Tag: wildlife

Insect Loss As an Early Warning of Systemic Biological Failure

n medicine, silence can be more alarming than noise. For example, a patient who abruptly stops voicing discomfort or a monitor that ceases activity may signal system failure rather than resolution. Ecology presents a similar scenario, and currently, the silence is deeply concerning.

Insects are disappearing across vast regions globally. This is not a modest decline or a simple geographic shift, but a rapid vanishing of beetles, butterflies, moths, flies, mosquitoes, bees, and entire functional groups. This phenomenon is not speculative or anecdotal; it is among the most consistently documented biological trends of the past 50 years and remains insufficiently addressed. For context, the total biomass of lost insects is comparable to the combined weight of all commercial aircraft worldwide, representing a profound ecological and economic loss.

For decades, insects were treated as background noise—annoyances at best, pests at worst. Their abundance was assumed, their resilience taken for granted. We designed agricultural systems, urban environments, chemical interventions, and technological solutions on the unspoken assumption that insects would always be there. They were too numerous to fail.

This assumption has proven incorrect.

The Data Are Not Subtle

One of the most widely cited early warnings came from a long-term German entomological study that tracked flying insect biomass across protected areas over nearly three decades. The result shocked even the investigators: a decline of more than 75% in total flying insect biomass between 1989 and 2016.¹ These were not industrial zones or pesticide-saturated fields. They were nature preserves. However, many regions like Africa and large parts of Asia still lack comprehensive, long-term insect monitoring, leaving significant gaps in our understanding of global insect declines.

Subsequent studies confirmed that this was not an anomaly. A global review published in Biological Conservation concluded that approximately 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction, with declines accelerating in recent decades.² Longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, North America, and East Asia tell the same story with local variation but consistent direction.³-⁶

The loss is not limited to rare or specialized species. Common insects—the ones that once filled the air—are disappearing fastest. Entomologists now openly discuss “functional extinction,” a state in which species technically still exist but no longer play their ecological roles in meaningful numbers.⁷

The significance of this issue is often underestimated.

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Texas Air-Drops Live Virus-Containing Edible Rabies Vaccines Over Cities from Aircraft—’Leaving Persons at Risk for Vaccine Exposure and Vaccine Virus Infection’: CDC

The Texas Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) has begun its annual distribution of RABORAL V-RG®, an oral rabies vaccine (ORV) bait—dropping the live laboratory-made virus from airplanes over Texas, as well as distributing it by hand.

The $2 million annual project is funded by the State of Texas and the United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service/Wildlife Services.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has known for over a decade that the RABORAL edible vaccine leaves “persons at risk for vaccine exposure and vaccine virus infection.”

Yet the department still allows millions of live genetically modified virus baits to be dispersed over communities, forests, and waterways each year without public notice, informed consent, or comprehensive biosafety oversight—posing potential risks to human health, wildlife, and national biosecurity.

Americans are being involuntarily exposed to laboratory-engineered pathogens capable of infecting multiple species, with no transparent risk disclosure or opt-out mechanism.

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California to Keep Bird Broiling Solar Plant in Operation

I was in Las Vegas with my family the week before Christmas. On the drive back to California we passed a solar generation site called Ivanpah. If you haven’t seen this before it’s pretty striking in person. Instead of using photo-voltaic cells, the site has three towers surrounded by mirrors. The mirrors focus light and heat on the towers which use the concetrated heat to turn turbines.

The site was built with funds from several major companies including Google and a federal loan guarantee of $1.6 billion dollars. When this site opened in 2014, it was considered a step into the future of solar energy, but that quickly changed for several reasons. First, the site never produced as much power as was promised. Second, the cost of PV solar panels dropped dramatically to the point that rate-payers were paying a lot more for Ivanpah’s solar energy than they would be if the site were just full of regular solar panels. And thirdly, the site had some environmental problems including interfering with local tortoises and killing as many as 6,000 birds a year.

A macabre fireworks show unfolds each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky.

Workers at the Ivanpah Solar Plant have a name for the spectacle: “Streamers.”

And the image-conscious owners of the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying everything they can think of to stop the slaughter.

Federal biologists say about 6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility’s three 40-story towers, which catch sunlight from five square miles of garage-door-size mirrors to drive the plant’s power-producing turbines.

For all of these reasons, both the Biden administration and the Trump administration agreed the state should shut down Ivanpah. Here’s a video Reason made about it last April.

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Wind Turbines Are Killing Bald Eagles—And China Is Cashing In

For more than a decade, Western governments promoted wind energy as a straightforward solution to complex energy and geopolitical problems. Wind power was marketed as clean, inexpensive, and strategically essential—capable of creating jobs, reducing emissions, and limiting reliance on foreign suppliers. 

That argument spread quickly through global climate conferences and corporate sustainability offices. What did not spread was an honest assessment of who profited from the transition or which environmental and strategic costs were ignored.

China captured more economic and geopolitical advantage from this transition than any other nation. Beijing did not simply participate in the renewable-energy sector; it built the manufacturing system that underpins it. 

Today, China controls more than 70% of the global wind-turbine supply chain and produces over 80% of the world’s rare-earth elements, which are essential for turbine generators. 

State subsidies, state-directed financing, and export mandates allowed Chinese firms to underprice Western competitors, effectively making the United States and Europe dependent on a Chinese industrial network for their own energy infrastructure.

This was not an unintended outcome. China expanded its coal fleet—adding roughly two new coal plants per week in recent years—to power factories producing “green” hardware for global export. 

While the United States retired more than 300 coal units since 2010, and Europe imposed strict emissions policies, China increased emissions to manufacture the very wind components Western nations relied on to lower theirs. The West reduced domestic production while China strengthened its industrial leverage.

Environmental impacts were similarly minimized. Wind turbines occupy large land areas and disrupt ecosystems, but the most visible consequence is bird mortality. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates, wind turbines kill between 500,000 and 700,000 birds annually in the United States alone. 

Independent ecological studies suggest the number may exceed 1 million when offshore installations are included. Raptors—especially eagles—are disproportionately affected. Federal data has documented incidents in which individual wind facilities kill dozens of golden eagles per year, losses that other industries would face major penalties for.

These impacts are structural, not accidental. Wind turbines are frequently built along ridgelines, prairie corridors, and coastal regions where airflow is strongest. Those same regions serve as primary migratory pathways. 

Developers, environmental review boards, and federal agencies acknowledge this overlap in planning documents, yet the information rarely reaches the public. What would be considered an unacceptable environmental cost for a fossil-fuel project is reframed as tolerable when produced by wind.

Wind’s operational limitations create further tradeoffs. Capacity factors—the percentage of time a turbine actually produces its rated power—hover between 32% and 35% in the United States. 

Because wind is intermittent, grid operators rely on natural gas or nuclear generation to stabilize supply. 

This backup requirement raises system-wide costs.

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Fallout From Chernobyl Might Be Creating A New Kind Of Dog

Dogs are humanity’s best friend, and this is partially because we’ve bred them to better suit our preferences and needs. The Alaskan Malamute and Komondor, for example, were intentionally bred to serve specific roles (pulling sleds across the Arctic and guarding sheep from predators, respectively, in these two cases). It’s not just breeding that can produce new types of dogs, though. The harrowing damage to the ecosystem left in the infamous Chernobyl disaster’s wake may be contributing, too.

The April 1986 calamity caused ecological damage so severe that it will continue to scar the land for generations to come. In fact, according to Time, the director of the Chernobyl plant, Ihor Gramotkin, has stated that it would be “at least 20,000 years” before the plant’s immediate area would be safe again. The dangers of radiation exposure are severe, and the further scientists are able to study animals that live in the wider area, the better they can understand those effects. The local dog population has been regularly exposed for some time, as they shelter in the dangerously radioactive Semikhody train station. The area is still extremely hazardous, and Russian military activity throughout the exclusion zone could have far-reaching effects.

A 2023 study published on ScienceAdvances titled “The dogs of Chernobyl: Demographic insights into populations inhabiting the nuclear exclusion zone” investigated the DNA of some of these dogs and found that “genome-wide profiles from Chernobyl, purebred and free-breeding dogs, worldwide reveal that the individuals from the power plant and Chernobyl City are genetically distinct.”

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Wyoming conservation group sues federal agency to obtain data on eagles killed by wind farms

AWyoming conservation group filed a federal lawsuit this month against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, arguing that the agency is illegally withholding records on bald and golden eagle deaths at three wind projects in southern Wyoming. 

Mike Lockhart, a biologist who worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service for over 30 years, told Just the News that the data the federal government is withholding could help assess the true impacts of wind energy in Wyoming on eagle mortality.

“We have no real idea of how many birds are being killed. There’s birds that I suspect are being killed that just disappear in the presence of the wind turbines. And I think the numbers are enormous compared to what we know right now,” Lockhart said. 

Blocked as “Privileged and confidential”

Earlier this year, the Albany County Conservancy, based in Laramie, Wyo., filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking records on the reported eagle deaths and injuries within two miles of Seven Mile Hill I/II, Ekola Flats, and Dunlap wind projects in southern Wyoming. 

The Interior Department responded by releasing 910 pages, while another 256 pages were redacted. The agency withheld the records under Exemption 4, which blocks the revelation of “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential.” 

The group filed an administrative appeal in May challenging the exemption and demanding the department release all the data it has related to the request. The ACC received no response to their appeal, and so they filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

File

ACC Complaint.pdf

Wind energy developers have been targeting the area of southeast Wyoming, which has some of the richest wind resources in the U.S. According to the ACC’s lawsuit, there will be 28 utility-scale wind farms operating across Wyoming by this summer, and some projects have over 500 turbines. 

“It’s not proprietary. It’s dead eagles,” conservationist says 

Anne Brande, executive director of the ACC, told Just the News that the ecological risks of so many projects make transparency in federal oversight all the more imperative. 

The law allows a certain number of eagles to be lost via a permitting system called the “eagle take.” Wind farm owners collect records on bird mortality as part of the eagle take permits the developers are required to have in order to disturb, injure and kill eagles.  This data is public information submitted to federal agencies as part of their permitting, Brande said, and there’s nothing in those records that could be legally withheld under Exemption 4. 

“It’s not proprietary. It’s dead eagles,” she said. 

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Putin scientists unveil ‘spy pigeons fitted with brain implants and cameras that can be controlled like drones’

A state-linked Moscow neurotechnology firm boasts its operators can steer flocks of the flying pests across the sky at will. 

Researchers have launched field tests of so-called ‘bird-biodrones’ known as PJN-1, ordinary pigeons surgically implanted with neural chips that allow technicians to direct their flight routes.

The birds can be steered remotely in real time, with operators able to upload flight commands by stimulating targeted regions of the brain.

The pigeon then ‘believes it wants to fly’ in the instructed direction, claim sources at Neiry, which has deep ties to the Kremlin’s hi-tech innovation machine.

Surgery is carried out in which electrodes are inserted into the brain with millimetre precision.

The birds wear tiny solar-powered backpacks containing onboard electronics, GPS tracking, and the receiver that transmits signals into the neural implant.

Chillingly, Neiry insists that ‘no training is required’, declaring that any animal becomes ‘remotely controllable after the operation’ – with pigeons capable of covering 310 miles a day, or more than 1,850 miles in a week.

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Japanese Riot Police Authorized To Use Rifles To Cull Out-of-Control Bear Populations After Record Number of Attacks on Humans

It’s open season on dangerous bears.

We have reported on how Japan was forced to mobilize police and military forces to tackle dangerous bear populations that caused over 70 attacks on human beings in the last month.

Initially, all reports were mentioning the work to ‘capture’ the beasts – but yesterday (5), the National Police Agency announced that they’ve ‘revised the rules’ to allow riot officers ‘to cull wild bears with rifles’.

The Japan Times reported:

“The police are set to cull bears in Akita and Iwate prefectures, which have seen an increase in attacks on residents, with operations scheduled to begin on Nov. 13 when the revisions take effect.

The NPA will dispatch riot police officers to the two prefectures on Thursday to begin training.

Police have previously focused on ensuring the safety of residents and providing information about bear sightings. Due to a shortage of hunters, however, the NPA decided to take part in direct culling after receiving requests for support from the two prefectures.”

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Shock New Report Lays Out The Full Scale Of Environmental Damage Caused by Onshore Wind Turbines

Fresh insights into the ecological devastation caused by onshore wind turbines around the world are contained in a shocking new paper published last month by a group of ecologists in Nature. The paper is paywalled and has attracted little mainstream media interest, but it highlights research that illustrates that the effect of utility-scale wind energy production “can be far reaching and sometimes have large and unexpected consequences for biodiversity”.

An annual figure of around one million bats are killed in the countries with the highest number of turbines, but harmful effects are seen in many other parts of the ecosystem. The number of top predators such as jaguars, jungle cats and golden jackals can be changed by turbines in tropical forest gaps leading to the “possibility for cascading effects” along similar latitudinal levels. 

In short, the science team notes that turbines can kill birds, bats and insects, change animal behaviour, physiology and demography and alter ecosystems. The installation of wind turbines invariably results in habitat degradation, but it is regions rich in biodiversity with minimal existing infrastructure that suffer the most.

The authors state that wind facilities “are recognised as an important driver for losses and degradation of irreplaceable habitats that are important for conservation.” Such areas, of course, can be found in the windy highlands of Scotland. For City-dwelling eco zealots, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind. Net Zero is all about money and power – bats and eagles have neither.

The Nature paper is a wake-up call about the increasing damage that is being inflicted on natural habitats by wind turbines that are steadily increasing in size and destructive potential. It is a summary of the latest findings about the effect of turbines and it is not sanguine about the future.

“Perhaps the greatest unknown in predicting future effects of wind power on biodiversity lies in the scope of the potential expansion of the technology and the cumulative consequences of this expansion for species and ecosystems”. A 2021 USA report on the potential pathways to Net Zero emissions is noted and this suggests using up to 13% of the land area for wind farms. The new Trump Administration is likely to put a stop to this madness which the scientists observe could have “dramatic consequences for biodiversity”.

The BP Deepwater Horizon accident is generally considered the worse US offshore oil spill. Estimates vary but it is thought to have led to the deaths of around 600,000 sea birds and the incident led to widespread condemnation by environmentalists that continues to this day. Slightly less publicity is given to the 500,000 bats killed onshore in the US by wind turbines every single year. In the UK, 30,000 is the estimated annual kill number, with Canada at 50,000 and 200,000 in Germany.

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EMS team under fire for treating man with antivenom after he was bitten by a mamba snake

An EMS team in Kentucky is in hot water after they treated a man who had been bitten by a mamba snake with antivenom.

James Harrison, the director of the Kentucky Reptile Zoo, was bitten by a highly venomous Jameson’s mamba while on the job in May.

Harrison got the antivenom he needed to live at the zoo, but he spent days recovering in the ICU.

The first responders who helped administer the antivenom are now in trouble.

Powell County Judge-Executive Eddie Barnes said he and another EMS worker were called to help Harrison after he was bitten.

“I’ll be honest with you, I think it’s ridiculous,” Barnes said.

Barnes said they first received directions from Harrison on what to do.

“The victim had told us that we needed to administer the antivenom as soon as possible, and if not, the first stage is paralysis, the second stage is respiratory arrest, the third stage is cardiac arrest, then he said, ‘I’m going to die,’” Barnes said.

Barnes said they were unable to reach their EMS director, but they did speak with medical staff at Clark Regional Medical Center.

While they were waiting for a helicopter to take Harrison to a UK hospital, they gave him the antivenom.

The decision is one that Harrison’s wife, Kristen Wiley, is thankful for.

“Every physician that we’ve talked to about it, and about the course of the bite, agrees that they were heroes and did what needed to be done to save him. That’s who I want working on me in an emergency,” Wiley said.

The Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services, or KBEMS, may think otherwise.

Barnes said he later learned KBEMS’ policy changed two years ago, and that only wilderness paramedics can administer antivenom now.

“If we had sat there and let him die, then we would have been morally and ethically responsible, and we could have been criminally charged for his death,” Barnes said.

Now, Barnes, who has his paramedic’s license, along with other EMS workers, will go up before KBEMS to argue why they should keep their licenses.

“If it came down today, I would do the same thing. You cannot put a price on a person’s life,” Barnes said.

Their hearing is expected to take place on Sept. 30.

KBEMS has not yet responded to a request for comment.

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