Speaking Out

[King Kodiak]

The koalas need to be saved. I dont know how accurate this is, but i read somewhere that about 30% of the population died.

[OldGreenGrolar]

Australia’s environment minister says up to 30% of koalas killed in NSW mid-north coast fires

www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/27/australias-environment-minister-says-up-to-30-of-koalas-killed-in-nsw-mid-north-coast-fires

[King Kodiak]

Jan 7, 2020 7:11:40 GMT -5 OldGreenGrolar said:

www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/27/australias-environment-minister-says-up-to-30-of-koalas-killed-in-nsw-mid-north-coast-fires

30%, this is just too much. Its like an extinction event. Close to 50%. Damn.

[brobear]

We need to be fair and honest with big cat enthusiasts. We must make every attempt at being courteous, polite, and as friendly as possible. But, through the years I find that bear enthusiasts have been buckling to their need to build up their chosen big cat by downsizing bears and down playing bear abilities. Personally, I've had enough of bending to appease their tender feelings. Bears are awesome. The bear is the Achilles' heel of the big cats.

[OldGreenGrolar]

We had rain yesterday. The weather forecast predicts there will be more rain in the coming nights. Hopefully that’s enough to quench the bushfires.

[OldGreenGrolar]

abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/support-australian-wildfires-relief-effort/story?id=68093913&cid=social_twitter_abcn

[brobear]

Jan 7, 2020 21:57:46 GMT -5 OldGreenGrolar said:

We had rain yesterday. The weather forecast predicts there will be more rain in the coming nights. Hopefully that’s enough to quench the bushfires.

That is good news.

[King Kodiak]

On kangaroo killing field, from horror to hope for Australian animals devastated by wildfires

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/09/australia/australia-fires-animals-mallacoota-intl-hnk/index.html

[OldGreenGrolar]

I has been raining yesterday and it is raining heavily today in Australia 😀.

[tom]

Hallelulia !! Hope that's enough to put the fires out.

[smedz]

Finally, something from nature to put out the fires.

[King Kodiak]

I absolutely love koalas and they should be saved. They resemble bear cubs so much so that scientists never really removed the "arctos" from the Koala's Genus which is Phascolarctos, which "Arctos" means bear in greek.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phascolarctos

[smedz]

This is what I meant when I said shark finning has taken pitted animal fighting's place as the worse case of animal cruelty. 

[tom]

Worlds foremost authority on African Lions Craig Packer speaks out on subjects relating to Lions such as Cecil the Lion that was killed by a Dentist. He also gives his opinion on trophy hunting and the bleak future for African Lions. www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/04/craig-packer-interview-cecil-the-lion-killer


Quote:

After 30 years researching the overhunting of lions in Africa, Packer is profoundly pessimistic about their future. The figures are stark. The global population has dropped to under 30,000 from 100,000 in the 1980s; there are fewer than 2,000 left in Kenya, only 2,800 wild lions in South Africa, and numbers have declined 66% in 15 years in Tanzania. Yet hunters are invited to kill thousands every year and vast tracts are reserved for hunting.Their long-term survival, he says, depends on big money coming in to protect them. But counterintuitively, he says, trophy hunters like Chancellor or the dentist are also needed. “Trophy hunting is not inherently damaging to lion populations, provided the hunters take care to let the males mature and wait to harvest them after their cubs are safely reared. The dentist was unlucky and not altogether to blame.“Trophy hunters are no angels but they actually control four times as much lion habitat in Africa than is protected in national parks; and 80% of the world’s lions left in the world are in the hunters’ hands.”

“Clients like the dentist are just tourists. They believe whatever they are told. It’s extremely unlikely that [the dentist] knew anything about that particular lion or even how close he was to the national park when he shot it. It’s common practice in Zimbabwe for hunting operators to draw lions out of the parks so their clients can shoot them.”

However much he scorns the city slickers who spray bullets at anything with fangs, he insists he is not waging war on controlled hunting. The problem is the companies are under extreme pressure to provide big male lions for their clients, and the industry is sleazy and corrupt. Some professional hunters engage in double hunting, where they let their clients exceed the quota of lions they can kill and then bury the less impressive lion; others will shoot a buffalo before the client arrives to bait a site to attract a lion so it can be easily shot on day one.

“If you are well connected you don’t even have to pay the government. Professional hunters are mostly working-class kids from South Africa, white Kenyans, French, Brits. These guys are pros but there is no oversight or accountability.“The corrupt companies all have connection with government. They are ruthless. The good ones fear that they will not be able to carry on if I name them. Hunting in Tanzania has been a bad thing. Kenya is just as bad.”

The hunting industry argues that its money goes to conservation, but Packer rejects this. “Hunters lie and the industry greatly exaggerates its ‘positive’ impact on wildlife conservation,” he says. “A lot of clients head off into the bush believing that their $50,000 will save the world – when in fact virtually none of that money goes to conservation and the true costs of conservation are far higher. [With Cecil] the hunters paid a small fine to the Zimbabwean government, while the dentist became the international scapegoat.

 

[King Kodiak]

Jan 16, 2020 19:43:05 GMT -5 smedz said:

This is what I meant when I said shark finning has taken pitted animal fighting's place as the worse case of animal cruelty. 

60% reduction of sharks in Costa Rica in just 9 years. Basically close to an extinction event. This sucks.

[tom]

Jan 7, 2020 0:24:44 GMT -5 brobear said:

Jan 6, 2020 20:00:49 GMT -5 King Kodiak said:

I see alot of bear fans from Australia. UrsusAmericanus, Verdugo, and Rorqual.

I hope they are all safe and unaffected by the massive fires there.
                                                                                                 

I just noticed this map of Australia that brobear posted. Where's Sidney?  Funny guy ... 

[OldGreenGrolar]

Sydney is in New South Wales.

[King Kodiak]

Jan 21, 2020 18:50:40 GMT -5 tom said:

Jan 7, 2020 0:24:44 GMT -5 brobear said:

I hope they are all safe and unaffected by the massive fires there.
                                                                                                 

I just noticed this map of Australia that brobear posted. Where's Sidney?  Funny guy ... 

Am pretty sure this map is like a brotherhood map because it says Australia and USA, so i believe it means that if Australia is burning, that USA is burning the same way.

[smedz]

Well, I'm in Iowa on an ffa trip. On the way back from Denver where I got a real coyote skull.

[tom]

Jan 23, 2020 17:00:33 GMT -5 King Kodiak said:

Jan 21, 2020 18:50:40 GMT -5 tom said:

I just noticed this map of Australia that brobear posted. Where's Sidney?  Funny guy ... 

Am pretty sure this map is like a brotherhood map because it says Australia and USA, so i believe it means that if Australia is burning, that USA is burning the same way.

If that was what the map was supposed to represent, than that would put to shame the brush fires California experienced last year for sure. I would go so far as to say the president would declare a national emergency if that were the USA.. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks down under.