I was in Colorado this month during the annual Sax-Zim Bog Birding Festival. It’s sad when even a lovely conflict makes me miss the wonderful local event, so on Saturday I headed to the bog with my little birding dog Pip and my friend Lisa. Earlier in the week, the forecast had called for snow […]
Tag: Coyote
If you love me, why am I dying?
Hey there, people-friends. I’ve been on the road, on the go, since early September. Before that, since February, I was out in the boonies running after sage-grouse. So that’s my excuse for the lack of posts. I’ve been wandering around Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, eastern California, Idaho, and now I’m hunkered down in New Mexico for […]
POLL: Should the coyote continue to be exterminated?
The howl of the coyote is America’s “original national anthem,” says Dan Flores, author of Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History. A totemic animal in Native American mythology, the coyote has lived in North America for more than a million years. But since the early 19th-century, when Lewis and Clark first encountered them, coyotes […]
How sea otters help save the planet
Charles Darwin once mused on the impacts that predators could have on the landscapes around them. In particular, he wondered – in On the Origin of Species – how neighbourhood cats might affect the abundance of flowers in the fields near his house at Downe in Kent. He concluded the animals’ potential to change local […]
Top scientists back federal plan to protect Alaska predators
A group of scientists has backed a federal plan to restrict the trapping and gunning down of bears and wolves in Alaska’s wildlife refuges, in the face of bitter opposition from the state government. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has proposed an overhaul of hunting regulations for Alaska’s 16 national wildlife refuges, which […]
POLL: Should the killing of animals by Wildlife Services be stopped?
After anti-government protesters took over Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this month to support two ranchers convicted of arson, it emerged that the convicts, Steven and Dwight Hammonds, had received thousands of dollars in financial support from the federal government. The public aid included the killing of five coyotes by a US Department of […]
POLL: Should the wolf cull in Ontario be stopped?
As all controversial government announcements are released when no one is watching, so too was the announcement by the Wynne govt. to begin a wolf cull in Northern Ontario. Posted on Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights Registry on December 17, the Ontario govt. is proposing to remove the previous requirements for hunters to purchase a […]
‘Golden jackals’ of East Africa are actually ‘golden wolves’
Despite their remarkably similar appearance, the “golden jackals” of East Africa and Eurasia are actually two entirely different species. The discovery, based on DNA evidence and reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 30, increases the overall biodiversity of the Canidae—the group including dogs, wolves, foxes, and jackals—from 35 living species to […]