- Some seventy years ago Orwell mused, “Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.” Indeed! Four south African nations gear up for only the second ivory auction since the worldwide criminalization of the ivory trade in 1989, according to the BBC. They hope to raise tens of millions for elephant conservation efforts. NGOs are fretting the sale’s an incentive to poachers, while TRAFFIC attempts to sooth them with line graphs. Just a week ago, eBay caved to pressure to drive ivory traffickers out of its virtual vendue; 39,000 frantic sellers have nine weeks to unload their wares. Did someone say stocking stuffers?
- Searchers are giving up hope of every finding those missing killer whales. “The population drop is worse than the stock market,” proclaims the Center for Whale Research’s Ken Balcomb, tagging into this bizarre fight eco-doomsayers have picked with the Dow Jones. But in all seriousness, the remaining number of “southern resident” orcas only just outnumbers the years since Black Friday.
- Bright side: The youth of Rotterdam have got Looten Plunder on the run with their (Dance! Dance!) Revolution! Read about here, or better yet head right to Club Watt’s almost erotic promotional video. (But big party foul with this head-scratching headline. What was it Aldo Leopold said about growing accustomed to thinking breakfast comes from the market and heat from the furnace? Apparently, CNN is hoping electricity comes from Eurotrash.)
- The (invasive) Frankenfish will not be listed as an endangered species. A group of westerners, opposed to the ESA, applied for the listing to show easterners the kind of damage a listing can have: protecting the northern snakehead fish would’ve covered all of the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding watersheds. I’m guessing the judge wasn’t amused.
- WWF has found at least 9 polar bears swimming in open ocean. Despite resistance from global warming “skeptics” that Arctic sea ice was actually growing this year (oh really? Up from its smallest extent ever?), it looks like the extent of ice this year will be as bad or worse than last year’s. Professor Richard Steiner: “While these bears are swimming around in an ice-free coastal Arctic Ocean, the only thing the State of Alaska is doing is suing the federal government trying to overturn the listing of polar bears.”
- Poachers in Virunga National Park in the DRC have killed 1/5 of elephants for ivory to export to China this year.
- In other news, Barack Obama has called the folks on his short list who will not receive the nomination. News organizations have failed to discover whom he’s called, but no doubt the FBI, the CIA, the White House, Department of Justice, Joe Lieberman, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and everybody else now not covered under the non-existent FISA act is selling furiously on InTrade.
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