Wildlife Services has come under fire after releasing the death toll of wildlife it killed in 2019. The US Department of Agriculture program slaughtered more than 1.2 million native species including wolves, coyotes, cougars and birds – all of which was funded with taxpayer money. The multi-million dollar federal program conducted the acts primarily to […]
Tag: Prairie Dog
An invisible enemy: the battle to save black-footed ferrets from the plague
Every year, from August to November, Travis Livieri becomes nocturnal. The field biologist goes out in his truck in Conata Basin, South Dakota, armed with a spotlight in search of one of the most endangered mammals in North America: the black-footed ferret. When the light catches the reflective green shine of the ferret’s eyes, he […]
Trophy Hunter Gets Eaten by Crocodiles
Scott Van Zyl was the owner of SS Pro Safaris, a South African canned hunting facility that also organized trips to Africa so trophy hunters could kill magnificent animals and display them in their homes. In a weird twist of fate, Van Zyl became the hunted earlier this month during a Zimbabwe safari. After he […]
Trophy Hunter Gets Eaten by Crocodiles
Scott Van Zyl was the owner of SS Pro Safaris, a South African canned hunting facility that also organized trips to Africa so trophy hunters could kill magnificent animals and display them in their homes. In a weird twist of fate, Van Zyl became the hunted earlier this month during a Zimbabwe safari. After he […]
POLL: Should Trump disband USDA Wildlife “Killing” Services?
Despite persistent outrage from the public, the U.S. government killed 2.7 million wild animals in 2016 — and almost 1.6 million were native wildlife, according to data released this week. That’s roughly five animals every minute. Even after scientific investigations by a team of ecologists cast serious doubts around the necessity of these killings, Wildlife […]
Drones to unleash vaccine-laced pellets to save endangered ferrets
The US government is set to unleash drones that fire vaccine-laced pellets in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret, a species that is facing a plague epidemic across America’s great plains. The US Fish and Wildlife (FWS) has developed a plan to bombard ferret habitat in Montana with the vaccine, which will be […]
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 […]
Fertilizer: one of the three major drivers of biodiversity loss this century
The world’s grasslands are being destabilized by fertilization, according to a paper recently published in the journal Nature. In a study of 41 grassland communities on five continents, researchers found that the presence of fertilizer weakened grassland species diversity. The researchers surveyed grasslands in countries around the world, such as China, the U.S., Switzerland, Tanzania […]
