Sarah Palin Does Not Belong on the Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel has signed a $1 million deal with Sarah Palin to host a reality TV show called “Sarah’s Palin’s Alaska”.  At first I did not believe it, thinking it was a hoax, but unfortunately, it’s confirmed by news sources. Read more here. Also on CNN.

As I wanted to keep an open mind about learning more about Alaska, I can hardly believe that Palin would the person to teach me about the last beautiful and wildest frontier of America. I mean, what is she going to teach us, that the Second Amendment gives her the right to kill wildlife and it’s part of life and necessity in her state? The Discovery Channel is home to Animal Planet, Planet Green, TLC (The Learning Channel), once know for its advocacy for the preservation for wildlife. Cashing in on Palin’s undeserved popularity is like turning its back on everything they once held sacred.

I don’t care how the Discovery Channel is going to justify this – Sarah Palin is the woman who proposed legislation for aerial hunting of precious wild wolves (here’s her comments on Huffington Post on hunt strategy), gutting moose and caribous for fun and tradition.  This is the woman who opposes global warming, who ridicules environmentalists and conservationists, who thinks whales and wolves should not be on the Endangered Species Act.

She is wrong for Discovery Channel. Wrong for the environment, and wrong for any sort of wildlife conservation. Urge the Discovery Channel to change their minds –PLEASE TAKE ACTION AND SIGN THE PETITION!!!!

Filed under: animal cruelty, Global Warming, hunting, local issues, Take Action, aerial hunting, alaska, discovery channel, Global Warming, reality tv, sarah palin, wolves

Help to Win Congressional Vote to End the Slaughter

Deep in Alaska, the aerial hunting of wolves continues this winter. More than 1,000 of these precious predators, the wolves have been chased to exhaustion and gunned down in deep snow. The animals die an slow agonizing death, crawling and suffering and trying to get away, or until the shooter sends a final execution shot into their heads.

Defenders of Wildlife and many people around the nation are trying to urge Congress to pass the vote to end this barbaric practice and from spreading to other states like the Montana, Idaho, Wyoming. More and more government representatives and senators are getting on board.

Spread the word and if you can, donate to help Defenders continue to fight for the lives of this fast-disappearing species.

Filed under: animal cruelty, environment, humane organizations, hunting, local issues, Take Action, aerial shooting, alaska, congress, defenders of wildlife, hunting, palin, wolves

More Yellowstone Wolves Killed

It is disturbing to me to recently learned that wildlife INSIDE Yellowstone National park, a protected piece of territory by the U.S. allows the Dept of Fish and Game to approve the killing of wildlife, especially wolves, an endangered specie. The misinterpretation of why wolves need to be killed for the sake of farming in nearby territories and controlling of population is absurd.

The killing of a top predator in any wild territory can have devastating chain reaction for the rest of the foodchain and wildlife. People don’t realize that, if you kill off the predators, that will contribute to the overpopulation of animals down the food chain, and like a domino effect, more of them will need to be eradicated because there is no more top predator to control that population.

It is true that everyday, a wolf or a wolve pack, including PUPS are cruelly killed in the Northwest. Recently, more than 60 wolves in the family, have been killed in Idaho and Montana, including Yellowstone’s famed Cottonwood Pack and a radio-collared female from Idaho’s Phantom Hill Pack. This time, they’ve left the newborn pups to die and starve through the coming brutal winter months in that region.

Please take action by and learning more, or donate to the Defenders of Wildlife.

Filed under: animal cruelty, hunting, local issues, Take Action, Cottonwood Pack, dept. of fish and game, EPA, Phantom Hill Pack, pups, wolves, yellowstone

Idaho Wolf Packs to be Exterminated

Some things never change. While President Obama’s victory in many ways represent good things to come, the seemingly less signifcant matters (in people’s minds) go remain the same. Awaiting the decision by the new Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar, the Dept of Fish and Game may be able to target multiple wolf packs and families for extermination in Idaho. I suspect they are claiming “population control,” but it seems to me that it has been the longest time since this country has had a problem with wolf overpopulation. Farmers say their livestocks are in jeopardy but there must be non lethal and efficient methods to keep wolves away. Killing them is not the answer.

The species needs to be preserved, as wolves are endangered. Learn more here.

Filed under: animal cruelty, election 2008, environment, local issues, department of fish and game, idaho, ken salazar, wolves

Animals Doomed If Palin Runs This Country

This is written for Alternet by Michael Markarian from the Human Society Legislative Fund:

“Palin is not only a lifetime member of the NRA, but is also a close ally of Safari Club International. These radical groups don’t represent rank-and-file hunters, but instead lobby on behalf of their elitist, wealthy members to defend despicable and unsporting practices such as captive trophy hunts, bear baiting, and steel-jawed legold traps — practices that real hunters agree are inhumane and unacceptable.

And the Palin Administration, in lock-step with these extreme anti-conservationists, has waged an all-out war on Alaska’s predators to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters…Despite the effects of climate change on the bear’s vanishing habitat and shrinking ice floes, Gov. Palin penned an op-ed in The New York Times earlier this year arguing that it was the “wrong move” to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Later, when the Bush administration announced its listing of the polar bear as a threatened species, she filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the decision. Environmentalists fired back over Palin’s lawsuit and said “her head-in-the-sand approach to global warming only helps oil companies, certainly not Alaska or the polar bear.”

Read full article here

Filed under: animal cruelty, humane organizations, hunting, alaska, election, endangered species act, New York Times, palin, polar bears, safari club international, sarah palin, vice president, wolves

Help Put Palin’s Wolf-Killing Record on TV

Sarah Palin is a champion of wildlife savagery, promoting unethical aerial killing of the endangered wolves, bears and other wildlife in Alaska. Help Defenders of Wildlife put this video on national television to educate voters about what this governor stands for.

From Defenders “Sarah Palin proposed paying a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf, approved a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to promote aerial hunting, and interoduced legislation to make it easier to use aircraft to hunt wolves and bears.”

Filed under: animal cruelty, hunting, local issues, Take Action, aerial hunting, alaska, sarah palin, wolf-killing, wolves

Bush/Cheney to Wipe Out Endangered Species Act

Bush and Cheney surprise no one by proposing to do one more bad deed before their presidency ends. With special interest groups these two are pushing to eliminate the Endangered Species Act, which for more than 30 years, worked painstakingly to protect and preserve wildlife that have been decreasing in numbers. These animals include the polar bears, whales, wolves, among many 1,400 other species.  Also reported by Defenders of Wildlife: “The Bush/Cheney proposal would block federal agencies from considering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on polar bears and other animals threatened by global warming.”

Speak out now at this link which gets sent directly to your local government and stop the assault on the most important law enacted on behalf of wildlife of this earth. Thank you!

Filed under: Global Warming, international issues, Take Action, cheney, endangered species act, Global Warming, polar bears, president bush, Take Action, whales, wildlife preservation, wolves

14 Wolf Pups Gunned Down: A Barbaric Slaying

Only within days of my previous post about the endangered wolves, I see this horrible news.

“Soon after Alaska’s Board of Game approved the killing of all wolves in an area near Cold Bay, state officials illegally killed 14 wolf pups after gunning down their mothers — yet another grisly chapter in the Alaska’s out-of-control wolf slaughter,” reported by Defenders of Wildlife.

Alaskan state wildlife personel illegally chased down a pack of 14 adult wolves by helicopter, shooting them from the air. They say this is to help boost caribou population which is neither sensible nor humane. Later, they raided a den of 14 puppies, now orphaned with their mothers and fathers killed just hours before. These puppies were prompted executed. Alaskans are now moving to end the Board of Game’s barbaric aerial hunting of wolves through a ballot measure. Wealthy interest groups like the Safari Club International are using their powers to defeat this ballot measure. Alaskans for Wildlife, along with Defenders of Wildlife, is desperately trying to raise $80,000 in effort to raise public awareness in order to end the hunting of these magnificent wolves.

Please help by spreading the word, or donating Defenders of Wildlife for more information. I just donated $100. Small price to pay to help save wolves.

Filed under: animal cruelty, hunting, local issues, Take Action, alaska wildlife, defenders of wildlife, safari club international, Take Action, wolf pups killing, wolves

Protect Our Wolves

This is an animal issue that I’ve been concerned about for a long time. It’s such a national dilemma often it’s difficult to get people to pay attention, especially when there is so much cruelty in our local animal population already.

These majestic creatures have been around for as long as scientists could remember. They are ancestors to dogs, and the reasons dogs exist today in so many forms, as beloved companions to millions around the world. Centuries of literature and fables misrepresent wolves as barbaric wild monsters that lurk the woods, killing people. Did you know, that there as never been a proven, documented case where a wolf has maimed or killed a person unprovoked?

No doubt, they are wild, and dangerous when their families and territory are threatened. They never purposefully seek out human beings. Long story short, wolf population, especially in the Northern Rockies, has declined faster than any known mammals alive today due to hunting and loss of habitat. As a result, in 1973 they were placed under the Endangered Species Act, with reintroduction in the rockies to restore population. Still, they are being illegally hunted, even in Yellowstone National Park which is protected by federal law. In the past decade, ranchers and farmers targeted them to allegedly protect their livestock, many from Idaho and neighboring states. People also hunt them for their pelts and as trophies; they fight in government for their right to kill.

Very recently, they got their wish, and the wolves were hastily lifted from the Endangered Species Act. Within 2 days, one of the most cherished senior member of a particular pack was gunned down. Enraged, animal advocates was able to get a district judge to place the gray wolves under protection immediately, now awaiting a court decision from the challenging parties. I hope that they will restore this protection permanently.

Wolves are an essential part of our environment. Like most life on earth, they are here to keep the order of the forests, of the animal life within, and maintain the food chain in balance, since they are top predators. With less wolves around, deer population will explode even further, necessitating the need to hunt them as well to keep their population in check. This requires us to re-examine our ways. Why do we kill animals that are doing nothing but fighting for their survival?  Like the harp seals which get slaughtered every winter in the Arctic and Canada, these animals do not get in our way. Why can’t we let them be?

Thankfully, there is such a thing called human intervention. Defenders of Wildlife is the nation’s leading wildlife organization in fighting for our wolves, next is perhaps World Wildlife Fund. I urge you to visit their website www.defendersofwildlife.org to learn more.

Think nationally, act locally. Thanks!

Filed under: animal cruelty, humane organizations, hunting, local issues, defenders of wildlife, endangered species act, hunting, wolves, yellowstone national park