KILLING CECIL, KILLING OURSELVES

In  Zimbabwe in Africa, until a few days ago, there lived a lion named Cecil. He was 13 years old; in his handsome, regal prime.  He lived in a protected parkland, and was a well known attraction to tourists come to see wild lions, while there is still wild habitat left for them. 

 

 

 The African Lion is on its way to endangered status. As Africa’s human population continues to explode,  Lion numbers are down 60% in just the last 30 years.  The collapse coincides largely with the loss of  their habitat.  That’s the sobering backdrop for Cecil’s murder for sport.

Here’s the story. A dentist from Minnesota paid more than $50,000 to kill a lion. He hired to two local guides to find a big, powerful male lion that the dentist wanted on his wall.  The details of how Cecil was targeted are unclear. What is known is Cecil lived, at least mostly if not entirely, inside a reserve, where hunting was not allowed.   While the intrepid dentist watched, the hired guides lured Cecil,  who was at least a prince in the local feline hierarchy, onto private land, where upon the dentist turned archer drilled the regal animal with an arrow. But it wasn’t a kill shot. 

Cecil bolted away. The hunter and his guides followed Cecil for the next forty hours. Instead of ending this wounded animal’s suffering, they followed, very possibly so the hunter could claim he took the powerful beast down with an arrow.  In the end, after almost two days of wounded agony, the dentist finished Cecil off with his gun.  Then they removed the lion’s head as a trophy and took its skin, perhaps destined to be a coffee table rug.

Killing for sport seems to be some kind of masculine thing. The operative word is ‘sport’.  People used to hunt to feed themselves. It’s still that way in many places, unfortunately.  But the person who  killed Cecil was financially secure. He spent a wad of money to kill a majestic predator as a personal trophy.  Murder is his sport.

Some psychologists say the choices we make are sometimes linked to certain brands of psychological inadequacy.    I don’t know. I’m not going to second guess the deeper motives behind the murder of Cecil the Lion. 

 

The intrepid big game hunter is getting hammered with scorching public condemnation.  He has been forced to close his dental practice. The scorn has emerged, not just from this country, but from around the entire world.  Many people in other countries have lost respect for Americans, because they see the horrendous casualties of our gun culture. In this case, it’s an American killer for sport willfully committing a reprehensible crime against nature.

 

Instead of shaking our heads in disgust at the death of Cecil the lion, then allowing indifference to absorb our momentary compassion, I say, let’s use our mourning for this handsome lion prince as a teachable moment.  Let’s make Cecil an icon; a martyr that stands for a human commitment to renewing the natural world.  

 

The human population has doubled since 1970. It took half a million years,  to get to a human population of 3.7 billion,  only 45 years to explode those numbers to nearly 7.4 billion.  We are still adding about 75 million new humans every year.  Too many people remain ignorant or in denial about the impact of our numbers. The scientific evidence is clear.  We have turned our atmosphere into a sewer. We are exhausting our fresh water supplies, stripping the life from our oceans and using up the planet’s finite resources like there is no tomorrow. We are shredding the biosphere we all depend on.  In just the last few decades it took to double our human numbers, the wild animal population in Earth has dropped by more than 50%.

 

We are all culpable for the perfect storm of 21^st century challenges that threaten not just humanity, but all life on Earth. It’s not just the dentist from Minnesota that is guilty.  He is in hiding, unable, despite claims of ‘deep regret’, to shed the regal blood on his hands. No question, he is doing the suffering now.

 

Here is a clear pathway to redemption for the dentist perpetrator.   Face the public.  Acknowledge the moral bankruptcy that big game hunting draws on.  Renounce hunting; arm yourself with a genuine understanding of how our biosphere works, then become a voice of compassion and reason. The louder and more powerful your message, the better for your soul.  Shape your own assertive mission as an ambassador for better behavior toward nature.

 

Let’s not allow Cecil’s death to go in vain. Let it be a symbol. Let it be a beacon that lights our course to a future that is both sustainable and life-affirming.  That’s the least each of us can do.  The undeniable truth is we have one small place in the universe.  The Earth is the only home we have. There is no choice.  We must fulfill our human potential and be the change we wish for.



 

The Great Debate - Indoor Vs. Outdoor Cats

This is a subject close to my heart. I love cats and I absolutely understand that they are happiest when they can come and go as they please. At the same time, it is alarming to know that the 84 million domestic cats in America kill between one and four billion - that's billion with a b - birds every year.

I don't advocate keeping cats indoors. At the same time, cats are a significant factor in the diminishing number of wild birds in our environment.  It's a troubling dilemma.

Not long ago, I did a blog entry on a wonderful book titled, Lost Cat, by Caroline Paul and Wendy MacNaughton. While they were on tour for their book, Caroline and Wendy found themselves drawn into the  debate about whether cats should be kept indoors or allowed to roam free. In response, Wendy and her collaborator, Tom Westerlin, developed this one minute video that addresses this cat controversy in a delightfully creative way.

Here is a link to The Great Debate  Indoors Vs. Outdoors... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vKZtbGOuAA

Lost Cat

So, our longtime friend, Alexandra Paul has a twin sister named Caroline, who is a very gifted writer. Caroline has written a couple of books, including one about her years as a firefighter in the city of San Francisco. 

Caroline’s latest book, Lost Cat is a story out of her own life. It begins as she is recovering from a very serious leg injury. One of her housemates is a cat named Tibby. Like all kittys, he is a bit of an enigma. For thirteen years, he was pretty much a homebody. Then, while Caroline is hobbled and on crutches, Tibby disappears. Caroline and her partner Wendy MacNaughton search frantically for Tibby, without success.   Then, five weeks later, when all hope is gone, the missing kitty returns, looking healthy, as if not a day had been lost. 

 

 

This is a wonderfully engaging, and amusing, true detective story.  It’s about the emotional distress that comes with the sudden, unexplained loss of a much loved, feline friend, and it’s about solving the mystery of where the venturesome kitty had been during his unexplained absence.

Last Cat is a simple tale. At heart, it is a love story. Caroline Paul tells it in a delightful way, that delivers lots of smiles. Her narrative is exquisitely complemented by Wendy MacNaughton’s sometimes quirky, always endearing illustrations.

 If you are a person with a soft spot for animals, particularly kitty cats, this is a book for you.

 

 

Lucky

A video to warm the heart.  In Fresno, California, firefighter, Cory Kalanick enters a smoke filled house with a GoPro video camera mounted on his helmet. Searching for survivors, he finds a kitten lying unconscious. Enough said.  Check out the video.  The kitten, who survived,  was given the name, 'Lucky'.

Here is the video of  'Lucky' being rescued and bought back form the brink...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjB_oVeq8Lo

What Happened to the Birds - Part Two

I didn't expect to be following up my last entry with another on the same subject, but then, I didn't expect to read something as troubling as what follows  either.

The chemical giants in their infinite wisdom have figured out how to engineer pesticide right into the seed they sell to farmers and landscapers. 

"Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres—a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state—with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too—neonics are common in lawn and garden products"

Is it any wonder that songbirds and honey bees  have been decimated? Is monetary profit the only basis for assigning value in our world these days? It sure seems so.



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Not Just the Bees: Bayer's Pesticide May Harm Birds, Too

—By Tom Philpott

Mother Jones Magazine

| Wed Mar. 27, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

 

Geese in a corn field Jimmy Smith/Flickr

 

 

Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres—a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state—with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too—neonics are common in lawn and garden products. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know all of that is probably bad news for honeybees and other pollinators, as a growing body of research shows—including three studies released just ahead of last year's planting season.

 

But bees aren't the only iconic springtime creature threatened by the ubiquitous pesticide, whose biggest makers are the European giants Bayer and Syngenta. It turns out that birds are too, according to an alarming analysis co-authored by Pierre Mineau, a retired senior research scientist at Environment Canada (Canada's EPA), published by the American Bird Conservancy. And not just birds themselves, but also the water-borne insect species that serve as a major food source for birds, fish, and amphibians.
 

The article isn't peer-reviewed, but Mineau is a formidable scientist. In February, he published a peer-reviewed paper in PLoS One concluding that pesticides, and not habitat loss, have likely been driving bird-population declines in the United States.

 

That paper didn't delve into specific pesticides. For his American Bird Conservancy paper, Mineau and his co-author, Cynthia Palmer, looked at a range of research on the effects of neonics on birds and water-borne insects, from papers by independent researchers to industry-funded studies used in the EPA's deregulation process and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

For the most vulnerable bird species, they found, consuming even two corn seeds coated with Bayer's blockbuster neonic clothianidin can have lethal effects.

 

Their conclusion: Neonics are highly mobile and persistent once they're unleashed into ecosystems, and they pose a serious threat to birds and the insects they feed on. The EPA, they continue, has in some cases severely underestimated the danger and in other cases simply ignored it. The underestimation, they argue, mainly stems from the widespread use of two bird species to judge toxicity, mallards and bobwhites. But many other bird species are more vulnerable to neonics than those two, and Mineau's paper concludes the EPA, in its risk assessment used to register a raft of neonic products over the past two decades, "underestimates toxicity by 1.5 to 10 fold if the intent of the exercise is to protect most species, not merely mallards and bobwhites." For the most vulnerable bird species, they found, consuming even two corn seeds coated with Bayer's blockbuster neonic clothianidin can have lethal effects.

The authors point to several instances of EPA scientists raising serious concerns about the ecological impacts of these pesticides, only to see them registered anyway. Back in 2003, when the EPA was first considering registering Bayer's clothianidin, an agency risk assessment concluded that "exposure to treated seed through ingestion might result in chronic risk to birds and mammals, especially mammals where consumption of 1-2 seeds only could push them to an exposure level at which reproductive effects are expected," the authors report. The assessment also described the chemical as persistent and mobile, with "potential to leach to groundwater as well as runoff to surface waters." So what happened to clothianidin? A "plethora of registered uses for clothianidin followed in quick succession," they report. The pesticide is now used on corn, soybeans, cotton, pears, potatoes, tree nuts, mustard greens, and more.

Mineau's paper notes in passing that the EPA also identified potential threats from clothianidin to bees as early as 2003, adding, however, that the pollinator issue is "outside the scope of the current review." I told the sordid tale of clothianidin's march through EPA registration despite its own scientists' bee concerns in this 2010 post.

But the most pernicious effect of neonics on birds may be indirect: By leaching into water and accumulating in streams and ponds, neonics also attack a major component of birds' food supply: insects that hang out in water, what Mineau calls the "bottom of the aquatic food chain." The EPA has severely underestimated the risk to such insects, they charge. For the neonic imidacloprid, they argue, a "scientifically defensible reference level" to gauge when the pesticide causes harm to insects is 0.2 ug/l. "European regulators acknowledge that acute effects are likely at levels exceeding 0.5 ug/l," they write. "In contrast, the EPA’s regulatory and non-regulatory reference levels are set at 35 ug/l."

Based on Mineau's analysis, the American Bird Conservancy is calling for a ban on the practice of using neonics to treat seed, joining a similar plea from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Meanwhile the EPA has been conducting a "comprehensive re-evaluation of these pesticides," but has taken no action to stop their use, and isn't expected to complete its review until 2018 at the earliest. Mineau told me that he presented his case on neonics and birds to the EPA last week, urging them to "speed things up a bit" on the review. I asked him how his message went over. "I didn't get the answer, that, sure, we'll have it done next year," he said. Instead, he added, the agency stressed it would stick to its current process. And that means heavy neonic exposure for the birds and the bees for at least another half-decade.




 

What Happened to All the Birds?

We moved into our home in Portland, Oregon a few years ago, We love Portland and, by and large, we like our home. It's on a large lot that has fruit trees, and lots of different plant varieties.  There are swatches of decorative grass, but no lawn. We have several bird feeders scattered about. There is a birdbath in the front and a pond with koi in the back.  It's a place we expected to see lots of different kinds of birds. 

Where birds are concerned, life in this place has been a disappointment. We see crows and blackbirds regularly, but only rarely any songbirds or hummingbirds. A squadron of rufus hummers did land in a flowered shrub next to our house one day, but sadly we only saw them that one time.

Why, when we live in an area that should be teeming with the chirping of songbirds, are we seeing virtually none of the little feathered buggers.   When I was a boy, my family lived in about six different states over a twelve year period. We always saw and heard birds, while  I was growing up in  Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Washington state. 

Why are we not seeing any songbirds here in our nieghborhood in beautiful Portland, Oregon?  Some are surely being scared away by the large and very territorial crows and blackbirds that live around here.   Domestic cats likely account for some of the attrition in small bird numbers. A recent study estimated that the 85 million house cats in the U.S. kill as many as a billion or more small birds annually.  Don't get me wrong, I like kitties. But, there's no denying they are hard wired to hunt.  They are predators. They are going to stalk birds if they get the chance.

I'm guessing a big part of the problem with small, wild critters, feathered and otherwise, that try to eek out a living in a suburban residential environment, densely populated with humans, is exposure to toxic chemicals.  I'm talking about the moss killers we put on our roofs and sidewalks.  I'm talking about the pesticides and insecticides, and herbicides people use around their homes.  When I go to the garden center,  its just amazing to see aisle after aisle stocked to the gills with every kind of toxic chemical guaranteed to take the work out of lawn and garden care.  I'm not carping against any use of lawn care products,  but I do think society has gone way overboard with the use of stuff like Round up and Weed be Gone.  

It's a lot easier to spray a little herbicide on a weed than it is to get on hands and knees and dig it out.  The chemicals we use around our homes may be designed to acceptable levels of toxicity for humans, but small birds weighing a few ounces and having high metabolic rates are exceedingly vulnerable to these chemicals. To a substantial degree, the average suburban landscape has been turned into a toxic chemical wasteland. 

We don't use chemicals on our property. We  don't have a lawn.  Our property is many varieties of trees, shrubs, and flowers, and ground cover.  It's a little bit wild. That's the way we like it.  Weeds are a problem. When they appear, we dig them up.  I wish more people did it this way.

It pains me not to see any small birds in our neighborhood.  The reasons for this seem pretty obvious.  To me, it's a reflection of how seriously disconnected we humans are from the natural world.





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Put a Bell on Your Cat

I've already written about this once, but its worth a repeat. House cats kill an enormous number of birds and small animals.  A new report puts the number at between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between  6.9 and 20.7 billion rodents and other small animals annually. These numbers are staggering but not surpising.  There are about 84 million feline pets in the U.S., and a lot of them are allowed to roam outside.

This situation hits home for a couple of reasons. My wife and I live in Portland, Oregon in a place where there should be lots of songbirds.  We just don't see them that often. 

I like cats. They can be wonderful pets, but they are what they are...very efficient predators. The cat next door is outside most of the time. He likes to hang out on our neighbor's roof.  He also visits us regularly, probably because he likes the catnip we grow in our garden. Several times, he has left dead mice on our back walkway. 

When I was growing up, my family lived successively in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania,  and Kansas. In each of those places, in the Spring and Summer,  there was a constant cacaphony of birds calling to eachother.  It's troubling to not hear any of that where we live in Oregon.  It's very green here and there should be lots of birds. 

If you have a cat, keep it indoors. That's the best way to prevent it from exercising its worst instincts.  If you must let your cat outside to roam, put a bell around its neck.  That will at least give its prey some warning and a chance to escape before its too late.



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Cat Meets Snow for First Time

This video is delightful.  A kitty leaves the house and experiences snow for the first time.Fun!

The video link is   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW1j7lzX0dw

Owl and the Pussy Cat

Amazing video of a black cat playing with a young barn owl.  Apparently, the owl was an orphan raised in a household shared by the cat. There's a special joy in seeing creatures who don't generally get along in nature, actually finding pleasure in eachother's company.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0nxsE196Xc

The Most Beautiful Animal Species

What is the most beautiful of all animal species?  A judgement like this is obviously very subjective.   If being photogenic is the primary criteria, my vote goes to the Snow Leopard. Not only is this medium sized cat beautiful to look at, it's also a creature of incredible grace, wonderfully adapted to  the sheer rock faces of the high Himalayas, above 10,000 feet. Snow leopards have massive paws and very thick fur, with a color pattern that blends perfectly with the snowy, high altitude environment. 

Snow Leopard's are rare, and are seriously threatened by habitat loss and the Asian fur trade.  Until a few years ago, there was virtually no video of a snow leopard hunting in its natural habitat.  Then, the BBC sent a crew to Mongolia; it's sole mission was to get video footage of snow leopards.  After a few weeks of waiting, the BBC crew was rewarded with some spectacular footage of a snow leopard chasing a young mountain ibex down the craggy face of a near vertical rock cliff.

Here is a link to that snow leopard video on Discovery's 'Planet Earth' minseries     .http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Snow_Leopard#p00378k9

Alan Hunt, a well-known and much admired wildlife artist, has painted the Snow Leopard multiple times. We have a limited edition print of the one below hanging in our home.

Nomad by Alan Hunt

Here is a link to the  Snow Leopard Trust http://www.snowleopard.org/

A Tower for Rufus

You Tube has millions of cat videos.  Felines tend to do cute and/or funny things at times, and owners with video cameras like to share their kitty stories.

This video is about a cat named Rufus,  who had to endure a long series of painful treatments to clear his ear of an infection. His owner won back Rufus's affection by building him a very cool sancutary in the apartment they shared.

Here is the link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI9W_VdV1l0&feature=player_embedded

Bubba

My brother Jay had a crazy cat. His name was Bubba.  He was very mellow and friendly, but he also was into adventure.

Me and Bubba

Bubba liked to get on the roof of Jay's house.  One day Jay was napping on his sofa a few feet from the fireplace. He was awakened suddenly when he heard something. Then, he saw  ashes falling into the fireplace pit from the flue.  A moment later, Bubba dropped into the firepit. He was covered with soot from his exploration of the chimney.

My brother's wife Jeannine told me that another time, she and Jay were awakened in bed to find Bubba staring at them a foot away from their faces with a live mouse in his jaws. They were startled. Bubba dropped the mouse and it went scurring away. Jay later caught it and released it outside of the house.  The whole thing was Bubba being a cat. The sweet thing about this is that Bubba was gifting his catch to his co-habitors in the house.

Bubba is long gone now. He died of old age. He had a good life with Jay and Jeannine. He brought them a lot of joy as well, just by being the kitty personality that he was.

Kitty Kills

I just read an article about domestic cats.  Turns out when they roam free, they generally revert to their feline instincts and become very efficient predators.

University of Georgia researcher Kerry Ann Lloyd looked at cat behavior closely and what she found wasn't pretty.  When they are prowling freely around the neighborhood, domestic cats are often doing what comes naturally. 


In an article just released by USA Today,  George Fenwick, head of the American bird Conservancy, is quoted as saying that cat predation is a significant reason why one in three American bird species are in decline.

There are about 74 million house cats in the US.  Of that total,  according to Kerry Ann Lloyd's findings, about 30%  kill prey - two animals per week on average.

My wife and I have a home in an area that should attract a lot of birds. We have feeders out for them and a pond and a bird bath with water for them.  We just don't see them.   I'm hardly suggesting that house cats are the principle cause of song birds being absent in a place where one would expect to see  alot of them. Loss of habitat is probably the biggest factor. But cats will be cats. And if one in three of 74 million cats are out hunting and killing two critters a week, that translates to about 50 million  kills every week.  In a year, we're talking about 2.6 billion birds, rodents, and other prey species that are lost to the world,  just from house cats.

Again,  I want to affirm that I really like cats.  I'm not suggesting that people should get rid of their cats. They can be wonderful pets. I am suggesting that responsible cat ownership means taking steps to limit the cat's ability to hunt successfully.  One way would be to keep them in the house more often than not. That would make a difference.  Another way could be as simple as putting a bell around the cat's neck. That would make it harder for the cat to stalk its prey successfully.

Kittycam

Here is a POV video from University of Georgia researcher Kerry Ann Lloyd that shows some cats wearing tiny 'kitty cams', doing their thing while on the prowl.

http://bcove.me/zks50jd1

Cat and Mouse Napping

Love little videos like this. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deLIcUOjszw