As legalizing the domestic rhino horn trade advances in South Africa, rumors and false reports are clouding the facts of this difficult issue, causing much frustration for those who believe a legal trade will save the rhinos. To combat the rumors and false reports, the Environmental Affairs Minister recently clarified what the legalization of the [...]
Congratulations to Craig Boddington, who has been named the 2017 Weatherby Hunting and Conservation Award winner. DSC Life Member Craig Boddington was born and raised in Kansas, where his early big-game experience, in the mid-1960s, included pronghorn and mule deer in Wyoming, whitetail and mule deer in Kansas, and mule deer in Colorado. When not [...]
Natural disasters trigger more than temporary loss of habitat for wild animals. Think bigger: as in, increased vulnerability to poachers and death by fallen tree bigger. After a natural disaster, headlines often capture statistics about the number of human lives lost or inches of rain per hour, but the number of animals affected is hard [...]
Earlier this month, Namibia Professional Hunting Association presented a new Trophy Measurement System to the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism. The system provides more incentives to take older animals, minimizing the hunting by size alone that anti-hunters often criticize. This new pro-active model supports sustainable hunting by adding incentives for taking older animals that [...]
The Hunting Heritage and Environmental Legacy Prevention (HELP) for Wildlife Act has cleared the first hurdle in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this bill will increase protection for wildlife and outdoor traditions. The bill extends funding for several acts and programs until 2023 such as the North America Wetlands Conservation Act and the National Fish [...]
Only a fraction of millions of illegal wildlife goods are confiscated. On July 4, Hong Kong custom officials intercepted the largest seizure of ivory on record. The 7 tons, or almost 16,000 pounds, of ivory were hidden in shipment containers labeled as frozen fish. Three people have already been arrested for their involvement. Just a [...]
Wildfire season is well underway for 2017. So far this year, more than 30,000 fires have burned across 3 million acres. On July 10 alone, there were 20 new fires across 15 states, and only seven have been contained. Scholars continue to debate the extent at which biodiversity loss fuels wildfire intensity. Every species contributes [...]
Bird-eating Mallards We’ve all heard of Turducken but… For the first time, a group of zoologists in Romania documented a group of wild ducks attack and attempt to eat two smaller birds. The mallards pursued the birds when they landed in the water, eventually drowning them before consuming them. The juvenile ducks struggled to eat [...]
The U.S. has ranked 19th on a list of top-performing countries for conservation efforts, coming in behind others such as Norway, Canada and Costa Rica. In the top five were four African countries that incorporate sustainable use in their wildlife management models: Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. For a recent study, the wildlife research unit [...]
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is not a new discovery, but this deer-killing disease is still puzzling scientists fifty years later. The New York Times recently highlighted how far research has come, including a new experiment that will burn National Park Service land to curb future fatalities. As described by Texas Parks and Wildlife, “Chronic wasting [...]
