Buffy Plays With Demons

Famous Wolf Killed Outside Of Yellowstone National Park
By NATE SCHWEBER
Published: December 8, 2012 

Yellowstone National Park’s best-known wolf, beloved by many tourists and valued by scientists who tracked its movements, was shot and killed on Thursday outside the park’s boundaries, Wyoming wildlife officials reported.

The wolf, known as 832F to researchers, was the alpha female of the park’s highly visible Lamar Canyon pack and had become so well known that some wildlife watchers referred to her as a “rock star.” The animal had been a tourist favorite for most of the past six years.

The wolf was fitted with a $4,000 collar with GPS tracking technology, which is being returned, said Daniel Stahler, a project director for Yellowstone’s wolf program. Based on data from the wolf’s collar, researchers knew that her pack rarely ventured outside the park, and then only for brief periods, Dr. Stahler said.

This year’s hunting season in the northern Rockies has been especially controversial because of the high numbers of popular wolves and wolves fitted with research collars that have been killed just outside Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Wolf hunts, sanctioned by recent federal and state rules applying to the northern Rockies, have been fiercely debated in the region. The wolf population has rebounded since they were reintroduced in the mid-1990s to counter their extirpation a few years earlier.

Many ranchers and hunters say the wolf hunts are a reasonable way to reduce attacks on livestock and protect big game populations.

This fall, the first wolf hunts in decades were authorized in Wyoming. The wolf killed last week was the eighth collared by researchers that was shot this year after leaving the park’s boundary.

The deaths have dismayed scientists who track wolves to study their habits, population spread and threats to their survival. Still, some found 832F’s death to be particularly disheartening.

“She is the most famous wolf in the world,” said Jimmy Jones, a wildlife photographer who lives in Los Angeles and whose portrait of 832F appears in the current issue of the magazine American Scientist.

Wildlife advocates say that the wolf populations are not large enough to withstand state-sanctioned harvests and that the animals attract tourist money. Yellowstone’s scenic Lamar Valley has been one of the most reliable places to view wolves in the northern Rockies, and it attracts scores of visitors every year.

benteter:

freightsickness:

creestalbreeze:

“A young woman was restrained, force-fed and injected with cosmetics in a high street shop window as part of a hard-hitting protest against animal testing.

Jacqueline Traide was tortured in front of hundreds of horrified shoppers in a bid to raise awareness and end the practise.

The 24-year-old endured 10 hours of experiments, which included having her hair shaved and irritants squirted in her eyes, as part of a worldwide campaign by Lush Cosmetics and The Humane Society.

The disturbing stunt took place in Lush’s Regent Street store, one of the UK’s busiest shopping streets.

Jacqueline appeared genuinely terrified as she was pinned down on a bench and had her mouth stretched open with two metal hooks while a man in a white coat force-fed her until she choked and gagged.

The artist was also injected with numerous needles, had her skin braised and lotions and creams smeared across her face.

Passers-by were gobsmacked to see Jacqueline, a social sculpture student at Oxford Brookes University, forced to have a section of her head shaved.

The gruesome spectacle aimed to highlight the cruelty inflicted on animals during cosmetic laboratory tests and raise awareness that animal testing is still a common practise.

The Humane Society International and Lush Cosmetics have joined forces to launch the largest-ever global campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics.

The campaign, launched to coincide with World Week for Animals in Laboratories, is being rolled out simultaneously in over 700 Lush Ltd shops across forty-seven countries including the United States, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Russia.

Lush campaign manager Tamsin Omond said: “The ironic thing is that if it was a beagle in the window and we were doing all these things to it, we’d have the police and RSPCA here in minutes.

“But somewhere in the world, this kind of thing is happening to an animal every few seconds on average.

“The difference is, it’s normally hidden. We need to remind people it is still going on.”

For more information about the campaign, visit www.fightinganimaltesting.com”

(via fabulouslytragic)

equestrian-athlete:

The horse is tied with a nylon cord for two hours, is liberated and is then re-tied another two hours, and so on. The goal is to destroy the top of the neck muscles, to maintain exceptional head for studbooks and competitions.

Source.

open-the-cages:

Paul McCartney Interrupts Olympic Rehearsal To Plead For Indian Elephant

Today, after hearing from PETA India about the plight of a young elephant who has been beaten and is kept in chains, former Beatle Paul McCartney broke from rehearsals for his performance at the London Olympics to send an urgent letter to Indian Forest Minister Dr Patangrao Shripatrao Kadam.

The music legend, who first visited India in 1966, called on the minister to use his power immediately to rescue the little elephant, named Sunder, from Jyotiba Temple in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra and move him to a forested sanctuary.

“I have seen photographs of young Sunder, the elephant kept alone in a shed at Jyotiba Temple and put in chains with spikes”, wrote McCartney. “Years of his life have been ruined by keeping him and abusing him in this way and enough is enough. I most respectfully call on you … to get Sunder out.”

McCartney’s plea follows PETA India’s discovery that Sunder was being abused by his handler (or mahout), who has gone on the run from police since the group became involved. Sunder has sustained a severe injury to his right eye from being jabbed in it with an ankus (a sharp, hooked metal poker-like weapon) by the boy handler. The elephant is also confined to chains with sharp spikes and is kept alone inside a dark shed, in which he cannot even take a single step in any direction. Sunder is denied all that is natural and important to him and lives in fear. There are lesions all over his body, indicating past beatings by the handler. The elephant was donated to the temple by Maharashtra Member of the Legislative Assembly Vinay Kore.

A scandal is growing over the way some elephants used in Indian temples to represent the Hindu god Ganesha are being housed and mistreated. Frequently controlled through beatings and prodded and gouged in sensitive areas behind their knees and ears with an ankus, they languish without veterinary care for even serious conditions, sustain leg injuries and are fed unsuitable food. Many elephants at Indian temples also show signs of severe psychological distress, such as swaying, head-bobbing or weaving – behaviour not found in healthy elephants in nature. The lack of exercise and the years spent standing in one position on hard concrete amid their own waste lead to painful and crippling foot ailments and arthritis.

Read more: http://www.looktothestars.org/news/8703-paul-mccartney-interrupts-olympic-rehearsal-to-plead-for-indian-elephant#ixzz21jjjYZ9c

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