Tag: wildlife

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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EPA Flags Silicone Chemical D4 as Risk to Humans, Wildlife

U.S. regulators said that D4, a chemical used to make silicone goods from solar panels to cosmetics, may harm women’s fertility and damage aquatic and land animals.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Sept. 17 draft risk evaluation concluded that D4—formally known as octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane—presents “unreasonable” risks to human health in almost two dozen uses and to the environment in seven cases. The agency found no such risk in 37 other applications.

EPA said the human health concerns are driven mainly by worker exposures in 23 uses, such as manufacturing D4, processing it into adhesives and sealants, and applying D4-containing paints and coatings in industrial and commercial settings.

The agency’s draft risk evaluation points to reproductive toxicity studies as the hazard driver for the human health finding. In the document, EPA notes that D4 exposure is linked to adverse reproductive outcomes in women.

While one consumer use—inhalation of fumes or skin contact with paints and coatings—was also flagged as hazardous, the agency determined that for the general population, no uses of D4 “significantly contribute to unreasonable risk.”

The agency noted that its findings did not assume the use of personal protective equipment, though it said that equipment like respirators and gloves could mitigate risks.

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8,000 years of human activities have caused wild animals to shrink and domestic animals to grow

Humans have caused wild animals to shrink and domestic animals to grow, according to a new study out of the University of Montpellier in southern France. Researchers studied tens of thousands of animal bones from Mediterranean France covering the last 8,000 years to see how the size of both types of animals has changed over time.

Scientists already know that human choices, such as selective breeding, influence the size of domestic animals, and that environmental factors also impact the size of both. However, little is known about how these two forces have influenced the size of wild and domestic animals over such a prolonged period. This latest research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , fills a major gap in our knowledge.

The scientists analyzed more than 225,000 bones from 311 archaeological sites in Mediterranean France. They took thousands of measurements of things like the length, width, and depth of bones and teeth from wild animals, such as foxes, rabbits and deer, as well as domestic ones, including goats, cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens.

But the researchers didn’t just focus on the bones. They also collected data on the climate, the types of plants growing in the area, the number of people living there and what they used the land for. And then, with some sophisticated statistical modeling, they were able to track key trends and drivers behind the change in animal size.

The research team’s findings reveal that for around 7,000 years, wild and domestic animals evolved along similar paths, growing and shrinking together in sync with their shared environment and human activity. However, all that changed around 1,000 years ago. Their body sizes began to diverge dramatically, especially during the Middle Ages.

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Radioactive Wasp Nest Discovered Near South Carolina Nuclear Weapon Facility

A radioactive wasp nest has been discovered near a former nuclear weapon manufacturing facility in South Carolina.

The nest was found by workers at the Savannah River Site in Aiken County, according to a report from the Department of Energy.

According to reports, the contaminated nest was found on July 3, just before 2 p.m., by Radiological Control Operations workers during routine inspections.

Located on a stanchion near a tank in the F-Area tank farm, the nest registered a staggering 100,000 disintegrations per minute (dpm), a level described as “moderately high” radiation.

Workers promptly sprayed the nest to eliminate the wasps, which were then bagged and disposed of as radiological waste.

The Associated Press reports:

The report said there is no leak from the waste tanks, and the nest was likely radioactive through what it called “onsite legacy radioactive contamination” from the residual radioactivity left from when the site was fully operational.

The watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch said the report was at best incomplete since it doesn’t detail where the contamination came from, how the wasps might have encountered it and the possibility there could be another radioactive nest if there is a leak somewhere.

Knowing the type of wasp nest could also be critical — some wasps make nest out of dirt and others use different material which could pinpoint where the contamination came from, Tom Clements, executive director of the group, wrote in a text message.

Thankfully, no contamination was detected in the surrounding ground or area, but the very presence of radioactive insects highlights the persistent threats from “onsite legacy contamination” tied to the site’s history of producing plutonium and tritium for nuclear bombs during the Cold War era.

“I’m as mad as a hornet that SRS didn’t explain where the radioactive waste came from or if there is some kind of leak from the waste tanks that the public should be aware of,” Clements told AP.

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Giant, flightless bird is next target for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences


A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country’s two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back.

Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives.

The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway.

To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand.

The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement.

“There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,” Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be “valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.”

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