Tag: wildlife

Residents of Massachusetts Coastal Community Left Stunned After Receiving Letter Explaining Why They Should Not Fly American Flags on THEIR OWN PROPERTY

Residents of a small Massachusetts island community are shocked and furious upon learning from town officials that they may not be able to fly American flags to celebrate the nation’s upcoming 250th birthday.

As Fox News reported on Saturday, homeowners on Plum Island received a letter from the town of Newbury warning them last week that it had become aware of multiple “devices and materials intended to deter” protected shorebirds from frequenting beach and dune systems.

These materials included “mylar streamers, flags, and reflective materials.”

The letter goes on to mention that homeowners could face significant financial penalties for failing to comply with the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, which Newbury town officials have vowed to enforce.

“Activities intended to deter protected shorebirds from utilizing suitable habitat may be viewed as harassment or disruption of normal feeding, nesting, or migratory behavior,” which is prohibited under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts, and “carry significant regulatory and financial penalties,” the letter reads.

“Non-compliance may result in state or federal enforcement actions and, thus, the Town urges residents to comply with applicable state and federal wildlife protection laws.”

When Fox News went to speak with the residents, they were stunned to see flags included in the letter.

Keep reading

Scientists Find Poison-Resistant Mutant Rats Spreading Across America’s Biggest Cities

Rats and mice in major American cities are developing genetic mutations that make them harder to kill with common poisons, according to new research from Rutgers University.

Scientists examined nearly 300 rodents from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., and found widespread signs of resistance to widely used exterminator chemicals.

Around five out of every six rodents tested carried at least one mutation linked to reduced sensitivity to poison.

More than two-thirds also had additional genetic changes previously tied to resistance against common rodenticides.

The mutations were especially common in house mice, which researchers said appear to be adapting faster than larger brown rats, also known as sewer rats.

“Genetic mutation is not that special in these creatures,” lead researcher Jin-Jia Yu said. “But we found that the house mouse shows a lot of genetic mutations related to rodenticide resistance.”

Keep reading

WHAT? China Demands Foreign Intelligence Services Stop Using ‘Spy Turtles’ To Scan Its Waters

The assets from the animal kingdom.

After India complained of the Mumbai ‘Chinese spy pigeon’ and the Ukrainians warned of the ‘Russian spy beluga whale’, the allegations of utilizing animals for information gathering see a new chapter.

China has warned against foreign governments using sensor-fitted fish and turtles to spy on its waters.

The Telegraph reported:

“In a post on social media, Beijing’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) claimed that ‘foreign intelligence services are continuously collecting and stealing sensitive marine data’.

Among the different types of espionage equipment allegedly in use, the agency claimed that fish and turtles had been fitted with sensors and were found to be collecting data such as ‘water temperature, salinity and ocean currents’, which were then transmitted via satellite in real time.”

Keep reading

Oregon petition to criminalize hunting, fishing reaches signature threshold

Supporters of an effort to criminalize the killing of animals for food in Oregon are one step closer in getting a measure on the November ballot.

Initiative Petition 28 would make it illegal to injure or kill animals and would effectively ban hunting, fishing and the breeding of animals.

Supporters have been collecting signatures for this since 2024 and this past week, they reached the number necessary to make it onto the November ballot.

But it’s not official yet. The Secretary of State’s Office still needs to verify the signatures.

Keep reading

Wildlife & Landmines: The Lasting Legacy of Passive Weapons

Horrifically deadly and widely implemented on a global scale, landmines continue to speckle the landscape of current and past battlefields. And while effective in a passive sense, the hardware planted beneath the soil persists long after the inevitable conclusion of war. Innocents and combatants who survive the barrage of bullets and bombs are left with a sadistic game of whack-a-mole – including the wild and domesticated animals.

Rudimentary explosives first appeared in China as early as the Song Dynasty. Continued development eventually gave rise to the modern pressure-activated landmine, which appeared on the battlefields of the American Civil War. Seen as a cowardly method of waging war at the time, the improvised explosive devices continued to gain popularity.

Since the Vietnam War, many variants of mines have been concocted and deployed in the field. This includes the proliferation of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle explosives. For the purposes of this piece, we will focus on anti-personnel mines due to their sensitivity and tendency to detonate with less pressure applied.

​The production, transfer, and use of anti-personnel landmines have been greatly reduced, notably following the signing of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which specifically addresses the use of mines, foreign and domestic. Many nations agreed to the treaty, though it excludes the signatures of China, Russia, and the U.S.

​However, mines continue to be used in modern theaters of war, and the historic placement of mines predates 1997, meaning an unknown number of AP mines patiently wait across the planet for a specific amount of pressure to be applied. And these explosives do not discriminate – hoof or foot, they are ready to go.

​Post-conflict wildlife interactions with landmines have largely remained unstudied, but specific negative interactions have been documented. Famously, in the case of “Mosha,” the Thai elephant that stepped on a mine following their use during a conflict between Myanmar and Thailand. The mine blew half of her front leg off while walking through the jungle on the border of the two nations. Mosha found refuge at a Thai sanctuary, where a prosthetic leg was built for her.

Keep reading

RADIOACTIVE HOGS: In the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Area, the Mutant Super Pig Population Is Surging Out of Control

Nuclear hogs reproduce faster than they can be culled.

In 2011, the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster was hit by a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami, causing one of the worst radioactive disasters in history.

Around 164,000 people were forced to flee from their homes to escape the radiation zone.

The New York Post reported:

“Amid the chaos, domestic pigs escaped into abandoned farmland and began interbreeding with indigenous feral boars — creating a mutant pig population with alarming genes, Popular Science reported.

[…] Researchers from Fukushima and Hirosaki Universities discovered through DNA analysis that the hybrid progeny inherited the maternal domestic pig’s rapid reproductive cycle, allowing populations to quickly multiply, unlike that of the boar, according to findings from the Journal of Forest Research.”Hybrid pigs are also being developed in other parts of the world

Keep reading

Hantavirus Patient Zero Was Dutch Birdwatcher Who Toured Massive Rat-Infested Landfill in Argentina’s ‘City at the End of the World’ Just Days Before Deadly Cruise Ship Outbreak

More information has come to light about the origins of the deadly hantavirus cluster aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, as health officials have now identified “Patient Zero,” the first confirmed case, as a 70-year-old Dutch ornithologist who visited a heavily rat-infested landfill just outside Ushuaia, Argentina, just days before boarding.

The incident has already claimed three lives aboard the ship and sparked international contact-tracing efforts across multiple continents.

Patient Zero has been named as Leo Schilperoord, a Dutch birdwatcher traveling with his 69-year-old wife, Mirjam Schilperoord.

The couple made a side trip in late March to a landfill a few miles outside Ushuaia, the southernmost city on Earth, famously nicknamed “The City at the End of the World,” specifically to observe the rare white-throated caracara.

Authorities now believe the pair inhaled aerosolized particles from the droppings or urine of long-tailed pygmy rice rats carrying the Andes strain of hantavirus while at the contaminated site.

Four days after that landfill visit, on April 1, the Schilperoords boarded the MV Hondius expedition cruise ship in Ushuaia along with approximately 112 other passengers.

Leo began showing symptoms, including a fever, headache, stomach pain, and diarrhea, on April 6 and died on the ship five days later.

His wife also succumbed to the virus.

“Mirjam got off the ship, along with Leo’s body, on April 24, during a planned stop on the Atlantic island of Santa Helena. She flew to Johannesburg in South Africa and transferred on a KLM flight bound for the Netherlands but never made it. The crew found her too sick to fly and removed her. She collapsed at the airport and died the next day,” the Post reports.

According to a report from the New York Post, “The couple — from Haulerwijk, a small village of 3,000 people in the Netherlands — were identified in obituaries published in their monthly village magazine.”

The Andes strain of hantavirus is unique because it is the only known variant capable of limited person-to-person transmission, though this remains rare.

Most cases occur through contact with infected rodent urine, droppings, or saliva, often via aerosolized particles when the droppings are disturbed.

A rodent bite or scratch can also transmit the virus, but that is uncommon.

The CDC has classified the risk to the general public in America as “extremely low” and continues to monitor the situation.

Keep reading

De-Extinct Dire Wolves Ready To Breed; Bioscience Company Pushes Forward Multiple Projects

Colossal Biosciences has announced that its de-extinct dire wolves—Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi—are now breeding-aged and the firm plans to expand the pack later this year. The development marks a significant step for the Texas-based company in its mission to restore extinct species through genetic engineering.

The dire wolf pups, born in late 2024 and early 2025, represent the world’s first de-extinct animals. They have thrived in a secure 2,000-acre preserve, reaching milestones like learning to process whole deer carcasses and now showing readiness for natural breeding behaviors.

“The dire wolf pack is actually breeding-aged at this point,” Matt James, Colossal’s chief animal officer, said, adding “But we will initially grow the pack through assisted reproduction while we create new, genetically diverse individuals.”

The company intends to engineer two to four additional pups to boost genetic diversity before allowing full natural breeding. “The plan is to create an inter-breedable population of dire wolves in which they would eventually breed naturally to create a sustainable population of the world’s first de-extinct species,” James continued.

He further added, “We will grow the population through assisted reproduction initially and then eventually only rely on natural breeding.”

“The dire wolves are doing great,” Ben Lamm, Colossal’s CEO and co-founder, stated., adding “The three dire wolves live on a 2,000-acre secure, expansive ecological preserve that allows us to monitor and manage them while providing them a semi-wild habitat to thrive in. We hope to have more dire wolf pups by the end of the year.”

Colossal reconstructed the dire wolf genome from ancient DNA fragments in bone samples, including a 72,000-year-old skull. Scientists then edited gray wolf embryos to incorporate key traits: a white coat, larger teeth, more muscular build, and distinctive howl. Embryos were implanted in surrogate dogs, with births by caesarean section.

Keep reading

Animals Are Thriving on Contaminated Land in Chernobyl’s Radioactive Exclusion Zone

Nature is more resilient than we imagine.

The world was shaken to the core forty years ago, on April 26, 1986, when an explosion in reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant that destroyed the reactor core and ignited a graphite fire.

The worst nuclear disaster in history unfolded.

A massive plume of radioactive material was released into the atmosphere, contaminating large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, with fallout spreading across much of Europe.

But today, four decades later, on contaminated land that is still too dangerous for human life, a variety of animals have returned to the exclusion zone.

Keep reading

Wyoming: A thorough assessment of the threat wind turbines pose to eagles needs to be done

A programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment (“EIA”) is a comprehensive analysis of the cumulative impacts of the massive wind development underway in Wyoming. The growing adverse impact on golden eagles and other wildlife is especially disturbing. What can be done to limit the damage is a big part of the assessment.

There is National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) language for this. It is called a “Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)” looking at “cumulative effects.” The Feds completed two back in 2024. The first one was for multiple offshore wind projects in the New York Bight. They then completed one for the five proposed floating wind projects off California. These are good precedents for Wyoming.

Of course, both these offshore wind studies were Biden-era greenwash jobs that mostly ignored the obvious adverse impact on protected whales and other marine mammals. This does not mean that a good PEIS cannot be done for Wyoming.

A good start on the PEIS issues can be found in the numerous comments already filed in opposition to individual Wyoming wind projects. For example, the Two Rivers Project received over a hundred pages of detailed technical comments, many regarding the extreme threat to golden eagles. Two Rivers is part of what is called the growing “wall of wind” in southeastern Wyoming.

The Two Rivers comments are HERE.

One of the best is “Comments on Environmental Assessment of the Two Rivers Wind Energy Project on behalf of National Audubon Society and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.” It is really a 17-page research report including lots of data and maps. See letter #16 of 18 [see below].

Keep reading