Republicans Want To Force The Critically Endangered Red Wolf Into Extinction

A CAPTIVE RED WOLF AT POINT DEFIANCE ZOO AND AQUARIUM. USFWS

The red wolf, Canis rufus, currently exists only as a small population in one part of North Carolina. It’s listed under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as critically endangered, which means it’s one step away from being extinct in the wild.
That’s why it strikes us as odd that, hidden in a Senate report related to funding for the Department of the Interior, is an order to end the red wolf recovery program that’s currently being run by the federal government.
“The Committee acknowledges the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s request that the [Fish and Wildlife] Service end the Red Wolf recovery program and declare the Red Wolf extinct,” it said.
It cites impacts on “landowners and other species” as being the reason, also noting that “the program has failed to meet population goals for the red wolf.” The text contains no citations to any research that backs up these claims.
“The Committee encourages the Service to consider ending the program in fiscal year 2018,” it concludes.
Right now, thanks to habitat destruction in the 1960s, there are only around 45 to 60 red wolves left in the wild. They had to be reintroduced after an extensive breeding program succeeded in bringing them back from being extinct in the wild in 1987.
At the time of writing, it still says on the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) website that red wolves are “one of the world’s most endangered wild canids.”
“Currently, adaptive management efforts are making good progress in…building the wild red wolf population in northeastern North Carolina,” it adds.
Despite this, the aforementioned North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission has for several years now wanted to end the recovery program for the reasons cited in the report. Landowners and hunters generally support the move to push red wolves into extinction.
Most scientists and conservationists, however, disagree, and it seems the FWS has been on their side until the recent changing of the guard.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NASA Has Found Another Planetary System Many Planets As Our Own

Image
Thanks to a novel artificial intelligence technique in partnership with Google, NASA has discovered a planetary system that has as many planets as our own. It’s the most planets in one system we’ve ever found elsewhere. The system is called Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth. We already knew about seven planets in this system, but thanks to this new technique, we’ve found an eighth. The findings are published in   The Astrophysical Journal . “The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system,” said Andrew Vanderburg from the University of Texas at Austin, one of the scientists behind the discovery, in a  statement . “You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer.” Kepler has been looking for planets since 2009, and has found thousands so far. But there are many more hiding in its data that we aren’t able to confirm yet. Thanks to this new method, we can do better. Kepler finds planets by detecti
Read more

Super Long Python | Found In | Florida | Watch Video

Image
THIS BURMESE PYTHON IS 5.1 METERS (17 FOOT) LONG AND WEIGHS 59.8 KILOGRAMS (132 POUNDS). SOUTH FLORIDA WATER MANAGEMENT DISTRICT Python hunters have found a monster slithering around the Everglades. Snake hunter Jason Leon captured a 5.1-meter (17-foot) Burmese python in the Florida Everglades. Weighing 59.8 kilograms (132 pounds), it’s thought this female could be a record-breaker for the longest snake caught by the South Florida Water Management District’s (SFWMD) Python Elimination Program. It was found earlier this week submerged in the water of an SFWMD territory near Big Cypress National Preserve. “That snake could pretty much kill any full-grown man,” Leon told  NBC 6 Miami  local news. “If that snake was alive right now, it would probably take like three of us to be able to control that snake.” As the name suggests, Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia. Over the past 50 years, the balmy swamps of southern Florida have become the home of hundreds of pythons, most of whic
Read more

Lindsey Vonn Suffers - Back Injures - World Cup Race

Image
Back Injures pulls out of St. Moritz race "Lindsey Vonn" Vonn later tweeted she had an "acute facet (spinal joint) dysfunction. I got compressed on the 6th gate and my back seized up." Vonn said she would see how she responded to treatment overnight, but she tweeted again Sunday morning ahead of a second super-G:  "Unfortunately I will not be able to race today. "I am extremely disappointed but my biggest goal this season is the Olympics and I need to take care of myself now so I can be ready for next week, and more importantly, for February." Soon after Newsweek asked Fox News for comment on the article, the outlet changed the story's headline to "Lindsey Vonn suffers back injury in World Cup race" and deleted a tweet with the original headline, although that tweet is still archived. Fox News spokeswoman Jessica Jensen acknowledged the changes in an email to Newsweek, writing, "The headline was changed and the tweet was deleted.&qu
Read more