Tag: wildlife

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.

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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.

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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.

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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].

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Why Is a Democratic Governor Undermining a Conservative Conservation Success Story?

Controversy is again raging over the fate of the Salt River wild horses, protected under state law as a natural treasure, after the Arizona Department of Agriculture awarded a new management contract requiring the removal of more than half the herd — despite a state law that authorizes removals only for humane reasons related to the health and safety of individual horses.

It didn’t have to be this way. In 2016, Arizona Republicans did something Washington rarely manages to do. They solved a problem. 

When the U.S. Forest Service moved to round up and remove every one of the Salt River wild horses from the Tonto National Forest, Arizonans responded with overwhelming opposition that stunned federal officials. More than 300,000 petition signatures flooded in. Members of Congress from both parties objected, including Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake. Tonto National Forest spokeswoman Carrie Templin told reporters she had never seen anything like it: “We expected public outcry. I don’t think anybody comprehended the magnitude.”

The Republican-led Arizona Legislature acted. In 2016, lawmakers passed the Salt River Wild Horse Act by a 53-3 vote. It was signed into law by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, who counted it among his top accomplishments of the year. The law’s intent was unambiguous: to protect the herd from harassment, killing, and slaughter and limit removals to humane reasons only related to the safety or health of individual horses or public safety. Nothing in the bill authorized mass removals for population reduction. Then-State Senator Katie Hobbs was among those who voted for it.

What followed was a model of conservative governance. The Arizona Department of Agriculture, led by then director Mark Killian — a prominent Republican and former state senator,  partnered with the nonprofit Salt River Wild Horse Management Group. This unique public-private partnership evolved into a unique and highly successful humane management program to protect the cherished herd. 

Over the last seven years, the group implemented a fertility control program that has reduced annual births from more than 100 foals to just one or two. Over seven years, the herd declined from 450 horses to 274 — a 40% reduction — without removing a single horse except those injured or ailing animals in need of special care. 

This program is privately funded at no cost to taxpayers, volunteer-powered, and state-overseen. A shining example of conservative principles: Limited government,  local control, fiscal responsibility, and a private initiative solving a public problem.

And it’s working.  

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Insanity: Newsom’s California Blows OVER $100 MILLION on a ‘Butterfly and Cougar’ Bridge With No End in Sight – Project Director Blames Trump and the Weather

While waste and California go together like peanut butter and jelly, even this latest example will blow your mind.

City Journal’s Chris Rufo broke an explosive story on Wednesday, revealing how Gavin Newsom’s California somehow spent $114 million on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC) over the course of four years. The crossing features an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills.

The stated goal of the project was to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions by providing safe passage to the animals. The species that were supposed to benefit included the endangered cougars in the area and the monarch butterflies.

During a ceremony announcing the project, Newsom boasted that the state would provide $54 million in funding to complete the crossing. It was supposed to cost $92 million in total, with the remaining funding from private philanthropists.

Officials projected the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing would open in 2025, but now it is over $20 million over budget with no finish in sight. And you can thank good old-fashioned political corruption for it, along with the person in charge of the project, a loony cougar-sweater-wearing ‘environmentalist’ named Beth Pratt, who serves on WAWC’s Partner Leadership Team.

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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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