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    Stress From Fireworks Killed Baby Red Panda, Zoo in Scotland Says

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    Camera footage showed Roxie, a three-month-old, agitated by the noise. She died shortly afterward.Roxie, a three-month-old panda, had just lost her mother, Ginger, five days earlier. Though the zookeepers at the Edinburgh Zoo were initially worried that she might not pull through, they became optimistic when she began to eat independently.That optimism quickly turned to despair, after camera footage showed Roxie becoming agitated during a continual din of fireworks as the city celebrated its annual Bonfire Night.“Roxie was very frightened by the fireworks,” Ben Supple, the deputy chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which runs the zoo, said on Thursday night.Roxie became ill, choked on her vomit, and died on Nov. 5. “It’s very sad to have lost Roxie at such a particularly young age,” Mr. Supple said. “Roxie would have been a wonderful ambassador for red pandas.”The zoological society is now calling for greater restrictions on the extensive fireworks displays that are a trademark of Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Night, the Nov. 5 celebration named after a participant in a failed plot in 1605 to kill King James I.More than one million have signed a public petition seeking tighter controls on fireworks displays. The petition was delivered to the British government last week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hurricanes Spur Pet Adoptions Nationwide. Should You Get a ‘Storm Dog’?

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      Amid major disasters, shelter animals are often sent to other states. And people are more likely to foster and adopt. Here’s what to know.Just days after Hurricane Milton hit Florida last week, about a dozen shelter dogs from a small town in Hendry County had already been flown to Texas. Several dozen other animals, from Pinellas County, had been taken by truck to shelters in Massachusetts and New York.They were part of the country’s latest diaspora of storm animals, dogs and cats scattered across the country by back-to-back hurricanes — Milton and Helene — which wreaked havoc across a vast swath of the United States this fall.Who transports these shelter animals and how does it work? Here’s what you need to know.Shelter animals often end up in faraway states after a disaster. Why?There are Harvey cats in California and Maria dogs in New York.If you have ever heard someone say their dog was rescued from a storm thousands of miles away, you might have wondered how they ended up so far from home.It comes down to a coordinated effort between shelters and national groups like the Humane Society, the ASPCA and the Best Friends Animal Society, as well as smaller public and private agencies.Year-round, these groups work to send animals from shelters facing overcrowding and low adoption rates to ones in other parts of the country where there is more space, and greater demand. When disaster strikes, the pace picks up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hurricane Milton Leaves Many Florida Animals in Limbo

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      Hurricane Milton has displaced people all over Florida. It left thousands of shelter animals in limbo, too.On Friday, animal shelters in Florida were struggling to handle an influx of animals after the storm and scrambling to relocate them, sending some as far away as Massachusetts.Temporary evacuation centers for animals had opened, including one at Alaqua Animal Refuge, in Florida’s Northern Panhandle, which began receiving animals from coastal areas at risk of flooding. Even small shelters were taking in animals, wherever they had spare kennels.“Many shelters were over capacity before the storm,” said Sharon Hawa, senior manager of emergency services at Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization that helped coordinate the transport of around 250 of Florida’s shelter animals this week.In an event like Milton, Ms. Hawa said, shelters usually receive animals picked up by people who are concerned that the strays could die in a storm, as well as ones that get separated from their owners during the storm.“Then there are animals that have already been part of their shelter population,” Ms. Hawa said, adding, “You’re talking about potentially 50, 60, 70, maybe 100 more animals.”On top of that, some shelters suffered property damage. “There are shelters where people are having to wade through water to get there to see if their shelter can even be operational,” Ms. Hawa said.In the lead-up to the storm, people in Clewiston, Fla., about 80 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale, brought in several stray dogs to the city, said Thomas Lewis, the police chief. Soon, the city’s animal services, which was only set up to handle 14 dogs, had more than 50. And Clewiston was in the direct path of the storm.Mr. Lewis wanted to save the animals, a mix of pit bull mutts and small dogs, and worked with Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League, in West Palm Beach, to relocate more than 40 of them.Nearly all were taken by truck to West Palm Beach. From there, 10 of them were flown to Panama City Beach, and from there, they continued their journey to the Humane Society of North Texas.Chief Lewis said it was good that they had been relocated, since the town was hit by tornadoes. But he wondered what would happen to them next. More

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      3 Idaho Big-Game Guides Led Illegal Mountain Lion Hunts, U.S. Says

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      The three face federal charges for leading hunts as part of an unlicensed outfitting business separate from their employer, federal prosecutors said.Three big-game hunting guides in Idaho are facing federal charges that they illegally led mountain lion hunts in national forests and then shipped some of at least a dozen carcasses out of state, according to federal prosecutors.All three people were licensed guides in the state and employed by a legal outfitter, but they also booked clients for mountain lion hunts separately from their employer starting in December 2021, the U.S. attorney’s office in Idaho said in a news release.The three guides, Chad Michael Kulow, 44, Andrea May Major, 44, and LaVoy Linton Eborn, 47, led paying clients on hunts through Caribou-Targhee National Forest in southeast Idaho and the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming as part of an unlicensed business, the prosecutors said. Their groups killed 12 mountain lions from December 2021 to February 2022, prosecutors said.It’s legal to hunt mountain lions in Idaho for most of the year with proper licensing. The three guides are accused of running an unlicensed outfitter in a side business and not following federal and state reporting requirements of the mountain lion kills.At least three of the mountain lions killed during these hunts were shipped to Texas without being presented to Idaho Fish and Game, the state agency that oversees hunting, prosecutors said. Hunters in Idaho must report and present any mountain lions to the state agency within 10 days of their being killed, according to its hunting season manual. The three hunters also used false business information in their big game mortality reports, which is required by the state agency, prosecutors said.The three were indicted in August on several charges, including conspiracy and violating the Lacey Act, a federal law that prohibits transporting animals that are illegally taken or possessed. All three were arrested last week and have pleaded not guilty to the charges.Lawyers representing the three defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.The most serious charges the three face carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.Nicholas Arrivo, the managing attorney for animal protection law at the Humane Society of the United States, said that the Lacey Act was “vigorously” enforced and has been around since 1900. The law, among the oldest related to wildlife in the country, is meant to prevent illegal animal trafficking, he said.Kristin Combs, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, said that while most hunters in her state hunted for food, she had noticed that wildlife was increasingly “valued in a very different way.”“This is totally trophy hunting,” she said. “No one is out there, like, eating mountain lion.”She said that trophy hunting — the hunting of animals to display their bodies rather than for food — had increased in recent years.But Ms. Combs added that she did not often hear about outfitters or licensed guides leading illegal hunts.“Mostly,” she said, “outfitters and guides have licenses and want to keep them.” More

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      JD Vance’s obsession with cats is bizarre. He needs to stop spreading fake mews | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Want to know the secret to winning elections and influencing people? Cat memes. This is according to JD Vance, who, you might have noticed, has a bizarre fixation with felines. Donald Trump’s running mate – a man who might soon become one of the most powerful people in the world – has been widely ridiculed and condemned for his comments about “childless cat ladies”. But instead of trying to move the news cycle on from cat-related matters, he seems to have doubled down on them. Vance is now in the headlines for spreading outrageous, and wildly racist, false rumours about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Trump amplified those rumours during his debate with Kamala Harris last week.These accusations, which partly stemmed from a Facebook post some random woman wrote (and has now apologised for) about a friend of a neighbour losing a cat, have wreaked havoc in Springfield. There have been bomb threats against local hospitals and Haitian community members are reportedly terrified. We all know Trump doesn’t have a conscience – but is Vance even the slightest bit contrite?Of course not. Vance isn’t just standing by the debunked claims – he is defending them while also seemingly admitting to lying. During an interview on CNN on Sunday, he claimed he has evidence to back up the accusations and insisted he is doing people a public service. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said. He added: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”I’m all for Vance creating stories – just not while running for high office. Please, JD, quit politics and go back to writing! You clearly have a knack for fiction. Or, since you are so obsessed with children, why not spend more time with your own kids and tell them a bedtime story or two? Just, you know, try to stick to unicorns and mermaids rather than people eating cats. And please, for the love of dogs, stop spreading fake mews. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      RFK Jr says he faces federal investigation for beheading whale

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that he is being investigated by federal authorities for collecting the head from a decapitated whale carcass.During a campaign event on Saturday for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in Glendale, Arizona, the former independent presidential candidate said, “I received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago.”He added: “This is all about the weaponization of our government against political opponents.”Kennedy, who endorsed the former president after dropping out of November’s election, fell under scrutiny in recent weeks after the resurfacing of a 2012 interview that his daughter Kick gave to Town & Country in which she addressed the whale in question.Recounting how the creature washed up on a beach near Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, she said, “[He] ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York.“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.”Reports of the decapitation caught the attention of the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, which called on federal authorities to investigate Kennedy. In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the environmental group said Kennedy “violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and possibly the Endangered Species Act, by illegally cutting the head off of a dead whale in or around 1994 in Hyannis Point, Massachusetts, and bringing it to his New York house.”The letter went on to say, “We hope that the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement, at a minimum, is able to ensure that Mr Kennedy surrenders any and all illegally obtained wildlife that he continues to possess, including the whale skull he took from the Massachusetts beach in 1994. Given Mr Kennedy’s reckless disregard for the two most important marine conservation laws in the United States, we ask that NOAA consider all appropriate civil and criminal penalties as well.”Kennedy in August faced a separate backlash after an unrelated animal admission. In that case, he acknowledged on a video that he was behind the dumping of a dead bear cub in New York City’s Central Park over a decade ago.Recalling the episode, Kennedy said that he picked up the carcass and put it in his van with plans to skin it and eat it later. However, he ran out of time to take the bear home and instead decided to stage a scene to make it look like a cyclist had hit the animal.“We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it,” Kennedy said. More

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      California Man Arrested After Shooting Spree Kills at Least 80 Animals

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      The hourslong episode in the middle of the night triggered a shelter-in-place order in Monterey County. One official described the scene as “horrible.”A bloody shooting spree in California this week left at least 80 animals dead and sent neighbors fleeing to safety in the middle of the night, the authorities said.A man, Vicente Joseph Arroyo of Salinas, was taken into custody after he fired multiple weapons in a vineyard in Prunedale over a three-hour period on Tuesday, the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Prunedale is an unincorporated community in Monterey County, about 100 miles south of San Francisco.Just before 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the sheriff’s office responded to calls of multiple shots being fired, and soon issued a shelter-in-place order for residents within a five-mile radius.“Various calibers of weapons could be heard being fired in an area that was extremely dark and covered in thick vegetation,” the news release said. “This made it difficult for deputies to immediately locate the person or persons responsible for firing the weapons.”Officers from multiple agencies responded to the scene, and by sunrise the authorities had located the suspect and a crashed vehicle along a road in the vineyard.After Mr. Arroyo, 39, was taken into custody without incident, the authorities found a cache of weapons including multiple long rifles, shotguns, handguns and an illegal assault weapon.Pictures from the scene posted to social media by the sheriff’s office showed a large amount of ammunition and what appeared to be at least one bulletproof vest.Monterey County Sheriff’s OfficeRoughly 80 animals were killed in the shooting spree, the authorities found, including miniature horses, goats, rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks and birds. Mr. Arroyo lived in a trailer next to the property where the animals were killed, Cmdr. Andres Rosas, a spokesman for the Monterey County sheriff’s office, told the San Francisco Chronicle.While some animals initially survived, they were later euthanized because of the severity of their injuries, the authorities said.Mr. Arroyo was booked into the Monterey County jail for willful discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, animal cruelty, illegal possession of an assault weapon, vandalism, criminal threats and felony possession of a firearm. His bail was set at $50,000.The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday, including questions about whether there was a clear motive.Jason Maynard, a neighbor, recalled the overnight chaos, telling the TV station KSBW and other local news outlets that after hearing the gunshots, he told his wife and child to drop to the floor.“It is a horrible scene,” Commander Rosas told the news station. “We are very fortunate that no human lives were lost.”Mr. Rosas said there was no information to indicate the suspect was looking for anyone specific and that it appeared the animals were the targets.“I’ve been doing this for 24 plus years now,” he said, “and no, I’ve unfortunately never seen anything like this when it comes to animal life lost.” More

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      RFK Jr faces call for investigation into claim he chainsawed whale’s head off

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      His independent White House campaign has fizzled, but the flow of bizarre stories of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s unorthodox handling of the carcasses of wild mammals has experienced no similar suspension.An environmental group is calling for a federal investigation into the former presidential candidate for an episode in which he allegedly severed the head of a washed-up whale with a chainsaw – and drove home with it strapped to his car’s roof.The episode has parallels with another extraordinary tale reported earlier in August in which Kennedy confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and attempted to make it look like the animal was killed by a bicyclist.The latest grisly revelation, about the whale head, is not particularly new – it stems from a 2012 interview Kennedy’s daughter Kick gave to Town & Country magazine, in which she talks about a visit to other family members of the political dynasty in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, more than two decades prior.But the story’s re-emergence, following the bear tale and other off-the-wall declarations – including claims that part of RFK Jr’s brain was eaten by worms and that he had an apparent fondness for barbecued dog – has angered activists at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. The group previously denounced Kennedy’s candidacy and endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president.In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) this week, Brett Hartl, the organization’s government affairs director and chief political strategist, demanded an inquiry.“Mr Kennedy’s apparent transport of the marine mammal skull from Massachusetts to New York, and therefore across state lines, also represented a felony violation of the Lacey Act, one of the earliest wildlife conservation laws enacted by [the] United States in 1900,” he wrote, adding that it was also illegal to possess part of any animal protected by the endangered species act.“Normally, an unverified anecdote would not provide sufficient evidence as the basis for conducting an investigation. The [bear] story made it seem like this was normal behavior for him, so he may also possess additional illegally collected wildlife parts.”The former Kennedy campaign’s press office did not respond to a request for comment. And Noaa has yet to publicly acknowledge receipt of Hartl’s letter.The somewhat unpleasant recounting by Kick Kennedy – granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, the assassinated former US attorney general and Kennedy Jr’s father – remains the only documented account of the whale incident.Describing her father’s fascination with animal skulls and skeletons as “eccentric environmentalism”, she tells how the whale washed up on a beach near Hyannis Port and he sped to the scene.“[He] ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York,” she said.“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.”Hartl, on X, called RFK Jr an “environmental criminal”. In his group’s denouncement of his candidacy, it said “his conspiracy theories go against the science-based foundation of all environmental protections”, and that he was no different from Donald Trump in terms of policy priorities “driven by what will benefit Big Oil and the greedy corporations that fund them”.Kennedy announced he was suspending his presidential campaign last Friday and immediately endorsed Trump. More

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      Police Nab Fugitive Tortoise on Slow Run to Freedom

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      Arizona state troopers rescued Stitch, the giant sulcata tortoise, from an interstate highway after it escaped from its enclosure at a ranch.On an interstate highway between Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., drivers on their morning commute called 911 to report a runaway. A very … very … slow one.He was miles from home and ambling across the four-lane highway when he was finally caught by police.State troopers, with the help of a few good Samaritans, stopped traffic and picked up the escapee: Stitch, a giant sulcata tortoise with a sand-colored shell.The 14-year-old tortoise had broken out of his enclosure and a few layers of fences at the nearby Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch, a roadside animal park open to the public, before making a run for it. Danna Cogburn, an owner of the ranch, said he had been missing for two to three hours before officers told the owners they had found him on the road.“How in the world or where he got out?” Ms. Cogburn said. “I’m not really sure.” She said Stitch was one of only two tortoises on the ranch who were small enough to have made it through the fence. “He had to work at it and be very determined.”The night before his July 30 escape, Ms. Cogburn said, storms had damaged some of the ranch’s gates and enclosures, including the area where the tortoises are kept.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More