³This is probably one of the strangest and most puzzling problems we have had with bats,² said Paul Cryan, a bat ecologist with the United States Geological Survey. ³It¹s really startling that we¹ve not come up with a smoking gun yet.² Merlin Tuttle, the president of Bat Conservation International, an education and research group in Austin, Tex., said: ³So far as we can tell at this point, this may be the most serious threat to North American bats we¹ve experienced in recorded history. ³It definitely warrants immediate and careful attention.²
....................................... No bears for oil
Why hasn't the polar bear been granted federal protection? Maybe because the Bush administration plans a last-minute handout of oil leases on its habitat.
By Katharine Mieszkowski
Jan. 17, 2008 | By 2050, two-thirds of the world's polar bears will have vanished, as a result of global warming melting their icy habitat, according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey. There may no longer be any polar bears at all living in Alaska, their only home in the United States. Still, this stark prediction, revealed in September
2007, after a yearlong review of the impact of melting sea ice on the Alaskan bears, hasn't inspired the Bush administration to list the bear as even a threatened species, much less an endangered one, under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for listing mammals as threatened or endangered, has been one of the most politically compromised scientific divisions in the Bush administration. It didn't consider extending federal protections to polar bears until it was petitioned, and subsequently sued, to do so by a coalition of environmental groups back in 2005. Now it admits that polar bears are "likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future," and explained recent delays by citing the complexity of the decision: It has never before had to designate a species as threatened because of global warming.
Buy a ticket to this house. The peeping has been going on since end of January. Now the katydids, and today we saw our first hummingbird at the feeder. Even took the greenhouse down over the weekend. Roses are budding, peaches are flowering, mesquites are leafing out and live oaks shed and now comes the dreaded mess of the catkins for miles, all into my pool filter.
None of these are complaints. I wish for you a fast coming spring if you wish for me a long lasting spring and not directly into 100 for 5 months.
I'd hate to be in the position of the poor sod working at Prudhoe Bay who has to decide "do I shoot the bear and go to jail, or do I die?"
Friend of mine worked on the DEWline. Anybody who thinks that polar bears need to be a protected species need to listen to some of his polar bear stories. If they are protected there needs to be a _strong_ exemption for self-defense, with "bear in sight and looking hungry" being complete justification.
I'd shoot the bear. But and it is a big but we are on their land and they are helpless when the ice no longer provides a means to find food. Walruses are currently forced to head towards land where the food supply is minimal. We are talking about species extinction. How many oil drilling folks were killed by bears in the last five years? How many folks killed by human's in the middle east?
We seem to think every thing revolves about us humans but another but we are connected in subtle way. Less pollinators = less food something most folks don't care about. Lot's of annoying things like stinging insects also polinate. A perfect safe world aka sterile may be our demise. Look at children with weak immune systems. Why no contact with death, destruction, decay etc. Same stuff that my seeds love and need. Go Figure.
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