LA Times editorial: Push to include drought legislation in spending bill is a mistake

The Los Angeles Times editorial board today comes out strong against a push by House leaders to include "drought response" language in the omnibus spending bill. This language is much less about addressing the problems of the drought than is about dismantling environmental protections, diverting water from the Central Valley wildlife refuges, and halting the restoration of the San Joaquin River. We're asking people to send an email to their leaders opposing this horrible plan.

Birds have been stealing our food for centuries, new research says

Don't get mad the next time a gull tries to steal your french fry, they're just following tradition. Paul Haemig, a Swedish animal ecologist visited 80 cafes and restaurants and recorded bird behavior. From a New Scientist article:

Haemig thinks that foraging where humans are present is a behaviour that evolved several times. And he believes that, in the principal clade to which these birds belong, the behaviour evolved earlier than humans did – because the species in this clade separated genetically before humans emerged.

“Their ancestors hung out around our ancestors,” he says. “It looks suspiciously like a very old association.”

He points to nearly 60 known foraging relationships between birds and other creatures, from army ants to aardvarks and whales to warthogs. So just as, on a frosty morning, a robin swoops for worms turned over by a gardener’s fork or, in the Congo marshes, birds pick up frogs flushed out by gorillas, the savvy birds of urbanised areas are foraging for mozzarella panini and chips at your table...

Restaurants may even have a role in conservation, Haemig says. In rural restaurants, the three predominant species he saw were declining in numbers in the countryside: house sparrows, white wagtails and Eurasian tree sparrows. This suggests that rural restaurants could become part of the plan for conserving them.

Read the entire piece here.

Drought isn't an excuse to threaten wildlife

Great opinion piece in today's Sacramento Bee from our colleagues at Defenders of Wildlife arguing that the drought should not be used as an opportunity to gut environmental protections.

"Other legislators, however, have tried to capitalize on the drought to grab more water for agribusinesses in the Central Valley, while undermining bedrock environmental laws. Rep. David Valadao’s Western Water and American Food Security Act is a prime example.

The bill from Valadao, R-Hanford, would override Endangered Species Act protections for imperiled native salmon runs, increasing the risk of extinctions among fish species that have suffered through four dry years. It could also cut back water to wildlife refuges so that some might receive barely a trickle and others nothing at all, even during times of critical need."