Wildlife

Wildlife & how are planet is changing for the worst for our 2 & 4 legged friends & even the ones that swim.
Man has alot to do with it, expansion of buildings, Houseing, Deforestation, etc.
This is a small artical on my area/country. Add to this, anything in your area as well Cool

Cheers

Our planet is undergoing a biodiversity crisis. At least 16,000 species are threatened with extinction, including 12 per cent of birds, 23 per cent of mammals and 32 per cent of amphibians.

Biologists know what is causing this environmental crisis –human impacts from development, deforestation, pollution and climate change are destroying the homes and habitat of wildlife around the world.

More importantly, biologists understand that the trend can be reversed.

There was a time when populations of the great whales, Bald Eagles and Whooping Cranes were in rapid decline. But because of strong legislation, habitat protection, and international agreements, these populations are bouncing back.

Despite an extraordinary legacy of animals and plants, 487 species are at risk of extinction in Canada. Weaknesses in the national Species at Risk Act abandon much of Canada’s iconic wildlife – such as the polar bear, Atlantic salmon and Peary caribou – leaving them left off the list that’s designed to protect them.

Each province has its own obligations to protect wildlife. But British Columbia does not have stand-alone endangered species legislation, nor does Alberta. The province of Ontario recently updated and strengthened its Endangered Species Act, which is the first step towards responsible environmental stewardship. The David Suzuki Foundation is part of the Save Our Species coalition that helped to bring the Ontario Act into force.

Protecting the environment and biodiversity is more than a moral responsibility; it has important consequences for human health and welfare.

According to the United Nation’s 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, two-thirds of the direct benefits people obtain from biodiversity are currently being degraded or used unsustainably.

These “ecosystem services” include:

providing materials such as food, fuels and fibres;
regulating climate, disease outbreaks, wastes and pollination;
supporting processes such as nutrient cycling and water purification; and
providing opportunities for aesthetic, recreational and spiritual use.
Biodiversity loss affects many services that are essential to the functioning of our society and economy. For example, declines in the populations of bees, butterflies and other pollinators because of habitat destruction, pesticide use and invasive species cost farmers millions of dollars each year in reduced crop yields.

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

I donate to a number of wildlife organizations.not alot but what ever I can afford. Very Happy

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I just heard something big crackï¿½.. holy crap!-Les Stroud

Every little bit helps linsleyk Smile

I donate to a local wildlife found once a year. Its all good Cool

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

Bearing down on grizzlies

Years ago, I was surprised to learn that a grizzly bear is protected in the United States, but if it walks across the border into British Columbia, it can be killed for sport. So there was a program on them for The Nature of Things. I was amazed to see pictures from the 1800s of immense piles of skulls from grizzlies that were slaughtered to make room for early settlers on the prairies. Grizzlies were not just mountain animals; they flourished on bison all the way across Canada to Manitoba and south to Texas and California (where the only place you’ll find one now is on the state flag)! Grizzlies need space – tagged animals have been known to travel over hundreds of kilometres in a season. But the cumulative impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation from logging, mining, road building, urbanization, and other land-use pressures have forced them into isolated patches of territory.

The U.S. Endangered Species Act lists the grizzly as "threatened", meaning it is in danger of becoming extinct. Grizzly bears in Canada are ranked as "special concern" by Canada’s scientific committee on species at risk (the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, or COSEWIC) but remain legally unprotected. In the absence of legal protection, they continue to be hunted unsustainably in B.C. Government statistics show that 430 grizzlies were killed in the province in 2007, and close to 11,000 have been killed since 1975.

Last year’s kill in B.C. was a record, something we only found out when environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, were able to pry the information from the government. Most of the bears – about 88 per cent – were killed for sport. The rest were killed by poachers and animal-control officers.

The B.C. government argues that the grizzly hunt is sustainable, but the methods by which it estimates the numbers of bears are imprecise. In fact, many leading bear biologists say the B.C. government’s numbers – about 17,000 grizzlies – are high and that the number may be as low as 6,000. When scientists and researchers are unable to determine accurate population numbers, they often rely on the precautionary principle to ensure sustainable management. This is the idea that when potential risks exist, it’s better to be safe than sorry. In other words, if we suspect that grizzly populations are imperilled, we should stop killing them, even if we aren’t yet 100 per cent certain about the existing population size or rate of decline.

Some might ask why we should protect the grizzly. After all, it’s a large, dangerous animal that has been known to kill humans and livestock. But the dangers are exaggerated: grizzlies tend to be more afraid of than threatening to people, and their impact on livestock is minimal. More importantly, grizzlies are essential components of the ecosystems where they live. They help to disperse seeds and nutrients throughout the forest, and because they eat both plants and animals, they have a significant "top-down" influence on the food web. When salmon are spawning, grizzlies carry the fish into the forests to eat them, leaving much of the carcass behind. Those salmon remains feed many other birds, mammals, invertebrates, and microorganisms, and the nutrients in the rotting carcasses fertilize the surrounding trees. It’s a marvelous story of interconnections and interdependence.

The B.C. government has made some progress in grizzly conservation by setting aside some of its habitat, including the Great Bear Rainforest, as protected areas. But even there, trophy hunting is allowed, and many of the parks and protected areas are likely too small and isolated to maintain the grizzlies’ long-term survival. For this reason, the way we manage the rest of its territory is critical. As a start, the B.C. government must suspend the controversial grizzly hunt, as Alberta recently did, and must continue to protect large areas of grizzly habitat from resource development, roads, and other human pressures. British Columbia is unique in that grizzlies still inhabit much of the province, even though they have been eliminated from almost all of their historical territory across the planet. That means we have a global responsibility to protect this iconic carnivore

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

I donate to helping the wolves and the manatees around here. Cool

Plus am big on donating to our local ASPCA.i know they aren't Wild Life,but they would be if no one helped them....lol Cool

Very true Lara Croft, they would be wild life if we didnt lend a hand Cool

Here, SPCA is a good foundation, its grown alot over the last 5 years. It has a much stronger say in the well being of animals in domestic places. Puppy mills for one. They needed warrents to get on the land etc, now they have the Authority to enter the premises without police & can remove the animals.

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

I watched a show about a man in Canada that raised bears, and then set them free. only to hear they been killed. I cried when I hear stuff like that. right now I have a lump in my throat.we need our precious bears. Sad

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I just heard something big crackï¿½.. holy crap!-Les Stroud

	linsleyk wrote:
	I watched a show about a man in Canada that raised bears, and then set them free. only to hear they been killed. I cried when I hear stuff like that. right now I have a lump in my throat.we need our precious bears.

I've never actually seen a bear in the wild. In wisconsin there's limited hunting of them so that's good. As long as they're regulated closely, and there aren't any poachers I think they'll do fine here. Smile

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Thats really good to hear Mystick Cool

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

I donate when I can to the World Wildlife Foundation, Canadian Wildlife Federation and the Humane Society. Whenever there's a huge natural disaster, such as Katrina or the tsunami, I donate then too. Even if I’m kind of broke at the time and can only send $20 or $50, it’s still something. If everyone even sent $2, think about the impact that’d have.

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Hunters really do a lot of donating, because the money from hunting licences goes to wildlife, and same with fishing licenses. I found out in a class that they take a percentage on guns and ammunition and spend it on hunting wildlife. It's 11% on firearms, ammo, and archery equipment, and 10% on handguns.

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One of my favourite organizations is The Nature Conservancy. They raise funds to buy land that is ecologicaly significant. Sort of like beating developers at their own game.

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"The monkeys are throwing stuff at me again."
-Survivorman in Costa Rica

^ Cool, i have the same site book marked Cool

Very good site & people within.

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

I give to nature conservatory too and to WW F and smaller places.

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I just heard something big crackï¿½.. holy crap!-Les Stroud

The Pine Beatle is now a very big threat to us here in B.C
The very thing that makes BC, BC is the forest ! & these little buggers have destroyed hundreds of thousands of hectares Shocked

. Its bad. The forest industry here will be gone IMO in the next decade or 2. Its already closed down 45 mills in BC. Rolling Eyes

Little bug, big problem

Human beings are obsessed with size. We want bigger cars and bigger houses, and, of course, men want bigger you-know-whats. But big isn’t everything. A tiny insect about the size of a grain of rice, the mountain pine beetle, has devastated British Columbia’s interior pine forests, threatening enormous social, economic, and ecological upheaval. The infestation, which is expected to kill close to 80 per cent of B.C.’s mature pine forests, was caused in large part by global warming and is now seen as a contributor to the problem that caused its outbreak in the first place.

How can something so seemingly insignificant cause so much damage? The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a naturally occurring insect that starts its attack when a female uses its senses to find a pine tree (usually lodgepole) that is at least 80 years old. On finding a mature tree, she bores into it while releasing a pheromone that attracts male beetles. When the sex-crazed males arrive, they in turn secrete pheromones that attract more females. The tree mounts a response by secreting a toxic resin that beats back a few beetles. But the beetles have another trick up their sleeves – or in their mouths. They carry spores of a blue-stained fungus, which are released as they bore into the tree. The fungus puts a stop to the spread of resin and allows the beetles to keep tunnelling.

The symbiotic relationship between the beetles and fungus doesn’t end there. The beetles lay eggs under the tree’s bark, and when the larvae hatch, they feed on the blue fungus until they are mature enough to leave the now dead tree, carrying the fungus in their mouths.

Under normal conditions, with fewer beetles, many trees could successfully defend themselves. But industrial forest-management practices and global warming have helped the beetles thrive. Forest-fire suppression created a huge supply of the mature lodgepole that the beetles find so appetizing. And while the spread of beetles was once held back by cold winters that kill them, warmer temperatures due to global warming have allowed the insects to survive and proliferate, and to spread to areas that were once too cold for them.

The devastation caused by the beetles could exacerbate the unnatural warming that is already occurring. Normally, forests are carbon sinks; that is, they absorb carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it in plant biomass and soils belowground. When the trees die, they stop absorbing carbon dioxide, and as they decompose, they release some of the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. In attempting to stop the beetles’ spread, the B.C. government has encouraged forestry companies to clear-cut large areas of pine forest, even though there are still surviving trees of other species in the infected stands. However, the hyper pace, scale, and intensity of this logging threatens to increase greenhouse gas emissions, as CO2 is released when trees are cut down and carbon-rich forest soils are mechanically disturbed.

Its effect on climate change isn’t the only reason clear-cutting is not a good strategy. Clear-cutting kills immature trees and species such as spruce that aren’t attractive to the beetle. Trees take a long time to mature to an age at which they become marketable, so if we cut down all the pine now, many areas of B.C. won’t have much of a forest industry for 80 years or more, whereas leaving some of the forests to regenerate on their own would mean the healthy trees that are now coming up could be ready for harvest much sooner. Areas that have been clear-cut are also more prone to flooding.

Instead of cutting down the infected forests whole-scale, the B.C. government must ensure that the response to the crisis doesn’t make a bad problem worse. Non-pine species shouldn’t be killed, and large areas need to be set aside to protect the habitat of species that are vulnerable to logging, and to preserve sensitive sites such as wetlands, lakes, and rivers.

We should also learn everything we can from this epidemic, as it likely won’t be the last. Other insects, such as the spruce budworm, are threatening forests in Eastern Canada, and the pine beetle itself has already leapt over the barrier of the Rocky Mountains to threaten the boreal forest that covers most of Northern Canada.

The mountain pine beetle outbreak is a clear example of how our actions can create ripple effects throughout the environment. Let’s hope that by the time the pine beetle runs out of trees to attack in B.C., we will have learned enough to prevent even greater bug-related disasters. We must also see this as a wake-up call about the dangers of climate change and the need for industry, citizens, and governments at all levels to do everything possible to address the problem. Just because the beetles are small doesn’t mean they are insignificant; it’s not a matter of size.

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

I've been hearing a lot about these beetles, from what I gather they're starting to spread across Canada. They're also in Alaska as well...but yeah, they do massive damage.

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	Stephanie wrote:
	I've been hearing a lot about these beetles, from what I gather they're starting to spread across Canada. They're also in Alaska as well...but yeah, they do massive damage.

Yeah I've seen that on the alaska show. Aren't they like spruce beetles or something. Confused

They did sound nasty, they just wipe out huge sections of forest. Sad

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You should have seen the destruction done here in Alabama. It was brutal. Shocked

Fortunately, they have run their course, and have died out.(like chicken pox)

We'll hope they die soon everywhere else, too. Confused

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Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. - Prov. 27:17

The Canadian Goverment needs a big slap in the face on this issue Confused

May 15, 2008 Ottawa - News that the U.S. is listing the polar bear as ‘threatened’ under its Endangered Species Act sends a clear signal that Canada is lagging behind in its global responsibility to protect wildlife, says the David Suzuki Foundation.

The polar bear is not yet listed under Canada’s Species At Risk Act (SARA), despite the fact that more than half of the world’s polar bears are found in Canada.

“"This is a strong step from the US,"” said Rachel Plotkin, the Foundation’s Biodiversity Policy Analyst. "“I hope that Canada is not far behind.”"

The primary threat facing polar bears in Canada is melting sea ice caused by global warming. Other significant threats include the bioaccumulation of persistent pollutants, unsustainable hunting of some populations, and development and shipping activity in the north.

Canada’s independent scientific advisory committee— - COSEWIC - —assessed the polar bears as a species of ‘special concern’ in 1991, 1999 and 2002. In 2005, the government had the opportunity to add the polar bear to the SARA list, but instead returned it back to COSEWIC for a reassessment.

This past April, COSEWIC announced that it is upholding its special concern assessment. The formal COSEWIC assessment lands on Environment Minister Baird’s desk in August. He then can recommend to add the polar bear to the list under SARA. If the polar bear is listed as special concern, a national management plan must be prepared that identifies the key threats it faces and means to address them.

“"There is global recognition that the polar bear is in trouble,”" said Rachel Plotkin, the Foundation’s Biodiversity Policy Analyst. “"Canada not only has to list the polar bear, but look squarely at the green house emissions within our borders - —these emissions are directly contributing to the decline of the polar bear.”"

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A Knifeless Man is a Lifeless Man
Canadian To The Core
We are Known By The Tracks we Leave Behind
Carry Less by Knowing More
Knowledge Weighs Nothing

Yeah government doesn't really care unless someone makes them. Confused

We need people to actively fight for government action or else nothing would get done. Politicians probably don't really know what the environment is like. They probably don't really care about it, it just makes them more popular with the people.

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