Free Republic

A startled bear — perhaps hungry for a plasma TV — broke into a Circuit City store in Colorado Springs this morning. "It's been pretty jumping this morning," ... The ursine intruder shattered a glass sliding door to enter a customer pickup area and cracked a second glass door, before fleeing into a nearby residential neighborhood and disappearing. "When I called my assistant manager, luckily the cops were still here and they verified my story,"... It's been a wild time in the Springs, after residents reported see what might have been an African lion — or a big dog —...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced it has removed the Preble's meadow jumping mouse populations in Wyoming from protection under the Endangered Species Act. The service said it is also amended the listing for Preble's to indicate the subspecies remains threatened in the Colorado portion of its range. "For Colorado basically nothing changes," A new management plant with a new critical habitat map will be developed by 2010... The determination is based on a better understanding of the distribution of and threats to Preble's meadow jumping mouse populations in Wyoming and Colorado

An aggressive black bear was shot and killed in a remote section of Denali National Park by park staffers on July 4... The black bear had threatened the life and safety of three park employees ... Three seasonal National Park Service technicians were conducting a botany field study along the remote river when a sub-adult black bear approached their camp ... The three tried to scare it away by yelling, waving their arms and throwing objects at the bear. After being chased off into dense brush, the bear circled back to the camp three or four times. At one point,...

Always there have been the bears in and around Anchorage. Never before has there been a bear mauling in town. Not that the horrific attack on 15-year-old mountain biker Petra Davis last weekend came as a shock to those familiar with local bears. A small group of wildlife biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have been warning for years that something like this could happen ... Some who have been hiking, running and mountain biking in the park and the adjacent Chugach State Park for decades say they see more bears and more bear sign than ever...

A Ketchikan jury correctly convicted a Greenpeace ship's captain of criminal negligence for sailing in Alaska waters without the proper oil spill response plan, the state appeals court ruled Thursday. The opinion partly cancels a 2005 decision by a Ketchikan judge to overturn guilty verdicts against Greenpeace Inc. and Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen of misdemeanor charges. At the time of its anti-logging campaign, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products," according to district court documents. In Alaska, non-tank vessels larger than 400 gross tons must file an oil spill response plan application five days before...

A teenage girl riding in an all-night bicycle race suffered severe injuries early this morning when a bear attacked her on a trail ... Police officers with shotguns escorted medics into dark woods to retrieve the girl... "She was cut up and bit pretty good," After the mauling, the girl used her cell phone to call 911 but was unable to communicate... Another rider who came along found her sitting on the ground and said she could utter only one word: "Bear." He then used her phone to make another call for help. Sinnott said he didn't arrive in time...

A former youth pastor was sentenced on Friday to six years- three years in prison and three years suspended- for his sexual involvement with a 14-year old girl. Keith Daniel Kiger, 31, of Winslow entered a negotiated plea of guilty to reduced charges of sexual indecency with a child before 4 th Judicial Circuit Judge William Storey. He was initially charged with second-degree sexual assault. Kiger was a youth minister at a church the victim had attended only a few times, so it would have been hard to prove he committed the act while being in a position of trust,...

With two-thirds of Oregon county governments, including Lane County, facing financial crises, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski on Monday urged residents to accept modest local property tax increases and more logging on federal forests to help stave off deep cuts in county law enforcement and other critical services. Those steps are just two of 54 recommendations in a task force report delivered to the governor on Monday. Kulongoski commissioned the report last year to address the imminent loss of about $238 million in annual federal timber payments, including $47 million a year to Lane County. The top recommendation was for Oregon...

Bob McLeod is all in favour of protecting Arctic polar bears. But he thinks the Bush administration is being "hypocritical" by trying to do it at the expense of American big game hunters, who spend millions each year seeking polar bear trophies in Canada's North. McLeod, the Northwest Territories' minister of human resources, on Monday opened a four-day trip in Washington to protest a Department of the Interior decision in May that prohibits the import of polar bear hides from Canada. The import ban was automatically triggered when the U.S. listed polar bears as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act,...

(CNSNews.com) - A Montana rancher killed a wolf to protect his cattle herd, and now federal officials say he violated the Endangered Species Act. This apparently extreme instance led one conservative analyst to claim that the act is doing more harm than good, because it forces landowners to "shoot, shovel and shut up." Roger Lang is a California entrepreneur who owns the 18,000-acre Sun Ranch, south of Ennis, Mont. Over the last 10 years he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to help ensure that his ranch is set up and operates legally, especially in conformity with the Endangered...

People in the Silver City/Pinos Altos, New Mexico, vicinity are nervously looking over their shoulders these days, fearing they may be the next meal for a mountain lion prowling the area... On Friday, the body of Robert Nowojski, 55, was found about 75 yards from his Pinos Altos home, severely mauled and partly fed upon. The animal would not leave until Game and Fish officers shot at it. Although not yet confirmed with an autopsy, authorities suspect the lion is responsible for the fatal attack. Hunters with hounds are now tracking the animal. Several people reported sightings of the mountain...

Wyoming officials confirm fifth case of plague found in mountain lions Friday, June 6, 2008 4:51 PM MDT Mountain lion hunters, the owners of domestic cats and others who may come in contact with mountain lions in Wyoming and other Western states are urged to protect themselves and their animals against plague. “Plague was confirmed in a mountain lion found dead in mid-April by a landowner in rural Johnson County,” said Todd Cornish, an associate professor in the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture's Department of Veterinary Sciences. Cornish said this is the fifth case of plague confirmed in mountain...

A judge awarded more than $4.2 million to a late Nevada rancher's estate after finding that the U.S. Forest Service engaged in an unconstitutional "taking" of water rights out of hostility to the rancher, a property rights activist. The decision ... involved the Fifth Amendment clause against private property being taken for public use without just compensation. The rancher, Wayne Hage, bought the sprawling Pine Creek Ranch in central Nevada in 1978. the taking occurred when the Forest Service made it impossible for Hage to maintain irrigation ditches, which deprived the ranch of water and made it unviable. The government...

A man from B.C.'s Interior not only survived being mauled by a grizzly — he killed the bear as well. John Shorter, 38, was hiking near Dease Lake in Northern B.C. Tuesday when he said he smelled a bear in the area. "I heard a woofing sound, turned, seen a grizz coming at me. I managed to get my rifle up and get one round into the chest.… At that point he got on top of me, obviously, and took me down," Shorter said. "He proceeded to try to maul me in the back of the scalp and on the...

Last night's two hotel guests relaxing in a hot tub in Ouray looked up to find there was another guest in the tub- a bear. The hotel says the bear was just inches away from one guest. Both the guest and the bear got the scare of their lives, the guest screamed and the bear ran and dove into the swimming pool. The Bear made his escape after swimming across the pool The Ouray Police Department says five to six bears have roaming the streets. Even walking down Main Street during the day.

Mountain Lions Stop By For A Drink

A black bear chased, caught and mauled a bicycle rider on a mountain trail in Canada's oldest and most popular national park, and was shot and killed when it refused to leave the area, a warden said. The biker, Greg Flaaten, 41, a Web administrator for the town of Banff, was being treated for severe arm injuries at Foothills Hospital in Calgary following the attack, and reconstructive surgery in the biceps and triceps area was scheduled Monday. Authorities initially feared Flaaten might lose his arm, but that concern was eased when a key artery was found to be intact, maintaining...

The husband of a 70-year-old grandmother who was killed by a bear in northern Quebec ... Conservation experts set traps after Friday evening's attack, but ... the bear was still at large in the wilds of northern Quebec. As she scouted a fishing hole for walleye, Ms. Lavoie became separated from her husband. Barely 10 minutes later, Mr. Lavoie felt something was amiss and went searching for his wife of 51 years. Metres away he came upon the nightmarish scene of her body being dragged into the forest by a bear. Mr. Lavoie chased the predator for nearly 200 metres...

Sixteen people who fed, kissed and held a baby raccoon on Hilton Head Island now are being treated by a physician after the animal tested positive for rabies. There also are seven more people who might need vaccines to prevent them from contracting the disease "Someone adopted a baby raccoon and passed it around to everyone they knew and kissed it on the lips," . "There was a lot of affectionate handling, kissing it and feeding it. Part of that is it was three weeks old, and they inserted fingers into the raccoon's mouth. Saliva is one way that rabies...

Agencies, expert unite in an attempt to control nuisance animals in the Brooks community in Estero; attack was fourth on dogs since March. “For the past three months, I thought: ‘Coyotes in Florida. Yeah, right,’” Love said. “I had never seen a coyote, not even in any zoo in Florida and I’ve been here 27 years.” But, with the newfound respect for the wild animal, she was quick to add, “We’re on their territory.” And, she says people didn’t start noticing coyotes in the area until alligators were removed from a lake on the property. She believes the alligators snagged...

Gotta love PETA. Just gotta love ‘em. Well, not really. One of the animal rights group’s more obscure pressure campaigns involves trying to convince the Queen of England to give up the natural black-bear fur hats that Buckingham Palace guards have worn for 200 years. Because — y’know — British monarchs have always responded so well to public pressure from nitwits. Are black bears endangered? Nope. The species covers most of North America. And black bear populations are growing in Canada, where Her Majesty’s funny hats come from. So what’s the big deal? PETA hates people who wear fur. And...

A mountain lion stirred up some excitement near Flatiron Elementary School... The 138-pound cat was shot once with a tranquilizer gun but then bolted ... At 10:30 a.m., the cat was shot with another tranquilizer dart ... Agents carried the cat to ...an Open Space park in west Boulder where it was released. Wildlife officers said the cat is about 2-years-old and known in the neighborhood. The same mountain lion was in the same neighborhood last week. In that incident, the mountain lion was tranquilized, but managed to run away. The cat also appears to have a high tolerance for...

A 210-pound alligator fought the law and the law won. But not before the 8-foot reptile sent the Volusia County sheriff's deputy who jumped it to the hospital. Deputy Keith Baughman intended to protect people from the alligator roaming an apartment complex ... so the lawman threw a towel over the gator's eyes and climbed onto its back. And that turned out to be the wrong tactic. The alligator threw off Baughman, then quickly snagged the deputy's left leg in its large jaws... As the alligator clamped down, Deputy Jason Stickels did what he could to free his fellow officer...

Confronting Lion Was Breathtaking Experience. “I was walking this trail I had made, hunting for mushrooms, when I came across a deer carcass which hadn't been there before,” said Ron Olson... “I kind of looked around and didn't see anything. When I turned around, just to my left, there stood a mountain lion.” The lion sighting was officially confirmed Friday by officials from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. It is the state's first confirmed sighting in four years. About 90 minutes after they set up the camera, four shots were taken of the mountain lion eating on the carcass....

"Their aggressive behavior seems to be on the upswing," said Steve Martarano, a spokesman with the state Department of Fish and Game. "They just seem to lose their fear of humans." Since the 1970s, more than 100 coyote attacks on humans in Southern California have been recorded, with half the incidents involving children age 10 and younger. "If they see a young child and they have a chance, yeah they'll take it," said Kevin Brennan, a state wildlife biologist. Game wardens don't normally hunt coyotes unless they pose a threat to people. After attacks, they trap and then shoot coyotes....

The video shot in Jack Foerschler’s barn shows his flock of sheep lying quietly in the dark... The flock seems peaceful, until the animals are suddenly startled. A nanosecond later, a blur leaps into the screen and tackles one of the sheep. The ewe is able to escape momentarily, jumping up from the creature’s clutches, running to the viewer’s left. But the invader is faster. It bounds to its feet and extends a claw toward its fleeing prey. The viewer can see its massive claws, slender muscular body and distinctively long tail. The culprit that killed four ewes, a ram...

LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. — A coyote grabbed a 2-year-old girl by the head and tried to drag her from the front yard of her mountain home in the third incident of a coyote threatening a small child in Southern California in five days, authorities said. The coyote attacked the girl around noon Tuesday when her mother, Melissa Rowley, went inside the home for a moment to put away a camera, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in an incident report. Rowley came out of the house and saw the coyote dragging her daughter towards a street. She ran towards...

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

A grizzly bear that appeared in a recent Will Ferrell movie killed a 39-year-old trainer with a bite to his neck Tuesday ... Three experienced handlers ...Rocky is 7 1/2 feet tall, weighs 700 pounds ... Randy Miller also said, "If one of these animals gets a hold of your throat, you're finished,"... "You can train them and use as many safety precautions as you can, but you're still taking a chance if you're putting yourself in contact with them," Richards said. "It's still a wild animal. Even though it may appear that the bear attacked for no reason, there...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Hunting Ban Being Discussed in Colorado!   Friday, April 18, 2008   Please Make Plans to AttendThe Colorado Wildlife Commission will meet to discuss a complete ban on prairie dog hunting in the state of Colorado on May 1-2.  While radical anti-hunting/animal rights groups are targeting prairie dog hunting as cruel, it is a traditional sporting activity and necessary management tool, especially for ranching interests in the state.  Ban proponents like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) have boasted that they seek to ban all hunting in the United States "species by species" and...

The captain and first officer of the anti-sealing ship the Farley Mowat were due to appear in court in Sydney, N.S., on Sunday, a day after their arrest off the west coast of Newfoundland. They have been charged with interfering with the seal hunt after a confrontation with a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker two weeks ago. Their vessel was boarded and seized Saturday in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by RCMP officers, working with officials from the federal Fisheries Department and the coast guard... Paul Watson of the international group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which owns the vessel, said its...

Former US president Bill Clinton said Friday he has been ordered to hold his tongue by his wife Hillary for reviving an embarrassing story about her trip to Bosnia in 1996 while out campaigning. "Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am," the grinning ex-president said during a campaign stop in Indiana, according to television pictures. A series of gaffes have made Bill Clinton somewhat of a liability in his wife's campaign for the Democratic White House nomination. And he put his foot in it again Thursday by...

The parents of the 11-year-old boy killed by a black bear last summer in American Fork Canyon are suing the U.S. Forest Service and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. They say more should have been done to prevent their son's death. Step-father Tim Mulvey, his wife Rebecca Ives and Sam’s father say they have lived with the horror of that father's day weekend every day since and now they want to make sure it never happens to anyone else's family. It is grief beyond comprehension for most of us; a child ripped away from his family in the middle of...

Montana’s wolf population increased 34 percent over the past year, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs... The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana...although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern and far western Montana... Wolves are still listed under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting was set for late March, but lawsuits are expected to delay that. As for conflicts with ranchers, the FWP reported an increase in the number of confirmed cattle deaths due to wolves, from 32 to 75, and an increase in the number of sheep deaths, from four to...

TRAPS, pyrotechnics and beanbags shot at sea lions have failed to deter the annual springtime feast of threatened salmon at a northwestern US dam... The National Marine Fisheries Service authorised Oregon and Washington state officials to first attempt to catch the sea lions that arrive at the base of the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River and hold them 48 hours to see whether an aquarium, zoo or similar facility will take them. Otherwise, they could be euthanised, along with those that avoid trapping. About 60 of the California sea lions, identified by branding, scars or other markings, were deemed...

Driving down to Austin lately has become a real trip. I-35 is usually packed for most of the 185 miles, and what used to take three or four hours now can take five or six. Flying down can take almost as long, when you figure in airline security delays, more flight delays, and the time it takes getting into and out of crowded airports. But what if it took 45 minutes to travel from the Metroplex to Austin by train or an hour to make a trip to Houston? Advocates of high-speed rail lines are floating these ideas once again...

REFUGIO, Texas - With an abandoned Wild West-vintage town of storefronts slumbering just a block from old US 77, tiny Refugio is a place where myth and reality coexist in a ghostly silence. more stories like this Obama faces heat over aide's NAFTA remarks to Canadians Texas, Ohio could decide Dem nomination Canada says didn't misrepresent Obama over NAFTA McCain tags Dems on trade treaty NAFTA seen differently in Ohio, Texas And now this South Texas outpost is swept up in one of the more intriguing tests of myth vs. reality in today's political life: the battle over the so-called...

SANTA CRUZ - A UC Santa Cruz faculty member whose biomedical research using animals sheds light on the causes of breast cancer and neurological diseases was the target of an attack Sunday afternoon, reportedly by animal rights activists. UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal confirmed late Monday that an off-campus home invasion by six masked intruders occurred at a faculty member's home. In a statement, Blumenthal called the incident "very disturbing." Santa Cruz police reported that six people wearing bandanas tried to break into a Westside home just before 1 p.m., and that one of the family members, not the faculty member,...

The Popo Agie Ranch, just four miles south of town, has a 70-acre hay meadow which rises from an aspen- and cottonwood-sheltered river basin, rolling east and empty into the foot of Table Mountain. The meadow, and the adjacent 4,000-acre pasture, was once used for a modest but profitable cow-calf operation. Today, if visitors roll over the wooden platform bridge across the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River, they'll notice a few corralled llamas, a handful of horses, but no cows. When wolves moved into the area, rancher Dave Vaughan got out of the cow-calf business... "As soon as...

A jackrabbit found throughout much of the West has disappeared from the Yellowstone area, although the reason why remains a mystery, a new study concludes. Whatever the cause, the study suggests the white-tailed jackrabbit's disappearance has wrought major changes to Yellowstone's food chain. Coyotes and wolves, which could have depended on the rabbit as a significant food source, apparently turned their attention instead to larger prey including young elk, pronghorn antelope -- even domestic livestock. However, because the rabbit's decline went relatively unnoticed until now, quantifying that shift is virtually impossible, said the study's lead author, Joel Berger with the...

A sled dog tour operator in the Interior village of Bettles said wolves have killed and eaten two of his sled dogs in the past two weeks, continuing what has been a statewide trend this winter. “They drug them right out of their collars,” Max Hanst said by phone Tuesday from the village 180 miles north of Fairbanks. “The most recent one was three nights ago. I lost another one six days before that.” Three days prior to the first attack, Hanst said he shot and killed an old, emaciated wolf trying to dig its way into a puppy pen....

In the 1930s, when the United States was mired in a Great Depression, Congress wisely and with great vision approved the O&C Lands Act to guide the management of federal lands that once belonged to the Oregon & California Railroad... The act established a method for funding Oregon counties, allowing them to provide such vital services as public safety and road maintenance. Now, because of the efforts of the environmental movement and its litigious attorneys, the O&C funding formula that was successful for decades has been severed. Environmental groups and their allies argue that tourism can take the place of...

HOUSTON -- It did not take long Tuesday for the Texas Department of Transportation to find out what the Houstonians at a public hearing thought about the proposed 600-mile Trans-Texas Corridor, KPRC Local 2 reported. "George Washington, Sam Houston would vomit on you people," one attendee said. Chris Zora, who opposes the plan, attended the hearing at the Arabia Shrine Center in Southwest Houston. "I'd like to see a show of hands here of anybody that approves of this corridor," Zora said. "Is there anyone in this room who approves of this corridor? Raise your hands if you approve of...

The home of a primate researcher was firebombed on Tuesday, marking the second attack at the same residence in the past four months, authorities said. An incendiary device charred the front door of the home of Edythe London, who is a professor of psychiatry and molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles. No one was at home when the attack occurred, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but animal rights activists are suspected of carrying out previous efforts at the homes of UCLA scientists who use animals in their research....

A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD boy and a dog with three legs fought off a 20-stone bear that attacked the boy's mother on a Romanian hillside and clamped its jaws round her neck. When the bear appeared, Petre Prundaru ran off and hid behind a tree, but his mother, Anisoara, 40, slipped and fell. When the boy saw the bear grab her by the neck, he picked up a stick and charged it. His pet dog, Cotonogu, also went for the bear and the animal ran off. Petre then managed to find a shepherd, who called emergency services... A hospital spokesman said: "Most...

Mountain bikers worry proposal could kill ‘epic ride’. Many of the area's skilled mountain bikers are concerned about a proposal that would ban them from some of their most-prized local trails, including a segment of the Colorado Trail. The proposal is part of a draft plan by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to guide management of 2.4 million acres of public lands in Southwest Colorado. The plan recommends classifying 55,000 acres as new wilderness, including 51,000 acres west of Hermosa Creek. Congress is ultimately responsible for establishing wilderness areas, which cannot be used by motorized vehicles...

The number of black bears that got in trouble between late November and late December nearly doubled last year as compared to the same period in 2006... In a report to the state Fish and Game Council, the division's five-member Black Bear Unit said it received 50 calls for assistance between Nov. 20 and Dec. 20. During the same period in 2006, the black bear unit fielded 27 calls. The unit uses a category system to rank misbehaving black bears. The most nefarious activity -- such as unprovoked attacks on people or animals, entries or attempted entries into houses, tents...

<p>Where, oh where, are the humaniacs when our companion animals need them?</p> <p>This has not been a good winter to be a dog in Alaska.</p> <p>Aside from the frighteningly "normal'' dangers for domestic canines ...</p> <p>Dogs attacked and eaten by wolves.</p>

Day of tobogganing almost ends in tragedy as wolves stalk children. In the dusky northern light three days before Christmas, two Fort Nelson families came dangerously close to two hungry wolves, until the family dog, Shadow, narrowly averted disaster. The wolves appeared quietly at about 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 22, as darkness was creeping in on the winter wonderland 100 kilometres east of Fort Nelson, where the families were tobogganing. About 30 metres away, a sleighful of three children -- one aged four and the others aged three -- were being happily towed along the base of a hill by...

Patmor had the encounter with a large brown bear ...there are other ways his life has changed after the event. He now brings more than just his dog with him while walking to the post office. "I carry my .44 whenever I go anywhere now," ... Patmor said carrying the pistol is a result of not just the bear bite, but also ... "I figured if I'm going to keep being attacked by animals, I've got to do something to protect myself," "In 20 years, I've hardly ever seen bears around my house, but I saw five browns and blacks...