Planetsave

“Leave No Trace” has always been an honored credo of the Boy Scouts of America. The trumpeted tenet is supposed to refer to ethical guidelines which preach having a minimal impact on land, nature and wildlife. But according to a recent investigation, the Boy Scouts have been caught logging over 34,000 acres of pristine forest over the last 20 years, including 60 clearcuts and 35 salvage harvests. They’ve literally left no trace– of the forests.

Furthermore, the survey showed that most of the acreage was logged to turn a backdoor profit, and there’s evidence of corruption. A number of Scout councils submitted inaccurate and misleading logging plans, and allegedly disregarded rules and regulations which were in place to protect wildlife and the watershed. Some of the deals even involve cozy relationships with private companies and state regulators.

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If I didn’t know any better, I’d congratulate Utah republicans for at least being consistent in their ultra-conservative, anti-choice beliefs by spreading it to all species. But alas, that was not the intention of this new law.

They’ve preemptively passed a law to stop animal rights activists from distributing birth control to deer populations in order to bring their population down below the legal level for hunting to be allowed. While this has never happened before, it’s a common fear that activists will someday destroy hunters’ “way of life.”

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A man who stabbed an Emu to death ‘because he wanted to eat it for Christmas lunch’ has been fined almost A$4,000 (US$2,500) for animal cruelty.

An Australian court heard that, two days before Christmas, Patrick James Andrews, 23, crept into the Emu enclosure at Alexandra zoo in south-east Queensland, where he repeatedly stabbed a 30-year-old Emu named Mary, before cutting its legs off. Zoo staff later found the animal dead in its enclosure.

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Airport customs in Melbourne, Australia found that a man was carrying bird eggs in his pocket before also noticing that he had two live pigeons wrapped in paper and stuffed inside his pants.

The 23-year-old Australian had just returned on a flight from Dubai. If convicted of smuggling charges, the man could face 10 years in prison and/or a $70,430 fine, according to local reports.

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Some clever techies confused PETA supporters today by pulling a well-executed prank against their campaign to “re-brand” fish as sea kittens.

For at least a couple hours today, the internet was abuzz with the fact that www.SeaKittens.com had an Omaha Steaks ad smack-dab at the top of the page. But PETA can’t really be that careless, right?

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The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is calling for a complete economic boycott of Icelandic products after the country’s announcement extending their illegal commercial whaling campaign into the next five years.

Last year, Iceland killed nine endangered Fin whales. A few months back they began exporting the meat from the endangered whales to Japan, which is a clear violation of international law. This year, they want to kill 150.

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Despite the news yesterday that the wolf population in Yellowstone has decreased 27%, the Bush administration said today that they will remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list in the Midwest and in the area surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

The Bush administration has tried to remove the wolves’ federal protections twice before, once in the Great Lakes and once in the northern Rockies, which includes Montana, Colorado and Wyoming. Federal judges revoked both rule changes in February and September of last year.

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The mountain yellow-legged frog is an endangered species, so closing 1,000 acres of a 655,000 acre park to protect what could be the last 18 of the frogs in the area shouldn’t be a big deal, right?

Well, those 1,000 acres include what was once a popular rock climbing area, Williamson Rock, and it’s been closed since 2005. The Forest service now says it’ll be closed at least another year. Climbers say they’ve been patient, but want the rock back.

“[The frog is] really on the brink,” said Lisa Northrop, planning officer for the Angeles National Forest. “Almost any activity, swimming, rock climbing, use of the trail, has the potential to impact the frog.”

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If you’ve ever been to Texas, you know there’s no shortage of deer. They’re everywhere. But apparently that’s not enough for the elite hunting resorts that artificially maintain a herd of white-tailed deer through breeding farms and stock auctions - they can’t keep up the demand for big bucks due to trophy hunting desires.

But the big deer are expensive and hard to come by from the 1,100 licensed deer breeders inside the state of Texas, thus spawning a massive illegal trade of large antlered bucks from farms in northern states like Michigan. The illegal trade is putting the health of the Texas deer population at risk, all because people feel the need to shoot bigger deer.

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On Saturday Canada issued new regulations for its annual seal slaughter, banning the skinning of live seals and forbidding the use of the spiked weapon called a hakapik on seals over one-year-old. Unfortunately, most seals killed in the hunt are under a year old so the law will not alter the cruel deaths many seals face each year.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has confronted and interfered with the seal hunters the past several years, issued a statement condemning the Canadian efforts as merely a reaction to the European Union’s threat to ban all inhumanely slaughtered seal products.

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