File photo of female moose (l);  at right, in the Iditarod 2009, eventual winner Lance Mackey attempts (successfully) to persuade moose to vacate trail for team.

By Imogen Foulkes, BBC News

A nationwide referendum is taking place in Switzerland on a proposal to give animals the constitutional right to be represented in court.

Animal rights groups say appointing state-funded animal lawyers would ensure animal welfare laws are upheld, and help prevent cases of cruelty.

Opponents say Switzerland does not need more legislation regarding animal protection.

The Swiss government has recommended that voters reject the idea.

There is already one animal lawyer in Switzerland.

Zurich has made legal representation for animals in cruelty cases compulsory since 1992.

The current incumbent is Antoine Goetschel. He has gone to court on behalf dogs, cats, cows, sheep, and even a fish.

Animal 'minority'

He believes speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves is the essence of justice.

"For me the animals are one of the weakest parts in society and they need to be better protected.

"So, it's kind of a fight for a minority that needs to be supported. And to make legislation more respectful towards humans and animals as a whole."

But Switzerland has very strict animal welfare laws, and the Swiss government, conscious that the taxpayer would have to pay the fees for a nationwide system of animal lawyers, has recommended voters reject the idea.

And there is opposition from Switzerland's powerful farming lobby.

Struggling with reduced subsidies and falling milk prices, Swiss farmers say animal lawyers would simply add another layer of bureaucracy to a system already overburdened with animal protection legislation.

Watch out for crazed Central Pk. raccoons!

By ED ROBINSON and HELEN FREUND
Last Updated: 6:26 AM, December 8, 2009
Posted: 2:54 AM, December 8, 2009

Some masked troublemakers are causing big concerns in Central Park -- three rabid raccoons have been found there in the past few months.  Two of the raccoons were discovered last week, causing the city Health Department to issue a warning.

"Protect yourself, avoid interaction with them," said the department's rabies expert, Dr. Sally Slavinsky.

"If an animal looks sick or has trouble walking, then you should tell a park employee or call 311."

If an animal attacks, you should call 911 and seek medical attention, authorities said.  Rabid raccoons are commonly found in Staten Island and The Bronx, but they're rarely seen in Manhattan.

It wasn't known how one found its way into the park to infect other animals, but Slavinsky said, "It's very possible that it might have been dropped off."

It takes several weeks for an animal carrying rabies to exhibit symptoms, and the person who left the animal in Central Park might not have realized the raccoon was infected.  Rabies is a viral disease spread by bites and scratches. It can be fatal if not treated promptly.  There have been no human cases of rabies in the city since 1953.

City residents are being warned not to touch or feed wild animals, including stray cats and dogs, and to stay away from any aggressive or sick animals, as well as creatures who appear unusually friendly.  Skunks and bats have also been known to carry rabies. Pet owners are being told to not leave their animals outdoors and to use a leash.  Vaccinations should also be kept up to date.

The news spooked some parkgoers.

"Those animals are pretty nasty," said Maxi Kaulisch, who works across the street at The Plaza hotel. "As a jogger, that is something I would be very worried about."

Carriage driver Colm Glennon, who works at night, jokingly referred to himself as a "raccoon expert."

"I've worked in this park for 20 years, and the raccoons have never bothered me," he said.

"However, I wouldn't corner them or go too close because then they would probably attack you, and it would be ugly."

By Jyotsna Singh, BBC News, Delhi

The find has been likened to the discovery of a treasure trove

Geologists in southern India say they have found hundreds of dinosaur egg clusters which could be about 65 million years old.

It was a chance find discovered when a team of scientists were locating a place to excavate an ancient riverbed in the state of Tamil Nadu.

As they dug deeper they saw layers of what looked like fossilised eggs.

The photos and samples were then sent to various universities who confirmed that they were dinosaur eggs.

Each egg is the size of a football - about 13 to 23cm in diameter, lying buried in sandy nests.

The leader of the team, MU Ramkumar, told the BBC the finding is significant and could help to unravel the mystery about the extinction of dinosaurs.

'Infertile'

"The important finding is that these eggs have been found in different layers that means the dinosaurs came to the place over and over year after year," he said.

Sauropods are renowned for their size

"The second important thing is that we have got volcanic ash deposits on the eggs which suggests that volcanic activity could have caused their extinction.

"The other thing we have found is that all these eggs are unhatched and infertile. So what made the eggs infertile? We need to carry out further studies to learn more from the findings."

Scientists believe the eggs belong to the docile leaf-eating Sauropod branch of dinosaurs. Their remains have been dug up on every continent, including Antarctica.

Palaeontologists use the term to describe large, four-legged, plant-eating dinosaurs with bulky bodies, long necks and tails and tiny heads with relatively small brains.

Dr Ramkumar and his team have called on the central and state governments to protect what they are calling a "Jurassic treasure trove".

The presence of dinosaur eggs was first recorded in the same district by a British geologist in the 1860s. In the 1990s a dinosaur egg was found in a government-owned factory in the state.

Private zoo on Greenwich-Stamford border seeks to reassure public

Humans project their own emotions onto dogs, researchers found

By Jody Bourton , Earth News reporter

Arctic waters are at best chilly and at worst close to freezing.

Which may explain why a polar bear cub has recently been seen riding on the back of its mother as the bears swim across parts of the Arctic Ocean.

The cub then briefly rode her back as she clambered out of the ice, a unique event photographed by a tourist.

Experts have rarely seen the behaviour, and they say the latest find suggests it may be a more common practice than previously thought.

Dr Jon Aars from the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso describes what happened in the journal Polar Biology.

On the 21 July 2006, Mrs Angela Plumb, a tourist from the UK, was aboard a ship in the mouth of a fjord in the Svalbard archipelago.

I would imagine a big benefit is the ride is faster Professor Andrew Derocher from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Holidaying in the wildlife hotspot of Duvefjorden, Nordaustlandet, Mrs Plumb spotted the mother bear with a seven-month-old cub hitching a ride on her back.

"The cub was on the back of the polar bear when it was in the water, then it got out of the water and stayed on its mother's back a little, then she shook it off," Mrs Plumb explains.

For large parts of the year, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) live among the sea ice, feeding mainly on seals.

The challenge for the bears is to navigate the many areas of open water between the islands of floating ice.

Seeing the bear had a radio collar, Mrs Plumb got in touch with Dr Aars to report her sighting and asked if this was a common behaviour.

"I hadn't seen this behaviour before or heard about it so I asked other researchers and found out it is something that has been observed but not frequently at all," Dr Aars says.

Out of the cold

Cubs are known to ride their mother's back when moving through deep snow as they leave their den areas.

Cubs of other bear species such as the sloth bear also ride on their parents.

However, the the extent to which polar bear cubs hitch a ride on swimming adults in open water is unknown.

Dr Aars was especially interested if this behaviour might have some adaptive value for the bears.

"This could be potentially important because it means that the cubs get exposed to less water. If they are in the water they would have to swim and very small cubs are very badly insulated in water," he says.

Adults are well adapted to swimming in the cold water with insulating subcutaneous fat and and large body mass.

However, young bears have very little insulating fat, as they do not develop brown fat stores until adulthood. Their fur coat also loses most of its insulating properties if immersed in ice water.

Dr Aars suggests staying out of the water could be vital for the cub's ability to survive in habitats where sea ice is scattered across open ocean.

Speedy transport

Another reason for the behaviour could be that it aids the mother's mobility in the water.

"I would imagine a big benefit is the ride is faster, an adult female polar bear is a strong swimmer, cubs of this size are much slower and time in water is time lost hunting," suggests Professor Andrew Derocher from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

"The mother would rather put her time into gaining more food by reaching good habitat rather than swimming and using energy," he explains.

The scientists are interested to find out if this behaviour might be a regular occurrence within the polar bear population.

"It's important to remember the vast areas it may happen in. It has not been observed that much, but it could be more common than we think," says Dr Aars.

Prof Derocher also wonders if the people who share the bears' habitat might be able to help unravel this behaviour.

"It would be interesting to hear if Inuit have seen this behaviour, I'm always very impressed that our observations match what local people have seen before, but they don't tell you about them unless you ask."

At 10 years old, Stump the Sussex spaniel should be well into his dotage. Instead, the dog who technically retired four years ago took home Best in Show on Tuesday at the 133rd Annual Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden, becoming the oldest to win the award...

It was the first time that a Sussex spaniel won the top prize, although the breed, which originated as a hunting companion in England, was among the first to be recognized by the American Kennel Club.

Judge Sari Brewster Tietjen said she made her decision at the last minute.

“I didn’t know who he was or how old he was,” Tietjen said. “He’s just everything that you’d want in the breed, and I couldn’t say no to him."

Stump won the sporting group at Westminster in 2004, but in early 2005 fell seriously ill with an undetermined sickness...

Study Finds Decline of Honeybee Colonies Slowing
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:43 p.m. ET

A pair of baby raccoons, nicknamed Screech and Lucky, were found abandoned at a home on Blue Spruce Circle.

When Barbara Gross walked out to get her mail around noon a couple of weeks ago, she heard a strange “chittering” sound coming from the driveway of her home on Blue Spruce Circle.

Walking toward the garage, she found the source of the noise — two tiny baby raccoons were huddled together and shaking.

Seeing no mother raccoon in sight, Ms. Gross, knowing that raccoons can often carry rabies, took care not to touch them, and instead walked to her deck and watched the critters make their way to a bed of pachysandra to cover themselves.

After some time passed and there was still no sign of the pair’s mother, Ms. Gross started to think something might be wrong. She also grew concerned that the babies would become prey to larger animals.

Looking for guidance, Ms. Gross called Wildlife in Crisis, a nonprofit wildlife care center in Weston that rehabilitates wild animals.  Full story here.

A Wildlife in Crisis worker suggested putting a cat carrier out to see if the raccoons would go inside it, and if they did, bringing the pair to the center. To Ms. Gross’s surprise, the pair went right inside, so she zipped the carrier up and took them to the center.

The raccoons were quite noisy. Ms. Gross nicknamed the bigger of the two Screech, because of the loud sounds he was making while trying to protect the smaller one, which she nicknamed Lucky.

Dehydrated

Once at the center, the raccoons were examined and bathed. They appeared to be quite dehydrated so they were fed from a baby bottle.

“The two raccoons are doing very well and are thriving now,” said Dara Reid, director of Wildlife in Crisis. She said in a few months they will be put in a large pen with other baby raccoons to prepare them for eventual release. Raccoons mature very slowly and usually spend a full year with their mother.

Ms. Gross feels better now, knowing Screech and Lucky are safe and sound.

According to Ms. Reid, many of the baby raccoons received at the center are orphaned because someone trapped their mother. “We ask people not to use traps this time of year, since you are more than likely going to be trapping a nursing mother,” she said.

Healthy mother raccoons are often seen out during the day. This is nothing to worry about, Ms. Reid said.

Brittany Avruda, a resident intern with Wildlife in Crisis, holds Screech and Lucky.
However, if a normally nocturnal animal is seen during the day acting aggressive, lethargic, or seemingly “drunk,” extreme caution should used. These are signs of possible rabies infection.

“We also ask people to please watch for wildlife when driving. Wild animals are very active this time of year, which means they will be frequently crossing our vast network of roads. Dawn and dusk are periods of particularly high activity for many wild animals,” Ms. Reid said.

Orphans
Wildlife in Crisis accepts all species of native wildlife, from tiny hummingbirds to bald eagles. “We want to make sure these baby animals are truly orphans before accepting them. The last thing we want to do is take baby animals away from their parents,” she said.

According to Ms. Reid, many times animals may just need a gentle helping hand, such as putting a baby bird back in its nest. “It’s a myth that your scent will hinder the parents’ return,” she said.

On the other hand, the center receives hundreds of calls from people about fawns lying alone in their yards. “This is perfectly normal. Mother deer only return to their fawns a few times a day, mostly overnight. We ask people to please leave fawns alone and not to touch them. Human scent can deter a mother deer from returning to her fawn. Sometimes fawns end up inside fenced yards or pools, in which case you can simply put on a pair of garden gloves and gently place the fawn directly on the other side of the fence,” she said.

For more information and answers about wildlife, visit www.wildlifeincrisis.org, or call 203-544-9913 if you believe you are seeing a wild animal in distress.

The exterminator Tom Rasberry, with his namesake “crazy Rasberry ants,” in Deer Park, Texas. (Photo: David J. Phillip/Associated Press)

As recently as Wednesday, all was well in Houston, at least according to the papers. But today, a story resembling “a really low-budget horror film” is playing out there, with billions of monsters (tiny ones) spreading in a “crazy” (or astonishingly organized) way with a killer instinct (for other ants, and oddly, for electronic equipment).

Two spine-tingling reports, from The Houston Chronicle and The Associated Press, leave no gory detail unarticulated about the city’s suddenly immense problem with ants.

Rasberry ants, to be specific — a swarming, voracious type of small red-brown ant named for an exterminator with enough experience to play the world-weary veteran in this flick. Tom Rasberry (whose name is one letter short of the red fruit) faced this particular ant menace in Pasadena, Texas, back in 2002, and learned that the pesky things had no problem existing in an ant apocalypse of sorts:

Rasberry said he treated a half-acre plot with insecticide, returning months later to find the area covered thickly with two inches of dead ants. Living insects teemed on the top layer of insect corpses.

No one seems able to say for sure how the Rasberry ant — which the A.P. says is formally known as paratrenicha species near pubens — reached Houston, though the A.P. mentions the possibility of a ride on a cargo ship. However it got there, the species is evidently in town to stay.

While the local exterminators seek stronger poisons and the Texas Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency brainstorm ideas for controlling the ants, an entomologist at Texas A&M University doubted that humans could win. ‘’At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant, because it is so widely dispersed,'’ Roger Gold told the A.P.

If true, that means Houston residents will have to get used to regular extermination calls (nothing new for New York City apartment dwellers) as well as ant sabotage of electrical and electronic devices. For obscure reasons, the insects chew up the wiring inside things like pool pumps, computers, gas meters and fire alarms when they get inside them. Even the Johnson Space Center and Hobby Airport are on the lookout after signs of a Rasberry ant advance.

Though the individual ants seem to wander aimlessly (that’s what “crazy” refers to), as a group their advance can be shockingly efficient, as scientists found out when they studied Biosphere 2, the life-in-a-bubble project that captured imaginations at the end of the 20th century. Here’s a description from a New York Times article in 1996:

Swarms of them crawled over everything in sight: thick foliage, damp pathways littered with dead leaves and even a bearded ecologist in the humid rain forest of Biosphere 2, an eight-story, glass-and-steel world in the wilds of the Sonora Desert that cost $200 million to build.

As the would-be Eden turned into a nightmare, a cousin of the rasberry known as the “crazy ant” thrived, even though it was never intentionally allowed into the ecosystem. A 1999 study [pdf] offered a timeline:

In 1990-91, surveys in Biosphere 2 found no one ant species dominant. By 1993, populations of the crazy ant, Paratrechina longicornis (Latreille), a tramp species not found in 1990-91, had increased to extremely high levels. In 1996, virtually all ants (>99.9%) coming to bait were P. longicornis.

Against all the odds, therein lies the good news (of sorts) for Houston: If the Rasberry ants succeed as well as their cousins did in Biosphere 2, they will wipe out the city’s population of fire ants, or as the A.P. calls them, “the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.”

While the new ants will also bite humans, it reportedly doesn’t hurt nearly as much as a fire ant bite. So, despite the scary headlines, the crazy Rasberry may wind up being an unlikely hero — or at least, the lesser of two evil ants.

V O T  E   ' Y E S '   O N    S H E L T E R - W O O F ! ! !  (How does "Leona's Place" sound for a catchy name for it?)
Leona Helmsley prefers "Trouble" to human members of her family.  Her will has the last laugh on uncharitable relatives.

Helmsley’s Fortune May Go to Benefit Dogs
NYTIMES
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: July 2, 2008
Sure, the hotelier and real estate magnate Leona Helmsley left $12 million in her will to her dog, Trouble. But that, it turns out, is nothing much compared with what other dogs may receive from the charitable trust of Mrs. Helmsley, who died last August.

Her instructions, specified in a two-page “mission statement,” are that the entire trust, valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, according to two people who have seen the document and who described it on condition of anonymity.

It is by no means clear, however, that all the money will go to dogs. Another provision of the mission statement says Mrs. Helmsley’s trustees may use their discretion in distributing the money, and some lawyers say the statement may not mean much anyway, given that its directions were not incorporated into Mrs. Helmsley’s will or the trust documents.

“The statement is an expression of her wishes that is not necessarily legally binding,” said William Josephson, a lawyer who was the chief of the Charities Bureau in the New York State attorney general’s office from 1999 to 2004.

Still, longstanding laws favor adherence to a donor’s intent, and the mission statement is the only clear expression of Mrs. Helmsley’s charitable intentions. That will make the document difficult for her trustees, as well as the probate court and state charity regulators, to ignore.

The two people who described the statement said Mrs. Helmsley signed it in 2003 to establish goals for the multibillion-dollar trust that would disburse assets after her death.

The first goal was to help indigent people, the second to provide for the care and welfare of dogs. A year later, they said, she deleted the first goal.

Howard J. Rubenstein, a spokesman for the executors of Mrs. Helmsley’s estate, said they did not want to comment on the statement because they were still working to determine the trust’s direction.

Mrs. Helmsley, the widow of Harry B. Helmsley, who built a real estate empire in Manhattan, was best known for her sharp tongue and impatience with humanity. She became a household name when she was featured in glossy advertisements for the Helmsley hotels. “It’s the only palace in the world where the queen stands guard,” advertisements for the Helmsley Palace proclaimed.

But for many Americans, she later became a symbol of unbridled arrogance and belief in entitlement, particularly after she was convicted in 1989 of $1.2 million in federal income tax evasion, for which she was sent to prison. She was the subject of a 1990 television film, “Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean,” with Suzanne Pleshette in the title role, and at least three books.

When she died last year at 87, she left all but a few million dollars of her vast estate to what will become one of the nation’s dozen largest foundations when the probate process is finished. She had $2.3 billion in liquid assets when she died, according to the probate petition, and the disposal of her real estate holdings is expected to produce an additional $3 billion to $6 billion.

Even if the resulting total is at the low end of the estimate — $5 billion or so — the trust will be worth almost 10 times the combined assets of all 7,381 animal-related nonprofit groups reporting to the Internal Revenue Service in 2005.

The five executors of her will — Mrs. Helmsley’s brother, Alvin Rosenthal; two of her grandsons, Walter and David Panzirer; her lawyer, Sandor Frankel; and her longtime friend John Codey — have been preoccupied with disposing of the real estate.

They are also the trustees of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and, according to the two people who discussed the mission statement, have fretted about the public outcry that disclosure of its terms might incite.

They have reason for concern: News last year that the biggest named beneficiary in Mrs. Helmsley’s will was Trouble, her Maltese, led to death threats against the dog, which now requires security costing $100,000 a year. But they also cannot sit on the liquid assets much longer without raising questions from the attorney general’s office, which oversees the use of charitable assets in New York State.

The trustees recently hired a philanthropic advisory service to help them figure out a way to remain true to Mrs. Helmsley’s intentions while at the same time pursuing broader charitable goals with her foundation.

Judge Renee R. Roth of Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan will also play a role. She has already demonstrated a willingness to be flexible, cutting the size of Trouble’s trust fund to $2 million, from the $12 million prescribed in Mrs. Helmsley’s will, and ordering that the difference be added to the pending charitable trust.

Judge Roth also agreed to a settlement between the trustees and two of Mrs. Helmsley’s grandchildren who were explicitly left out of her will. The agreement gave those grandchildren $6 million each.

There are many ways the trustees could spend the Helmsley money on dogs. National groups like the Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have programs dedicated to dogs, and many smaller local groups rescue abandoned and abused dogs.

Or the trustees could use the trust’s money to finance veterinary schools or research on canine diseases.

Her goal of helping dogs was not Mrs. Helmsley’s only posthumous quirk. In her will, she ordered that her tomb, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., be “acid-washed or steam-cleaned” once a year.

She also made two grandchildren’s combined $10 million inheritance contingent on their visiting their father’s grave, requiring that a registration book be placed in the mausoleum to prove that they had shown up.

In the spirit of one-ness with Cha-Cha and the dogs on Aliy Zirkle's team, a link to the New London DAY series re: Animal Control, regionalism - check it out!  http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=de532527-29f8-4d62-824b-c8f2c22c56df

A Seoul National University panel said it believed that Hwang Woo-suk never had the data he said he had. Dr Hwang quit last week after the panel said some research was fabricated. Correspondents say the finding is important as individually-tailored stem cells were seen as a key to treating diseases like diabetes and Alzheimers...

Herpes Infection Strikes UConn's Horse Herd;   Whole Herd Placed In Quarantine
By GRACE E. MERRITT, Courant Staff Writer
January 10, 2007

STORRS -- There's a herpes outbreak at the University of Connecticut, but you don't need to worry unless you're a horse.

The state Department of Agriculture, together with the university, has quarantined the university's horse herd until the equine herpes virus infection runs its course.

The virus, a respiratory disease, cannot be spread to humans and poses no human health risk, but it will put a crimp in the polo team's schedule and equine management classes this spring. The quarantine will last for several weeks, said Mary Jane Lis, state veterinarian with the state Department of Agriculture.

Lis imposed the quarantine Monday after several horses tested positive for the relatively common disease.

"It is quite contagious from horse to horse. We don't want to move them around where they could spread the infection," said Sandy Bushmich, a veterinarian and associate professor of pathobiology and veterinary science at UConn.

The 72-horse herd, stabled mostly in two barns on the pastoral Horsebarn Hill area on campus, normally come in contact with other horses during polo matches, shows and other events. The infection can be spread from horse to horse or through contaminated equipment.

"It's like a cold. It's spread through respiratory secretions," UConn spokeswoman Karen Grava said Tuesday.

The disease usually affects young horses and causes respiratory complications, similar to a bad cold. But the infection can also cause abortion in pregnant mares as well as neurological diseases, Bushmich said.

In the meantime, the university has been regularly sanitizing the stables and has postponed student coursework involving horses, such as equine or breeding management. The polo teams, which were scheduled to begin their season with a match against Michigan State on Jan. 26, will have a truncated season. The state Department of Agriculture has also postponed a planned Jan. 20 sale of rescued horses at the polo arena and will reschedule once the herd is released from quarantine.

Outbreaks of the virus have occurred in at least 10 states in the past three years.

HARTFORD — United Illuminating Co. refused Tuesday to suspend its program to eradicate monk parakeets from utility poles, and state officials said they are, for the moment, powerless to stop the killing. Lawmakers, power company officials and some bird advocates met for almost two hours at the Capitol to discuss the parakeet problem.

This month, they began capturing the birds and removing the nests. Under state law, the birds are handed over to the United States Department of Agriculture, which euthanizes them. Because the parakeets, native to South America, are considered an invasive species under state law, the USDA told lawmakers an executive order requires they be killed.

"We cannot at the moment, stop what is happening," said state Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, the chairman of the legislature's Environment Committee. "We have learned where we have to work, where we have to go." Over 130 of the green and gray pigeon-sized birds have been captured since the program began two weeks ago.

UI estimated it would take six weeks to remove the 103 monk parakeet nests from poles in West Haven, Milford, Stratford and Bridgeport. The nests can each weigh more than 200 pounds and hold more than 40 parakeets. Dwight Smith, a bird expert at Southern Connecticut State University, said he told lawmakers and power officials that killing the birds won't work.

An eradication program was tried 30 years ago, and the birds just came back, he said.

"So why can't we come up with a different solution?" he asked.

The Humane Society of the United States and others have asked UI to take down the nests without killing the birds, then send out crews to dismantle them when the birds try to rebuild. The birds, they said, will eventually learn to build elsewhere. Al Carbone, a UI spokesman, said the company will look at the costs of such a maintenance program, but he did not promise one.

"We are going to continue to remove the nests as we have already planned," he said. The pigeon-sized monk parakeets, natives of South America, were imported into the United States by the thousands in the 1960s. Birds that were accidentally or intentionally released by owners and breeders have established wild colonies in cities all over North America.

The public, including the Norwalk-based environmental group Friends of Animals, were kept out of the meeting. The group's president, Priscilla Feral, accused lawmakers of knuckling under to the power company.

A group of Moose Pass residents and state and national conservation organizations sued the U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday to stop the expansion of helicopter-assisted skiing and snowboarding in the mountainous Chugach National Forest south of Girdwood.   They contend the agency didn't fully analyze the economic, social and environmental impacts before it granted Chugach Powder Guides a five-year permit last fall. It would allow the Girdwood-based business to carry nearly twice as many clients every winter into an area 60 percent larger than in previous seasons.

The plaintiffs accept heli-skiing as a legitimate use in a national forest, said plaintiff Rick Smeriglio of Moose Pass. "Our beef is with the process," he said. "We want (the agency) to go back and do it right."

But the lawsuit came as no surprise to Chugach co-owner and business manager Chris Owens. Alaska's fledgling heli-ski industry has faced opposition virtually everywhere it lights, largely from local residents who don't want to hear the whop-whop-whop of rotor blades on a still winter day, or who fear that well-heeled skiers will shred their favorite secluded slope.

"This is where things tend to go if the public process doesn't go your way," Owens said.  Chugach Powder Guides has operated in the mountains around Girdwood since 1997 with a series of one-year permits from the Forest Service. The most recent, approved in 2003, allows it to carry 1,200
clients during the 10-week season and use about 160,000 acres of national forest land.

But to compete in the multibillion-dollar international heli-ski industry, Chugach wanted additional slopes in the backcountry farther south, plus highway-accessible landing zones.

"Alaska has a great reputation for heli-skiing," Owens said. It's becoming known as the "pinnacle of big mountain skiing. Alaska is what you aspire to achieve sometime in a ski career," he said.  "It also has a great reputation for having people sit on the ground," waiting for the weather to improve.

His company has worked around that by taking clients uphill in wide-track snow cats or having them ski at Alyeska Resort. But skiers and snowboarders who pay as much as $5,550 a week for an Alaska ski vacation really want helicopter access, he said, and the new five-year permit offers that.  It expands the company's ski terrain from 159,000 acres to more than 260,000 acres and opens miles of new runs, including many that have never been skied before, Owens said.

"The whole reason we want into this terrain is we need viable alternatives," he said. "We don't want to own the world. We want to have enough safe ski areas that when we have bad weather in one of these areas we have someplace else to go."  Several of the newly approved areas are considered tentative, and Chugach has only a one-year permit to use them. The Forest Service says it will monitor the impact this winter and determine later whether to extend the permit.

In addition, two areas are closed to helicopters for a portion of each week, which the Forest Service says will help ensure that other users can plan a quiet backcountry trip. The company must post all its flight plans on a daily hot line, which backcountry users can call to determine whether a certain valley will have helicopter traffic that day.

To mitigate the concerns of residents along the Seward Highway and other forest users, the permit requires Chugach to follow specific flight routes and fly at least 1,500 feet above ground level.  Helicopters cannot circle or harass wildlife and must honor no-fly zones around mountain goat and Dall sheep concentrations.  It took nearly five years to complete the environmental impact statement for the new permit, which Owens called full and complete.

The lawsuit takes issue with that. The five Moose Pass residents, along with the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and the Alaska Quiet Rights Coalition, say the Forest Service's study doesn't fulfill the requirements in federal law. They want the agency to perform a new environmental impact statement, and in the meantime limit Chugach Powder Guides to its old territory.

Teresa Berwick, staff attorney for Trustees for Alaska, which is representing the plaintiffs, called the agency's study superficial.  "They don't know the actual number of sheep, goats or brown bears in the area, yet they come to the conclusion that heli-skiing won't have any impact," she said. The agency considered sound levels from the company's helicopters but not how it affects residents in the Moose Pass area.

"We just think the Forest Service didn't do its job," she said.  Forest Service spokeswoman Rebecca Talbott said Tuesday that the agency hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't respond to the charges. But she noted that agency officials reviewed the environmental impact statement closely before approving it and upheld it after it was appealed.

The district foresters in Girdwood and Seward "wouldn't have signed if they didn't think it was comprehensive and met the test" set out in national environmental law, Talbott said.  Residents of Moose Pass are shaking their heads over the permit, said several of the plaintiffs. In spite of the mitigation efforts included in the permit, "I think the tone in the community is that our concerns and comments were either ignored or dismissed outright by the Forest Service," said Mike Cooney, an avid backcountry skier, hunter and fisherman.

After the permit was issued last September and the Forest Service dismissed their appeals, he said, "we're left with no choice but to sue them. They've pushed us to this point. We wouldn't be here if they considered more carefully the concerns of the community."

If the Forest Service does another environmental impact statement that goes into greater detail, yet reaches the same conclusions, Cooney said, "I could live with that." Heli-skiing is a legitimate use in national forests and should never be banned outright, he said.

"But I want to make sure that if they expand to this level, the Forest Service has done the job that (federal law) requires them to do," he said. "I'm interested in seeing the forest managed well, and in the public interest, and there are interests in the forest beyond heli-skiing that need to be considered with this type of permit."

Owens said his company's ski and snowboard season starts Saturday. This weekend's clients include a film crew whose previous work has helped create the buzz on heli-skiing in Alaska. 

BANG NIENG, Thailand (AP) -- A year ago, they were filming battle scenes for the movie "Alexander." Now six elephants are pitching in to help with the massive cleanup from the tsunami that devastated many of Thailand's prime tourist destinations.

The massive waves, which killed 5,000 and left nearly 4,000 missing in Thailand, dumped debris more than a mile from the popular beaches of Phuket island and Phang Nga province a week ago. While heavy machinery works on the tangled wreckage that used to be posh seafront resorts, some areas are too muddy or hilly for anything other than 4 foot drive.

So the Wang Chang elephant farm in the 17th-century Thai capital of Ayuddhaya offered to send in its best pachyderms. They arrived by truck Sunday in Phang Nga and got to work immediately - after a quick shower to cool off in the tropical heat.

"The six were chosen because they are smart and can act on command," said Romthongsai Meephan, one of the elephant farm's owners.

The elephants, all males, were cast with Colin Farrell and Angelina Jolie in "Alexander," recreating their ancient roles as battle tanks. Today, they mostly entertain tourists and give them tours around Ayuddhaya, but they also are experienced at dragging logs through forests.

"They will be assigned to work in towing heavy objects and pulling out debris," said Siriphong Leeprasit, a district official in Phang Nga. "Elephants could work better in pulling out the remains of collapsed buildings and houses, especially in areas flooded with mud or hilly areas."

In Indonesia, another 11 elephants - native to badly hit Sumatra island - have been pressed into similar duty because there were few trucks and other heavy equipment to do the job there. A TV report showed them pulling a sport utility vehicle from a collapsed building.

Cranes and backhoes have been used to open routes to areas cut off in Thailand, but many local residents have complained that assistance has been slow to arrive and some areas have still not been accessed, particularly near Khao Lak beach, another hard-hit tourist zone about 50 miles north of Phuket.

So two of the elephants headed into a rough forested road that was blocked by uprooted palm trees, cement utility poles, cars, motorbikes and TV sets. A gray police patrol boat had washed up on a hill, more than a mile from the beach. The receding waters left behind two murky saltwater lakes.

The beasts were watered down by their trainers, called mahouts, then began using their trunks and tusks to clear the road. One mahout clambered aboard each elephant, with two others on the ground leading them.

The animals made quick work of huge muddy clumps of plant material and didn't need much more time to handle the heavy utility pylons. Then, after a little lunch, they were ready to start the next task.

As cold December mornings go, it was one for the birds.

Literally.

Just after sunrise Saturday, with temperatures in the mid teens, bird enthusiasts fanned out across the Hartford area in conjunction with the 105th annual National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count.

Between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5, birds will be counted in approximately 2,000 locations in the Western Hemisphere, including 18 in Connecticut. The information gathered helps scientists chart trends in the bird population. The Hartford area is defined as being within 7½ miles of the Old State House.

Jay Kaplan of Canton, co-compiler of the Hartford-area count, appears unfazed by the weather as he gathers with a small group of fellow birders at the entrance to the city's Cedar Hill Cemetery.

The cemetery's 270 acres of rolling terrain are home to many species of birds, and it doesn't take Kaplan long to spot some kinglets and chickadees, which he says is a "good omen."

Pausing occasionally to allow Kaplan to attract birds with a type of shushing call, the small group makes its way around a pond, where it is joined by two other birders who have circled from the opposite direction.

When they meet, they relay what they have observed - species and numbers - to Phyllis Winer of West Hartford, who is carrying a clipboard and is charged with recording all the sightings.

Winer got into birding eight years ago through her daughter, Sarah, now a college junior, who had taken a birding course taught by Kaplan, the director of the Roaring Brook Nature Center in Canton.

"I guess the reason I do this is because it's fun," Winer says. "It releases stress. It's something I really enjoy."

Pat Junno of Canton says she became involved in birding for similar reasons. "I just find it to be very relaxing," Junno says as she listens to a woodpecker tapping in the distance.

One does not have to observe birders for long to realize they are much more attuned than the average person to the sounds and movements of birds. They are also capable of instantly identifying a species - even from a distance - while the bird is in flight.

After surveying the pond area, the group, which also includes Marianne Piche, a graduate student from Willimantic, and Brian Kleinman of Granby, who owns an educational business called "Riverside Reptiles," fans out throughout the cemetery.

Because the annual count is conducted year after year in the same locations to assure continuity, there are specific locations to be canvassed. At one point, Kaplan decides to head up to the resting place of J.P. Morgan, where he expects to find - and does find - yellow belly sap suckers.

Cedar Hill was designed as a place of serenity open to the public. In addition to birds and all manner of wildlife, the cemetery includes many elaborate monuments and gravestones, among them those of Samuel Colt, Morgan G. Bulkeley and Katharine Hepburn.

Driving slowly, Kaplan spots several birds, including a red tail hawk atop a tree, and a mockingbird, its feathers puffed up to ward off the cold.

After a few hours in the cemetery, the group heads over to nearby Goodwin Park to count the gulls, and then to Riverside Park, to work the area along the Connecticut River.

Coming upon a group of cardinals, Kaplan uses the sighting to make the central point about the purpose of the annual count.

"Fifty years ago, you wouldn't have seen cardinals, woodpeckers, Carolina wrens and other southern or northern birds," Kaplan says. "But because we do this every year, we can chart their progress over time.

"Why are these birds here now? Who knows? Could be global warming, or milder winters, or because backyard bird feeders have become such a big thing."

By noon, the group has seen 36 species of birds - but nothing rare or unusual - with a full afternoon of watching still ahead. Kaplan says they usually see about 45 species each year.

As evidence that birding can be done almost anywhere, after leaving the banks of the Connecticut, the group heads over to another regular stop - the Hartford landfill.

So what do you do when a 400-pound black bear ambles up onto your deck and peeks into your kitchen window? If you're Bonnie Reynolds from Barkhamsted, you take pictures. Lots of them.

"They are beautiful animals and have shiny black fur, very soulful expressions on their face, deep brown eyes," said Reynolds, who has taken dozens of photos of the bears who visit her home near Route 181. "They just happen to be looking for food. We just happen to be their supermarket."

According to the Department of Environmental Protection, Connecticut's population of black bears is growing, and becoming more visible. In the past year, there have been more than 1,700 reported sightings of the animals, with New Hartford in the lead at 153 individual sightings and Barkhamsted following closely at 150.

"We've solicited the sightings for about two decades," DEP wildlife biologist Paul Rego said of a report on the department's website that lists, by town, the number of bear sightings that have been phoned, faxed or mailed into the office. "They give us an index to the populations and give us information on the geographical spread."

Sightings have been reported in about 120 towns and cities in the past 12 months, including Bloomfield with 21, Marlborough with 10, New Haven with three, Simsbury with 149 and Waterbury with six. The DEP estimates that several hundred bears live in Connecticut.

Black bears disappeared from the state beginning in the mid-1800s. Their comeback, according to a DEP information series on the animals, is due to a re-growth of forestland after the abandonment of farms during the late 1800s. In the 1980s, the DEP wildlife division found evidence that black bears were indeed living in Connecticut again and since then, the annual sightings have increased.

In September, a black bear cub was struck and killed in East Granby, leaving an agitated mother on the loose. Troopers on the scene clapped and yelled and the mother and her surviving cub retreated into the woods. In late June, a 400-pound black bear was removed from West Hartford after it climbed a tree behind a shopping plaza near South Main Street and Sedgwick Road. Earlier that month, black bears were pursued in, or removed from, business and residential areas in West Hartford, Hartford, Willimantic and Middletown.

Unlike grizzlies, black bears are seldom aggressive. They are generally shy and secretive, usually fearful of humans. However, if bears regularly find food near houses or places where there is human activity, their fear of humans decreases. In areas where bears are prevalent, bird feeders, birdseed, gas grills and garbage cans should be well-stored or removed.

"We have bears that would be surprised by seeing a human and then there are those that seem to be accustomed to human disturbances and don't run off when people yell at them," Rego said. "It increases the danger level. It increases the frequency of human and bear contact."

In May, a bear broke into a Suffield home and stole a 50-pound bag of birdseed. Caution should always be taken when dealing with bears or any wild animal, Rego said.

"It is a concern in that along with more bears, we've received more reports of bear problems of various types, ranging from bears killing livestock, bears getting into cities, to bears causing damage around homes," Rego said.

Bear sightings do not always warrant a response from the DEP, but if a bear becomes extremely bold, kills livestock or shows up in a heavily populated area such as a shopping district, the bear might have to be removed or killed. The DEP tags bears to keep track of their movements and population but the animals cannot be relocated because no other state is accepting bears for release.

Bears tend to wander when their population grows, crowding their natural habitats and increasing competition for food.

"Hunger makes them more bold. ... The more hungry, the more tempted they are to try to find food near homes," Rego said. "Sometimes there are strong attractants near humans, sometimes they can find better food near humans than where they were living."

For Reynolds, the bears' presence in her life is a gift, not a nuisance, even when they repeatedly knock over her garbage cans or rearrange her deck furniture in search of birdseed.

"I don't worry about them at all. We've got the wild coyotes out here and moose and the bear and the wild turkeys," said Reynolds, who observes rather than encourages her visitors. "When hunting seasons begins, you'll see the bears walking up the road because the hunters are all out in the woods."

Hunting bears is not permitted in the state. New Jersey, where there has also been a dramatic increase in the black bear population, added a short bear hunting season last year.

In Burlington, where sightings are up to 88 over the past 12 months, bears are seen weekly, sometimes daily, First Selectman Ted Scheidel said.

"They end up in people's garages. They've gotten in somebody's goat fence, get in and eat the grain, say hello and leave. ... Those goats just stand still," Scheidel said. "People are seeing too many and they get worried. To me it's a wonderful thing, I don't want anyone injured, but if you take the normal precautions you should be OK."

The DEP recommends that if you see a bear, enjoy it from a distance; shout or wave your arms to make your presence known and walk away slowly if you surprise one. Never attempt to feed or attract bears.
 

NORWALK -- It's a sight New Englanders aren't entirely used to seeing: Thousands of seals swimming through Long Island Sound or hauling out to Maine, where they like to have their pups.

Seals traditionally have migrated into southern New England waters in the winter. But as their numbers have grown following passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, an increasing number of seals crowded out of Maine and Massachusetts waters have been looking to make southern New England their permanent homes.

There are as many as 100,000 harbor seals in New England waters, and yet what is known about these mammals is very little. Regional experts recently met at The Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk to develop a research plan to explore where exactly the seals are coming from, what food they are eating and what kind of impact the expanding population may have on commercial fisheries.

"My personal sense is you've got a lot to learn from the abundant species. It's important to look at Mother Nature's success stories," said Greg Early, a contract biologist based in New Bedford, Mass.

Before the protection act, seals were a dying breed that were once hunted by fishermen who regarded them as their competition. In 1973, there were only 5,800 seals counted in Maine, a number that probably reflects the entire New England population at the time, said Amy Ferland, a harbor seal census researcher for The Maritime Aquarium.

"They were almost completely wiped out," Ferland said.

It became illegal to hunt or harass seals under the protection law and the population has recovered, with female seals bearing one pup each year, Ferland said.

In addition to the harbor seals, there are between 5,000 and 7,000 gray seals that usually haul out to Muskeget Island, between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, in the winter to have their pups.

There are also a number of harp and hooded seals that researchers believe are breeding in Canadian waters and only coming down to New England during certain times of the year, said Gordon Waring, a research fisheries biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Waring said researchers are interested in exploring any genetic links between harbor seals that are mating in U.S. waters and those that are breeding in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Funding for marine research is expensive; Waring estimates that a complete abundance survey for New England could cost as much as $300,000. The count, which includes the use of two airplanes and radio tagging, is completed over three or five years.

To collect diet information, scientists would need an additional $100,000 to look at seal droppings or to examine the stomachs of stranded, dead seals. A research plan for the group is still in the early stages, but scientists hope to eventually secure a federal grant for funding.

Commercial fishermen in Connecticut who have watched their winter flounder population decline over the last few years say the research is necessary to their livelihood. Winter flounder is the most sought-after fish by both recreational and commercial fishermen, said Eric Smith, acting director of the state's Department of Environmental Protection's marine fisheries division.

"If the research comes to show that we're never going to get a strong winter flounder stock because seals are knocking the population down to very low levels, then that would be nice to know. I wouldn't like the idea of it, but at least I would have something to say to these fishermen," Smith said.

Any talk of implementing a controlled harvest on the seals to keep the growing population in check would be met with such strong resistance that it's almost entirely unlikely, Smith said.

"It would take an act of God and probably a bit more for me to think that this country would go back to harvesting mammals," Smith said.

Researchers say the high seal population is bound to have an impact on humans. Boaters and kayakers may be unknowingly breaking buffer zones set in place by the protection act and some seals are actually hauling out onto privately owned waterfront properties.

Maritime Aquarium officials received about a handful of calls from residents last winter saying they had a seal on their property.

Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration has counted 51 seal strandings along the Connecticut and Rhode Island coast this year, an increase of 15 from 2002. In particular, there has been quite a jump in the number of harbor and gray seals.

In southern Maine, there have been between 400 and 450 seal strandings reported since January, Early said. That number has doubled since last year.

"The short take home message to people is that seals are a big part of our sea life now," he said. 

Mitch Demientieff is a native Athabascan. Swarmed by mosquitoes, we creep through thick undergrowth in the forest in the interior of Alaska.

He's breaking branches on the way so we don't surprise any bears. He's doing what his people have been doing for survival for centuries - hunting
for bears.  Like many native Americans, Mitch is classified as a subsistence-level hunter. It means that, by law, he can catch and kill one bear per year for him and his family to eat.

But now, as chairman of the Federal Subsistence Board, he has helped pushed through a new regulation meaning he and other subsistence hunters can sell on parts of a captured bear in a commercial market.  He says: "We depend on subsistence for food but we have to send our kids to school.

"We are not nomadic any more and we need to be a member of the cash economy in the state of Alaska, the US and the world.  Everybody needs money these days. We are no exception to that."

'Growing concerns'

This is bear country. Alaska is a living example of what the lower 48 states were like before the bear population was devastated by the arrival of people.  Poaching is a problem, though, in this vast state which is difficult to police.  Conservationists are worried that protecting bears will be harder still if there are cash incentives to kill them.

Dave Cline of the Kodiak Bear Trust says: "I and others have growing concerns that we can't allow the commercial take of brown bears in such a way that it could lead to the international trafficking of its parts which has gone on unfortunately in other parts of north America and the world.

"That is, killing bears strictly for the sale of their hide, gall bladders, or their claws."

Hunting trophies are popular in Alaskan stores. Across the state all sorts of furs are for sale - including polar bears and wolves.  But not brown bears.  The new law means grizzly furs will be on offer and about $300 could get you real brown bear claws instead of fake ones - though the items do have to be made into a native Alaskan art form, like necklaces.

Gus Gillespie from the Alaska Fur Exchange in Anchorage says: "At the moment we sell artificial grizzly bear claws because there's such a demand for them.  "People come in asking for brown bear claws all the time. And I think that if it's legalised there will be a huge market. I think that the fur itself would probably be used for trim in coats."

The bear regulations come into effect this summer in time for the start of the autumn hunting season.

Subsistence hunters say only the bears already killed for food will be used commercially. But conservationists say the blurring of the lines between subsistence and profit is a worrying trend for this threatened species.

At about 9 a.m., residents of Laurel Road spotted the bear as it ran through their back yard, heading south toward New Canaan center and Wilton, said Mary Ann Kleinschmitt, New Canaan animal control officer.

Animal Control notified the state Department of Environmental Protection and New Canaan Police Department and checked out the area. The bear was not spotted again, and the office did not receive any more calls.

The last New Canaan bear sighting occurred in the spring of 2001, when two cases were reported to Animal Control near North Wilton and Cheesespring roads on the Wilton border.  Black bear sightings in this part of Connecticut are becoming more common.

"They are going to start coming down more often," Kleinschmitt said. "Right now we get the occasional stray."  The DEP estimates that New Canaan and its environs will see more bears in the next five to seven years, she said.  "They are adapting. It's natural for bears to look for food, and one place they find it is near houses," DEP wildlife biologist Paul Rego said. "Are the fears founded?  Black bears are rarely aggressive toward humans."

The smallest North American bear, black bears are the only species found in the Northeast. Known for being shy and reclusive, they live in forestland and eat grasses, fruit, nuts, insects and the occasional small mammal. They also are excellent tree climbers.  In Connecticut, they sport black or brown glossy coats with tan muzzles. Males usually weigh 150 to 300 pounds, and females weigh 110 to 150 pounds. Adults are about 5 to 6 feet long.

From 1996 to 1998, about 90 black bear sightings were reported to the state DEP. The number increased to nearly 300 in 2000; more than 600 in 2002; and about 1,500 last year. Most were in northwestern regions of the state, in rural towns such as Barkhamsted, Burlington and Simsbury, but sightings also were reported in Wilton, Trumbull and Ridgefield in the past year. Unconfirmed reports of bear activity have been made in Stamford and Greenwich.

At Audubon Connecticut's sanctuary on Riversville Road in Greenwich, staff there found evidence in May 2000 of a bear raid on its birdseed bin and beehives.  "It's very typical black bear behavior," Audubon education naturalist Ted Gilman said. ". . . There's no raccoon big enough to do that."

Black bear sightings occur most frequently during May, June and July.  "In Connecticut's case, we definitely have a growing and geographically
expanding bear population," Rego said.  The DEP tracks the black bear populations through reported sightings or complaints of bold or aggressive behavior. While a bold bear -- one that doesn't run when a person approaches -- might not be aggressive, its habituation to humans opens the door to potential trouble, he said.

Problem bears kill livestock and wreak property damage, breaking fences, doors and screened porches and taking down bird feeders. Others wander into urban areas.  "I do see situations where it's unfortunate that there couldn't have been more precautions," he said. "Bird feeders are, right now, the biggest welcome mat around the houses."

Most state environmental agencies have a standard bear policy that specifies response according to severity of problem behavior.  Bears caught killing livestock, for instance, may be shot by a DEP conservation officer. If the event is reported later, the Wildlife Division will attempt to trap the
bear and subject it to "aversive" conditioning -- making it associate the bad behavior with captivity and negative interaction with humans. Then they tag and release it.

If bad behavior continues, the DEP will attempt to catch the bear again and euthanize it. Bear euthanization is rare, Rego said.  DEP personnel have the highest chance of catching a bear in the days immediately after the bad behavior, he said. It is often difficult to catch bears a second or third time, as they quickly learn trapping techniques.

"They learn very well. They have a great memory," said Matt Merchant, a wildlife biologist for the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation Region 3, which includes Westchester County, N.Y. "They develop bad habits very quickly."

New York has 6,000 to 8,000 bears statewide in native populations and transient animals that cross the border from other states or Canada. Any bears found in Westchester County are likely mostly transient bears, Merchant said.  In June 2000, the DEC received a complaint of a bear at a residence in Harrison, N.Y., rooting through the homeowner's garbage. But reports of black bears in Westchester County are rare -- 13 sightings since 1990.

The DEC has less information on Westchester County bears because there is no hunting season, the black bear's major source of mortality.

"Populations have grown, New Jersey in particular, where they did away with hunting for so long and their nuisance problem has pretty much skyrocketed," Merchant said.

Hunting does not seem to be necessary in Westchester County, and bear tracking there is done only from complaint data. Many of the complaint trends follow changes in food availability, he said. Dry years are high problem years for nuisance bears.  The DEC put together an adaptive management strategy for the New York bear population during the past few years. Rather than having a specific population number as a goal, the plan identifies the impact of bears on major stakeholders in the state -- such as agricultural workers -- and aims at changing those impacts,
Merchant said.

If the population of bears in Connecticut were to increase at its current rate for another 15 years, bears could earn the same reputation for being pests as deer, Rego said.  Although the DEP has had discussions about culling the bear population, no formal proposals have been made, Rego said.
"We have encouraged people to report bear sightings regardless of the circumstances," he said. "It's one way we've been able to index what has
happened with the bear population."

Don't laugh. It could begin this summer.  A moose-mover bill is heading for approval in the Alaska Legislature, and Gov. Frank Murkowski looks likely to sign it. Sponsored by Sen. Con Bunde, R-Anchorage, it would authorize state-approved groups to tranquilize and remove "nuisance moose" from urban yards, playgrounds and roadways and relocate them to the Bush.

While almost none of the relocation details have been decided, the idea behind it has drawn support in many quarters, from Anchorage schools Superintendent Carol Comeau, who says she is concerned for the safety of her students, to subsistence advocates, who would love to augment rural moose herds with a few hearty urban transplants.

But the moose bill has met some resistance, particularly in the city it was designed to help. Biologists call it well-intentioned but expensive, potentially dangerous and probably ineffective, while wildlife advocates say Anchorage residents prefer peaceful co-existence with moose rather than their forced relocation.

"Most people don't consider moose to be a nuisance," said Defenders of Wildlife spokeswoman Karen Deatherage. "That's not the majority viewpoint in this city."

The man behind the plan is unfazed by the criticism. Gary Olson, founder, chairman and, to date, unpaid director of the 16-month-old Alaska Moose Federation, said moose transplants are but a small part of his dream to improve the health of moose populations all over the state.  "For decades, we've sat back and watched" as new homes and highways encroached on moose habitat, said Olson, 33. Alaskans love their moose, he said, but "moose have shouldered the burden of conservation by themselves for far too long."

Olson and the federation have a long list of supporters, including Alaska's congressional delegation and half of the state Senate. The group has big plans as well. It is seeking federal money for fencing and overpasses to keep moose off highways and railroad tracks. It proposes mowing large tracts of land and controlled forest fires to improve moose browse. It envisions National Guardsmen plowing rural roadsides to lead moose away from the asphalt.

"It's a public-safety issue, first and foremost," Olson said. Moose-car collisions kill hundreds of moose and several humans every year and cause millions of dollars in damage.  But while the proposed fences and overpasses would help eliminate highway collisions, Olson believes the
moose-mover bill could dramatically reduce moose-human interactions in one of the few areas of Alaska with a moose abundance -- Anchorage.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates the winter moose population from Eagle River to South Anchorage has grown over the past decade to about 1,000. The population is held in check by skimpy habitat and about 160 car-crash deaths a year.

Yet as more moose and humans squeeze into the same space, it's causing friction, Olson said. "These moose have learned not to be afraid of us. They've learned this is their town. The repercussions are pretty dangerous..."

A zoo spokesman ended speculation that the animals had been spray-painted in camouflage colours.  The green colouring is apparently the work of an algae which has found a new home in the bears' translucent hair shafts.

"The harmless algae is the result of Singapore's warm and humid climate," spokesman Vincent Tan told the Associated Press news agency... 

For reasons that require a sophisticated understanding of foreign policy, everyone in Middletown is Italian and everyone in Portland is Swedish. This really doesn't make any difference. Unless you are a black bear.

There you are (if you are a black bear), with no natural affinity for Swedes or Italians, no prejudice against either nationality, no lingering Lutheran animosity for the Catholics on the other side of the Connecticut River (most bears are Unitarians).  But you (if you're a black bear) have to make a choice. Portland or Middletown? Middletown or Portland?

That was the dilemma last month for a black bear named Ingmar Sabistano, who, over the course of a few days, was seen in both Portland and Middletown, trying to decide where to live.  How does a bear get from Portland to Middletown? He could swim across the Connecticut River, but the current is strong this time of year, and he could be swept right down to Long Island Sound - the path that the Swedes used many hundreds of years ago to paddle up the Connecticut River to conquer Portland and drive the Italians across the river to Middletown.

The bear also could have waddled across the Arrigoni Bridge (the Italians got to name the bridge), but how does a 187-pound black bear walk cross a busy bridge without being noticed?  Well, anyway, after wandering back and forth, Ingmar snapped.  The cops and wildlife biologists and a consultant from the Homeland Security SWAT team found the bear up a tree, right in front of the Community Health Center in Middletown, begging for some counseling about where to live. They drugged him up, then moved him to a state forest.

Dog Or Chicken? Chicken Or Dog?

If you're a black bear living in Bristol, what do you eat? A chicken? A dog? A dog and then a chicken? A chicken, but then you're too full for the dog? Yes, that's the one.  This spring, a 250-pound black bear awoke from his winter slumber, ambled over to a Fall Mountain neighborhood, ate some chickens and grabbed a dog, but changed its mind about the dog before it was gobbled. The bear then rented an apartment in Middletown before changing its mind and deciding to buy in Portland.

Pot Or Pan? Pan Or Pot?

According to the Norwich Bulletin, a fella in Canterbury last month goes out into his backyard to turn on the swimming-pool filter and is confronted by a giant black bear. The crafty homeowner apparently banged pots and pans together, which drove the bear into the woods. Pots and pans have long been the effective weapon of choice against black bears. It's a mystery, sort of like why the Swedes moved to Portland and the Italians moved to Middletown.

Bears? This Is Cattle Country

New Jersey politicians, fearing that hundreds of Connecticut black bears would be chased down the Connecticut Turnpike by angry Italians, Swedes and chicken farmers into New Jersey, have approved the state's first bear hunt in more than 30 years.  In December, don't be wandering around New Jersey looking like a bear.

Kiss? Gobble? Kiss Then Gobble?

Alaska wildlife officials report that grizzly bears are confronting cars on the Dalton Highway, where one bear licked a truck windshield. These bears have been known to whisper in your ear, send you flowers, lick your windshield and then swallow you whole.

The Hungry Burglar

Speaking of Alaska, a bear broke into a Juneau home this month only six blocks from the State Capitol, rummaged around a bit and then ate most of a 50-pound bag of dog food. No jewels. No stereo. Just the dog food.

Surprised? Surprised By What?

The official black bear control philosophy, as expressed by Dale May, director of Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection wildlife cops, in The Bristol Press: "People should not be surprised to see a bear in their yard." Unless it's licking the windshield.

Longqiao, China — Timidly sniffing the air, 20 rare Asiatic black bears crept into their new home Monday — a sanctuary prepared by conservationists to save them from farmers who drained their bodily fluids to produce an ingredient for traditional Chinese medicine.

The site, set in a bamboo forest in China's southwest and financed by a Hong Kong animal charity, is part of efforts to stop “bear farming,”
which involves surgically implanting tubes to drain bile from the gallbladders of captive animals.

China encouraged the practice in the 1990s as a way to stop hunting of endangered bears. But injuries and illness suffered by caged bears led to
criticism from environmentalists, who say demand for their bile can be met with herbal and synthetic alternatives.

“We will achieve the final objective of terminating bear farming in China,” Chen Rensheng, secretary general of the official China Wildlife Conservation Association, said at a ceremony to open the sanctuary.

The $3 million center set up by the Hong Kong-based Animals Asia Foundation includes a hospital for injured bears and a 27-acre tract of bamboo forest.  The sanctuary near the city of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, is big enough for 100 bears. The foundation said it will be expanding under an agreement with Beijing to return 500 animals to the wild.

Bear bile, a bitter, greenish fluid that helps with digestion, has been used for centuries by Chinese physicians to treat diseases of the eye, liver and other organs.  China lists the Asiatic black bear as an endangered animal, according to the foundation.  It said bile farming began in North Korea in the early 1980s as an export industry for the impoverished communist nation and spread to China, Vietnam and South Korea.

On Monday, the first bears released into the sanctuary stood at the open gate of their fenced-in living area, seemingly unfamiliar with the outdoors after months and sometimes years of captivity.  Most stayed close to the 15-by-50-foot pen and darted back inside whenever they heard a noise.
Two bears crossed a small clearing to snatch apples left on tree branches by the sanctuary staff in hopes of luring the animals out of their pen.  The others went back inside after a short time outdoors, but the staff said they were likely to emerge once the crowd had left.

Sixty-four other bears seized from farmers are still being treated at the hospital for injuries, said Jill Robinson, the British founder of the activist Animals Asia Foundation.  One bear still in treatment was missing a paw, which a veterinarian said probably was lost in a trap.

The sanctuary said it received 17 newly seized bears this week and had to euthanize three of them because they had painful, untreatable tumors due to their treatment by bile farmers.  Animal rights activists have released photographs showing bears held by bile farmers in cages too small for them to turn around.

Chen, the environmental official, disputed activists' reports that Chinese bile farmers are holding as many as 9,000 bears. He said officials are conducting a survey to find the true number, but wouldn't say what officials think it is.

"They've already started rabies shots, which they did the day it happened," said Lynn DellaBianca, manager of the Stamford Animal Control Center.  At about 10:20 a.m., Debra Andrianos, 42, and her husband heard their three children screaming and running up the back stairs. They were being chased by a raccoon, according to police.

The raccoon jumped on the back of their 6-year-old son and bit him on the neck. Debra Andrianos grabbed the raccoon by the jaws and pried the animal away. She was bitten on the finger, police said.  The raccoon began circling the family. The woman's husband picked up a shovel, struck and killed it.  Animal Control officers picked up the carcass and sent it to the state laboratory in Hartford for testing.

"This was a very vicious attack," said Dr. Anthony Iton, the city's director of health and social services.  "So immediately when we heard, we suspected the raccoon was rabid."  Though healthy raccoons can be "pretty vicious," Iton said, this one was "above and beyond that" and manifesting the behavior of a rabid animal.

Rabies is an acute, infectious and often fatal viral disease of the central nervous system transmitted by the bite of an infected animal.  Early symptoms of rabies in humans include pain or numbness at the site of the bite, fever, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and lethargy.  Symptoms rapidly progress, usually in days, into paralysis, throat spasms, delirium, hallucinations, coma, cardiac arrhythmia and finally death.  Iton said his lab followed up with the family to make sure they got their shots, which block the toxin from taking effect.  He said the incubation period is usually three to eight weeks, but can be as short as nine days, making it crucial that victims receive shots right away.

Police said Andrianos and her son were treated and released from Stamford Hospital and can live normally during treatment. They will receive a series of five shots over several weeks.  "It used to be very painful, but it's no longer as painful as it used to be," Iton said
of the shots.  DellaBianca said the treatment should prevent rabies.  "From all that we've ever heard, anyone who gets shots for post-exposure has never gotten rabies," she said.  DellaBianca said she's seen some people bitten in the past, but usually the animal runs off and never gets tested. Dogs and cats are the animals that she usually sees bitten, she said.

"We send a lot of animals for rabies testing, but only a small percentage come back positive," DellaBianca said. "We really don't have that many people that are bitten or scratched by wild animals. This is a very rare case."  In 1995, a 13-year-old Greenwich girl died of rabies after being bitten or scratched by a rabid bat.  The girl, Maria Fareri, was not aware that she had been in contact with a bat.

Most rabid animals are too sick to attack anyone, DellaBianca said.  "This is just a really extreme case," she said. "Most of the time, raccoons do not attack people."  All warm-blooded animals can get rabies, though some are more likely to become infected, such as bats, skunks, foxes, coyotes and raccoons.  DellaBianca advises having pets vaccinated against rabies. To prevent an attack, she recommends that people not leave pet food or garbage out in the yard.  Police Capt. Richard Conklin said wild animals normally avoid people and advises residents not to trust one that is coming close.

"If they are coming around or acting odd, they should call police or the animal control immediately," Conklin said.

Tatiana's story:  as it happened; photo, map and aerial photo above, news reports from the time of the event, click  here.

S.F. cops tell how they killed raging zoo tiger
John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
 
(02-03) 20:51 PST -- It was Christmas Day 2007, and San Francisco police Officers Yukio "Chris" Oshita and Scott Biggs were driving slowly down an access road in the San Francisco Zoo.

Behind them: a bloody tiger enclosure and one dead man, fatally mauled.

Ahead of them: the Terrace Cafe and the sight of a 243-pound Siberian tiger sitting in front of her next victim, toying with the man as a cat would play with a wounded mouse.

Across the way, Officers Kevin O'Leary and Daniel Kroos had just arrived in their radio car. The man with the tiger was screaming, begging for help.

Armed only with their .40-caliber handguns, the officers had to figure things out in a heartbeat. Shoot. Don't shoot. Distract the tiger. Wait for help.

"I never could have imagined having to deal with something like this," Biggs said. "We never got any instruction on dealing with wild animals when we were at the academy."

Moments later, Tatiana left her victim and turned her attention on the four officers, leaving them with one choice. They responded with a deadly hail of gunfire, and the Siberian tiger soon was dead.

For their actions, Oshita, 31, Biggs, 37, O'Leary, 40, and Kroos, 29, will receive the San Francisco Police Department's highest award for bravery - the gold medal of valor - at a ceremony tonight at City Hall.

The officers have said nothing in public until now because of investigations into the incident as well as pending lawsuits. But, as the department prepares to honor the men, three of the four agreed to tell the story of what happened that night at the zoo.

Just before dusk that day, 17-year-old Carlos Souza Jr. and two brothers, Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23, were at the tiger enclosure when Tatiana turned, leaped over the retaining wall and went on the attack. Zoo officials have said the men must have taunted or somehow bothered the tiger. An investigation has never conclusively proven that.

The tiger killed Souza immediately, then chased Paul Dhaliwal about 300 yards to the zoo's Terrace Cafe and was in the process of attacking him when the officers arrived.

Plainclothes partners Oshita and Biggs were in one car, and uniformed officers O'Leary and Kroos were in another. The first calls came in just after 5 p.m. The initial radio broadcast indicated that a zoo patron had been bitten by "an exotic animal."

"I thought it must have been some other animal, something small, like just a small bite that needed to be handled," Oshita said.

In any case, they responded to the zoo as quickly as possible and learned immediately that a tiger was on the loose.

O'Leary and Kroos (who declined to be interviewed for this story) went to the zoo entrance and used their loudspeaker to order patrons out of the zoo.

A gruesome discovery

Oshita and Biggs went to the tiger enclosure, where they found Souza. It was not a pretty sight, the officers recalled. Gruesome, in fact, they said.

The officers' faces went white at the memory of the scene.

Dusk had settled by now, and they knew a man-killing tiger was on the loose, with plenty of places to hide.

A zoo employee called to them. The tiger, he told them, had gone to the area by the Terrace Cafe, where it had attacked another person.

The officers, with the employee in the backseat, drove slowly down a service road toward the cafe. They looked left and right, up and down, for signs of the tiger.

They were not thinking about confronting or killing the tiger, they said. Their mission was to find and help victims and to secure the area.

That all changed when they came upon the scene at the Terrace Cafe.

At about the same time, O'Leary and Kroos reached the cafe from a different direction. All four officers saw the same thing: Dhaliwal was sitting on the ground, legs extended in front of him, bleeding from the head and screaming for help. Tatiana was sitting in front of him, looking at him.

The officers - 35 yards away - yelled, whistled and tried to get the tiger's attention. They wanted the animal to move away from her victim.

The noise startled the tiger; she reared up on her back legs and started swatting at Dhaliwal, toying with him.

Tiger coming on fast

The officers could not shoot for fear of hitting the young man. They made more noise.

Finally, the big cat turned and looked at Oshita, who was standing with his partner in front of their car.

"She looked angry," Oshita said.

The tiger started toward the officers. By now, O'Leary and Kroos had made their way to the left of Oshita and Biggs.

Oshita said the tiger moved quickly - not running; more of a lope. Whatever, it was fast.

Oshita, who had his .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol drawn, fired three rounds. Two shots hit the tiger in the chest. Oshita said he could see the tiger's hair part, as if someone had blown on it.

"The bullets didn't even slow her down," Oshita said. "She just had this look on her face like, 'Are you kidding me?' "

And Tatiana kept coming.

The officers retreated to their car. To their horror, they saw that the passenger side window was open and they had no time to roll it up. The tiger had a place to attack.

O'Leary and Kroos started firing from their positions to the left. Oshita, in the passenger seat with the open window, leaned out of the car and fired twice more at the oncoming tiger.

Biggs, making a split-second decision, jumped out, ran around to the front of the vehicle where bullets had finally caused Tatiana to stumble to the ground. Worried that the big cat would leap up for one last attack, Biggs shot her once more.

Tatiana, the biggest, baddest, most majestic cat in the house, turned and lay her head down. She was dead. The time was 5:27 p.m.

It was later determined that Tatiana had been hit seven times: twice in the head and five times in the chest.

The officers said they have no lingering emotional issues related to their action.

O'Leary, who saw combat as a soldier during the first Gulf War, said war was worse than the tiger attack. But he conceded that what happened that night at the zoo was surreal and difficult to digest because the fight was different. In war, it's soldier vs. soldier. But you never know what a tiger will do or even how to kill the beast, he said.

"No one wanted to shoot that tiger," Biggs said. "She was a beautiful animal. It was just an unfortunate situation. We didn't have any choice."

US zoo baffled by tiger's escape

The injured victims are described as being in a critical condition Investigators are trying to establish how a tiger escaped from its grotto at San Francisco Zoo and attacked three visitors, killing one. Police shot dead the 300lb (136kg) beast, named Tatiana, which mauled a keeper just before Christmas last year. Zoo officials said they were baffled as to how the Siberian tiger got out at around closing time on Christmas Day. The two survivors have been upgraded to stable condition at San Francisco General Hospital. They have undergone surgery after suffering bites and claw cuts to their upper body. Dr Rochelle Dicker at the hospital said: "Our two victims, I'm happy to report, are doing very well right now. They are in very stable condition; they're in good spirits." 'Aggressive bite marks' Emergency services were called to the zoo at around 1715 (0115 GMT) after the tiger went on the rampage. "There was no way out through the door. The animal appears to have climbed or otherwise leaped out of the enclosure" Robert Jenkins, zoo director The zoo was evacuated and armed police officers and firefighters sent to the scene. It was dark by the time police arrived at the zoo and barely a couple of dozen visitors remained. Three men - one of them 19 years old and the other two in their early 20s - were attacked, suffering "pretty aggressive bite marks", zoo spokesman Steve Mannina told the Associated Press news agency. Officers found the dead body of one of the victims right outside the tiger's enclosure. Tatiana attacked one of the zoo's keepers last year The second victim was found about 300m away, in front of a cafe, sitting on the ground, with blood running from gashes in his head. Tatiana sat next to him and suddenly attacked him again, Mr Mannina said. Officers approached, and fired at the animal with .40 calibre handguns when it began to advance towards them. The third victim was found in the cafe. Officials were at a loss to explain how Tatiana got out of the enclosure, which is surrounded by a 15ft (4.5m) wide moat and a 20ft (6m) high wall. The zoo's director of animal care and conservation, Robert Jenkins, said: "There was no way out through the door. "The animal appears to have climbed or otherwise leaped out of the enclosure." San Francisco Zoo is home to Siberian and Sumatran tigers. In December 2006, a keeper at the zoo had her arm severely lacerated when Tatiana reached through the bars of her cage and mauled her during a public feeding. As a result of that attack the zoo built a new feeding enclosure in its Lion House to protect the trainers as they carried out feedings.

The London-based charity the World Society for Protection of Animals (WSPA) said the animals are in a pitiful state, following years of civil war and the recent military action. Spokesman John Walsh told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the zoo had been 94% destroyed, and now housed only about 40 animals in cramped conditions.

"Rabbits and canaries, the lion, the bear, some coyotes and some primates... and all of them have been forced into smaller cages because
most of the zoo has been destroyed."

The charity has already brought the plight of the animals - including Marjan, a 48-year-old blind lion - to the attention of the British public.  Mr Walsh said the zoo had been very popular during the Taleban era, because there was little other entertainment.

Stray dogs

"We went there in 1995 with the object of taking the lion and animals out... but the government said no way, they wanted to keep them there."

The team will be equipped to handle animal first aid, which could include treating wounds and helping starving and dehydrated animals.  A second team, including a vet experienced in treating animals in the aftermath of disasters, is expected to arrive next week.

The teams will also assess the wider problems facing animals in Afghanistan, the charity said in a statement.

"WSPA is aware that the animal suffering in Afghanistan is likely to extend outside the zoo to livestock and stray dogs.

"WSPA is committed to doing all it can to alleviate their suffering now."

MPs debate

WSPA is an umbrella organisation of more than 400 associations in 90 countries.  The team is backed by a £160,000 ($240,000) emergency relief fund collected from donations worldwide.

Labour MP Tony Banks tabled a Commons motion calling for cash and veterinary help for the creatures in Afghanistan, and the public donated thousands of pounds to help them. 

"At that time, we can have a conversation about the effectiveness of this season's program," said Tom Baptist, vice president and executive director of Connecticut Audubon.  Baptist decided on Oct. 30 to allow bowhunting at the sanctuary after a report by a Yale graduate student said it was the best way to control a growing deer population. The report said the large number of deer was hurting the forest ecosystem and threatening plants and wildlife at the sanctuary.

The town's first selectman and conservation director have agreed with the report's recommendation, as have officials at the state Department of Environmental Protection. But many animal rights activists protested, saying bowhunting is an ineffective and cruel method of managing the deer population.

In the Audubon program, selected members of the Greenwich Sportsmen and Landowner's Association, which includes about 20 licensed hunters, have been allowed to hunt on Audubon property from dawn until 9:30 a.m. on weekdays. The hunting season continues through Jan. 31.  Bob DeLaney, president of the Greenwich Sportsmen and Landowner's Association, declined to answer questions about the program, deferring to Baptist.

The report said bowhunting on the 285-acre sanctuary was the best way to reduce the deer population by about 40 a year to five to seven deer within the program's first two years. The sanctuary covers less than half a square mile.  The 22-page report, prepared by a master's degree candidate at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, examined a number of deer-management methods, including fencing and repellents, trapping, fertility control and sterilization. It said all methods except bowhunting were either impractical or too expensive.

Not that it bothers the Rowayton resident and long-time president of and chief spokeswoman for Darien-based Friends of Animals, who takes a certain amount of pride in calling herself “the punching bag of Alaskan talk radio.”

Feral is well known in Connecticut as a tenacious and vociferous animal rights activist who has protested everything from pig races in Derby to the thinning of deer herds in Greenwich.  The Alaskan tourism boycott, which Feral says has so far cost Alaska $100 million in bookings, is in protest of the state’s policy of allowing people to shoot wolves from helicopters and airplanes, a practice Feral likens to “a video game.” Friends of Animals also annoys some Alaskans by organizing mass protests called “Howl-Ins” of the wolf-killing policies.

Feral is no fan of Alaska’s current governor, Republican Frank Murkowski, calling his wildlife policies “draconian.”

The talk radio hosts rarely miss an opportunity to characterize Feral as an “outsider” and “meddler,” while hunters who call in usually draw on terms unsuitable in a family newspaper.  Talk radio is not the only Alaskan media taking pot shots at Feral. In February, the News-Miner in Fairbanks carried an   editorial entitled “Oh, please Priscilla” that charged that the Friends’ efforts to stop the state’s wolf control program were “futile.” The editorial said Feral failed to rally the Alaskan public to the cause and therefore was forced to sue state wildlife officials. (The suit is scheduled to go to trial in May.)

Not one to let such attacks pass without rejoinder, Feral fired back, saying Murkowski had received “hundreds of thousands of negative comments” on aerial wolf shooting. “Me thinks the News-Miner has an attitudinal ax to grind that overrides facts,” she wrote.

The latest collision between Feral and Alaska’s hunters and wildlife establishment involves an injured female wolf that is hanging around the small village of Evansville on the Dalton Highway 200 miles north of Fairbanks. A few village residents have fed the wolf, an act that is illegal under Alaskan law. Evansville is a cluster of 15 homes, called “a suburb” of the nearby metropolis (20 houses and a store) of Beetle.

Fearing the wolf might injure someone, wildlife officials at first wanted to shoot it. But an Evansville woman, Wyoma Knight, a member of the Inubec tribe, knowing of Friends of Animals’ opposition on wolf killing programs, alerted Feral to the animal’s plight. Feral offered to have Friends of Animals pay the expense   of having the wolf trapped and transported to a wolf sanctuary in Washington state.

By last Saturday, the story was front-page news in the News-Miner. And the radio talk shows were buzzing again.  Monday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced that it would not permit the wolf to leave the state, but neither would it order it shot.

Wednesday, Knight said the wolf was still in Evansville, but she feared it would soon be shot by a local hunter or again caught in a trap. Feral was none too happy with the decision either. "It’s just mean spirited,” she told a reporter. “The nicest thing to do for an animal that can’t get food for itself would be to offer it sanctuary.”

By Wednesday, the wolf story had been pushed off the News-Miner’s front page by a story about a man who found a 7-foot grizzly bear hibernating in his restaurant.

Despite finger-numbing cold as low as 55 below in Glennallen, private pilots shot and killed another 16 wolves in the state-sponsored Nelchina basin predator control program last weekend, bringing their total to 30.

Though the wolf kill cheers hunters who hope to see more moose and caribou in the area as a result of fewer predators, it is painful news to at least some people in the tourism industry.  Mark Reiser, owner of a Wasilla-based company called Outdoors Alaska, said a major client canceled    its reservations last week and is instead going to Costa Rica. Another large group also changed plans, citing the state predator control.

"This program and this national boycott are devastating my business," Reiser said. "I'm a very small business, so the $30,000 in gross revenue is fairly significant to me."

Animal rights groups began threatening a tourism boycott late last year as state game managers turned up the heat on predator control. The Alaska Board of Game eventually approved a plan for private pilots to shoot about 40 wolves near McGrath, using shotguns from airplanes. To date, poor weather has prevented any kills.

A second program would remove roughly 140 wolves from Game Management Unit 13, the Nelchina basin, using a method known as land-and-shoot. Pilots spot the animals from the air, then land their airplanes, hop out and fire using rifles.  The Nelchina basin, known as the breadbasket of Alaska, is an area of 25,000 square miles northeast of Anchorage surrounded by the Parks, Richardson and Glenn highways.

It is historically where residents of the Anchorage Bowl and Fairbanks hunted, and wolf control efforts from before statehood allowed the moose and caribou populations to balloon. The moose population has fallen by about half since the 1980s, in part because of rising wolf numbers, said Bob Tobey, who manages the region for the Department of Fish and Game in Glennallen.  "If we get some wolf control, we can stop this decline," he said, although it won't show immediate results. "We declined so long and so far, it's not going to come back anytime soon."

His goal is to reduce the area's wolf population to between 135 and 165, and to use private pilots to keep it there.  "I'm not looking for a huge kill this year," Tobey said. "I think we're better off taking some wolves every year and keeping the population down."  As the days grow longer and managers get a better idea of the Nelchina wolf population, he could cut off the land-and-shoot program at 100 wolves, Tobey said.

"We just have to see what the total overall harvest is and where distribution is," he said.  The state has enlisted 34 private pilots to do the shooting. They were selected based on their experience in the area, including in land-and-shoot hunting when it was legal or in previous wolf control efforts.  Among the permittees is Micheal Meekin, a longtime Palmer air taxi operator and former land-and-shoot hunter. He went out last week hoping to find a pack of wolves sitting on a lake that would make an easy target. He didn't, he said.

"Land-and-shoot isn't a for-sure thing," he said. A pilot needs the skill to spot the tracks and locate the wolves, then the luck to find them in a spot suitable for landing a small airplane. Then it's a matter of hitting a running target. Some of the pilots are their own gunners, while others are taking a second person along to shoot.

But Meekin doubts Fish and Game will reach its target of 140 animals, he said.  "The wolves aren't stupid." It won't take long before they realize that airplanes mean danger, he said. "Once they hear an airplane, they're going to hook it up and head for the timber. And once they're in the timber, they're safe."

Though he applauds the intention of reducing wolf numbers to produce more moose, he may not fly much more, Meekin said. "It costs too much." He estimated that pilots are spending $55 to $75 an hour, and their only compensation is the wolf pelts, which might be worth $300 in good condition. "It isn't a moneymaking thing," he said.  While a few of the permittees are serious trappers, Meekin said, others probably see it as a resumption of sport hunting.

"I don't think anybody's out there just to increase the moose population," he said.  Some opponents of the new wolf control programs have charged that it is sport hunting in disguise and therefore circumventing two statewide votes in which land-and-shoot and aerial hunting were banned.   Others, including the national organization Friends of Animals, oppose killing wolves for any reason, including state-sponsored predator control. The Darien, Conn.-based group is promoting a tourism boycott, modeled after the lines of successful efforts in the early 1990s.

The boycott appears to be having mixed success. Businesses like Reiser's have already felt the pinch, but other operators believe the boycott may not have the teeth its predecessors had a decade ago. Denali Lodges, which has three facilities near Denali National Park, hasn't received a single cancellation, said Eric Downey, vice president of marketing.  "We were very concerned, but those concerns did not materialize," he said, perhaps because many of the protests scheduled Outside were held in the weeks before and around Christmas. People were too busy to notice, Downey said.

The businesses that form the Alaska Wilderness Recreation and Tourism Association haven't reported a flood of cancellations, said executive director Anne Gore.  "We're beginning to feel a little bit more pressure" since the first wolves were killed, said Gore, estimating cancellations at fewer than 10.  But the next few weeks will be telling for her association members, many of whom cater to the kinds of visitors most likely to oppose killing wolves, she added.

"If (the cancellation rate) continues at the same rate it's going now or it escalates at all, we will certainly need to address this" at the group's annual meeting in March, she said. "I've heard businesses say this is not going to go away, (that) it's just going to get worse and could result in some of the same economic impacts that some of these businesses experienced 10 years ago."

Members of the state's largest tourism industry group, the Alaska Travel Industry Association, also report fewer cancellations than they feared, but they also are watching closely, said executive director Ron Peck. Reservations will continue to roll in all spring and summer, he noted.

"We're not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot," he said.

“Once the case broke I thought this is the perfect subject to show how complex this is,” said Cameron Faustman. “It's been around 10 to 15 years. When it hit here, it was real for us.”

UConn officials believe it's the only college-level course in the United States on mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.  The disease's apperance in the United States generated interest among 50 students in a one-credit course on the topic for the spring semester.

Thomas Hoagland of the animal science department said many students enrolled in the course because they “didn't know much about animals. They didn't know the difference between a cow, a heifer or a steer,” he said.  They learn plenty more than that. The course focuses on science, public health, international trade and nutrition and feeding of cattle.

The class is a natural at a university established in 1881 as a land grant school.  The link between food and human health has stirred public interest before, said Faustman, a food chemist by training. In 1993, E. coli bacteria was found in hamburgers sold by Jack in the Box restaurants in         Washington state. In the late 1980s, there was concern about the use of the chemical Alar on apples.

Mad cow is different, provoking a greater public response. “This, I think, is of special interest,” he said. 

Greenwich officials voted last night to pay sharpshooters to cull deer in three town parks, moving the town one step closer to being the first in the state to do so.

During the two-hour Representative Town Meeting debate at Central Middle School, speakers favoring the move swapped motherly accounts of children troubled by pain and neurological problems brought on by deer-tick-borne Lyme disease with those opponents who had their depiction of sharpshooters luring deer in the middle of the night before stunning them with floodlights and then gunning them down.

"If we vote for this proposal tonight, I fully expect that it will be reported in the New York media that Greenwich has gone out and hired somebody else to do our dirty work," warned James Boutelle, a District 8/Cos Cob delegate to the RTM. "We can fully expect an ongoing blackeye from this."
The motion to approve the funds for the sharpshooting program carried with 61 percent of the 184 voting members present.

Last month the Conservation Commission asked for an increase of $47,000 to its consulting budget to pay a sharpshooter and the supplies required to cull deer on three town parks. The sharpshooting, planned for the first week in February, also requires a permit from the Department of Environmental Protection, which has not yet been issued but if approved, would make Greenwich the first municipality in Connecticut to thin its deer herd through baiting and sharpshooting.

Prior to the passage of a state law last year, the culling of deer were mostly limited to licensed hunting and trapping. The DEP now has the authority to permit municipalities to use methods not open to hunters and trappers, such as the use of a high-powered rifle equipped with sound suppressers and shooting past dusk.

Unlike hunting, which is only allowed from September through January, the proposed sharpshooting would be for the first week of February at the Griffith E. Harris Memorial Golf Course, Babcock Preserve and Pomerance-Montgomery Pinetum Park.  Overabundant deer, who have few natural predators, need to be managed because their large numbers invite swarms of Lyme-disease-carrying ticks, lead to an increase in traffic accidents, and wreak havoc on forest biodiversity by devouring ground cover and shrubs that other animals and plants depend on to live, the commission said.

Greenwich doesn't currently allow hunting on town property, and deer-management activities have been limited to private landowners opening their land to recreational hunters.  The proposal has attracted opponents, such as Karen Sadik-Khan, a District 6/Old Greenwich RTM delegate who objected to the plan of hiring sharpshooters who will do their work at night and use bait to lure deer.

"There's a certain amount of violence with luring deer," she said.  Bow hunters also came out against the plan, which they said was extravagant and ineffective because it seeks to cull deer on three town properties instead of over a larger area.

"This plan is destined to failure from the start," said Jeff Stempien, who also is a Greenwich police detective.  But the plan also received the support of several mothers whose children were stricken with Lyme Disease.

"It completely stole the life of my child," said Diane Blanchard, who besides contracting the disease herself looked on for six years while her three children battled the disease, including one who was bitten a second time and had a secondary infection.  Deb Siciliano brought her daughter Amanda to address the RTM about their fears of contracting the disease while playing soccer near the woods.

"Our town cannot have one more child robbed of their childhood because of this insidious disease," Siciliano said.

T H E    N O R T H E R N    R O U T E

Iditarod 2010 an adventure, not a race, say some; record fast finish for Red Lantern winner (last place finisher)!

Sled cam video: How a musher sees the finish line - 3/18/2010 3:02 pm
Anchorage Daily News
Posted by iditarodblog
Posted: March 18, 2010 - 3:02 pm
From Kyle Hopkins in Anchorage --

"This clip from Two Rivers musher Aliy Zirkle's blog is up elswhere on our site, but is too cool not to post here as well. (Zirkle shares the Web site with her husband and fellow Iditarod musher, Allen Moore.)"

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I D I T A R O D    2 0 1 0    B L O G :  http://www.spkenneldoglog.blogspot.com/ BEST AND MOST UP-TO-DATE NEWS FROM SP WEBSITE!!!  

I D I T A R O D   # 3 8    O V E R ;   R E D    L A N T E R N   W I N N E R   F I N I S H E S    B E F O R E    M U S H E R S'   B A N Q U E T

WESTPORT-RELATED MUSHER - BIB #40 - just behind  Allen and the SPKennel Black Team by a few places...) - follow our race favorites here (and read about Iditarods since 2006, in reverse chronological order)!  Anchorage Daily News: http://www.adn.com/iditarod/

I D I T A R O D    2 0 1 0    B L O G :  http://www.spkenneldoglog.blogspot.com/

The things you learn on the Internet!  Woof!  Aliy finishes with 8 dogs in 16th place!  (in the top ten many many times along the way - when we checked)
For example, Cha Cha (born 5-5-01) comes from the "dance litter" of 4 (Lindy, Rumba and Tango) children of Yuksi and Alberta.  As best we can figure,  Cha Cha is the mother of 15 (in two litters with two different male racing dogs, one in 2006 and the other in 2007) of the total of SP Kennel's 48 racing dogs.  In 2010, Cha Cha was lead dog for the Red Team - but was "dropped" close to the end - and the new "lead dog" was young Dingle - son of Cha Cha and Pingo!  Was this a message?  Will Cha Cha retire?  Tune in next year for our coverage of Iditarod #39!

NOME -- Pumping his fist as he approached the finish line, Lance Mackey won the Iditarod Trial Sled Dog Race on Tuesday afternoon, becoming the first musher to take four straight.

Mackey, 39, and his team of 11 dogs passed under the burled arch at 2:59 p.m., becoming the second musher in race history to finish in less than 9 days -- by just 51 seconds.

"I had seven dogs who would go to the end of the earth for me, and nine more who would try," Mackey said at the finish line. "I've got a lot of young superstars and a bright future with them.

"I'll probably be back next year," he added. "I don't see why not. I'm a little beat up, though. I can only be so tough so long."

The feat earned him a check for $50,400 and a new Dodge truck.

Hans Gatt of Whitehorse finished second at 4:04 p.m., and Jeff King of Denali Park was headed for a third-place finish late this afternoon.

Under a bluebird sky, Mackey's dogs trotted down Front Street while the big afternoon crowd surged forward, narrowing the slot of snow through which he could pass.

"I drew the right (bib) number, 49, representing the whole state of Alaska and the people who believed in me," he said. "It was an amazing welcome as usual. People were cheering as if it was my first one."

Two of Mackey's stalwart dogs, Rev, who's missing his left ear tip, and Maple, sat with Mackey under the burled arch, adorned with collars of yellow roses. Mackey draped his arms around them and planted a kiss on their fur.

"They may not be the fastest team in this race," Mackey said. "But they've got the biggest hearts."

The Mackey family now owns six titles -- one by his father Dick in 1978, one by his half-brother Rick in 1983 and Lance's four.

Only four other mushers have that many. Rick Swenson of Two Rivers has five. Mackey, King, Martin Buser of Big Lake, Swingley and Butcher are the others.

Lance's career began slowly with a 36th place finish in 2001, his first race.

Cancer turned his life upside down three days after the end of that race.

Doctors determined that the piercing headaches he had been experiencing for were were due to a squamous cell carcinoma growing rapidly in his neck. To save Mackey's life, doctors cut out muscle, lymph nodes, the internal jugular vein and several nerves.

Twelve weeks of post-surgery radiation follow, but the radiation ate away at his jawbone, costing him 10 teeth. He also has limited mobility in his right arm and radiation treatments left his body weakened against the cold.

Relentless running turned the tables for Mackey in this year's race. His dogs delivered a stunning run of about 140 miles from Nulato to Unalakleet without a significant rest to vault past Jeff King into a lead they'd never relinquish.

Imagine running five marathons back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Mackey's dogs went a little farther -- and then kept it up all the way to Nome.

"I'm totally willing to gamble any time any day," Mackey said back in Unalakleet. "I'm not afraid to lay it on the line."

It wasn't the first time King had fallen victim to a bold Mackey ploy. Two years ago, King seemed poised to pass Mackey in the home stretch but Mackey slipped out of the Elim checkpoint as King slept to gain the upper hand.

"I wondered," King said this year in Shaktoolik, "maybe that 140-mile run was a little much. But they came back."

Since the race's rag-tag, thrown-together beginnings in 1973, some 817 mushers have guided dog teams to Nome. Eighteen have been crowned champion. Only one has worn that crown four consecutive years.

The late, great Susan Butcher had her string of three straight stopped in 1989 by Nenana's Joe Runyan; Butcher won again in 1990.

More recently, Doug Swingley of Montana dominated the 1,000-mile marathon from 1999-2001, a streaked ended when Martin Buser of Big Lake authored the fastest Iditarod ever. Swingley lollygagged into town in 40th place that year and proceeded to use the burled arch as his wedding chapel, marrying longtime companion Melanie Shirilla as dogs stood by as canine bridesmaids and groomsmen.

"There's a hell of a lot of good dog teams in this race with exceptional drivers who are very focused and determined," Mackey said earlier. "Hans Gatt just whipped my butt in the Yukon Quest."

But he couldn't do it again.

Nevertheless, Gatt's second-place finish was another piece of evidence that winning the Quest was a sure route to the top of the Iditarod leader board. In 2007, Mackey first pulled off what had been considered an impossible double.

Impossible?

In four years, the Quest champions have gone first-first-second-second just weeks after their first 1,000-mile ultramarathon.

Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/03/16/1185841/mackey-wins-record-fourth-straight.html#ixzz0iRPhR1Bh

Mackey begins final Iditarod leg with lead
YAHOO
16 March 2010

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – "See you in Nome." With those words and two-hour lead, musher Lance Mackey hit the trail for the final leg of the 1,100-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race.

Mackey left the White Mountain checkpoint at 4:43 a.m. following a mandatory eight-hour layover. He had a one hour, 57-minute lead on his closest competitor, Hans Gatt of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

The front-runners were expected to reach the Nome finish line 77 miles from White Mountain on Tuesday afternoon.

Four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King of Denali Park remains in third place.

HOW IS ALIY & SP KENNEL DOING?  WOOF!!!  Cha Cha leads the team and crosses the Yukon River (see multi-part video of the crossing here);  Our observation from checking temperatures, etc. - this was a tough Iditarod for the dogs, as the cold weather did take its toll - Aliy "lost" lots of time putting on extra booties and coats for the team so they wouldn't get a "chicken legs" effect from ice-balls (see video report from the trail);  musher with Westport relatives at rest (r.)

Behind Mackey, surgers and strugglers
Anchorage Daily News
By MIKE CAMPBELL, mcampbell@adn.com
Published: March 15th, 2010 07:43 PM
Last Modified: March 16th, 2010 06:48 AM

Three-time champion Lance Mackey pulled into Elim early this afternoon, fed his dogs and mushed on, seeking to expand a comfortable lead of more than two hours in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

For more than a day now, Mackey has posted faster run times than second-place Jeff King, and his dozen dogs have required less rest, allowing the defending champion to gradually pull away. Absent a mistake over the final 120 miles, a fourth consecutive Iditarod should be his.

But behind, a handful of racers too far back to win were looking to improve their positions -- and earnings -- on the homestretch. After all, the battle for first isn't the only one being waged in the 38th Iditarod. And in any race, there are success stories and disappointments.

COMING ON

• Ken Anderson of Fox has finished as high as fourth in the Iditarod, but halfway through this year's race in Cripple he was 19th and struggling to stay in the money. But he's mounted an excellent second half to move steadily up the rankings to fourth. Here's how, according to race blogger Jon Little, writing for Dr. Tim's Pet Food Co.:

"Anderson came up with a new wrinkle this year that's been talked about but rarely attempted. It took nerve and a willingness to camp out in cold, windy conditions late in an exhausting race.

"He blew through Kaltag, stopping only 10 minutes to pick up supplies such as straw, food and fuel, and continued on to camp -- somewhere. I think he probably had the team run all the way to Old Woman cabin, which is about four hours from Unalakleet. The team rested there a good while.

"Then he blew through Unalakleet and went a couple more hours, and camped again, somewhere in the Nulato Hills. Then he blew through Shaktoolik, again stopping only to resupply, and finally pulled over at Koyuk -- in fourth place.

"He wound up camping just twice between Nulato and Koyuk, instead of three times as most dog teams did. Can Anderson hold his very hard-earned advantage?"

• Ramey Smyth of Willow is known as the fastest closer in Iditarod history, having won the final 22-mile Safety-to-Nome dash a record seven times. This year, he's winding it up early. Smyth made the 50-mile run from Shaktoolik to Koyuk in an impressive 7 hours, 6 minutes to land the Willow musher in eighth place. His time to Koyuk was a full 98 minutes faster than the time of Hugh Neff, who's sitting three spots ahead.

"Smyth is a master of closing the deal, and he's the last musher you want chasing you down in the final 150 miles of the Iditarod," writes Little in his race blog. "Smyth is three hours behind Anderson arriving at Koyuk, but his run time of seven hours is significantly faster than the rest. He should move up."

It's been an extraordinary turnaround in a few short months for Smyth. At the Kuskokwim 300, he finished a disappointing seventh, one spot better than he did a month later at the Tustumena 300. Desperate, he entered the Earl Norris Open for sprint mushers in Willow, finishing a distant 12th.

"I just don't have any money," he said at the time. "My dogs have a really bad flu, too, that seems to be dragging on and on."

Consider them recovered.

• Aliy Zirkle (above) of Fairbanks has been the model of consistency, at the bottom of the top 10 or in the low teens most of the race. Topping her best-ever Iditarod finish of 11th in 2005 is well within reach of the former Yukon Quest champion.

• Dallas Seavey of Seward earned the halfway prize by mushing to Cripple before taking his 24-hour layover. That strategy earned him $3,000 and the view of a lot of dog rear ends that passed while he rested. But Seavey, 23, patiently worked his way back to the top 10. Now he's only five hours behind his dad, Mitch. Can he can catch him?

• DeeDee Jonrowe of Willow is exhibiting all the skill that makes her a 14-time top-10 finisher. Jonrowe left the halfway point of Cripple in 26th place, down to just eight dogs. But she has done a superb job coaxing that group to the coast, with a good shot at a top-20 finish, no small accomplishment.

• Dan Kaduce of Chatanika is topping what most consider a strong rookie field in 23rd place out of Unalakleet. While an Iditarod rookie, Kaduce is no greenhorn -- he has four top-10 finishes in the Yukon Quest. Fellow rookie Michael Williams Jr. of Akiak is 27th.

• Wattie McDonald of Scotland "is having a magical race," writes Little. "McDonald, whose entire background consisted of running dry-land cart races with Siberians before he spent the last two winters working with 1984 champion Dean Osmar of Kasilof to get qualified for the Iditarod. Somehow, he maintained an entire 16-dog team all the way to the Yukon River. His run times have been excellent, which isn't a surprise since he's running Osmar's main dogs."

STRUGGLING:

• Sven Haltmann, the young Swiss immigrant, flirted with the top five in the first half of the race and is now struggling to hang onto a top-20 spot. He's down to nine dogs.

• Cim Smyth, Ramey's younger brother, was at the front of the pack during the race's early days. After a fifth-place finish last year, some thought he might contend. But he was down to 22nd, with just nine dogs, out of Unalakleet this morning.

• Paul Gebhardt of Kasilof looked to have recaptured the magic that got him two runner-up finishes, contending for the lead in the race's first few days. He's fallen to 25th out of Unalakleet. In fact, his former handler Kristy Berington is now just 10 spots back.

• Sebastian Schnuelle of Whitehorse, who's planning to move from mushing to sailing, was looking to go out with a bang. That could only mean one thing for last year's Yukon Quest champion and Iditarod runner-up -- an Iditarod title. But Schnuelle was ninth out of Shaktoolik and seemed poised to fall out of the top 10. Perhaps he was one musher who benefited from running the Quest and Iditarod back to back, something he did several times before passing on this year's Quest.

This was where Aliy spent her rest sewing extra protective stuff to shield Cha Cha's limbs and ankles.

WARM UP RACES FOR IDITAROD 2010!!!
The RED TEAM (Aliy) and the BLACK TEAM (Allen)...

• Denali Doubles Sled Dog Race - SP Kennel finishes #4 and #11with two teams of two mushers in it - Aliy took a veterinarian as co-pilot!   Woof!!!
• Copper Basin 300: Allen Moore finishes in second place, Aliy is #11 and Bridget, Allen's daughter, finished #24 - SP Kennel wins HUMANITARIAN AWARD!!!

The Iditarod race route shifts every other year - so 2009 should be like...2007, shown just below!  MAP ABOVE SHOWS BOTH ROUTES!

We followed the race by clicking on map at top, Aliy & Allen pass each other in Takotna:  News on Aliy: http://iditarodblogs.com/teachers/2009/11/04/meet-the-musher-aliy-zirkle/

Keep track of who's doing what...Aliy at the ceremonial start.  Cha Cha and her daughter Minnie, pictured above; Lance Mackey faces down a moose early in the race - which he won for the third time;  cold, it was REALLY cold this year!  At the finish with SP Kennel Team.