Absolute heartlessness and typical European depravity. From The Sunday Times:

Scores of new species found in Greater Mekong

If you Google and click Image search for the Latin name of the hot pink millipede described in the article, you’ll see wild photos of some of these creatures: (Desmoxytes purpurosea)

Check out this very cool photo of a beloved dog in supernatural sunlight…

Via cbs4denver: A babysitter’s parrot is being credited with helping save the life of a 2-year-old girl who was choking Friday at a Denver area home. While the sitter was in the bathroom, Willie (the parrot) started screaming and flapping his wings. Then he started saying “mama baby” over and over until the sitter came out and found the baby choking.

More than one-third of the planet’s amphibians are on the brink of extinction. One by one, they’re disappearing.

The Panamanian golden frog is a bright yellow or orange amphibian with black markings and long limbs. It provides the classic example of warning coloration — its skin is highly toxic. It lives in the rain forests of Panama, but its numbers have declined dramatically in recent years due to habitat loss, hunting, pollution and disease.

The corroboree frog is a black frog with bright yellow stripes found only in a narrow region of moss-covered bogs in the high-altitude forest of New South Wales, Australia. Unlike many brightly colored frogs, the corroboree does not have toxic skin. It was once abundant, but a rapid decline in population over the past 10 years has made it one of the world’s most endangered frogs.

What’s causing the die-off?

It appears to be a deadly fungus that is destroying frogs and other amphibian populations around the world.

To learn more, see Animal Planet’s new multimedia project called The Vanishing Frog. The film, produced by Discovery Studios, sends Animal Planet’s Jeff Corwin on a worldwide mission to uncover clues to the frog’s deadly plight while also unifying viewers with a common cause of environmental and wildlife protection.

Via Breitbart:  Four Australian teenagers were charged Thursday with attacking an almost blind greater flamingo that is believed to be the oldest bird of its kind in the world, police and zoo officials said.The flamingo’s head and beak were injured and it was bleeding from an eye after the attack at Adelaide Zoo that left it in a critical condition, zoo staff said.

Police said four men aged between 17 and 19 were charged with aggravated ill-treatment of an animal and released on bail to appear in court at a later date.

Via News.com.au:

An amazing image of a mammoth spider devouring a bird was taken in the backyard of a property near Cairns, Australia.

The photo, believed to have been taken earlier this week, shows the spider clenching its legs around a lifeless bird trapped in a web at a property near Atherton, west of Cairns.

Joel Shakespeare, the head spider keeper at NSW’s Australian Reptile Park, said the spider was a golden orb weaver.

“Normally they prey on large insects, it’s unusual to see one eating a bird,” he said. Shakepeare said he had seen golden orb weaver spiders as big as a human hand but the northern species in tropical areas were known to grow larger.

Shakespeare said the bird, a chestnut-breasted mannikin which appears frozen in an angel-like pose in the pictures, is likely to have flown into the web and got caught.

“It wouldn’t eat the whole bird,” he said.

Mishandling animals should come as no surprise when one talks about Muslims, smuggling tunnels, and Gaza in the same sentence.  Via Ha’Aretz:

When the calves were hauled out of the tunnel from Egypt Tuesday they could hardly stand up.

After a terrifying, one-kilometer underground trip into the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, what the young cattle wanted most was a long drink of cool water.

Underground livestock smuggling has increased dramatically ahead of Id Al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice, due December 10, when Muslims the world over slaughter animals and feed the poor to seek God’s forgiveness.

“Even if we brought in animals every day we would not meet the demand for the Id,” said a tunnel operator who identified himself as Abu Luqaib. Hundreds of Gaza merchants throng around the border area of Rafah every day to pick up merchandise coming to Gaza from Egypt via subterranean passages that have created a flourishing trade zone.

“It’s an industrial zone here,” said the 23-year-old tunnel operator as his crew pulled a bawling calf up the deep shaft by a simple rope around its middle. No livestock harness was used.

Here is another article from 2006 about a thousand Turks who spent the first day of the same Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in emergency wards after stabbing themselves or suffering other injuries while sacrificing startled animals.

It’s time for all to learn about the plight of wild horses in the western U.S.

On June 30, 2008, during the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board meeting, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced its potential inability to support, financially, approximately 31,500 wild horses, currently in the agency’s short- and long-term holding facilities. This situation could result in the euthanasia of thousands of wild horses, if a viable solution is not soon found. The following article is from WildHorseSummit:

KILLING AMERICA’S WILD HORSES & BURROS?

BLM PROPOSES MASS KILLING OF AMERICA’S WILD HORSES & BURROS

In 2001, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) launched one the most aggressive wild horse and burro removal campaigns every initiated and has removed over 75,000 wild horses and burros from public lands.

At the turn of the century, an estimated 2-3 million wild horses roamed free in America but through horse hunting and the easy money of capturing them for slaughter, populations had dwindled to about 17,000.

Due to the second largest public outcry and letter campaign ever received by the United States Congress, wild horses and burros became federally protected in 1971 through the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. Yet, over the years, protections have continued to be stripped away as both land and populations have disappeared by the very officials that were charged with protecting and preserving them.

In 2004, Montana’s Senator Conrad Burns shattered over 30 years of protection by slipping in a secret amendment in an appropriations bill that was 1,000’s of pages long and nobody bothered to read before signing it the day before the Congressional Thanksgiving break ~ President Bush then signed it into law.

The Burns Amendment, as it is now called, authorized the government to begin selling captured wild horses and burros again for slaughter “without limitation” until all “excess” wild horses and burros had been disposed of. These same government officials that have been reducing and removing our wild horses, burros and their protected habitat are the ones who decide what constitutes “excess”.

Public opposition to sending our wild horses and burros to slaughter caused Congress to require BLM to change their adoption contracts to include a non-legally binding promise that the new owner would not ship them to slaughter ~ though Congress has yet to repeal the actual law.

On June 30, 2008, with BLM reporting 33,000 wild horses are now being warehoused in government holding facilities, more than currently roam free, they announced they can no longer afford to feed the horses so aggressively removed at their discretion and have proposed either allowing our wild horses and burros be sent to slaughterhouses or BLM wants the authority to kill them outright in their pens.

The BLMs management of the Wild Horse and Burro Program has been under investigation by the Government Accountability Office for the last year with the final report due out in September 2008. A few key Congressman have demanded BLM halt any progress on mass killings until the results of the GAO’s report has been released.

While BLM continues to report 33,000 wild horses and burros still roam free, based on BLMs own population and removal numbers since 2000, an independent analysis of their statistics revealed only about 13,500 were really left when BLM issued their population figures in February 2008. Click Here to learn more.

Depending on the results of the GAO’s report and Congress’s response to it, the killing of tens of thousands of warehoused wild horses and burros may begin as early as November of this year.

Currently, BLM is accepting public comments regarding their new slaughter plans and the American public must speak up! The next month is absolutely crucial in deciding whether America’s wild horses and burros will continue to be protected and remain a part of our American heritage or if they will begin their final march to disappear forever.

Their protection has already been stripped to the bone on every level and if BLM isn’t stopped from killing thousands of horses now – nothing will stop them again.

Tell BLM “NO! THIS IS NOT AN OPTION!” by clicking the link above if our remaining wild horses and burros are to have even the slightest chance at life at all.

Please take a moment out to speak for those who can’t, to be counted as someone who wants to see wild horses and burros remain a part of the American scene and who opposes BLMs management and recent proposed killing policies.

Also please consider passing this along to everyone you know, as the more voices that are heard, the more the odds increase that our wild horses and burros will not be killed or slaughtered. Perhaps even write a letter to your local news station, newspaper or government representatives voicing your opposition to a long-standing history of malfeasance in the Wild Horse and Burro Program.

AMERICA’S WILD HORSES & BURROS
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Photo #1: Wild Horse captured by BLM in September 2006.
Photo # 2: Wild Horses being driven to BLM capture pens by helicopters.
Photo # 3: Wild Horses being warehoused by the BLM.
Photo # 4: Historical photo of wild horse bodies after being driven off cliffs, a method used to eradicate them to reserve all food and water for cattle and sheep ranchers before wild horses and burros became federally protected from such abuses.
Photo #5: Historical photo of mass wild horse grave.
Photo # 6: Recent photo of horses being slaughtered in a Mexican horse slaughter plant, a wild horses or burros fate under BLMs deceptive “Instant Title” option they want Congress to finally approve.

Visit these sites for more information:

• American Herds

• Wild Horse Summit

• Wild Horse Adoption

• Managing for Extinction: Shortcomings of the Bureau of Land Management’s National Wild Horse and Burro Program by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), 2007

National Wild Horse Association

• The National Wild Horse Association is a registered non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization run completely by volunteers. The NWHA was established in 1971 when Congress passed the “Wild, Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act” with one important purpose in mind – insuring the welfare of wild horses and burros and their survival in an ecologically balanced environment on the open range. Website:  http://www.nwha.us/

  American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign

  The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign is supported by a broad-based coalition of public interest groups, environmentalists, humane organizations and historical societies representing over 10 million supporters.

  Website:  http://www.wildhorsepreservation.com

Operation Baghdad Pups began with an email received on September 11, 2007. The desperate words of the U.S. soldier serving in Iraq told of his desire to get the dog, Charlie, he and his regiment had befriended out of the Middle East before their tour of duty ended. Because it is against regulations for troops to befriend an animal or transport one on a military flight, the likelihood of the determined soldiers succeeding alone seemed doubtful.

Members of this Army regiment discovered the dog earlier that summer while patrolling a dangerous neighborhood on the outskirts of Baghdad. The malnourished and flea covered puppy, no bigger than a baked potato, was scooped up by a soldier who felt sorry for the pitiful orphan. Hidden in a tattered blanket, the puppy was snuck onto the Coalition Outpost. As the soldiers took turns secretly caring for the puppy the strong bond between man and dog grew.

“Taking care of Charlie gave me something to look forward to everyday,” one soldier explained. “When all the guys got to playing with him we forgot where we were, the horrible things we had seen, and what we still had to go through. Charlie definitely made our time in Iraq more bearable. He was like a welcomed piece of home right here in the midst of Baghdad.”

Abandoning Charlie in this war ravaged country, consumed in hatred and destruction, would have meant certain death for him. “We all made him a promise that we would not give up. We’d find a way somehow to get him to a better life in the states,” the soldier wrote in that first email.

How could SPCA International not intervene?

Operation Baghdad Pups has now successfully rescued Charlie and other dogs befriended by our troops, out of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the logistics of moving animals from a war zone to a new home are extremely complicated and expensive. To learn more about these complicated hurdles each Baghdad Pup must overcome, visit the efforts page.

With each rescue, the Operation Baghdad Pups team repeatedly beats the odds, but the challenges are still very much a reality. Soon after Charlie’s rescue, SPCA International heard from many more military personnel in Iraq hoping for assistance. Before long, SPCA International had over 35 active cases and that number continues to grow daily.

Every case is funded from generous donations from people like you.

Every animal in the Operation Baghdad Pups program must already have a home in the states before being accepted. SPCA International carefully screens the soldier to make sure they are aware of the potential challenges they and their families might face as the dog or cat they have befriended adjusts to living in a real home and no longer in the middle of a war zone.

Operation Baghdad Pups has a lot more work to do and we need YOUR help! Please join us, and commit to helping us save more animals while saying, “Thank You!” to our troops for making it possible for us to remain free and safe.

How to Help an Animal

Resources for Soldiers:

• Operation Baghdad Pup Criteria
• Contact SPCA International about your story
Resources for Civilians Who Want to Help:

• Donate • Operation Baghdad Pups wish list
• Contact us to organize your community group and sponsor an Operation Baghdad Pups Rescue
• Tell your friends!