Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people?

We're obviously extremely pro-wildlife, so when we read stories like this one, we just simply cannot fathom what kind of person does this kind of thing:

An Alaskan man has been charged with intentionally ramming his jet boat into breaching humpback whales in the state's southeast waters, authorities said.

Kevin B. Carle, 44, was charged with a federal misdemeanor for violating the Endangered Species Act by "knowingly harassing, pursuing and harming whales," the Anchorage Daily News reported Thursday.

Like, what happened to Mr. Carle as a child to make him such an asshole?
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UPDATE: Sweet lord Almighty. Today's news had a whole bucketload of wingnut animal haters. Check out this link to an AZ Game and Fish Department bulletin on a bighorn killing.

Go figure.

Geesh. With so many of the Mexican gray wolves being serially murdered in the last month, it seems kind of obvious to us where the fingers might be pointing: towards the very people who hate wolves, want them off "their" land, demonize native species to the point of fantasy, and who, oh, by the way, have the equipment to track the radio signal from the collared critters.

Seriously? We give those people radio receivers to help them find the wolves? The very wolves they are committed to wiping out AGAIN? Uh, that doesn't seem like a very efficient way to try to recover the species.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service might want to rethink that plan. ASAP.

Dirty oil

Via UnF--kTheGulf.com.

We don't necessarily think that one should spend $13 on a new T-shirt, but it's a gimmick that we get. We vote for sending the whole $13 or $130 to a conservation organization based in the Gulf region, riding your bike more than you drive, and rejecting the notion that we should allow privatization of public resources. Whether it's letting BP ruin our oceans for cheap oil or HP ruin our lands for cheap forage, it's totally fucked.

Mexican Wolf Alpha Male killed in Arizona

(Photo source)

These mo&*#$*@ckers who keep killing wolves really piss us off.

The body of an adult male wolf was found June 18 and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say it died from a gunshot wound.

It was an alpha male in the Hawks Nest Pack that traditionally uses the area east of Big Lake on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest as their spring-summer breeding territory, located west of the Arizona-New Mexico border.

The killers are criminals, violating the Endangered Species Act and depriving our landscapes from the ecological-balance that predators bring. They are also depriving our children of the chance to see Mexican gray wolves in the wild, and they are costing taxpayers millions of dollars by sabotaging the recovery program.

The federal government needs to step in and begin catching and prosecuting these criminals. They also need to step up releases of captive animals, sending a clear message to the criminals that they will not succeed in eliminating wild wolves in Arizona and New Mexico.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

The Hawks Nest Pack was one of the first wolf packs to be released into Arizona and is well known for its ability to coexist with livestock grazing within its territory. Living in close proximity to actively grazed allotments on the Forests, this pack has a proven record of avoiding domestic livestock in favor of native prey animals like elk and deer. Research indicates that hunting behaviors within individual wolf packs are passed on to successive generations. The ability of this wolf pack to thrive and fit into an area of diverse land uses (including livestock grazing, camping, hunting, wood cutting and other forest activities) without most people even knowing that they are present in this portion of the White Mountains of Arizona makes the killing of AM 1044 all the more regrettable.

Not that livestock predation makes it acceptable to kill wolves, mind you- unless you are Wildlife Services (Ahem)- but the cowboy complaint about wolves and livestock being unable to coexist has not been borne out in this particular home range, making this just another mean-spirited crime against Nature.
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If you know anything about this, please see the information about the $50,000 reward.