The Staggering Amounts Americans Pay To Kill Exotic Animals – http://huff.to/1Jaqtm7Filed. Sourced through Scoop.it from: animalsdeservetolive.com
Tag Archives: hunting
Extinction Resources: Information, Opinion, Ideas, & Questions
Extinction Information Resources
Passenger Pigeon
Stopping human-caused extinction of Earth’s plant and animal species is the greatest challenge of our time. This post provides access to the latest articles on extinction. The first item (Ceballos et al. 2015) is the latest detailed report on what we know and how we acquired the information.
More than a thousand recent articles are linked to my blog (https://garryrogers.com/blog):
Causes of Extinction
My blog covers the things that people do to cause extinctions and reduce biodiversity. These deeds of ours are woven into individual and our collective habits and beliefs. Stopping them will alter our society and our culture. It will be difficult. Our population must be reduced, our food choices must change, and our resource harvest must decline. Nothing less will succeed. Search the blog using the following terms for recent reports: Burning, Coal, Construction, Deforestation, Desertification, Energy, Farming, Fishing, Fracking, Grazing, Hunting, Invasive Species, Logging, Mining, Oil, Pesticides, Pet Trade, Pollution, Population, Roads, and Soil.
Climate change will become the major cause of extinction. Here’s its search link on my blog: Climate Change.
For more reading, my Internet newsletters include a wider variety of articles than my blog.
A Camera Does Just as Well
The challenge and thrill of a great photograph leave a lasting pride that you can share with multitudes. Here’s my photography-bio: https://garryrogers.com/garryrogers-photography.
Save Wildlife: Apply for a Hunting Permit
Arizona Wildlife Protection: Gambling for Big Game
Young Mule Deer
I am not a gambler, but as I watched five Mule Deer browsing in my yard this morning I decided to enter the Arizona Game and Fish Department drawing to win a deer hunting permit. If I win, I will have blocked a real killer. (The header image is from the Arizona Game and Fish Department website.)
You can enter drawings for Bighorn Sheep, Buffalo, Deer, Javelina, Pheasant, and Turkey. Click here to enter. Fees vary depending on your location and the species you are protecting. For Arizona residents, the hunting license and the drawing entry fee total $50. If you win, the toe tag will cost an extra $45.
The drawings for Elk and Pronghorn Antelope took place last month (25,932 killing permits issued). There are a few Elk tags left. If this is your special animal, click here to buy a chance to save one.
Arizona Wildlife Management
Some will argue that killing wild animals is necessary to prevent habitat-destroying population explosions. Others will say that restoring and protecting habitat, removing domestic livestock, and protecting large predators will achieve natural populations and increase overall biodiversity. Of course, selling licenses is big business; the Arizona Game and Fish Department, like many other governmental wildlife management agencies, depends on license sales for a substantial part of its annual budget. Search my website for “Hunting,” “Livestock,” and “Predators” to find discussions and reports related to these subjects.
Here’s a tweet suggestion (you should have room to add a photo):
Protect wildlife: Apply for a big-game permit and keep a killer out of the woods.
If you decide to take a chance, you can let us know in a comment. If you don’t want to publicize your gambling sins, send me a private email.
Game and Fish increases pronghorn population with killings of coyotes
More than 800 coyotes were killed at the direction of the Arizona Game and Fish Department from 2012 to 2014 for the purpose of protecting pronghorn fawns in five areas around the state, agency officials say. Source: azdailysun.com
GR: The Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) lets people kill Pronghorn Antelope for the money. Antelope have declined drastically from their original range. However, AZGFD continues to sell Antelope hunting licenses for $103 ($565 non-residents).
“Annual harvests since 1990 have varied between 500 and 700 bucks, with archers taking a proportionally larger percent of the harvest in recent years. Plagued by encroaching subdivisions, increasing highway construction, and other land-use changes, maintaining even the present number of antelope is dependent on citizen involvement and an aggressive translocation program. Approximately 10 percent of the antelope harvest is in areas having reintroduced herds.”
The AZGFD can’t do much about construction and land-use, but they could stop selling hunting licenses. They might have to cut salaries and layoff a few of their wildlife-control staff. But then they wouldn’t have to kill the coyotes.
Even more appropriate in these times of rapidly disappearing wildlife, would be to stop all hunting and call on the people of Arizona to fund the 25% of the AZGFD budget that comes from hunting licenses.
Free UW wildlife course would please Aldo Leopold
Online class explores hunting and role in conservation. Source: www.greenbaypressgazette.com
GR: I’m thinking Leopold would be appalled. Like many of us, Leopold grew more protective of wildlife as he aged. He proposed the “land ethic” not long before his death. He concluded that Earth ecosystem stability requires that we treat animals as our equals, not our resources. This course description suggests the course content will focus on ideas that Leopold left behind as he saw nature succumbing to relentless pressure of the exploding human population. Please convince me it isn’t so.
Steven Rinella cooking wild animals. (Photo: Pat Durkin)
Pennsylvania pigeon shoots: An early push for their extinction
Politics Preys on Pennsylvania Pigeons
“Pennsylvania, in 2014, almost became the 50th state to ban live pigeon shoots. For the geographically challenged, that would be all of them, finally, pitching the anachronistic nonsport onto the trash heap.
“The votes looked good. The Senate passed the bill in mid-October on a 36-12 vote. It had to go to the House. It needed a vote in that chamber to reach the governor’s desk.
“But first, it had to get through the House Rules Committee, and that is where the bill that had taken flight better than it ever had in the decades that it’s been sought, hit with a splat and died.
“What killed it was a barrage of political donations from the Flyers Victory Fund, a political action committee that supports the shoots. The fund kicked out $20,000 for members of the House Rules Committee — a grand apiece plus $3,000 to its boss, Rep. Mike Turzai. So for $1,000 each, and a little extra gravy for the chief, the Flyers assured that those who still wish to take part in the practice will be able to legally do so in Pennsylvania for at least a while longer. Politics is worse to watch than even a live pigeon shoot.
“One positive: Four members of the Rules Committee returned the money. They were Reps. Bill Adolph Jr., Mark Mustio, Robert Godshell and Thomas Killion — all Republicans. It appears the other 14 Republicans and all 15 Democrats tucked the cash into their war chests and moved on. If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll hear it. My information came from campaign finance reports dated through late November” (read more).
BLM Issues Deadly Permit for Wolf Derby
R.T. is right. We need the wolves, we don’t need hunters, and open-range grazing is obsolete. So, let’s end ranching and return the land to wildlife.
Source: The Teton Valley News
“The BLM’s self-righteous propensity to play God over the native creatures of our public lands stretches far beyond the destruction of our wild horses and burros but all the way to the very predators that would naturally regulate the herds, IF they even needed to be regulated. Nature has been doing just fine for eons without the interference of human management but the rouge feds prefer to deal with special interest groups and the collusion of monetary gain instead of making sound decisions on scientific data and facts.” ~ R.T.
The BLM Idaho Falls District received 40,000 comments on the environmental assessment, many indicating concern over the proposed type of action occurring on public lands.
Last week the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a decision to approve Idaho for Wildlife’s special recreation permit for a competitive event to have a wolf…
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How wolves are beneficial
This article claims that the Utah State government has been paying lobbyists. I haven’t verified the claim. State governments should not use taxpayer funds to pay lobbyists to oppose endangered species listings. Nod if you agree.
GarryRogers Nature Conservation 