Vegan News 6.21.13

By Published On: 21 June 2013Last Updated: 17 January 2017

Iceland resumes whale hunting, landscapers kill tens of thousands of bees with insecticide, geese killed to 'protect' aircraft, marijuana threatens forest animals

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Iceland resumes fin whale hunting after two-year break. “Undercover pictures taken aboard the Hvalur 8 by Greenpeace show the harpooned whale being cut up for meat that is likely to be exported to Japan. Fin whales are the second largest animal on earth after the blue whale and are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species. ‘Whaling is brutal and belongs to a bygone era not the 21st century,’ said John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK. ‘It is deeply regrettable that a single Icelandic whaler backed by the government is undermining the global ban on commercial whaling which is there to secure the future of the world’s whales.'”

Buzzkill: Huge bee die-off in Oregon parking lot blamed on insecticide spraying. “Bumblebees were the species hardest hit, with an estimated 25,000 dead and 150 colonies lost outside a Target store. ‘They were literally falling out of the trees,’ said Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist with the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. ‘To our knowledge this is one of the largest documented bumblebee deaths in the Western U.S. It was heartbreaking to watch.’ It turns out that landscapers had sprayed the lot’s 65 European linden trees on Saturday with the insecticide Safari. The insecticide is marketed by manufacturer Valent as ‘a super-systemic insecticide with quick uptake and knockdown.’”

Soylent Geese: Inwood Bird Slaughter Has Animal Activists Crowing. “The slaughtering of ten geese in Inwood Hill Park yesterday morning has caused outrage amongst locals and goose lovers alike. David Karopin, the leader of interest group GoosewatchNYC, told The Observer that the killing of the animals, which effectively wiped out the park population, was ‘egregiously cruel,’ ‘uses taxpayer money’ and ‘was undertaken with no consultation of the public.’ The USDA argues that the culls are necessary in order to protect air travel, pointing to the birds as a possible cause of the dramatic Hudson Miracle plane crash in early 2009. The killing programs are said to lower the risk of birds hitting the planes. ‘You cannot kill every bird in the sky, you cannot kill your way out of this problem,’ he said.”

Marijuana Crops in California Threaten Forests and Wildlife. “It took the death of a small, rare member of the weasel family to focus the attention of Northern California’s marijuana growers on the impact that their huge and expanding activities were having on the environment. The animal, a Pacific fisher, had been poisoned by an anticoagulant in rat poisons like d-Con. Since then, six other poisoned fishers have been found. Two endangered spotted owls tested positive. Mourad W. Gabriel, a scientist at the University of California, Davis, concluded that the contamination began when marijuana growers in deep forests spread d-Con to protect their plants from wood rats.”

Photo credit: industriarts via Flickr

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HELLO! I'm KD Angle-Traegner.

Writer, activist, and founder of Four Urban Paws Sanctuary. I’m on a mission to help people live a vegan life. Read more about KD…

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