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    Bird Flu Suspected in Deaths of Ducks and Wild Birds at N.Y.C. Zoos

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    Three ducks died of the disease at the Queens Zoo, while three more ducks and nine wild birds that died at the Bronx Zoo were being tested for the virus, according to the parks’ operator.Three ducks at the Queens Zoo died because of bird flu, and as many as 12 more birds at the Bronx Zoo that died after possible exposure were being tested for the virus, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, the nonprofit that operates the parks.The deaths and possible exposures at the Queens Zoo and the Bronx Zoo, one of the largest and most well-known zoos in the United States, come as an outbreak of bird flu has spread across the country, sickening chickens and dairy cattle and driving up the price of eggs.On Friday, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered all live bird markets in New York City and a few surrounding counties to close temporarily in an effort to stem the spread of the virus. “Safeguarding public health is all about being proactive,” she said in a statement.The order, from the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, requires live bird markets that have not detected any bird flu cases to sell their inventories and disinfect their operations. Markets with detected cases must follow guidelines for quarantine and depopulation, the order said.The virus, called H5N1, has infected roughly 156 million commercial, backyard and wild birds across the country since January 2022. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the illness poses minimal risks to the general public’s health, and that it does not yet have the ability to spread readily among people.The Wildlife Conservation Society, which also operates the Central Park Zoo, the Prospect Park Zoo and the New York Aquarium on Coney Island, said that, as a precaution, the organization had recently moved vulnerable bird species to separate, protected areas inside its parks. It has also limited the exposure of other animals in its care to wild birds and especially to waterfowl, which are known to be carriers of the virus.“We have assessed and reviewed our protocols regarding risk to our birds from avian influenza,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “Our veterinarians and curators continue to closely monitor the situation in the region and are collaborating with city, state and federal agencies.”The Bronx and Queens Zoos remained open on Saturday, the organization said, noting the low risk of visitors coming into contact with zoo birds or contracting the virus.On Saturday afternoon at the Queens Zoo, Marck Vasquez and Jennifer Espinoza said they were sad to find that the swans, one of their favorite attractions, were not in their usual pond surrounded by wild birds, but instead alone in a separate enclosure.“It feels empty,” said Mr. Vasquez, 21.Nearby, another visitor, Chawsu, 36, who is originally from Myanmar, strolled by a pond where scores of wild mallards swam. Ms. Chawsu said she was sad the flu was sickening birds but that she was otherwise unconcerned.“I’m coming from a country where every year we have bird flu,” Ms. Chawsu said. “It’s not a worry to me.”Ellen Yan More

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      ‘Straight in harm’s way’: can Trump open up Alaska’s 19m-acre refuge for drilling?

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      The Arctic national wildlife refuge (ANWR) is one of the earth’s last intact ecosystems. Vast and little-known, this 19m-acre expanse along Alaska’s north slope is home to some of the region’s last remaining polar bears, as well as musk oxen, wolves and wolverines. Millions of birds from around the world migrate to or through the region each year, and it serves as the calving grounds for the porcupine caribou.Donald Trump has called the refuge the US’s “biggest oil farm”.The first Trump administration opened 1.5m acres of the refuge’s coastal plain to the oil and gas industry, and under Trump’s watch, the US government held its first-ever oil and gas lease sale there.In a few weeks, when Trump takes office again, the refuge – one of the last truly wild places in the world – is awaiting an uncertain future.The president-elect has promised to revive his crusade to “drill baby drill” on the refuge as soon as he returns to the White House in January, falsely claiming it holds more oil than Saudi Arabia. Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second term, calls for an immediate expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska, including in the ANWR, noting that the state “is a special case and deserves immediate action”.From his end, Joe Biden is moving to limit drilling in the region as much as his administration can. Experts are debating how much oil and gas there is to gain if Trump were to open up the region for drilling again. But Alaska’s Republican governor and Native Alaskan leaders in the region say they are eager to find out – seeing the potential for a major new source of revenue in the geographically remote region.Other Native leaders and activists have banded with environmental groups that oppose drilling on the refuge – and are gearing up for an arduous battle.“I see it as a David and Goliath fight,” said Tonya Garnett, a spokesperson for the Gwich’in steering committee, representing Gwich’in Nation villages in the US and Canada. “But we are resilient, and we are strong, and we’re going to keep fighting.”‘Sacred place where life begins’Garnett, who grew up in Arctic Village, just south of the refuge’s border, has spent most of her life trying to protect the refuge. Trump’s election has upped the urgency.The Gwich’in call the refuge’s coastal plain Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit – the “sacred place where life begins”. It serves as the breeding grounds for a 218,000-strong herd of porcupine caribou – which the Gwich’in have hunted for sustenance through their entire history. “We don’t even go up there, because we don’t want to disturb them,” said Garnett. “We believe that even our footprints will disturb them.”Environmental concerns go beyond the caribou. Scientists have warned that mitigating the risks drilling will pose to polar bears will be impossible. A 2020 study in PloS One found that the infrared technology mounted on airplanes used to scope for dens are unreliable.Experts have also warned that the trucks and equipment used in even the initial stages of exploration could cause severe damage to the remote tundra, endangering the habitat of the bears and many other sensitive species. With the climate warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, bears are already struggling to hunt on a landscape that is quickly melting away below them. “Drilling puts the polar bears straight in harm’s way,” said Pat Lavin, the Alaska policy adviser for the non-profit Defenders of Wildlife.All the while, extracting and burning more fossil fuels is guaranteed to accelerate global heating – further degrading the region that is home to not only bears and other wildlife, but also several Alaskan communities.Melting permafrost is releasing mercury, as well as greenhouse gases – and eroding infrastructure as the literal ground beneath many Alaskans feet begins to disintegrate. “It’s a scary thing,” said Garnett.‘This issue has become symbolic’The political zeal to drill in the Arctic has remained strong, despite industry skepticism over how much there would be to gain from drilling the ANWR. The US Geological Survey estimates that between 4.3bn and 11.8bn barrels of oil lie underneath the refuge’s coastal plain, but it remains profoundly unclear how large the deposits are and how difficult it will be to get to them. Its location in the remote, northernmost reaches of the continent, bereft of roads and infrastructure, makes it exceptionally difficult and expensive to even explore for petroleum.“We think there is almost no rationale for Arctic exploration,” Goldman Sachs commodity expert Michele Della Vigna told CNBC in 2017. “Immensely complex, expensive projects like the Arctic we think can move too high on the cost curve to be economically doable.”And yet, Republicans seem determined. Environmentalists have wondered if this zeal is more political than practical. “To some extent, this issue has become symbolic,” said Kristin Miller, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. “There’s an idea that if they can drill the Arctic Refuge, they can drill anywhere.”The Biden administration is working to limit exploration as much as it can in its remaining weeks in office. After two of the companies who’d bought leases in the first Trump years relinquished them voluntarily, in 2023 the Biden administration cancelled the remaining leases. However, the administration is obligated to hold a final oil and gas lease sale in the refuge as required by Trump-era law. Biden’s team has indicated it will be offering up just 400,000 acres – the minimum required by the 2017 law – with contingencies to avoid habitat for polar pears and the caribou calving grounds.It’s unclear who would bid for these leases. Already, several big banks have vowed not to finance energy development there, and big oil and gas companies have avoided the region – in large part because drilling into this iconic landscape remains deeply unpopular with many Americans.During the first Trump term, only two small private companies submitted bids for leases on the refuge, and later relinquished them. The other main bidder was the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a public corporation of the state of Alaska, which is suing the Biden administration over the cancellation of its leases last year.That group has already approved $20m to potentially bid again on leases for oil exploration in the region, even amid growing scrutiny of the extraction-focused group’s use of taxpayer funds, and its failure to meet its mandate of encouraging economic growth.The group did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on how it plans to proceed.‘We’re ready to fight’Garnett said she sees the unending drive to drill into this land as a form of colonization. The Gwich’in have built their livelihoods and culture around the porcupine caribou, and by disrupting the caribou’s habitat, oil industrialists will destroy the Gwich’in’s history and way of life, she said.“We’re ready to fight, to educate, and to go with a good heart,” she said. “Because that’s what we have to do.” The Gwich’in tribes have urged the Biden administration to establish an Indigenous sacred sight on the coastal plain in the coming weeks.Not all Native groups in the region agree on that plan. Iñupiaq leaders on the North Slope have said the petition infringes on their traditional homelands, and threatens oil and gas development that could benefit the Iñupiaq village of Kaktovik, the only community located within the refuge boundaries.In an October op-ed, Josiah Patkotak, mayor of the North Slope borough, which includes Kaktovik, said that the territory in question “has never been” Gwich’in territory”.“This is not about the protection of sacred sites” he wrote in response to news that the administration would consider designating the site. “It is about a federal government that thinks it knows better than the people who have lived on and cared for these lands since time immemorial.”Nathan Gordon Jr, the mayor of Kaktovik, said he’s excited about the incoming administration, and its openness to renewing oil and gas exploration. “We would be able to provide more for the community, more safety regulations and infrastructure,” he said.Gordon said he disagrees with the argument that oil and gas exploration would decimate the caribou, noting that residents in Kaktovik, too, rely on the herd for sustenance hunting. “We wouldn’t do anything to hurt our own herd,” he said. “I don’t see the main negative effects that everybody else sees.”One thing he has in common with tribal members on the other side of this issue, is that he too has spent years advocating on the issue. “I’ve been working on this ever since I’ve been a tribal councilmember,” he said. “We want to be able to use our lands.” More

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      in Elections

      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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      in Elections

      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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      in Elections

      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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      in US Politics

      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

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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