Some craven coward, who considers himself a great hunter and even a hero, is slaughtering wolves and treating OUR shared land as his own domain. Dumbass. [spit on the ground]
The effort to recover Mexican gray wolves in a swath of federal forests straddling the Arizona-New Mexico border has been beset by challenges since the first lobos were released in Arizona in 1998. Federal officials had expected the wild wolf population would grow to 100 wolves by the end of 2006, but the 2009 count totaled 42 wolves, down from 52 in the previous year.
A report issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service in May called illegal shootings the "single greatest source of wolf mortality in the reintroduced population." Between 1998 and June 2009, 31 of 68 deaths of wild-roaming wolves were caused by illegal shooting, according to the report. …
The Fish and Wildlife Service described the Hawks Nest Pack, which traditionally roamed an area east of Big Lake in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest for its spring-summer breeding territory, as having "a proven record of avoiding domestic livestock in favor of native prey animals like elk and deer."
When it’s warm in Albuquerque, it’s always a little bit cooler in the mountains. There are plenty of hard core hiking spots to go around, but there are also some easy going gems that deliver the visual goods without a knock down workout. These trails are family affairs. Pack up the kids. Take the dog. Carry plenty of liquids. Getting There 1. Take I-40 (or even better, Route 66) east into the Sandia mountains. Go until you hit Tijeras. Take 337 going south. 2. Stop at the Sandia Ranger Station if it is open. It will be on your left. Pick up a trail map for the Cedro Creek Nature Trail. The trail has a series of numbered markers. This map will give the corresponding details. 3. Head on down 337. Pass Tunnel Canyon and keep going. Look for the Otero Canyon sign. Pull off and park. 4. Walk down the short hill and look for the Cedro Creek trail sign just to your left. Get hiking!
I saw 5 hawks in one tree this morning in Altura Park. Four were definitely a family; two were definitely young. The fifth caused some commotion on return. I don’t know if it was an interloper or just another member of the family.
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.†— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The summer solstice occurs on June 21st at 7:28 am EDT. At this moment the center of the Sun’s disc stands directly overhead at a point on the Tropic of Cancer in the southeastern corner of Algeria. A few hours earlier Old Sol stood virtually overhead in the Egyptian city of Aswan, known to the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes in about 240 BCE as Syene. Eratosthenes also knew that on the summer solstice in Alexandria, Egypt the Sun was just over seven degrees from the zenith. Having traveled by camel from Syene to Alexandria, he estimated the distance between the two cities and used geometry to estimate the circumference of the Earth. His result was remarkably close to our modern value if we make certain assumptions about the units that he used. Still, his method proved that the Earth was indeed a sphere of finite dimension. For most of us, the solstice passes more or less unnoticed except as the marker of the longest day of the year. However, many ancient cultures revered the day, as evidenced by Neolithic and Paleoamerican sites throughout the world.
As you look at this map, keep in mind that New Mexico is normally a dry state compared to most. This data indicates that this year, so far, much of the state is abnormally dry. [hattip to John Fleck]
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2010) — The most detailed national vegetation U.S. land-cover map to date has been released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The map will enable conservation professionals to identify places in the country with sufficient habitat to support wildlife.
To celebrate this week’s World Oceans Day, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has brought together tools and resources to help decision makers, industry, universities and other learning institutions, as well as concerned citizens, better understand North America’s shared ocean resources. These maps and publications include:
A new map viewer using Google Earth to explore all of the Atlas’ marine ecosystems maps and data.
Marine Ecoregions of North America: a set of maps and detailed descriptions that provide a platform for sound management and conservation of marine biodiversity.
Baja California to the Bering Sea: an assessment of 28 priority conservation areas requiring concerted conservation action along North America’s West Coast.
Conservation action plans for four marine species of common concern for North America: vaquita porpoise, humpback whale, leatherback turtle and pink-footed shearwater.
To explore the CEC’s marine information and view an introductory video, please visit: http://www.cec.org/marine.
The marine protected areas information is provided by the Canadian Council on Ecological Areas (http://www.ccea.org/), Quebec’s Ministry of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks (http://www.mddep.gouv.qc.ca/), Mexico’s Comisión Nacional de Ãreas Naturales Protegidas (http://www.conanp.gob.mx), and the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (http://www.noaa.gov).
The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is an international organization created under the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) by Canada, Mexico and the United States to address regional environmental concerns, help prevent potential trade and environmental conflicts and promote the effective enforcement of environmental law. NAAEC complements the environmental provisions established in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to which it is a side accord.
You have to read this, ripped from abqjournal.com:
Thursday, June 10, 2010 Our Greed Speaks Louder Than Brown Pelicans By Amy D. Estelle Albuquerque resident I am sad beyond belief today. The photo of an oil-coated brown pelican gasping for air on the front page of Friday’s Albuquerque Journal brought home the abstraction of the Gulf oil spill. My heart broke again. This is surely not the only magnificent species that will pay the price of no-holds-barred offshore drilling. I have heard similar reports of other birds, dolphins and fish. But brown pelicans are a favorite of mine. Their ungainly prehistoric appearance on land is matched by their ability to glide in graceful unison inches above the surf and to dive like arrows shot into the sea to gulp a fish swimming just beneath the surface. Thirty years ago on the coast of Georgia I had an experience with a brown pelican that Gulf coast residents may now unfortunately share: an immature pelican died in my arms. It wasn’t oil, but a sudden cold spell that doomed the bird’s already impaired immune system. An island resident phoned the environmental education center where I worked to report that a brown pelican had landed in their backyard and was unable to fly. A colleague and I drove over to pick up the bird. The veterinarian did what he could and sent us back to the environmental education center with instructions to hold the hypothermic bird close to my body and once we arrived to put it in a small warm room. Just as we drove through the center’s gate, the bird stretched its long neck and took its last breath. I am not ashamed to say that I cried then and I cried today. There is nothing ordinary about a brown pelican. With a wingspan of nearly seven feet, it looks like it descended directly from a pterodactyl. Right now in the height of the breeding season, a striking stripe of Hershey-bar-brown feathers outlined in white cloak the bird’s neck and a pastel sunny yellow tops the head. The iris is a pale blue, and the tip of the beak yellow-orange. No time would be a good time for an oil spill, but with eggs or hatchlings in the nest, the death rate will be compounded. After surviving the widely used pesticide DDT, a comeback which took nearly half a century, the brown pelican, newly removed from the federal endangered species list, faces a 21st century nemesis: corporate power and a timid — if not corporate-owned — U.S. Congress. Why do the United States and the United Kingdom not require the same fail-safe measures for offshore oil wells that Norway has successfully mandated for decades? An excerpt from Joe Conason’s article at Salon.com makes clear that there is an alternative arrangement: "What makes Norway so different from the United States — and much more likely to install the most protective energy technology — is that the Norwegian state can impose public values on oil producers without fighting off lobbyists and crooked politicians, because it owns and controls the resources. Rather than Halliburton-style corporate management controlling the government and blocking environmental improvement, Norway’s system works the other way around. It isn’t perfect, as any Nordic environmentalist will ardently explain, but the results are considerably better than ours." No one knows for sure the impact the BP oil spill will have on the long-term fate of the brown pelicans in the Gulf. Like the fate of the commercial and sport fishing industries, the tourism industry, and the human families who live, work, and play on these shores, the future is as opaque as the Gulf water. What I know, living in the New Mexico desert, is that these fibers of life are intertwined. As the brown pelican survives or dies, so will the human families dependent on the Gulf ecosystem. But there is a more disturbing message in the photograph the Journal published, and it sickens me to face it and to hear it: A silent scream. A demand for justice. As Henry Beston in 1925 wrote so poignantly and radically in "The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod," our relationships with animals are international: "We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." This time the travail was preventable: Deregulation, lack of government oversight, powerful lobbyists and corporate greed — there is more than enough blame to go around. The BP-TransOcean-Haliburton Gulf oil spill is an unprovoked and entirely preventable attack on another nation, one who has no seat at the U.N. Who will speak for the brown pelicans if you and I do not? Who will hear its silent call to act if you and I do not? This is our Silent Spring. This is our time to respond.
