Sunday, May 3, 2015

Minnesota Moose Declining Rapidly



Barrett, Joe (2015, May 1). Minnesota Moose Study Curbed After Harm to Animals. The Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/minnesota-moose-study-curbed-after-harm-to-animals-1430522616
[excerpted] …State officials this past week ordered scientists to stop adding new subjects to research into what is killing off the moose after some studied animals were abandoned or died.

…About a quarter of young moose collared with GPS devices in the past two years were abandoned by their mothers to a near-certain death if state officials hadn’t intervened and sent several of them to a zoo. And a higher-than-expected number of adult moose handled this year failed to recover from sedation after being fitted with the collars.

…The population of the ungulates, which average between 950 and 1,000 pounds, has fallen by more than 60% to an estimated 3,450 this year, compared with about 8,840 in 2006, said state officials.

A resurgent wolf population, mild winters that allow ticks and other disease-carrying pests to survive, and other maladies are among the culprits, but scientists say they can’t be sure why the population is falling so quickly....
Majia here: I respect and support scientific inquiry on the reasons behind animal mortality events, but it is my belief that scientific findings are insufficient to move the policy makers and public opinion in the directions necessary for our long-term survival.





1 comment:

  1. Perhaps the oligarchy [and I am using that term the way the Princeton/Northwestern Universities used it in their recently published study] believes they have a way to avoid the consequences of radiation and also keep enough "peasants" alive and functioning to provide them with their leisure and luxurious life style. I do not know. But it seems unlikely. In which case their present behaviour seems psychotic. And radiation is just one of the things we know about that are imperilling life on this earth. We now have millennia of this aristocracy/peasantry arrangement which was only somewhat modified by some nations having large and flourishing middle classes. But as we can see the middle classes are dwindling. Until perhaps one hundred years ago this oligarchy could in fact act recklessly and the planet could absorb it. But science and technology moved through an invisible wall and discovered things like radiation and genetics that now allow these oligarchs to fiddle with nature--and this is about like children playing with matches. We could use a Presidential candidate now who made the future of the planet his or her main campaign theme.
    I would not be surprised if the GPS devices did something the mothers picked up on. The more we involve ourselves with technology the further we seem to get from what we need to know and do. For thousands of years the native Americans did very well by the natural world. We might want to start adopting more of their approaches which did work--and soon.

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