspicuously larger than western coyotes, simply as an invasive species from the west. They appeared after the wolf was wiped out. Invasive (as opposed to native) means they don't belong and were introduced by humans. The invasive designation means about the only management these new coyotes get is hunting by the federal government through its controversial Wildlife Services agency. Even in states where it's not labeled invastive, there's no bag limit and long hunting seasons--something Way wants to change.

"We should not be calling this animal a coyote. This animal is really a native animal, essentially a product without human assistance," he says. "By getting rid of wolves, we clearly opened up the niche for this animal."

The evidence is showing that the coy-wolf--a term Way predicts will catch on within a year or so--is really a hybrid of the coyote and the endangered Eastern Red Wolf (Canis rufus). Those invasive-native categories have come under attack in books like Playing God in Yellowstone because they presume the American wilderness was pristine and frozen before Europeans showed up.

The coywolf has forced biologist to rethink many old classifications. They are discovering that many of the previously distinct species of wild dog may really be the same. The red wolf is being reintroduced but one of the obstacles is that the animals go out and breed with coywolves.

What we're witnessing is evolution in our lifetimes. The wolf's niche was largely wiped out by development, but a slightly different niche opened up and the coywolf filled it. The coywolf is more amenable to living near people and more flexible in its diet: it eats tiny rodents up to deer.

Eating deer may be the thing that makes the coywolf popular. Way thinks the coywolf could be the answer to the exploding deer population--if people would just let the coywolf do its job.

"The answer is right in front of our face," he says. He supports the reintroduction of the wolf, but thinks they're never going to be able to be as widespread or effective as the coywolf in modern America. Wolves won't be able to exist in suburban areas where deer generate complaints.

Way would like to end the no bag limit hunting that is keeping coywolves in check. About 400,000 coyotes are killed every year, according to a story by Mike Finkel in Audubon. "That is more than 1,000 coyotes a day -- almost a coyote a minute," Finkel writes. The federal government is, remarkably still in the business of predator eradication and its Wildlife Service division itself killed 89,300 coyotes in 2008.


The Adirondacks tourism office, for example, boasts that call coyote hunting "one of the fastest growing sports in the country." With an estimate of 20,000 to 30,000 coyotes in New York, the office pitches, "there are plenty of opportunities in the Adirondack Park." In Way's Massachusetts, last year hunters killed 442 coyotes, almost double the previous years' total.

Way wants to encourage another way to enjoy the coywolves: come out an watch them in action. Aside from his personalized treks, he hopes to open a center so people can learn and enjoy them all the time.

• Check out the details of the coyote safari at Eastern Coyote Research
• Find out where you can see wolves near you
• See more wild animals in the northeast

Paris Builds Contraceptive Communes for Pigeons

When I went to Paris recently I was surprised to see what looked like a beyond-huge pigeon house in a pocket park in Montmarte, not far from Sacre Couer. Did pigeons, detested throughout the world, find a warm welcome from Parisiennes? Were they like the Jerry Lewis of birds?
Well, not quite.
The pigeons like the giant communes, where they live comfortably in groups of up to 200. But it's a trap. They're designed so the pigeons don't poop on buildings. And every week or so someone from a pest control company comes in and shakes their eggs so they won't have baby pigeons.
They do allow some reproduction. A Bloomberg report seems to say they let one egg per nest hatch. Le Figaro seems to say that workers let the first brood of each pair (La première couvée de chaque couple) hatch, then shake all the rest. Either way, it amounts to a lot of pigeons not being born, but a good life for those who do hatch.
The League for the Protection of Birds [Oiseaux] (LPO) likes the plan. The Humane Society of the United States has been pushing contraceptive as the most sane, least cruel strategy for dealing with populations of animals that people find annoying.
The big catch? Those fancy houses cost a lot of money. Like 20,000 euros ($30,000) to build and another 5,000 euros ($7,500) to maintain. But just one experimental house up five years is supposed to have prevented the birth of 5,000 pigeons. Depending on how long the houses last, it amounts to something like 9 € ($13.50) per pigeon prevented.

Can't believe there's any real wildlife in Europe? Check out this animaltourism.com map and guide of cool places to see Europe's wild horses (koniks), bison (wisent), wild boars and other natural wonders.

A Scourge of Bunny Rabbits?

Stadspark (City Park) in Antwerp, Belgium, has bunnies like Central Park has squirrels. At first I didn't believe a local who told me of the roaming rabbits, but they aren't hard to find. In fact, they were hard to miss. Black, white, multi-color rabbits that had clearly been released from careless pet owners, nonchalantly gathered in clusters and hopped across paths.

Antwerp is not alone. It's just one of many places around the world facing a surging rabbit population. Stockholm parks managers kill thousands of rabbits a year, so many that this year they decided to start burning them as fuel. England is worried of a rabbit surge. Even Mike Ballast, the composer who wrote theme song for the embattled rabbits of Watership Down, has been wiping out rabbits on his estate. In British Columbia, the town of Kelowna has been hunting bunnies with air rifles, but will now catch them and try to give them to rabbit rescue groups or neuter them like feral cats.

What's going on here? There are two kinds of rabbits: wild and dumped pets.Both groups are benefiting from some changes: in Europe 95% of rabbits were wiped out by the myxomatosis virus in the 1950s. But resistant rabbits thrived and over the decades the population came back to levels not seen in many people's lifetimes. Some also think global warming lets them overwinter in places that were once inhospitable. And there's the lack of natural predators. Or even unnatural predators, like unleashed dogs, which have vanished since the 1950s.

The dumped pets generally can't survive in a real forest; they starve to death or are eaten by predators, according to the House Rabbit Society. A predator-free city park with human feeders can be another story. Some of the rabbits I saw in Antwerp were babies--too cute to have been dumped. So I think they're successful enough to breed. People who dump pets are hard to catch--unless the cities start requiring microchips in rabbits, which could quickly put an end to the problem.

What's odd is that there's been little effort to introduce natural predators. That's admittedly difficult in a city park. But fox and rabbits are the classic population cycle relationship biologists have been using for decades. English pest control agents are using ferrets to chase them out of holes. If there are any natural predators out there, they're likely to start surging on their own with this healthy diet.

Australians Save 3,001 Kangaroos

An Australian court decided to end the military's plan to shoot 7,000 kangaroos on a base near Canberra. But the decision comes half-way through the program, so they've already killed 4,000 gray kangaroos. The military says the 9,000 kangaroos living in Austtralian Capitol Territory were over-grazing and destroying native grasslands.
Animal Liberation, the group that sued to stop the cull, says the science behind saving the kangaroos is flawed and that kangaroo culls are pushed by the "kangaroo industry" as a way to produce a kind of cheap, free-range 'roo meat. The meat is often contaminated and the clubbing of joeys and clumsy shooting of adults makes the Canadian baby seal-clubbing look quaint, the group says.
The local government is going to try to write some new laws and a way around the judgment so it can carry on slaughtering the kangaroos.
The case highlights the vastly different ways of viewing animals: either as populations to be managed to human desires or as individuals. I know it's supposed to be soft-minded to anthropomorphize and describe animals as unique characters. But you can't be around them without starting to think of them that way.
Think about another Australian making a decision about kangaroos at the same time. Surfer Neil McCallum saw a joey go out for an ocean swim and get caught in a riptide. He grabbed his surfboard and pushed the little kangaroo back to shore. The story made headlines around the world--not, I think, because everyone thought he was crazy to have bothered. But that's the story we'd rather hear about and rather believe about ourselves, the one where we go out and save even just one animal, no matter how pointless the gesture.

The Dolphins NOAA Wouldn't Let Others Save Have Died

Last summer a pod of 16 dolphins swam up the Shrewsbury River in New Jersey. When winter came, they didn't leave. So the Marine Mammal Stranding Center wanted to shoo them out. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said no. They were worried that trying to push the dolphins one way could make them go further under the ice--which has happened before. But in a broader sense their argument against action was: let nature take its course; we can't save all the wild animals.

Now the fifth dolphin has turned up dead.
In January we knew of five left, then didn't see them anymore.

So far scientists haven't been able to conclusively id one of the dead dolphins as part of that pod since its 8 1/2 foot carcass has rotted so much.

The argument against hurting the dolphins by trying to rescue them seems to have fallen apart. All that's left is the philosophical bent of NOAA. It doesn't seem fair that since the marine mammal stranding center, whose whole expertise is helping these animals in New Jersey, wanted to do its job without any taxpayer support that NOAA should have gotten in the way.

To the Bat Cave--or Maybe Just Outside the Bat Cave's Entrance

The federal government wants you to stay out of caves to help save bats. They fear white-nose syndrome, which has kill up to a million bats in the northeast is spreading. States as far away as Georgia are thinking about closing down caves, Mark Davis reports in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Now big caves around the country are debating the proposition of closing to save their big attraction.

A fungus is believed to be behind the mysterious illness that leaves bats starving at the end of hibernation. Scientists know that the sick bats wake up a lot more during hibernation, but are not sure if that's a cause or effect. Either way, they don't want anybody barging in on their caves and waking them up. Of course, that won't be much of an issue over the summer.

There are a ton of great places to see bats around the country. People have finally caught on to the allure of seeing thousands of bats stream out of a dark hole at dusk. And we've finally realized that they aren't going to deliberately fly into our hair or suck our blood. It would be a shame to lose all of our goodwill toward bats.

The Wildlife Service seems to be talking about cavers, that is people who actually go in the caves, not hang out outside waiting for the fly-out. They say caves visited by cavers have seen more of the disease and fear it might be spread on equipment. So it's unclear if we'll still be able to enjoy a bat fly-out from a distance. A lot of big bat caves are closed to the public anyway--like former mine shafts that have bars in front so kids don't climb in.

Get well bats, hope to see you soon.

Really Rare Jaguar Euthanized

Arizona Game and Fish had to euthanize a jaguar they caught and collared just a couple weeks ago. We've known jaguars were back in the U.S. since the mid-1990s from pictures on motion-detector cameras. But this was the first time North America's only roaring big cat had been caught in the U.S. And it was by accident--they laid out leg snares for bears and mountain lions. So they'd seen this guy, known as Macho B, for a long time. In fact, he was the oldest jaguar in the wild.

The department made a big show of not telling where this cat was caught. But, given that it took them 13 years to capture this one, I don't really imagine anyone trying to do it in a day on a lark. Since they describe the area as southwest of Tuscon and fitted the collar with a device to go off over the border, I would assume the area was right around Nogales--where the department shows a bear population on their map.

The biologists noticed the jaguar not moving, so they recaptured him and noticed that he'd lost a lot of weight. Tests showed severe kidney failure, something they think takes weeks not just days. But the first blood samples they took from Macho B were only for DNA use, they say, so they won't be able to tell how sick he was when they caught him the first time.

I would think that it would be an incredible coincidence if this wise old cat's death and its collaring happened within two weeks of each other. I don't think there's anything the biologists could have done that would have caused kidney failure. (Though catching an animal in a leg snare wouldn't help.) I think it's more likely that the cat was weakened and that's why he somehow missed one of these traps that he'd been avoiding for all these years.

Macho B was one of only two individuals they knew about in Arizona. The population in northern Mexico is still illegally hunt and caught and is cut off from the rest of the jaguar population. The border fence threatens to divide the territory further--maybe leaving no jaguars on our side. So it would be an incredible feat to get them re-established.

Last NJ Dolphins Escape Icy River--Maybe

The last of 16 dolphins who have been up the Shrewsbury River in New Jersey since the summer may have escaped back to the ocean. Witnesses at Bahr's Landing restaurant say they saw three to five dolphins on January 15, but haven't seen them swim back in.

Of course, it's very easy to imagine dolphins slipping by even the most diligent watchers--let alone people otherwise occupied with eating and working in a restaurant. But it's nice to think they got out. Bob Schoelkopf, co-director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine says the last time he saw them they were thin and weak.

Over the summer 16 dolphins were spotted in the river--much to everyone's excitement and worry, first about boating accidents and then about the ice.

In 1993 dolphins drowned in the river after it froze; people had tried to shoo them out to sea, but they went under the ice.

So far this year three dolphins have turned up dead.

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center, alone with many dolphin watchers and lovers, wanted to try to push or lure them out to sea. But the federal officials in charge of dolphins, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wouldn't let them. Not even if they did the rescue work on their own. They claimed that the dolphins were just trying to expand their territory and people should stand back and let them. The Chronicle Herald in Canada ran an obnoxious headline on an AP story: Group fights science to save ‘frightened’ dolphins.

It's amazing to find these Bush administration officials embracing science at all. Or evolution--they seem to be arguing that if the dolphins die it's part of some natural selection process. I can understand not wanting to spend federal money to attempt a rescue, but banning a private, highly trained rescue group is going way too far. It's debatable whether it's worthwhile, but if someone decides it's worthwhile for them, who is NOAA to stand in the way?

Saying that we can't possibly interfere with nature is ridiculous. We interfere with nature all the time. We fish, hunt, pollute, develop. We also rehabilitate wildlife in every state. I certainly hope in the Obama administration we're allowed once again to save a handful of wild animals without government interference.

Photo by Jackie, Sister72

Moose moving to new herds

In the last couple weeks we've seen a lot of helicopter rides for the moose around Ogden, Utah.

Nineteen moose that had been wandering into the city were moved to the Upper White River/Flat Tops area, according to the Daily Sentinel. There are moose there, but not a lot. They travelled by helicopter sling and livestock trailer to the North and South forks of the White River and along Marvine Creek.

Another 20 moved to Colorado, according to the Deseret News. Last year wildlife officials got 60 calls about moose around.

Instead of using drug darts, the helicopter crews shoot a net over the moose, handcuff their hooves, blindfold them to keep them calm, then get a dozen men to carry them to a trailer.

Colorado used to trade bighorn sheep for the moose; now they just pay for them. The Craig Daily Press quotes Colorado Wildlife officials saying there probably weren't moose here originally; they just wanted them to attract tourists.

I don't know if responding to complaints of just seeing moose is all that sound of a management plan. Or bringing in a new species for a tourist attraction. In fact, I'm pretty sure neither is. But I'm glad the moose are going somewhere that somebody isn't going to call the cops just for seeing them. And I do think they'll be something tourists want to see.

Hunters Make Bigger Deer Populations, Smaller Deer

Newsweek's Lily Huang recently had a great story about how hunting is having the effect of de-evolution: "the survival of the weak and scrawny."

The basic idea has been floating around for a while: if hunters take out the biggest animals with the flashiest antlers, then they are getting rid of the biggest and strongest of the population. They are effectively reversing evolution, giving advantage to animals with smaller antlers.

Biologists have now been able to measure how this kind of hunting has reduced the average size of some animals. One population of bighorn sheep in Canada has had horns shrink by one-quarter over 30 years. The red kangaroo has gotten smaller. More elephants are born without tusks because those who have them don't survive.

The article didn't get into it, but I think those who survive are certainly different mentally, too. They are probably smarter, better at evading detection, shier around people. That's a real problem for those of us who just want to see them. And an ever worse problem for those whose business is taking us animal tourists to see them.

The other impact of hunting--and managing wildlife populations--for trophy antlers is that it actually increases the population overall. When wildlife biologists want to decrease a population, they target females. Many hunters want no part of that. But if you just kill the males, the next year the same number of does have the same number of fawns. First year does tend to have one fawn, but after that they have two usually, three or four occasionally. So for every male you hunt, you probably get two fawns the next year.

This--along with wildlife management policies specifically aimed at increasing deer populations for hunters--is why the deer population has gone up so much. I also think this is why deer have gotten smaller along with their antlers. Deer antlers do not, as many people think, correspond to the number of years lived. Instead it's a measure of nutrition. So hunters aren't necessarily taking out the oldest, but the best at finding food.

It's ironic that the practice of trophy hunting has made these wildlife trophies rare.

Madeleine Pickens Would Effectively Double the US Wild Horse Population

It could get a whole lot easier to see our country's wild horses soon. Sometime in the next couple years Madeleine Pickens plans to open up a million-acre horse sanctuary that will effectively double the country's wild horse population.

Madeleine Pickens and her animal-animal loving, billionaire husband T. Boone have come up with plan to save wild horses. I got to talk with her recently for a story on her wild horse sanctuary I did for PeoplePets.

What many people don't realize is that we have about 33,000 wild horses in the wild, plus another 30,000 in pens. The Bureau of Land Management has been managing these horses since they got federal protection in 1971--and shrinking the land they graze on all the while.

They calculate how many wild horses can survive based on the land left, so when they cut the grazing area, they cut the number of horses. The BLM recently said it wanted to cut the herd to 27,000.

Meanwhile, it's been rounding up horses every year for auction. They try to auction them off to horse lovers who agree to all kinds of restrictions. Well, the main restriction is they can't sell them to somebody who's going to use the horse for meat. At least not right away.

The BLM wanted to either euthanize or sell the other horses "without restriction." That means they would go to auction and almost certainly be bought by buyers who would send them to slaughter. Horse slaughter is effectively banned in the U.S., but the buyers just truck the horses to Canada or Mexico.

So, if the Pickens' horse plan goes through, we'll end up with about 60,000 horses instead of 30,000. Our country will effectively double its wild horse population. (I don't think we can count the 30,000 in holding pens now as wild anymore.) Sure, the ones on Pickens' proposed retirement home will be sterilized. But they'll still be enjoying life.

And we'll still be able to go see them. In fact, Pickens is a huge animal lover, so she says she'll allow dogs. That's a big contrast to the east coast's Chincoteague, which almost superstitiously doesn't allow them on the island.

Plus, Pickens is already thinking about taking in more wild horses as they get moved off the range. And discarded race horses. And--down the road--even other animals.

This could become the best animal tourist destination in the country. I can't wait to visit.

Whalers Try To Revive Desire For Whale Meat

Whale meat for sale at a supermarket,
originally uploaded by thaths.

The old argument for whale meat used to be that it was a cheap, familiar meat for old people who had grown up on it. Sustenance and self-sufficiency came up a lot. Now that Japan and Iceland have spurned international bans on whaling, they're hard to market whale meat to new customers.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that in Reykjavik marketer Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson is trying to "hook" urban hipsters on whale meat by selling it in vacuum-sealed ready packs and offering recipe tips.

The Journal quotes Eva Maria Thorarinsdottir, marketing manager of Reykjavik's Elding Whale Watching saying hunting has made minke whales much shier. So all the government of Iceland's support of the nostalgic whaling industry is hurting people who are making a living on animal tourism. "Our business is much more profitable than theirs," she says.

The Washington Post says the Japanese government and pro-whaling groups spend $5 million a year for promotions like to getting school kids to try whale meat. Meanwhile, though, demand is so low that prices have fallen 20% from 1999 to 2004 ($15 a pound to $12 a pound). And they still have extra that they have to freeze.

This looks like yet another program where a government is throwing money away to support a dying industry (whaling) rather than throwing money behind a growing industry (whale watching).

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