Collide-a-scape

A conservationist tries to make sense of a town grief-stricken over a wild turkey that got a little too comfortable among humans.

People in Easton, MA  are so torn up about “Freddie” that a facebook page was created.  It has over 1500 fans. There was also a memorial for the bird, with flowers, all of which leads wildlife biologist Michael Hutchins to surmise:

I have to wonder how we can redirect the tremendous energy and emotion focused on this individual animal toward the conservation of endangered species and their habitats?  I find it almost perverse that people are spending this much of their precious time and resources mourning one individual of a common species ( more than 3 million wild turkeys are estimated to roam the U.S.) when animals like black-footed ferrets, California condors, gopher tortoises, northern spotted owls, and many others are teetering on the brink of irreversible and final extinction.  Who will mourn them when they are gone?

As for me, I’m wondering what all these people eat for Thanksgiving.

If the animal rights crowd thought they could skulk around the Utah wilds and sterilize the big game, they better think twice, because the hunters there are on to them: According to the AP:

Some sportsmen have expressed worry that animal rights groups will begin giving birth control to deer so their population levels will reach a point that they can’t be legally hunted.

Not taking any chances, the Utah state Legislature passed this bill today, which allows only authorized persons to inject wildlife with birth control.

Now let’s be clear: the mule deer in Utah are threatened on many fronts, from habitat loss to chronic wasting disease.

But animal rights advocates armed with birth control darts?

It seems that all that frantic fence-building along the U.S.-Mexican border is proving no match for determined drug cartels.

The wildlife, on the other hand, may be having a tougher time.  To document and chronicle this largely ignored story (it’s been two years since Congress, at the height of illegal immigrant hysteria, enacted the Secure Fence Act), a team of conservation photographers and biologists  have just embarked on a three week journey into the borderlands.

For a  glimpse of what may lurk ahead for this bunch, check out Jonathan Thompson’s recent account from the “narco trail.” At the very least, it will make you think twice about making a family stopover in southern Arizona’s backcountry.