Archive for the ‘Humane Society Legislative Fund’ Category

Hunting Polar Bears/Exotics and Canned Hunts Condoned by Congress?

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

 

Boy, am I slow. I just got around to putting a bunch of e-mail and newsletters together to figure out why wildlife, habitat, and our national parks have been under attack by the Bush administration. Well, at least the how. A group of wealthy hunters that comprise Safari Club International (SCI) are using their funds to permeate congress once again to allow hunting polar bears, and everything else on their exotic big game list of course, whether or not the animals are endangered, and to bring the carcasses back into the U.S. as trophies.

 

People all over the world are outraged about our treatment of polar bears already by not putting them on the endangered species list much sooner and continued threats to the bear’s environment by oil drills. And these guys want to hunt the bears. Is that not adding insult to injury that we civilized humans just dismiss a beautiful species and hundreds of other equally beautiful species already threatened by global warming as trophies? How utterly superficial. We fight the use of ivory, but condone canned hunts. Do we know what we’re doing half the time?

 

I read a little about SCI on Wikipedia, and Source Watch and how they direct their lobby money predominantly toward Republicans as their allies in congress. SCI also advertises that they donates money for the preservation of animal species and that they do not advocate canned hunts–except they do it. And they pretty much are interested in the preservation of species so they can hunt the animals they preserve. Got a crippled exotic, put it in a canned hunt. Got too many exotic offspring put them in a canned hunt. Nice, real sporting.

 

I just read my mail from the Humane Society Legislative Fund about canned hunts. I had no idea that 25 states still advocate them and the trend is growing via lobby money from SCI and others. America is hitting rock bottom on ethics/morals when it comes to money vs. our national parks, animals, and habitat lately. I couldn’t figure out how the wolf slaughter, the buffalo slaughter, the push to put guns in our National Parks and a lot of other abuse was happening with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service despite thousands of protests. It seems Dirk Kempthorne, as Secy. of the Interior isn’t the only hunting/gun advocate working too closely with wildlife and habitat.  Director of our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Matt Hogan, is the former chief lobbyist for Safari Club International, and another Bush appointee. Figures. Talk about conflict of interest. I thought the EPA was bad!

 

Considering the plight of all of animals and humans due to global warming, there really should be a moratorium on big game hunting for trophy’s sake. The people in Gana Africa are eating exotics to just stay alive for Pete’s sake. Complain to you senators and reps about canned hunts and lobbyists like SCI.

 

Posted in Animals in Peril, Bush Administration, Conservation, Dept. of the Interior, Endangered Species, Environmental Legislation, Environmentalism, Global Warming, Guns/Firearms, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Illegal Hunting, Illegal Use of Animals, Legislators, Morality, Politics, Secy. Kempthorne, Sport Hunting, USFWS | 1 Comment »

Earthjustice Files to Stop Wolf Slaughter Immediately

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

From my e-mail, I read that Earthjustice attorneys filed a case to stop the wolf slaughter in the northern Rockies. A coalition of environmental and animal rights groups like the NRDC, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society urged Earthjustice to use its legal expertise to stop the killing immediately and “compel the federal government to reinstate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves until true recovery is achieved.

This didn’t come out of the blue. Earthjustice filed intent to challenge the decision to take wolves off the endangered list, but the USFWS didn’t answer. So now they go to court because as Earthjustice charges: “The USFWS failed to take into account basic principles of conservation biology, disregarded its own policies, and departed from past practice in delisting the wolf.” And Earthjustice will argue in court that the USFWS

  • used an outdated and biologically inadequate standard for determining the number of wolves that must be protected in order to maintain a genetically viable population;
  • ignored the agency’s own requirement that wolves in the northern Rockies’ core recovery populations must be connected and interbreed before they can be deemed recovered; and
  • failed to take into account that state laws that currently govern the fate of the wolves in the absence of federal protections allow unregulated wolf killing.

What angers me most about this is the time and expense that goes into something like this that shouldn’t have happened in the first place in the U.S. of America. You know from my postings that petitions with signatures in the thousands hit the USFWS before the delisting, as well as, thousands of phone calls. Washington went ahead anyway, a total disregard for their responsibility to us—again. And none of this will bring Limpy or the other 19 wolves back.

Posted in Animals and Extinction, Animals in Peril, Conservation, Defenders of Wildlife, Dept. of the Interior, Earthjustice, Endangered Species, Environmentalism, Federal Government, Governor Otter, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Idaho, Illegal Hunting, Legislators, Morality, NRDC, Nature, Politics, Science, Secy. Kempthorne, Sport Hunting, The Sierra Club, USFWS, Wildlife, Wolves, Wyoming | 1 Comment »

Watch “A Man Among Wolves” at 10:00 Tonight, Jan. 16, National Geographic Channel

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

This is a very good documentary about wolves by researcher Shaun Ellis and also a good tribute to “Wolf Moon” month of January. Find out more about wolves and why we should stop the eradication of this species once and for all. A majority of people have spoken, but legislators, especially in Alaska, continue the sportless killing by helicopter and plane.

 Shaun Ellis doesn’t recite a documentary at you, he lives with the wolves. It’s good. Watch it. Learn.

Peace

Posted in Alaska, Animals and Extinction, Animals in Peril, Bureau of Land Management, Bush Administration, Defenders of Wildlife, Dept. of the Interior, Endangered Species, Environmentalism, Federal Government, Gov. Freudenthal, Governor Otter, Governor Palin, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Idaho, Illegal Hunting, Illegal Use of Animals, Legislators, Morality, NRDC, National Forest, National Geographic Channel, National Parks and Forests, Nature, Politics, Public Lands, Public Lands, Science, Secy. Kempthorne, Sport Hunting, Wildlife, Wolves, Wyoming, Yellowstone Park | 1 Comment »

Your Dog is a Wolf, Even That Little Chihuahua

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

In honor of this being Wolf Moon month and that the fate of wolves in our national parks, in Idaho, and in Wyoming hangs in balance with a Secretary of Interior that is oblivious to thousands of voices to spare the wolf, I thought I’d do a piece on dogs and wolves. I ran into this interesting page along the way.

The website page is: http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/genetic1.htm. There is a list of References for Wolf-Dog Genetic History. I started to read the summaries of a variety of books written about the genealogy of the dog. Dogs are direct descendants of wolves, all dogs, little bitty pocket dogs, hairy dogs, smooth dogs, hunting dogs, even Pekinese dogs. The DNA of dog and wolf is almost identical. The dog is not the descendant of the combo wolf/jackal as many used to believe. Our dogs are tame wolves basically.

So I kept reading the short synopsis of each entry, there must be 15 of them on this page, and one after the other: “Scientists believe that wolves are the direct ancestors of today’s domestic dogs,” and “…on the basis of a large number of skull measurements and examinations of the size and structure of the brain, blood factors, and numbers of chromosomes that all dogs, whether Pekingese, bulldogs or Alsatians, were descended solely from the wolf…[t]he domesticated wolf is the dog,” and “Although the subject continues to be controversial, most authorities now agree that all dogs, from Chihuahuas to Dobermans are descended from wolves which were tamed in the Near East ten or twelve thousand years ago.” There were some summaries more genetically oriented, but all of them concurred the dog, man’s best friend is really a wolf in pedigree skin. That is except for one entry

That one entry is odd because it’s about proving whether the canine carries wolf blood. They have the same DNA for Pete’s sake. Trying to ascertain whether the dog carries actual wolf blood, when their DNA is identical, looks like a technical way around relating man’s best friend to the wolf. And look from whom and where the study comes. The Wyoming Game and Fish Dept. contracted a New York lab to do this study and look whose questioning the ties between wolf and dog, the Idaho Fish and Game Dept. back when the Wolf Conservation and Management Plan was instituted there. It was stated “There is not presently a valid test that will guarantee analysis of whether a particular canine carries wolf blood. Certain DNA studies have been conducted by a New York laboratory under contract by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, but a much larger population study of wolf and dog breeds would have to be done before conclusive results can be obtained.” Jerry M. Conley, Director, Idaho Fish and Game Dept. From letter to Gov. Cecil D. Andrus, March 19, 1992.

Idaho and Wyoming have been gunning for wolves for years. It’s coming close to a head now. And it’s not about control of an untamed, voracious animal. It’s certainly not about maintaining balance in our ecosystems of which the wolf plays an important role.  And it’s not about killing livestock.  It’s about exterminating an animal that is the grandfather of our pet dog, so that man can hunt for sport instead. And sport hunting is about money. It always gets back to money.
 

Posted in Alaska, Animals in Peril, Defenders of Wildlife, Dept. of the Interior, Endangered Species, Federal Government, Gov. Freudenthal, Governor Otter, Governor Palin, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Idaho, Illegal Hunting, Illegal Use of Animals, Legislators, Morality, NRDC, National Parks and Forests, Nature, Secy. Kempthorne, State Gov't., USFWS, Wildlife, Wolves, Wyoming | 1 Comment »

Computer Assisted Hunting

Friday, December 21st, 2007

I think virtual reality got a littel too real. Every heard of Internat hunting? Someone can sit in their house or wherever, in front of their pc and with the click of a mouse–shoot a real animal dead somewhere. How sporting? A web cam is situated in front of a target spot. A LOADED rifle fires at whatever is on that target.

The Humane Society Legislative Fund went into action the moment “Live Shot” was introduced in 2005. Do you believe it? A website where someone can act like they’re virtually shooting something but it’s real. The “Live Shot” website is now defunct and 35 states have laws banning the practice but 25 states still do not, and more websites for Internet hunting are popping up.

I don’t know about anyone else but when I first read about Internet hunting my mind skipped like lightening to human prey. Not only the fact that someone has the freedom and the time to hunt for a spot to sight in a rifle at a target and rig it to a web cam so that whoever can shoot with the click of a tab whatever crosses that target while watching it on their screen, but the idea someone should go through the trouble to do something like this is an unnerving statement about our society. Hunting is one thing, this is somehow too cold, too strange, too covert and REMOTE to be OK.

What’s to stop someone from hunting humans, or an army set up like this? See what I mean about instant imagination. I was off and running real quick with this one. Anyway, too many states have yet to pass any laws to stop it. Both the House and Senate have introduced legislation prohibiting interstate Internet hunting, and H.R. 2711, the Computer Assisted Remote Hunting Act, will ban the practice across the country and prevent this type of website.

Urge your reps to support and co-sponsor House Bill 2711 and its companion bill. an animal is guided to the target to feed and some low-life at home literally clicks it to death for kicks from their computer. That is sick enough for us to know it could get a whole lot worse. Let them know that you want computer assisted killing stopped completely.

Call your Senators @ 202-224-3121 or goto: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

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Posted in Animals and Extinction, Endangered Species, Federal Government, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Illegal Hunting, Illegal Use of Animals, Legislators, Nature, Politics, Wildlife | 1 Comment »