February 11, 2013

Ancient wolf DNA to show how predator became man's best friend

Source: Telegraph uk

Ancient wolf DNA to show how predator became man's best friend

7:54AM GMT 11 Feb 2013

A study of ancient wolf bones and DNA could help scientists understand how the predators were tamed by our ancestors to become man's best friend.

The research could show that domestication took place 35,000 years ago, two and a half times longer ago than can currently be proven.

Experts are split on how the process began, with some insisting dogs were domesticated once in East Asia and spread from there, while others suggest it happened in several places at different times.


The project, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, will enable researchers from Durham and Aberdeen Universities to use the latest DNA techniques on bones, teeth and remains found across Asia and Europe.

.. More...

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9861852/Ancient-wolf-DNA-to-show-how-predator-became-mans-best-friend.html#sections

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Btw, wolves have been under
deadly assault.

http://www.defendersblog.org/2013/01/wolf-advocates-across-the-west/

February 10, 2013

The Meat Industry Now Consumes Four-Fifths of All Antibiotics

http://m.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/meat-industry-still-gorging-antibiotics

The Meat Industry Now Consumes Four-Fifths of All Antibiotics
By Tom Philpott on Fri. February 8, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a set of voluntary "guidelines" designed to nudge the meat industry to curb its antibiotics habit. Ever since, the agency has been mulling whether and how to implement the new program. Meanwhile, the meat industry has been merrily gorging away on antibiotics—and churning out meat rife with antibiotic-resistant pathogens—if the latest data from the FDA itself is any indication.

The Pew Charitable Trusts crunched the agency's numbers on antibiotic use on livestock farms and compared them to data on human use of antibiotics to treat illness, and mashed it all into an infographic, which I've excerpted below. Note that that while human antibiotic use has leveled off at below 8 billion pounds annually, livestock farms have been sucking in more and more of the drugs each year—and consumption reached a record nearly 29.9 billion pounds in 2011. To put it another way, the livestock industry is now consuming nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics used in the US, and its appetite for them is growing.

---• Of the Salmonella on ground turkey, about 78% were resistant to at least one antibiotic and half of the bacteria were resistant to three or more. These figures are up compared to 2010.

• Nearly three-quarters of the Salmonella found on retail chicken breast were resistant to at least one antibiotic. About 12% of retail chicken breast and ground turkey samples were contaminated with Salmonella.

• Resistance to tetracycline [an antibiotic] is up among Campylobacter on retail chicken. About 95% of chicken products were contaminated with Campylobacter, and nearly half of those bacteria were resistant to tetracyclines. This reflects an increase over last year and 2002.

February 6, 2013

More drones in the hands of the good guys

make us all safer..,Or something
like that...

February 4, 2013

Activists aim to halt wolf-hunting season, Referendum sought to stop Michigan law

Source: Toledo Blade

Activists aim to halt wolf-hunting season
Referendum sought to stop Michigan law

Animal advocates across Michigan are collecting signatures to stop the potential hunting of gray wolves, which were protected by the state for nearly 50 years after they were hunted to near extinction.

A referendum challenge to a new state law could delay the creation of a hunting season for the animals by a year and a half. In December, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law Public Act 520, which gives the state Natural Resources Commission the power to decide whether a wolf-hunting season should be held.

Various estimates place the wolf population at fewer than 700, with the vast majority in the Upper Peninsula.

Sen. Tom Casperson (R., Escanaba) sponsored the bill. The measure designates wolves as a game animal and authorizes the Natural Resources Commission to establish a game season.

Senate Bill 996, also sponsored by Mr. Casperson, would build upon provisions in law to ensure livestock owners receive fair and timely compensation for animals killed by wolves, coyotes, or cougars.

..more..

Read more: http://www.toledoblade.com/Politics/2013/02/04/Activists-aim-to-halt-wolf-hunting-season.html

February 1, 2013

US carbon emissions fall to lowest levels since 1994

Source: Guardian

Friday 1 February 2013 06.34 EST

US carbon emissions fall to lowest levels since 1994

Energy-saving technologies and a doubling in renewables led to the reduction in climate pollution, new figures show

--
America's carbon dioxide emissions last year fell to their lowest levels since 1994, according to a new report.

Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 13% in the past five years, because of new energy-saving technologies and a doubling in the take-up of renewable energy, the report compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) said.

The reduction in climate pollution – even as Congress failed to act on climate change – brings America more than halfway towards Barack Obama's target of cutting emissions by 17% from 2005 levels over the next decade, the Bloomberg analysts said.

By the end of last year, America's emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had fallen 10.7% from the 2005 baselines.

.

..more...

Read more: http://m.guardiannews.com/environment/2013/feb/01/us-carbon-emissions-lowest-levels

February 1, 2013

Does your kid want to protect wolves?

http://action.keepwolvesprotected.com/page/s/kids-for-pups?utm_source=em013113&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=KeepMIWolvesProtected

Does your kid want to protect wolves?

If so, send us a fun picture of your son or daughter with a Keep Michigan Wolves Protected sign. Create your own sign or download and print our sign:

“I want to protect wolves because...!” (pdf)

You can also make your own creative sign for why your kid wants to keep Michigan's wolves protected. We'll be posting the pictures on our Facebook page. And we may even use it in a campaign ad!

~ ~~~

http://www.keepwolvesprotected.com/about

Keep Michigan Wolves Protected is a coalition of conservation groups, animal welfare organizations, wildlife professionals, hunters, ranchers and other Michigan citizens working to protect Michigan's fragile wolf population.

Wolves have been on the protected list in Michigan for nearly 50 years. There are fewer than 700 wolves in Michigan and their numbers are only now starting to recover. It's not right to spend decades bringing the wolf back from the brink of extinction only to turn around and allow them to be killed for sport.

It’s already legal in Michigan to kill wolves in order to protect livestock or dogs. The wolf population is simply not large enough to support the hunting of wolves for sport. It's unnecessary and reckless given the decades spent trying to protect the wolf population in Michigan.

People don't eat wolves, and it's just pointless trophy hunting for no good purpose. Wolf hunting may involve especially cruel and unfair practices, such as painful steel-jawed leghold traps, hunting over bait, and even using packs of dogs to chase down and kill wolves.

In December 2012, after Michigan state politicians rushed a 'lame duck' bill through the House and Senate, Governor Snyder signed legislation into law that would designate wolves a "game" species and authorize the Natural Resources Commission to establish a hunting season.

Keep Michigan Wolves Protected is seeking to collect more than 225,000 signatures of Michigan voters to place a referendum on the ballot. If we are successful, a proposal will appear on the Michigan statewide ballot in 2014 that would allow voters to choose whether or not to enact the legislature's wolf hunting law.

It is the goal of Keep Michigan Wolves Protected to preserve the longstanding Michigan prohibition on the trophy hunting of this iconic species.

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January 31, 2013

Wolf Slaughter Continues in the Rocky Mountains

http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/wolf-slaughter-continues-in-the-rocky-mountains-by-james-william-gibson-earth-island-journal/

Wolf Slaughter Continues in the Rocky Mountains
by James William Gibson (Earth Island Journal)


Fantasies of killing become increasingly bizarre
Lynne Stone, longtime wolf advocate and executive director of Northern Idaho’s Boulder White Cloud Council in Ketchum, couldn’t help but laugh. For the last two years she has routinely petitioned the Idaho Dept of Fish and Game for every single “ Big Game Mortality Report” filed on wolves killed by hunters —several hundred of them since the animals lost Endangered Species Act protect. Hunters and trappers are required to send in the report along with the skull and pelt for examination. In mid-January Stone ran across a November 2012 report that stated, “DNA came back as a domestic dog,” a light-skinned one.

Hunters operating just west of Yellowstone National Park killed seven radio-collared wolves from
October through December, including the famous, often photographed 832F, the majestic female
alpha of the Lamar Canyon pack.

“Buy a wolf tag, shoot a dog, claim it was a wolf, get bragging rights and a dog-skin rug,” she chuckled “Life is wonderful in 3rd world Idaho. Is anyone missing a light-colored mutt? Maybe it’s time folks put orange vests and hats on their dogs.”

Gallows humor is all wolf supporters have left. In February 2011, Congress removed gray wolves in the northern Rockies from protection by the Endangered Species Act, the first time a species has ever been delisted for political reasons. Before that, the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s reintroduction of wolves to the northern Rockies in the mid-1990s appeared to be one of the greatest conservation successes in decades. Wolves had been killed off in the West in the late nineteenth and early centuries. But while tourists from all over the country came to Yellowstone in hopes of seeing “Cinderella” or “Limpy” — many of the wolves became named — in the Rockies a reactionary political movement developed against the animals.

January 31, 2013

Extreme Wealth and Inequality is un ethical!

http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/cost-of-inequality-oxfam-mb180113.pdf

The cost of inequality: how wealth and income
extremes hurt us all

The world must urgently set goals to tackle extreme inequality and extreme wealth
It is now widely accepted that rapidly growing extreme wealth and inequality are harmful to
human progress, and that something needs to be done. Already this year, the World Economic
Forum’s Global Risk Report rated inequality as one of the top global risks of 2013. The IMF and
the Economist agree. Around the world, the Occupy protests demonstrated the increasing public
anger and feeling that inequality has gone too far.

In the last decade, the focus has been exclusively on one half of the inequality equation - ending
extreme poverty. Inequality and the extreme wealth that contributes to it were seen as either not
relevant, or a prerequisite for the growth that would also help the poorest, as the wealth created
trickled down to the benefit of everyone.

There has been great progress in the fight against extreme poverty. Hundreds of millions of
people have seen their lives improve dramatically – an historically unprecedented achievement
of which the world should be proud. But as we look to the next decade, and new development
goals we need to define progress, we must demonstrate that we are also tackling inequality- and
that means looking at not just the poorest but the richest5. Oxfam believes that reducing
inequality is a key part of fighting poverty and securing a sustainable future for all. In a world of
finite resources, we cannot end poverty unless we reduce inequality rapidly.

That is why we are calling for a new global goal to end extreme wealth by 2025, and reverse the
rapid increase in inequality seen in the majority of countries in the last twenty years, taking
inequality back to 1990 levels.


Extreme wealth and inequality are reaching levels never before seen and are getting
worse

Over the last thirty years inequality has grown dramatically in many countries. In the US the
share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10 to 20%. For the
top 0.01% it has quadrupled8 to levels never seen before. At a global level, the top 1% (60 million
people), and particularly the even more select few in the top 0.01% (600,000 individuals - there
are around 1200 billionaires in the world), the last thirty years has been an incredible feeding
frenzy10. This is not confined to the US, or indeed to rich countries. In the UK inequality is rapidly
returning to levels not seen since the time of Charles Dickens. In China the top 10% now take
home nearly 60% of the income. Chinese inequality levels are now similar to those in South
Africa, which are now the most unequal country on earth and significantly more unequal than at
the end of apartheid. Even in many of the poorest countries, inequality has rapidly grown.
Globally the incomes of the top 1% have increased 60% in twenty years. The growth in income
for the 0.01% has been even greater.

Following the financial crisis, the process has accelerated, with the top 1% further increasing their share of income. The luxury goods market has registered double digit growth every year
since the crisis hit. Whether it is a sports car or a super-yacht, caviar or champagne, there has
never been a bigger demand for the most expensive luxuries.

..more..

January 31, 2013

If this Anti-Trapping petition gets 100,000 signatures in 30 days

If this Anti-Trapping petition gets 100,000 signatures in 30 days the Obama administration will have to address it. Please consider signing and sharing. Thank you!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ban-trapping-america-all-other-civilized-countries-have-already-done-based-cruelty-and-torture/4vhVGVbz

January 31, 2013

U.S. wildlife agent accused of trapping a neighbor's dog

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/31/5153892/us-wildlife-agent-accused-of-trapping.html

U.S. wildlife agent accused of trapping a neighbor's dog

By Tom Knudson
tknudson@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013 - 12:00 am | Page 7A

The arrest of a federal Wildlife Services trapper in Arizona earlier this month on a charge of animal cruelty has sparked renewed concern about the little-known agency.

Wildlife Services, which was the focus of a Bee investigative series last year, is a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that specializes in destroying and dispersing animals considered to be a threat to agriculture, the public and the environment.

Since 2000, employees have killed more than 1 million coyotes and other predators, along with many other species, from nonnative starlings and wild pigs to migratory shorebirds, beaver, porcupines, river otters and other native wildlife.

In the process, they have also accidentally killed more than 50,000 non-target animals, from domestic dogs to golden eagles and black bears, The Bee investigation found.

In Arizona, Wildlife Services employee Russell Files is accused of setting traps with the specific intent of capturing a neighbor's dog he found troublesome.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/31/5153892/us-wildlife-agent-accused-of-trapping.html#storylink=cpy