Conservation groups allege US has failed to protect endangered red wolf

US Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed one of world’s rarest wolves to be killed, as an estimated 50 to 75 are left in North Carolina wilderness, lawsuit alleges

Oliver Milman in New York

Tuesday 17 November 2015 18.52 GMT

The US government has failed to properly protect the red wolf, one of the world’s rarest wolves, by allowing a member of the species’ small wild population to be killed, conservationists have claimed.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been taken to court by a coalition of environmental groups that argues it has not properly protected the endangered red wolf, with estimates of just 50 to 75 of the animals left in the wild in North Carolina.

A lawsuit filed with the US district court for the eastern district of North Carolina states that the FWS permitted a landowner to kill an adult female red wolf in June that was known to have mothered a total of 16 pups through four litters.

This killing, along with a previous shooting of a red wolf last year, represents a “direct violation” of regulations around the capture of wolves on private property, the lawsuit claims.

The environment groups – the Red Wolf Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Welfare Institute – also allege that the FWS has failed to properly review the status of red wolves and has unduly suspended the reintroduction of the species from captivity into the wild.

The red wolf, which is smaller than a grey wolf, weighing around 40 to 50lb, once roamed an area stretching from Missouri to Texas and into North Carolina. The species, a top predator in the region, was largely wiped out over the past 100 years due to shooting and habitat loss.

The species was effectively extinct in the wild in 1980 when the FWS took the remaining red wolves into captivity for breeding. From an initial population of 14, there are now around 200 in captivity. Given this captive population, the FWS does not consider the species to be in imminent danger of becoming extinct if a wild wolf is shot.

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US government gives research chimps endangered-species protection

The decision will prohibit most research on captive animals.

Sara Reardon

12 June 2015

Wild and captive chimpanzees will now be treated equally under US law.

Chimpanzee research in the United States may be nearly over. On 12 June, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it is categorizing captive chimpanzees as an endangered species subject to legal protections.

The new rule will bar most invasive research on chimpanzees. Exceptions will be granted for work that would “benefit the species in the wild” or aid the chimpanzee's propagation or survival, including work to improve chimp habitat and the management of wild populations.

The FWS proposed the rule in 2013 to close a loophole that exempted captive chimps from the Endangered Species Act protections that had already been given to their wild counterparts. Under the law, it is illegal to import or export an endangered animal, or to “harm, harass, kill [or] injure” one.

The new regulation will extend these limits to more than 700 chimps in US research laboratories, as well as animals in zoos or entertainment venues such as circuses. The FWS rule also makes it illegal to sell chimpanzee blood, cell lines or tissue across state lines without a permit.

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The Big Rhino Debt Swap

Leya Musa / 5 days ago

The United States government and the Indonesian government have signed a new agreement that will see debt owned by Indonesia to the United States swapped for rhino protection and conservation measures. The new deal also involves Indonesian NGO KEHATI.

The agreement will see Indonesia commit about US$12 million towards conservation programmes to help protect wildlife and habitats in Sumatra. This will include a programme to help conserve one of the world’s rarest rhinos – the Sumatran rhino – which is estimated to have a population of no more than 100. The deal will also see habitat protection for tigers, Sumatran elephants and orang-utans.

The deal was partially funded and negotiated by Conservation International. Global law firm White & Case LLP provided legal support on a pro bono basis.

“Sumatran rhinos number no more than 100, and along with many other species living in these forests, like Sumatran tigers, are among the most critically endangered animals on Earth,” said Susie Ellis, executive director, International Rhino Foundation. “This support will be pivotal in ensuring their survival.”

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US Government helps Asia in the fight against wildlife trafficking

March 2014: Law enforcement officers from Lao PDR and Thailand recently participated in a training course in order to improve their ability to fight against wildlife crime. There were twenty-six participants in total, including customs, police, and wildlife officers, as well as prosecutors.

Wildlife trafficking between Thailand and Lao PDR is renowned as a major route for the smuggling of wild animals and wildlife products. Via these countries, illegal animals and products are transported to China and Vietnam, and as far as Africa. Here, criminals take advantage of weak laws and understaffed law enforcement. The training course was designed to improve enforcement collaboration between Thailand and Lao PDR in an attempt to reduce global wildlife crime. The US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs co-funded the course along with the Blue Moon Fund. 

Bangkok-based counter-trafficking organisation Freeland implemented the training as part of Asia’s Regional Response to Endangered Trafficking (ARREST) program, which is run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). ARREST is the US Government’s largest counter wildlife trafficking program that fights trafficking in Asia by reducing consumer demand, strengthening law enforcement, and enhancing regional cooperation. 

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/US-helps-Asia-014.html

USA offers reward for help smashing wildlife crime syndicate

November 2013: In an unprecedented move the US Government are offering a reward of up to $1 million for information that will help lead to the dismantling of one of Asia’s largest wildlife-trafficking syndicates. The State Department said it was targeting a Laos-based syndicate called the Xaysavang Network, which spans South Africa, Mozambique, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and China, said the Secretary of State John Kerry in a statement. 

“The Xaysavang Network facilitates the killing of endangered elephants, rhinos, and other species for products such as ivory. 

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Appeals Court Upholds Polar Bear’s Endangered Species Act Protections

RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The US government and the polar bear won an important court ruling on Friday, as an appeals court deemed that the Bush administration had acted reasonably when they decided to list the Arctic mammal as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act due to the effects of climate change.

According to Brent Kendall of the Wall Street Journal, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a 36 page ruling which upheld the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) 2008 decision.

The agency opted to grant the polar bear protection on the basis that it could become endangered in the foreseeable future due to the impact of global warming on its sea-ice habitat. Opponents had argued that the FWS’s decision formed them to impose “far-ranging and possibly costly protections for a species that remains fairly abundant in many regions of the Arctic,” Los Angeles Times writer Kim Murphy said.

“There are still about 25,000 polar bears around the world, many of them in relatively healthy populations, but scientists fear that climate change is rapidly affecting their ability to sustain those numbers after the next half-century,” Murphy explained.

Continued:  http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112795277/polar-bears-retain-endangered-species-act-protection-030313/

U.S. government sued over endangered sea turtles (Loggerheads on West Coast.) – via Herp Digest

1/9/2013 By Tom Brown

Jan 8 (Reuters) - Three environmental groups sued the U.S. government on Tuesday for what they said was Washington's failure to take urgent steps to ensure the survival of endangered loggerhead sea turtles.

"Loggerhead sea turtles are among the most imperiled of sea turtle species and have experienced alarming declines in recent years," said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit said loggerheads were already being pushed to the brink of extinction and that the government had failed to comply with deadlines set under the Endangered Species Act to establish protected areas or "critical habitat" for loggerhead sea turtle populations.

The suit, brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Oceana Inc and Turtle Island Restoration, cited the destruction or degradation of nesting and foraging habitats, pollution including oil spills, climate change and sea level rise among other threats to the long-term survival of the marine turtles.

"Loggerhead sea turtles face numerous, ongoing threats in waters off the coasts of California and Hawaii, along the continental shelf off the eastern seaboard from Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts, south through Florida and the Gulf of Mexico," it said.

Government spokesmen declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The legal complaint said the "incidental capture, injury and death by commercial fishing fleets" posed another clear danger to the loggerheads.

Of the seven species of sea turtles, six are found in U.S. waters. The marine reptiles live mostly in the ocean and often migrate long distances, but adult females return to land to lay their eggs along beaches.

Florida beaches have the largest nesting population of loggerheads in the United States but face increasing threats from coastal development.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Northern Pacific loggerheads, have seen the most startling population decline in recent years. They nest in Japan, and cross the Pacific to feed along the coasts of Southern California and Mexico, and have declined by at least 80 percent over the past decade.

Defendants named in the lawsuit include the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"The Services are depriving this critically imperiled species of significant legal protections that are important for its conservation and recovery, especially in light of the continuing negative effects of climate change and commercial fishing activities which include the use of harmful longlines, trawls and gillnets," the lawsuit said.

U.S. sues to return Tyrannosaurus skeleton to Mongolia

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. authorities filed a lawsuit seeking to return to Mongolia a 70-million-year-old piece of its cultural heritage - fangs and all.

The skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar - a smaller Asian cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex - has been the subject of a months-long legal battle and is now being sought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who announced the federal government's lawsuit on Monday.

Bharara seeks the forfeiture of the skeleton from Heritage Auctions of Texas, the auction company that sold it for more than $1 million last month to an undisclosed buyer, Bharara said in a statement. He vowed to return the skeleton to Mongolia, where it was originally "looted from the Gobi Desert."

"A piece of the country's natural history was stolen with it, and we look forward to returning it to its rightful place," Bharara said.

Mongolia's President Tsakhia Elbegdorj thanked U.S. authorities for stepping into the dispute, saying in a statement "an important piece of the cultural heritage of the Mongolian people" had been recovered.

The dinosaur skeleton was discovered in 1946 during a joint Soviet-Mongolian expedition to the Gobi Desert in the Omnogovi Province, Bharara said. Since 1924, Mongolia has enacted laws declaring dinosaur fossils to be the property of the government, criminalizing their export.

Last month, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions agreed to help the Mongolian government investigate the ownership of the skeleton, which was auctioned in New York in May. A state district judge in Dallas granted the Mongolian government a temporary restraining order to prevent the transfer of ownership until it was determined whether it was illegally obtained from Mongolia.

On June 5, at the request of Mongolia's president, several paleontologists specializing in the species examined the skeleton and concluded it was a Tyrannosaurus bataar unearthed from the western Gobi Desert in Mongolia between 1995 and 2005.

(Reporting by Joseph O'Leary; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Christopher Wilson)

Feds to Seize $1.1 Million Dinosaur on Friday

Federal officials have plans to seize a dinosaur skeleton that paleontologists and Mongolian officials say was taken illegally from that country.

Yesterday, a federal judge signed a warrant allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations (ICE HSI) to seize the fossils, which belong to a 8-foot tall and 24-foot long (2.4-by-7.3 meter)Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton. 

Officials plan to collect the dinosaur on Friday from the facility where auction house Heritage Auctions has been storing it in Sunnyside, N.Y.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/21079-dinosaur-seizure-mongolia.html

Banned Antibiotics Found in Poultry Products

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2012) — In a joint study, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University found evidence suggesting that a class of antibiotics previously banned by the U.S. government for poultry production is still in use. Results of the study were published March 21 in Environmental Science & Technology.

The study, conducted by the Bloomberg School's Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State's Biodesign Institute, looked for drugs and other residues in feather meal, a common additive to chicken, swine, cattle and fish feed. The most important drugs found in the study were fluoroquinolones -- broad spectrum antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in people, particularly those infections that have become resistant to old-er antibiotic classes. The banned drugs were found in 8 of 12 samples of feather meal in a multi-state study. The findings were a surprise to scientists because fluoroquinolone use in U.S. poultry production was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005.

This is the first time investigators have examined feather meal, a byproduct of poultry production made from poultry feathers, to determine what drugs poultry may have received prior to their slaughter and sale.

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120405131431.htm