Author: sharonstjoan

This is a red grouse video.

The flooding disasters in Britain have various causes. Contrary to what right-wing politicians say, gay people are not one of them. Contrary to what right-wing politicians say, refugees are not one of them (quite the contrary).

Now, on to one of the real causes.

By Peter Lazenby in Britain:

Grouse shooting ‘making flood wreckage worse’

Saturday 16th January 2016

GROUSE shooting is contributing to the flooding which has devastated dozens of communities across Britain, the Green Party warned yesterday.

Landowners’ cultivation of moorland to suit grouse breeding — instead of managing it to prevent flooding — allows water to pour off moorlands instead of being absorbed.

Green leader Natalie Bennett reiterated a call for a ban on the “sport” after visiting flood-hit communities in Yorkshire.

“Management of moors for intensive shooting is simply incompatible with 21st-century needs —…

After a week of sleet and rain a patch of weekend sunshine seemed the best excuse for a trip to see some natural and some less natural avian pleasures at Pensthorpe. Locally with singing mistlethrush and mallards chasing each other round point towards spring. Although we are in winter the slight lengthening of days is now perceptible.   First to show their fantastic colours and spring time displays in all their pseudo captive glory were the mandarin ducks.

Mandarins sharing a moment of intimacy

Feral and escaped mandarins pop up all over the county but the best spot for them last year was the breckland birding mecca Santon Downham were it is possible these tree nesting imports bred.  The next bird to show us how to do courtship properly and perhaps trying to make up for his less impressive plumage were a goldeneye. This diving duck is a…

“In my mind the right amount of trees, wildfire, juniper, bark beetles, is whatever exists. All of these are controlled by climate, just like the amount of ice that covered the continents and mountains was dictated by climate. Climate will decide what density of trees can grow on any particular site.

LOGGING IS NOT BENIGN

“One of the assumptions of many collaboratives, agencies like the Forest Service, and of course the timber industry is that logging emulates natural processes. There is a very small amount of truth in that logging as well as wildfire, beetles and other natural agents do kill trees. However, that is like suggesting that someone shot to death by a gun is analogous to dying from old age because in both cases, the person is dead. The sad truth is that most so-called “restoration” is degrading our forest ecosystems.” www.thewildlifenews.com

GR:  Wuerthner debunks many of the…

These are not jallikattu bulls, but bulls rescued by Blue Cross of India.

By Sharon St Joan

A December 31, 2015 editorial in the newspaper The Hindu, “A Stand Against Reason,” describes the possibility that the cruel sport of “jallikattu,” bull-racing, will be re-introduced in Tamil Nadu, although it was banned last year by the Supreme Court. Here is the gist of the main points in The Hindu editorial:

In human sports, the contenders have a choice as to whether or not to participate in a sport where they may incur a risk of injury. Of course, animals have no such choice.

This is especially true of jallikattu, in which frightened bulls in pain are forced to run a gauntlet of young men trying to leap onto them, hanging onto their horns. The essential cruelty of this “sport” lies in the fact that bulls, unlike horses, do…

By Rudra Krishna

On the morning of the December 2, 2015, the Blue Cross of India received a call from the Adyar police, with the information that that many cows and buffalos had been picked up by the torrential currents of the overflowing and much-swollen Adyar River, and that they were being washed away into the Indian Ocean.

As we later found out, the Chembarambakkam Reservoir had received an unprecedented amount of rainfall the previous night, and authorities had been forced to release water as quickly as they could, which caused the river to flow about 8-10 feet higher than it is even meant to, and in a most rapid and destructive manner.

All that aside, when we received the call at our Guindy facility, we immediately sent out a rescue vehicle with a couple of our rescue staff and a volunteer, Satish. Please remember that we had no clear…