River otters have made a comeback in West Virginia and might be rewarded with a place on the trapping list. Generally, I think I’m pretty good at not anthropomorphizing animals, but killing otters does seem a good deal like killing preschoolers. But I’ll harden my heart.

(While I was researching this post, my girlfriend stumbled upon a wonderful tongue-twister: “otter article.”  Enjoy!)

There’s been a lot of news about sea lions in California recently. It started when the famous sea lions at Pier 39 in San Francisco went missing (don’t worry, they’re coming back). Then Oregon wildlife officials started euthanizing sea lions for eating the endangered chinook salmon. Now this from the LA Times, where “starving sea lion pups” are showing up on beaches in Orange County. Many of these stories present the phenomenon as something of a mystery: something unusual is going on with sea lions. A suggestion that it might have something to do with El Niño.

Thanks to the internet (and a proxy to Cal’s library), that can easily be checked. A search for California sea lions from 1998-1999 on LexisNexis reveals:

CONSERVATION officials have found at least 700 pups of the rare New Zealand sea lion dead on a sub-Antarctic island, adding to reports of sea lion deaths in California, Chile and Peru. (The Scotsman, Jan 30 1998)

BABY seals and sea lions, deprived of food by the oceanic warming of El Nino, the weather phenomenon, are dying by the thousand on the islands off southern California. (Times of London, Dec 9 1997)

Note also that, perhaps not coincidentally, this was the year that orcas were first spotted hunting sea otters.

Let’s get everyone back up to speed. Here’s part 1, through December 15.

• Bush did, indeed, change some rules in the ESA, but it’s probably not as bad as it could’ve been.
• It’s time to re-read the Lorax.
• Otters are moving back into towns and cities in England.
• Snow geese eggs may become a larger part of polar bears’ diet. Do you smell a Red List upgrade (downgrade)?
• Remember the Laotian rock rat that was discovered in a market in Laos? WWF has released a report (PDF) on its findings in the Mekong, with more than 1,000 new species described.
• An Inspector General report of the Bush-era Interior Department was released. It’s not pretty.