Tag: wildlife

Refusal To Help Stop Flesh-Eating Screwworms Is More Evidence Mexico Is No Friend To America

The United States recently suspended imports of cattle, horses, and bison from Mexico in response to a growing threat: the return of a silent, flesh-eating invader called the New World Screwworm. The screwworm is more than just a bug. It’s a flesh-eating parasite that poses a severe risk to livestock and wildlife and is crawling its way north from Mexico.

If left unchecked, the screwworm could decimate American cattle, horses, and wildlife. And once it’s here, eradicating it could take decades and cost billions. The last time it happened, our livestock industry took 30 years to bounce back.

While Mexico cries foul, it’s time we stop pretending we’re dealing with a friendly, cooperative neighbor. We’re not.

Thankfully, the U.S. is not taking any chances and has responded swiftly and decisively. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins deserves enormous credit for jumping into action. The USDA quickly mobilized, ramping up strategies to stop the outbreak at its source and suspending live animal imports through ports of entry along the southern border on May 11. 

The methods being used are the same ones that successfully eradicated screwworm from the U.S. in 1966: releasing massive numbers of sterile male screwworm flies. A female screwworm fly lives only 30 days, maximum. Since she gets just one chance to mate in this short window, mating with a sterile male means her line ends there. No offspring means no spread. Since each female can lay up to 3,000 flesh-eating larvae, breaking that reproductive cycle is the key to stopping the outbreak.

But for that to work, flights to disperse sterile male flies need to be constant and daily. Mexico knows this but still imposed restrictions, limiting USDA sterile fly dispersal flights and imposing customs duties on the tools needed for the job, such as plane parts, fly shipments, and dispersal equipment, delaying every aspect of the operation. Let that sink in: As a deadly parasite inches toward our border, the Mexican government is nickel-and-diming the planes and tools we’re using to stop it. That’s not cooperation. That’s sabotage.

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Montana Governor Signs Bill Directing Marijuana Tax Revenue Toward Environmental Conservation And Wildlife

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) announced on Friday that he had recently signed House Bill 932, a proposal that would expand uses for the conservation-dedicated tax revenues the state collects on recreational marijuana sales.

Under HB 932, the scope of wildlife habitat protection and improvement supported with marijuana taxes will broaden to include projects implemented on private land. The law is slated to take effect July 1.

Before the latest legislative reform, Habitat Montana was the sole beneficiary of the roughly $10 million of habitat-conservation-dedicated funding that marijuana revenues support. In recent years, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) has used Habitat Montana to purchase new Wildlife Management Areas and secure both perpetual conservation easements and 40-year conservation leases.

With HB 932 in play this summer, that $10 million of conservation funding will all go into a new account: the “habitat legacy account.”

From there, it will be further divided into three separate funding buckets.

Most of the money, 75 percent, will support Habitat Montana and state water projects. Roughly 20 percent of the remainder will be funneled into an existing program called the Wildlife Habitat Improvement Program, or WHIP, and 5 percent will be directed toward the newly established wildlife crossings account that seeks to reduce the wildlife-vehicle collisions that plague the state’s highways and interstates.

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Alaska Defies Court Order, Moves Forward with Controversial Bear-Killing Program Despite Ruling It Is Illegal

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) announced it will move forward with its controversial predator control program targeting bears in Western Alaska—despite a recent court ruling declaring the effort unconstitutional.

On Friday, the department announced plans to resume its aerial bear culling efforts in Western Alaska starting Saturday, despite a March 14 ruling by Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi that declared the program illegal, Alaska Beacon reported.

The state claims it is acting within the bounds of emergency regulations passed by the Alaska Board of Game on March 27, which the Department argues were not explicitly invalidated by the courts.

“The court order did not prohibit these activities or invalidate emergency regulations adopted by the Alaska Board of Game on March 27, 2025,” the department said in a statement, citing the Board’s authority to authorize the renewed bear removal program.

The goal, the department insists, is to increase caribou calf survival and grow the herd’s numbers to a level that “supports hunting opportunities for all Alaskans and nonresidents.”

At its peak, the Mulchatna Caribou Herd supported over 48 communities and supplied more than 4,700 caribou annually, according to the state.

However, Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin ruled Wednesday that the state remains bound by Judge Guidi’s earlier decision, which found that the Board of Game failed to justify the emergency nature of the predator control regulations. She also noted that the Board’s new rule failed to correct the original constitutional shortcomings.

Despite this, Rankin declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, saying the request was moot under current legal circumstances. In response, the Alliance filed a fresh application Friday in an attempt to stop the resumed killing.

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The Return of the Dire Wolf

Romulus and Remus are doing what puppies do: chasing, tussling, nipping, nuzzling. But there’s something very un-puppylike about the snowy white 6-month olds—their size, for starters. At their young age they already measure nearly 4 ft. long, tip the scales at 80 lb., and could grow to 6 ft. and 150 lb. Then there’s their behavior: the angelic exuberance puppies exhibit in the presence of humans—trotting up for hugs, belly rubs, kisses—is completely absent. They keep their distance, retreating if a person approaches. Even one of the handlers who raised them from birth can get only so close before Romulus and Remus flinch and retreat. This isn’t domestic canine behavior, this is wild lupine behavior: the pups are wolves. Not only that, they’re dire wolves—which means they have cause to be lonely.

The dire wolf once roamed an American range that extended as far south as Venezuela and as far north as Canada, but not a single one has been seen in over 10,000 years, when the species went extinct. Plenty of dire wolf remains have been discovered across the Americas, however, and that presented an opportunity for a company named Colossal Biosciences. 

Relying on deft genetic engineering and ancient, preserved DNA, Colossal scientists deciphered the dire wolf genome, rewrote the genetic code of the common gray wolf to match it, and, using domestic dogs as surrogate mothers, brought Romulus, Remus, and their sister, 2-month-old Khaleesi, into the world during three separate births last fall and this winter—effectively for the first time de-extincting a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished. TIME met the males (Khaleesi was not present due to her young age) at a fenced field in a U.S. wildlife facility on March 24, on the condition that their location remain a secret to protect the animals from prying eyes.

The dire wolf isn’t the only animal that Colossal, which was founded in 2021 and currently employs 130 scientists, wants to bring back. Also on their de-extinction wish list is the woolly mammoth, the dodo, and the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Already, in March, the company surprised the science community with the news that it had copied mammoth DNA to create a woolly mouse, a chimeric critter with the long, golden coat and the accelerated fat metabolism of the mammoth.

If all this seems to smack of a P.T. Barnum, the company has a reply. Colossal claims that the same techniques it uses to summon back species from the dead could prevent existing but endangered animals from slipping into extinction themselves. What they learn restoring the mammoth, they say, could help them engineer more robust elephants that can better survive the climatic ravages of a warming world. Bring back the thylacine and you might help preserve the related marsupial known as the quoll. Techniques learned restoring the dire wolf can similarly be used to support the endangered red wolf.

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Authorities Confiscated a Beloved Deer That a Woman Raised as a Pet — and Now the Animal Might Be Euthanized

Authorities confiscated a deer that a Pennsylvania woman had been keeping as a pet, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission and multiple reports.

Tammy Shiery of Fayette County says that she and several members of her neighborhood have raised the 2-year-old deer — whom they named Baby — ever since they found him as a fawn, per CBS News affiliate KDKA News.

Shiery, 64, told the outlet that Baby has received all of the same vaccines that are required for deer on deer farms, and that she believed she had all of the necessary paperwork to legally keep Baby as a pet. 

However, Pennsylvania law states that deer can only be kept as domestic pets if they were born in captivity — which Baby was not. Shiery attempted to intervene when state authorities showed up to take Baby away and was subsequently arrested, per KDKA.

PEOPLE reached out to the Pennsylvania State Police but did not receive an immediate response.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission confirmed it has Baby in its custody, and he has not been euthanized at this point in time, per KDKA. The game commission also told the outlet that it is currently deciding on next steps for the animal.

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How Many More Ridiculous Green Energy Projects Will Fail?

The answer is all of them, in due time. Here are the latest spectacular failures.

Birds Fry Every Two Minutes

It took 10 years, and hundreds-of-thousands of dead birds, before the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California would meet its fate.

The Wall Street Journal explains in ‘A Prolific Executioner of Wildlife’

An Obama-era monument to green delusions finally faces extinction.

Longtime readers may recall a 2014 Journal editorial about California’s “bird-fryer” solar plant, a taxpayer-backed venture that was hell on local animals. Turns out it was also hell on electricity ratepayers. But as with so many politically favored green ventures, waiting for official acknowledgment of failure can feel like an eternity.

Now finally here in 2025 it seems the reckoning has begun. The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes in an editorial that “a major California utility —  Pacific Gas & Electric — announced that it will no longer buy power from the Ivanpah solar plant off Interstate 15 near the Nevada-California border. As a result, two of the plant’s three towers will shut down next year — and the third will probably follow.”

The plant might have functioned merely as the world’s most expensive backyard bug zapper. But it was just too lethal. The Review-Journal’s Emerson Drewes reported last month:

Federal wildlife officials said Ivanpah might act as a “mega-trap” for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their deaths in the intensely focused light rays.

So many birds have been victims of the plant’s concentrated sun rays that workers referred to them as “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. When federal wildlife investigators visited the plant around 10 years ago, they reported an average of one “streamer” every two minutes.

Performance has proven so poor that PG&E has exercised its right to terminate the contract, about which negotiations have been completed; there is no doubt that towers 1 and 3 will cease operations within roughly a year. And it appears to be the case that Edison too wants out: “the utility is in ‘ongoing discussions’ with the project’s owners and the federal government over ending the utility’s contract.”

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Herbicide threatens manatee immune systems, UF study finds

A new University of Florida study focusing on manatees’ immune systems reveals how glyphosate, the world’s most commonly used herbicide, may threaten manatee health in an environment increasingly impacted by human activities.

“Our research raises important questions about how chemical exposure might influence immune function,” said lead author Maite De Maria, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher who supports the U.S. Geological Survey in collaboration with the Center for Environmental and Human Toxicology at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine.

The researchers collected blood samples from manatees in the wild. They then tested the animals’ blood cells in the lab to determine how the herbicide might influence their immune system responses. The study, published in Environment International, examined lymphocyte, or white blood cell, responses to glyphosate at a range of concentrations found in aquatic environments.

White blood cells act protectively within the body, patrolling the bloodstream for harmful invaders such as bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens, and acting defensively to fight infection.

The researchers found that glyphosate can reduce immune cell activity by more than 27.3%, potentially compromising the threatened species’ ability to fend off disease.

After being listed as an endangered species since 1973, the West Indian manatee, of which the Florida manatee is a subspecies, was reclassified from endangered to threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2017. The Marine Mammal Commission lists the current population estimate at 9,790 manatees. However, over 2,000 manatees died in 2021 and 2022 alone, according to the Save the Manatee organization. While some of those deaths were attributed to traditional causes, such as cold stress and vessel collisions, most were attributed to starvation due to the loss of seagrass, a primary food source of manatees, in Indian River Lagoon and other warm-water estuaries. Poor water quality is believed to be a leading factor in the drastic reduction of seagrass beds.

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The Infamous Delta Smelt Fish Has Not Been Seen in Nearly a Decade – California Allowed Its Cities to Burn to the Ground Over a Fish That They Can’t Even Find Anymore

The tiny Delta Smelt fish have not been seen in the wild in California in over a decade.

And yet, California Democrats flushed annual water flow into the ocean to save this little fish that they can’t even find in its natural habitat.
Now several cities are burnt to the ground.

They sacrificed entire communities for a fish that doesn’t exist.

A 2021 report by Dan Bacher in the Sacramento News revealed that there have been NO DELTA SMELT seen in the wild since 2012.
They’re extinct.

For the seventh September in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt during its Fall Midwater Trawl Survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The last time Delta smelt – an indicator species for the broader ecological health estuary – were found in CDFW’s September survey was in 2015. Only 5 were caught by state biologists at the time.

After that, the only year that Delta smelt were caught during the entire four-month survey was in 2016, when a total of 8 smelt were reported.

The final results of Fish and Wildlife’s four-month survey of pelagic (open water) fish species, conducted from September through mid-December, won’t be available until around the start of next year. The current September 2022 data is available here on the annual state surveys webpage.

Recent research has shown that the water releases are not providing the benefits to the small fish that they originally thought. Their population numbers are nearly nonexistent in the wild.

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Were Peanut and Fred the final straws?

The vicious, unnecessary, malevolent killing of pet squirrel, Peanut, and pet raccoon, Fred, may have been the final two straws that put Trump over the top in such huge numbers. American voters were shocked that the government could come into their homes and unceremoniously murder two harmless long-time pets just because of some obscure law that didn’t apply. Laugh if you want, but I believe these two pet sacrifices put Trump over the top in larger numbers than he would have gotten had the pets not been slaughtered.

Government has been overreaching for a long time. We hated it then; we hate it now. Until the Peanut incident, the government had cover. But when you threaten a person’s beloved pet, you have gone too far. When you kill it just because you can, you have gone too far. People get extremely attached to pets. Children get attached to pets. It’s lose-lose for the government.

As with everything else the totalitarian Left does, it went a bridge too far and the voters punished them mercilessly for it. Certainly, there were other issues that precipitated a Trump victory — immigration, the economy,  DEI, abortion, men in women’s sports, Afghanistan, Iran. But none of those issues allowed the government to waltz into your house and kill your beloved pet.

When Peanut and Fred were slaughtered, it got up close and personal — in your house and in your face. At least when they raided your house for documents, no one was killed. But this time, two precious pets were.

Now voters knew — if they didn’t already know — how far Democrats would go if they won. I like to think Peanut and Fred didn’t die in vain.

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Escape From Psychopathocracy

You thought Halloween was over, but somehow the horror show won’t stop, and it’s not so much fun anymore. Those oversized ghouls, werewolves, and dead souls you erected in the front yard, like shrines to wickedness, represent something truly roiling and moiling around the zeitgeist of this troubled land: the ruling Party of Chaos. Look at what they have done to you and what they are still doing. Hoaxing you, sucking the life-blood out of you, and lying about everything. Wrecking the country.

     Why does it seem that the Democratic Party is in it solely to remain in power? I will tell you: because it controls the money-flows to the vast cadres of a vicious parasitical bureaucracy and its support system of outside orgs that commit crimes and make war on the rest of us. It’s called “the blob” for a reason. It’s exactly like that monster out of the 1950s horror movies, a shape-shifting leviathan that devours everything in its path with only one purpose, to grow ever larger until it consumes. . . everything.

     In my state of New York last week, the DEC authorities sent a swat team to seize a man and woman’s pet squirrel and raccoon and then killed the animals. Why? Because they could. How is that different from the DOJ swatting and seizing a grandmother for walking through the US capitol building and then stuffing her in prison for the rest of her natural life on misdemeanor charges? It’s not different. They are both demonstrations of deliberate cruelty — and that’s why the squirrel story resonated so widely around the country. You know exactly what it says: we can take whatever is dear to you. . . your pets. . . your livelihood. . . your freedom. . . your life.

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