Tag Archives: california

Feeding Russia’s and China’s Fur Fixation

Posted on by

American trappers make a killing with bobcat pelts

from Takepart, by Taylor Hill, April 16, 2015

International trade is fueling California’s bobcat fur demand, but pressure from conservation and citizen groups is pushing the state to look at an all-out prohibition on commercial bobcat trapping. The act came about after it was discovered that trappers were ambushing bobcats on private land and in areas just outside Joshua Tree National Park. The public outcry played a role in pressuring the state to move quickly on the issue.

But as things often go in politics, by the time Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill, it had been workshopped into an amended semi-ban on bobcat trapping—creating no-trapping zones around national parks and wildlife refuges but allowing it elsewhere. In other words, the trapping problem near Joshua Tree had been solved, but much of the rest of the state was still fair game.

That’s allowed commercial trappers to keep making a pretty penny selling pelts overseas, thanks in part to growing demand in China and Russia. Today, bobcat pelts are fetching between $200 to $600 for just one clean, white belly fur hide—quite an increase from the $78 a bobcat pelt fetched as recently as 2009.

Those rising pelt prices fueled a 50 percent increase in California bobcats killed in 2012 compared with the previous year, resulting in 1,813 bobcats taken from the wild.

Now only a year and a half after the passage of the bill, wildlife officials are once again getting an earful from the public, with conservation groups and citizens calling for the full ban to be instated—and an end to the pelt trade for one of the last U.S.-based species of wildcat still for sale on the international market.

At a state Fish and Game Commission meeting last week, officials reviewed their options and heard from the public on the bill: Around 40 people spoke in support of a total ban, with only four members speaking against it.

“Right now, the fate of bobcats is tied to the rise and fall of its fur prices in the international market, instead of a science-based plan,” said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel for the conservation group Center for Biological Diversity.

Click HERE for original and complete article.

Pet cat maimed in bear trap

Posted on by

Over the weekend came a horrific vision: Scruffy, a cat from Royal Oaks, California, was found valiantly hobbling along his owners’ driveway with a bear trap ensnared on his leg. The tabby has miraculously survived but might require a paw amputation.

After seeing Scruffy caught in the trap, his owners, Stephanie and Larry Waldrip, rushed him to the East Lake Animal Clinic in nearby Watsonville. The head vet David Carroll and a nurse spent more than an hour freeing Scruffy from the trap. It is estimated that if a human stepped onto the bear trap, she could have easily broken an ankle.

Scruffy’s owners are said to suspect a nearby resident of having laid down the bear trap but they have refrained from going on record about it. They first came across Scruffy a year ago when they noticed him lounging in their driveway and have since become the cat’s owners or at least feeding masters.

At the moment, the local SCPA is investigating the sickening matter and trying to ascertain who laid down the trap that has mauled the poor cat. You can watch more about Scruffy’s plight in the video below.

Click here for full story.

US Wildlife Services: The Killing Agency

Posted on by

This is a powerful, well researched and well written piece on our taxpayer-funded federal Wildlife Services.   Here are a few excepts:

Since 2000, its (Wildlife Services) employees have killed nearly a million coyotes, mostly in the West.  They have destroyed millions of birds, from nonnative starlings to migratory shorebirds, along with a colorful menagerie of more than 300 other species, including black bears, beavers, porcupines, river otters, mountain lions and wolves. [Click here to see statistics.]

In most cases, they have officially revealed little or no detail about where the creatures where killed, or why.  But a Bee investigation has found the agency’s practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.

…..

Gary Strader, an employee of the US Dept of Agriculture [Wildlife Services], stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn’t intense to kill.   There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle.

“I called my supervisor and said, ‘I just caught a golden eagle and it’s dead.’  He said ‘Did anybody see it…if you think nobody saw it, go get a shovel and bury it and don’t say nothing to anybody.”

…..

A dog owner’s anguish

Sharyn Aguiar writes about the death of her German Shepherd Max, who poisoned by a government M-44 sodium cyanide cartridge in Utah in 2006.

“I kneeled at the top of his head, bending over him, crying and trying to figure out what happened to him. I remember crying out ‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand’ as I looked at his mouth. His mouth had a pinkish/salmonish colored foam coming from it.”

[Click here to see more Wildlife Mysteries Revealed.]

…..

This investigation’s findings include:

• With steel traps, wire snares and poison, agency employees have accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals since 2000 that were not problems, including federally protected golden and bald eagles; more than 1,100 dogs, including family PETS; and several species considered rare or imperiled by wildlife biologists. [For more on trapping problems, click here.]

• Since 1987, at least 18 employees and several members of the public have been exposed to cyanide when they triggered spring-loaded cartridges laced with poison meant to kill coyotes. They survived – but 10 people have died and many others have been injured in crashes during agency aerial gunning operations since 1979.

• A growing body of science has found the agency’s war against predators, waged to protect livestock and big game, is altering ecosystems in ways that diminish biodiversity, degrade habitat and invite disease.

See the full story and the many interesting attachments at: Sac Bee