by Jason on June 19, 2006
It’s been touched on in the forums, but I want this on the front page: sparkalina sent in a follow-up to the International Whaling Commission’s last meeting, where Japan didn’t manage to overturn the whaling ban, but they’ve announced that they’ll be killing humpback whales soon, at a planned rate of 50 per year. Humpbacks haven’t been hunted in more than 30 years, although experts say the populations still haven’t recovered, and there’s still an international ban on the practice, but Japan is going to be proceeding under a scientific research exemption. These exemptions are very difficult to get – I think it involves shrugging and saying it’s scientific – but the payoff are huge. I mean, just look at how Japan’s economy has flourished thanks largely to the use of whale-based technologies obtained through this important scientific research! Critics might think that it’s a thin disguise for a commercial fishing operation worth tens of millions of dollars, but dude, the science is so… scientific… I particularly like their work on “how to do whatever the hell we want, regardless of the impact on the planet.” They might steal the Nobel Prize from the Hummer owners for this one. Link.
by Jason on June 14, 2006
kunsjoi notes that the whaling situation is about to get a whole lot… not better, anyway, if not worse, as Japan and other whaling nations are poised to achieve a majority on the 66 member International Whaling Commission. The majority won’t let them overturn the commercial whaling ban that’s been in place since 1982 (they need a three quarter majority for that), but it will let them shut down any attempt to protect whales, which means there’s virtually no chance of a whale sanctuary opening up or any “humane killing” methods being established. Of course, Norway has a novel way around the ban already – they just ignore it altogether – so this might not really matter what the commission does. It reminds me, in a way, of when politicians have the power to set their own salaries, except there’s no way to kick the bastards out in response. Link.
FatalException notes that archaeologists have found evidence of one of the earliest forms of agriculture, and it wasn’t fruit cake: nine small fig from over 11,000 years ago were found in a house in the Jordan Valley. This particular type of fig requires manual intervention from humans to propagate, as they need a shoot to be removed and replanted, and this discovery helps pin down the point where humans first started farming their food instead of eating whatever they could find. Animal agriculture would have followed once a semi-stable food supply was assured, but it’s important to realize that the whole hunter-gatherer thing is unbalanced in most peoples’ minds – finding food is a whole lot easier than catching animals, especially with the tools of the era. Link.
Wanna know who’s largely responsible for deforestation in Guatemala’s rain forest? As Steve_L reports, it’s cattle ranchers and drug smugglers, and, just so you don’t think I’m using a funny coincidence to bash ranchers, we’ve also got reports of drug smuggling cattle ranchers. At least 7 percent of the world’s plant and animal species are found in the rainforest, which is one of the largest North of the Amazon, but a chunk the size of Dallas, Texas is being destroyed every year, thanks in part to the world’s demand for cheap hamburgers, and, uh, cocaine. Link.
kunsjoi reports that vultures in India, while once so abundant that they were considered a nuisance or a danger, are now on the verge of extinction, having made it onto the World Conservation Union’s “critically endangered” list. As a result of the population drop, rats and feral dogs have had easier access to food the vultures would have eaten, which is bringing about fears of an escalation in rabies cases. The cause of the problem, it would seem, is a cheap cattle medication called diclofenac. Vultures who feed off of dead cattle who have been treated with the drug typically die of kidney failure shortly afterwards. A ban was promised in March 2005, but nothing has come out of that yet. Vultures lay one egg per year, and experts aren’t sure if the species will recover, even if the cattle medication is banned today. Link.
Stitches reports that people like dead cows a whole lot less when they’re not on a plate. There’s been a dead cow stuck in a river dam in West Virginia for the past few days, and nobody seems too happy about it, anyway. The weird part is that no government agency is interested in removing the cow. The Division of Natural Resources, the departments of Agriculture and Environmental Protection and the Clarksburg Water Board have all investigated the matter and decided that it’s not their problem. While I have an obvious longer term solution (stop promoting the raising of cows for human consumption), it’d be nice to see this animal get a proper burial. I know, it’s the vegan equivalent of wishing for a pony, but still… Link.
I love it when people try to turn dairy cows into environmental marvels, capable of eating all kinds of garbage – literally. Yesterday we posted a story that referenced the practice of feeding chicken litter to cows. Today we’ve got a story from Dave Noisy that discusses feeding waste chocolate to dairy cows. Oh, those lucky lucky animals, they get to eat all the chocolate they want! Oh, and it’s mixed with barley and wheat dust! Mmmm! Of course, the cows “love it.” Why aren’t we feeding our own children all this waste chocolate? Has nobody thought of this yet? I need to make some phone calls. OK, I’m back. They hung up on me. Strange. Also strange is how the article must have been cut off in transmission – there’s no mention of how this waste chocolate is likely to show up later as manure runoff into the local river, as dairy manure is wont to do. Now there’s an environmental miracle for you. Link.
Forget “dolphin-friendly” anything when it comes to seafood – as Steve_L reports, dozens of dead dolphins have been found on the coast of the North Sea in Bulgaria lately, and the culprit is believed to be fishing nets. It seems it’s the dolphins’ own fault for swimming in groups in a world that uses more and more nets the size of multiple football fields. Link.
Do you want to get angry about hunters? ‘Cause Magic Stones sent in a doozy. A big shot hunter may be facing a $1000 fine or a year in jail for shooting the wrong kind of bear – he was looking for polar bears, but he may have shot what’s called a pizzly, or a polar-grizzly cross. Check out Jim Martell’s defenses: 1) “Well, the guide, he said ‘shoot’, and he’s a longtime guide there in Sachs Harbour and he knows what a polar bear is,” and 2) “Y’know, I’ve spent $50,000 here. And … to come back with nothing, I don’t think that’s fair.” Oh, mighty hunter… Link.
Animals have been tied to several of the A-list diseases that are scaring the bejeezus out of people these days, such as SARS. However, as Dave Noisy notes, sometimes the real cause is staring right at us by way of a mirror. For example, bats have been blamed for the spread of several outbreaks recently, but scientists are now realizing that in each case, the problem is occurring when humans expand their habitats to encroach on natural boundaries that have been working to keep these diseases at bay. Those at the head of this emerging field of study have called it “conservation medicine,” and argue that it’s impossible to divorce human health from that of the environment, a fact that seems really obvious and really terrifying at the same time. Link.
