News briefs about animals: NJ to Arizona

At this time of year, media coverage focuses on school starting, especially now, with Covid debates raging.  But it’s also a season when animal advocates plunge even deeper into activism.  Hunting season is imminent, or in one reprehensible case, already underway.

True to its mission and past practice, the Animal Protection League of NJ has lots going on to benefit animals, including the state’s geese, deer and black bears.  While some towns are interested in habitat modification, most reportedly don’t want non-lethal approaches – a disappointing turn of events, even when APLNJ does site visits and helps with habitat changes.

The organization’s activities range from attending town meetings and sessions with condo associations, to talking with the governor’s staff about non-lethal black bear management.  Its TNR program reports success at enlisting community groups to help vet two large cat colonies.

Details on many of these initiatives to follow . . . !

From a deer friend

·        Gardener alert!  Do you believe in “deer-proof plants”?  Truth is, there’s no such thing.  Even though specified perennials, annuals and trees may be labeled “deer-resistant,” some deer are hungrier than others! 

·       Numbers of fawns were aided before and during Hurricane Ida – from Jersey shore lagoons, after being injured and even one with his head stuck in a plastic trick or treat bucket.

·        Male deer shed the “velvet” covering their antlers once it has done its job: providing nourishment and protection to the antlers so they “mineralize” – grow big and strong.  This process signals the start of “the rut,” or deer-mating season.

Information like this about our native deer appears in a newsletter called The Bleat (alluding to the sound baby deer make to call their moms).  The publication is produced by Kimberly Nagelhout, a long-time deer advocate, activist for non-lethal deer programs and member of the Animal Protection League of NJ. 

Her commitment to deer shows in her related activities – from notable wildlife photography to the creative way she credits helpers and donors to her projects: “deer friends” and volunteers get a “4-hoof salute,” and “The Buck Stops Here.”  

Kim Nagelhout treating a fawn

Take a look at The Bleat here: https://conta.cc/3zN8Abg.  This link will also lead to the next edition.   

Felines’ ‘new’ life stages

New guidelines for defining cat life stages have been released by the American Association of Feline Practitioners and the American Animal Hospital Association.  Recommended by a task force of feline medical experts, the guidelines are intended to help veterinarians tailor their health-care plans for cat patients depending on both their biological and lifestyle needs.

The new feline life stages are Kitten – Birth to 1 year; Young Adult – 1 to 6 years; Mature Adult – 7 to 10 years; enior – 10 years and older; End-Of-Life – Any age.

Lots 'wrong with this picture'!

Starting this month, the National Park Service is allowing four 5-day “lethal removal operations” this year on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park.  Translated, that means 12 selected volunteer hunters will be allowed to kill one bison each during his/her “operation” period. 

Up to 500 animals comprise the North Rim bison herd; they have lived peaceably there till being targeted for culling – a.k.a., “lethal removal.”  Non-lethal possibilities were dismissed earlier by the Park Service, whose logo features a bison!

An estimated 60 million bison once ranged from the Yukon all the way to Mexico.  History shows that they were nearly decimated.  And now, in a national park where hunting is prohibited, nearly 50 bison will be killed as a result of a “bison herd reduction environmental assessment.”  

The writer of the opinion column linked below protests the cull “for such intolerable offenses as foraging, drinking, defecating, wallowing and kicking up some dirt, these native animals are treated throughout the study as a constant disturbance, as if the ideal of management were sterile, picture-perfect scenery instead of a lived-in ecosystem.”   https://tinyurl.com/vv86r9u2

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Focusing on animals: an escape from human ills & errors

                                 Botswana baby                         Getty pic               

Summer is almost over and the world is a sick, crazy, cruel mess.  What else can go wrong?

Instead of downer-forecasts, let’s work on what might go right: take a bike ride or a walk along fields of drying grasses rimmed by yellow flowers, with crickety sounds rising from the brittle foliage.  Take deep breaths and look around at the blue-sky world.   

Or, re-pot a plant or two before it winters over inside, and clean up the garden a bit – leaving enough debris for small animals’ cover till spring. 

Or, brush your cat or take a walk with your dog, and feel extra grateful for pets, who can center and comfort us.

Or, and this isn’t as far afield as it may seem: think about the wildlife you love and advocate for.  Just move far away, mentally, and think about animals – those who fascinate you, those you especially care about. 

                                                   Elephant Crisis Fund pic

Recent news about elephants intrigued me (no surprise, right?), so I’ll go there.  And why not? They’re such remarkable-but-sorely endangered animals, and they need our help as well as our admiration for all the good they do in the world.

I used to report that elephants’ worst threat came from poachers who slaughtered them for their tusks, then sold their ivory to satisfy the world’s demand.  Habitat all over Africa is steadily being lost to development that affects elephants’ traditional travel routes; highways do the same.

But now, a growing hazard for elephants comes from the people who live and farm near them.  As human population increases and elephant habitat shrinks, elephants’ hunger drives them to invade people’s farms and threaten or destroy their crops.

Retaliation follows. With coexistence becoming ever harder to maintain, frustrated farmers strike back at the elephants, often killing them.  Fences can be ineffectual and the bees that elephants fear aren’t universal; nor are the animal advocates who set up bee-deterrents to keep elephants away from land intended for other purposes.   

                                                          Dodo-Shutterstock

Big-picture elephant news that should ultimately help conserve elephants: a decades-long study and its resultant product – “The Elephant Ethogram: A Library of African Elephant Behavior” – is an illustrated list of some 500 elephant behaviors and 110 behavioral suites in a wide variety of contexts, with still more to come.  Publicly available and invaluable to scientists and those working for elephants’ survival, this Ethogram includes more than 3,000 video and audio clips that illustrate the text.   

Dr. Joyce Poole’s “tens of thousands of hours spent observing, tracking and analyzing” African savanna elephants -- described as “the largest land animal on the planet and one of the most cognitively and behaviorally complex”-- led to this encyclopedic result. 

Poole and her husband, Petter Granli, compiled the Ethogram, released last May by ElephantVoices, a non-profit group whose mission is “To inspire wonder in the intelligence, complexity and voices of elephants, and to secure a kinder future for them.”   https://tinyurl.com/2kmy262m

Not only does the Ethogram look like a great thing to browse or spend days with, but also, the article below, where I first learned about it, is terrific all by itself, offering wonderful images and captions.  https://tinyurl.com/49dc4k45

                                                            MoizHasein-Stock

Now I wonder whether the elephant ethogram includes the many ways that elephants use their trunks, which turn out to be multi-multi-multi-purpose tools!  

With no bones or joints in it, the trunk is pure muscle, yet capable of delicate actions too: although it can uproot trees, it can also pluck a single leaf from a branch.  And it boasts a powerful sense of smell.

Elephants use their trunks to drink, store and spray water, and they can blow air through them to communicate, with bellows that are audible for miles.  With their trunks, elephants can apply suction to grab food too – a function formerly thought to be exclusive to fishes.  

But of what practical, or satisfying, use is it for an elephant to be able to suction up a single potato chip, as shown in this story?  Answer: that feat may suggest technological innovations in the human and robotic worlds.  Science at work!   https://tinyurl.com/4jzx69kw

 

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Drop that hamburger & come out with your mind open!

We’re hearing it more and more often: “Plant-based meat products are not only less harmful to the climate but also better for our health.”  When that claim comes from the founder and CEO of “Beyond Meat,” we want to know more.  

A vegetarian since high school, Ethan Brown started Beyond Meat in 2009 and took the company public 10 years later -- an arc that coincides with the soaring growth rate of plant-based meat.  His company produces burgers, sausages and more for supermarkets and fast-food outlets like McDonald’s.

Beyond more predictable reasons for plant-based meat, Brown “would rather not be responsible for the deaths of animals,” according to a full-page profile of him in the NYTimes business section last month.  

The article includes a series of Q&As that should put many pro-animal meat arguments to rest: everyone else eats meat so why shouldn’t humans; how is a Beyond Burger healthier for me than a hamburger; is Beyond Meat’s meat loaded with chemicals; how does Beyond Meat differ from Impossible Foods; how do you reconcile your emphasis on health with your partnerships with fast-food partnerships . . .  . ?

An accompanying graphic shows how Beyond Meat's footprint is smaller than that of a quarter-pound beef burger.  For instance, Brown’s product is responsible for 90% less greenhouse gas emissions and uses 46% less energy.    https://tinyurl.com/3b5r36b7

Poor butterfly

A sad sight from earlier this month: As I stood outside, a single monarch butterfly fluttered by me, flying in slow, low swoops down the street, as if looking for something.  Had the insect fallen far behind in the mass migration (if there was  one)?  Was s/he hoping to come upon a long-lived milkweed plant?    

I soon lost sight of the orange beauty, and felt sad because I couldn’t help. Our milkweed bush had long since given up, after attracting too few butterflies.  I wondered how far this one would get, without nourishment and with predators all around.

Monarch 

Then yesterday, I saw Margaret Renkl’s column, this time about “a troubling summer in the yard,” including the dearth of butterflies there in Tennessee, where she lives.  It’s not a happy picture, even though Renkl tries hard to make the most of it.     https://tinyurl.com/5cw39tbm

Bruce the handybird

Online animal sites often run stories about how people help animals walk or fly again after injury,  overcome fear or shyness, and even search for food.  

But Bruce, a New Zealand kea (parrot) with a broken beak, said in effect, “I’d rather do it myself,” and proceeded to devise a new way to preen his feathers.   

Rather than beak surgery that would allow him to perform the necessary feather job, Bruce has chosen to comb himself with the point of a pebble between his tongue and lower beak.  His system effectively rids him of parasites and dirt.

Kea bird

All it takes is careful selection of the right size pebble, then getting to work.  No surgery needed.  The researcher who studied and wrote about Bruce said he doesn’t need a prosthesis – he has his own.  

https://tinyurl.com/54j29wfk 

 

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