Coffee and Provocation

Cats Need 9-Lives in Australia
The Australians do not play around when it comes to feral cats and fox.  Hunters and land owners shoot them on sight and very serious poisons are used to try to eradicate them, all in order to try to protect native wildlife from small mammals to endemic birds.  One example: 3,000 feral cats were recently shot during a 16-day period in Queensland to keep them away from a 29-square-kilometer sanctuary designed to protect the endangered greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis), a defenseless, two and half pounds marsupial that looks like a cross between a mouse and a rabbit.

The Real Snake in the Garden of Eden Was Man
Scientists say humans wiped out almost a thousand species of birds--- most of them of the big, flightless and tasty variety -- from Pacific Islands during the Holocene period as early humans arrived a thousand years before the first Europeans.  I have written a little about this before -- see More People Meant Less Moa.

A Massive and Long-term Pedophilia Scandal Will Do That!
“According to Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, in 1984, nearly 90 percent of Irish Catholics went to weekly Mass. In 2011, only 18 percent did.” Source.

Is Horse Slaughter Less Cruel Than No Slaughter?
Bloomberg editorial board member Marc Champion wonders whether the ban of horse slaughterhouses in the US has actually increased suffering for the animals, and whether there really is a good case for managing unwanted pet and feral horses as a meat market.  He notes:  "All things die, including horses. The attempt to prevent the U.S. from reopening slaughterhouses for the animals is surely foolish. Consider what has happened since the last horses were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2007, after Congress banned the Food and Drug Administration from funding the inspection of horse slaughterhouses. Since then, as a Bloomberg News story reports today, the number of horses that the U.S. ships out of the country to be slaughtered in other North American countries more than doubled, to 197,442. So in our anxiety to be more humane, we have subjected the animals to a long and inhumane truck ride before they meet the same end in other countries."

How Gun Paranoia is Benefiting Wildlife:
Thanks to massive amounts of wasteful gun and bullet buying by a poorly-informed public too easily manipulated by the NRA, a record $882 million in dedicated taxes was collected to be used by the states to fund wildlife and recreation protects.  Over $522 million will be used to acquire or long-term lease conservation and hunting lands under the Pittman-Robertson Act.  Want to know more about the Pittman Robertson program which has more than 40 MILLION acres of land set aside for citizen hunting all over the country?  Just click here.

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