Showing posts with label endangered. Show all posts
Showing posts with label endangered. Show all posts

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Trump Vs. Our National Parks

photo national park service.jpg

The Trumpies are wasting no time in trying to sell-off our National Park System to the highest bidder. It seems very similar to the "Sovereign Citizen" movement that led to the Oregon Standoff at Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Trump and several yokels in Congress who are like kissing cousins to the Bundy clan think they get to decide what happens to protected land that belongs to the American taxpayers.

John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt are turning over in their graves.











Last week, Trump showed his dictatorial attitude when he made a priority of shutting down discussions of climate change within various government agencies.

From Fortune
Employees at several federal agencies including the Department of Agriculture have been barred by the Trump administration from making any statements, or providing any documents to the public or journalists, according to published reports.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services are also impacted by the orders, which were reportedly handed down this week, and include a prohibition against some of the agencies posting on social media.
...A memo sent to EPA staff said that there should be no press releases sent to "external audiences" and that "no social media will be going out," according to a report by The Hill. The memo also says that a digital strategist will be coming in to oversee the agency's social-media policies, and that "existing, individually controlled social-media accounts may become more centrally controlled."

Trump particularly targeted the National Park System Twitter accounts. Why? Because Trump was furious that the Park Service retweeted an article in the New York Times about his small inaugural crowd compared with Obama's in 2009.

From CNN
After the retweet began to get attention, a career staffer at the Interior Department instructed employees that the "new administration has said that the department and all bureau are not supposed to tweet this weekend and wait for guidance until Monday."
The message continued, "Please make sure that any scheduled tweets are no longer scheduled," and referred all questions to another career staffer at the department.
On Saturday, the National Park Service called Friday's retweets "mistaken."



But the folks at Badlands National Monument went rogue and caused a stir:

From Vanity Fair
On Tuesday, the Twitter account for South Dakota’s Badlands National Park—a subsidiary of the National Park Service—began tweeting out climate change facts, in apparent defiance of the gag order. Someone working for the national park’s social media team went rogue and started posting climate change facts from the National Wildlife Federation’s Web site in 140-character bursts. (Trump, who can generously be described as a climate change skeptic, has previously called called climate change a “hoax” engineered by the Chinese.)
The National Park’s tweets were retweeted thousands of times before they were suddenly deleted later Tuesday afternoon.











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Sunday, August 2, 2015

The World Mourns the Killing of #CecilTheLion

photo Lion-Cecil.png

The world is mourning the death of majestic Cecil the Lion of Zimbabwe, seen here in his prime:



This magnificent creature was slain by dentist Walter Palmer of Minnesota, who paid $50,000 to guides in Zimbabwe who lured Cecil out of a game preserve merely to shoot him and cut off his head for a trophy. When the guides realized the lion had been collared by an Oxford group doing research on lions, they dumped the collar and proceeded to behead and skin Cecil, but the Zimbabwe government seized what was left of the creature and did not allow Palmer to keep his kill.

From CNN
Palmer is in the public crosshairs after the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said Cecil the lion was lured out of an animal sanctuary in Zimbabwe and shot with a crossbow.
But his death wasn't immediate.
Cecil lived another 40 hours until the hunters tracked him down and shot him with a gun. He was then skinned and beheaded.
The hunters also tried to destroy the GPS collar that Cecil was wearing as part of research backed by Oxford University, the conservation group said.
. . . Above the menagerie of stuffed animals at the door, posters now cover the front facade of the practice.
One sign asked, "Dr. Palmer, why did you kill Cecil?" Another said, "Rot in hell." A third employed the hashtag #catlivesmatter.
The vitriol for Palmer even flowed from the governor's mansion.
"I'm just so disgusted with that man," said Gov. Mark Dayton. "Shoot any lion but lure a lion like that out of the preserve and shoot him, how could anybody think that's sport? Just appalling."

When word of this senseless death hit the news and social media, all hell broke loose for Mr. Palmer, as it should.








Palmer, left, poses with an earlier lion he killed.






Believe it or not, even though the hunt went completely wrong, Walter Palmer wanted to keep on hunting and asked to shoot an elephant next. Apparently he doesn't give a crap about the rare animals of Africa or the world in general. But now the world cares what happens to Palmer and would love to see his ass in jail.

IB Times
Walter Palmer, the U.S. dentist who killed the lion Cecil in Zimbabwe, wanted to shoot a “very large elephant,” his guide and professional hunter Theo Bronkhorst told the Daily Telegraph Thursday. Palmer has gone underground amid an international outcry over the illegal hunt of the "iconic" lion.
Bronkhorst told the Telegraph that after killing the lion in Hwange National Park, Palmer asked him if he could find an elephant whose tusk weighed at least 63 pounds. "I told him I would not be able to find one so big, so the client left the next day," he said.
Prosecutors charged Bronkhorst Wednesday for failing to prevent Palmer from unlawfully killing Cecil. However, they are yet to charge Honest Ndlovu -- a second suspect and farm owner -- who has been named as an accomplice. Ndlovu appeared in court Wednesday.
The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said Tuesday that Palmer -- who paid $50,000 to kill Cecil -- and his group tied a dead animal to their car to lure the lion. According to the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe, drawing in animals with a bait is unethical. The association, of which Bronkhorst is a member, has revoked his license.


Talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel highlighted the death of Cecil by asking for donations to the group studying the lion and his pride: Wildcru.org





Statement from famous naturalist Jane Goodall:
I was shocked and outraged to hear the story of Cecil, Zimbabwe’s much loved lion. Not only is it incomprehensible to me that anyone would want to kill an endangered animal (fewer than 20,000 wild lions in Africa today) but to lure Cecil from the safety of a national park and then to shoot him with a crossbow...? I have no words to express my repugnance. He was not even killed outright, but suffered for hours before finally being shot with a bullet. And his magnificent head severed from his wounded body. And this behaviour is described as a “sport." Only one good thing comes out of this – thousands of people have read the story and have also been shocked. Their eyes opened to the dark side of human nature. Surely they will now be more prepared to fight for the protection of wild animals and the wild places where they live. Therein lies the hope.
Jane Goodall, Ph.d., DBE
Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute &
UN Messenger of Peace







From the Born Free Foundation:
Following the tragic and reportedly illegal killing of Cecil the lion, Born Free Foundation and Born Free USA today called on the US Government and European Union to take urgent steps to end the import of lion trophies and for an international moratorium on lion hunting.
The global outcry following Cecil’s death has sent shock waves across the world and has further ignited the political and public debate on the plight of wild lions and the inhumane actions of sport hunters.
. . . President of the Born Free Foundation, Will Travers OBE, has publicly called on the hunters to lay down their weapons of mass destruction. “Cecil's story has sickened and saddened us all. We can no longer accept that hunting magnificent wild animals for ‘sport’ can be deemed acceptable. Cecil's death was brutal and it showed no respect for this iconic symbol of Africa. Trophy hunting is no sport; it is merely a disguise for killing to massage an ego.”
Born Free is calling on the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to release its Final Rule on the petition to list the lion as ‘endangered’ under the United States Endangered Species Act, first submitted by Born Free and others in March 2011. Listing under the ESA would prohibit wounding, harming, harassing, killing, or trading in lions, except under certain very limited conditions, and would add significant protection for lions across their range.
Further, Born Free is calling on US Government prosecutors to explore whether legal action against Mr Palmer is warranted under the Lacey Act, which prohibits transport of wildlife specimens if they were taken illegally in their place of origin.



Zimbabwe would like a few words with Dr. Palmer, as well as our own U.S. Fish and Game service.






























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