Oregon and Washington will be able to kill sea lions that are feeding on salmon and steelhead trout, under a new policy announced on Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The decision allows the states to cull a total of 92 sea lions per year, but only after the animals have been hazed with rubber buckshot and firecrackers and offered to zoos. Sea lions are shielded by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. In 2011, NOAA withdrew a similar authorization permitting the sta... Read More
Five governments in south Africa on Thursday announced the creation of the world's biggest intra-country wildlife reserve. The park will protect several populations of animals that are threatened by poaching or require large tracts of unmolested land for migration. Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have donated land totaling more than 170,000 square miles that will link 36 individual reserves. The park will be called the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. The territo... Read More
On Tuesday, a man from Gatlinburg, Tennessee pleaded guilty in federal court to impersonating a National Park Service employee in order to get free cabin rentals. James T. Bell admitted that in August, 2011 he approached cabin owners in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and asked to use their cabins for "donors" to the park. Driving a white pickup truck with a magnetic sticker on the side that read, "for official use only, U.S. Government Department of the Interior — National Park Serv... Read More
Thieves in diving gear stole the bell from the Costa Concordia shipwreck more than two weeks ago, Italian officials said Thursday. The bell was submerged in 26 feet of water, and the thieves had to avoid both a 24-hour police surveillance team and a laser system meant to measure shifts in the shipwreck to avoid detection. The mayor of Giglio, Italy—the small island where the ship crashed in January—said he believes the thieves chose the bell as a "morbid memento." The incident is u... Read More
Dallas Seavey became the youngest musher ever to win the Iditarod on Tuesday when he arrived in Nome, Alaska after mushing for nine days. Seavey, 25, is the son of 2004 Iditarod winner Mitch Seavey. Dallas credited his victory to a careful strategy and said he held his team back in the first part of the race, then pushed them at top speed in the final stages. In addition to Mitch Seavey, who came in seventh, Seavey's 74-year-old grandfather Dan Seavey also raced.
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