Tag Archives: wildlife

What The Hell??? Marcy Housing Worker Uses Pitchfork To Kill 3 Ft. Long Giant Rat Running Around The Projects !!!

What is really good with Jay-Z’s old hood? In the works of Amy Winehouse — what kind of f**kery is this??? Giant rats — bigger than cats — are terrorizing the residents of the Marcy projects where Jay-Z grew up. A housing worker recently used a PITCHFORK to kill one. You’ve got to read the details: A photo making the rounds shows Housing Authority worker Jose Rivera minutes after he speared the humongous rodent with a pitchfork at the Marcy Houses. It’s covered in white fur and looks well-fed. It appears to be about three feet long, including its hideously dangling tail. And Rivera, 48, says it’s not the only one. He insists that while he was filling a rat hole last week, three came running out – but he was only able to nail one. “I hit it one time and it was still moving,” Rivera said. “I hit it another time and that’s when it died. I’m not scared of rats but I was scared of being bitten.” Naomi Colon, head of the Marcy Houses Tenant Association, said there have been sightings of the outsize rat for at least six years. “The residents have told me that they’ve seen it running around with other rats. She lived with them. She ran into the same hole they ran in.” Animal experts who viewed the picture identified the animal as a Gambian pouched rat, which is a fairly common pet rat. They’re nocturnal, can grow to three feet and four pounds or more, and live seven or eight years. Imports have been banned since 2003, when they were blamed for a monkeypox outbreak that sickened 100 people in the United States. Dr. Paul Calle, director of zoological health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said the Marcy Houses specimen was probably an escaped or discarded pet who decided to join the regular rat race. “They are a very social animal and live in big groups in the wild. Our Norway rats are the closest big rodents it could accompany,” he said. They can even be trained to sniff out landmines or even tuberculosis. “They’re pretty remarkable animals,” Calle said. Tenants fear that the Gambian rat has been breeding with the Norway rats and spawning a super-breed of rodents – but zoo officials say not to worry. The imported rat probably wouldn’t mate with local rats, and it couldn’t reproduce if it did, because each is from a different genus, Calle said. Residents say that while the monster-sized rat may be the stuff of horror movies, the run-of-the-mill rats are an even bigger nightmare at the project where Jay-Z grew up. “Even the cats are afraid of the rats. They get together and gang up on the cats, said resident Stephanie Davis, 44. Pam Davis, 43, added, “They’re here day and night. We don’t dodge bullets. We dodge rats.They’re so big, they should charge them rent.” The New York City Housing Authority had no immediate comment. What the fizzuck!!! These nasty mofos are running around terrorizing CATS! SMH @ “We don’t dodge bullets. We dodge rats.” Source

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What The Hell??? Marcy Housing Worker Uses Pitchfork To Kill 3 Ft. Long Giant Rat Running Around The Projects !!!

Human Planet – Web exclusive series trailer – BBC One

http://www.youtube.com/v/2HiUMlOz4UQ?f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

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Human Planet – Web exclusive series trailer – BBC One

Carbon Trading is Far From Perfect, But What’s the Alternative?

Image credit: Friends of the Earth UK While some see it as the only viable way to curb our carbon emissions, and there is evidence that the EU’s carbon trading scheme has helped reduce emissions , the fact that the global carbon market has grown to over $136 billion has some people worried. Very worried. Given the ongoing fall out from the latest financial crisis, and the

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Carbon Trading is Far From Perfect, But What’s the Alternative?

Walmart Adds 218,000 Acres to Wildlife Habitat Protection Program

Image: mjb84 via flickr One more item to add to the list of reasons it’s getting harder to hate Walmart : its Acres for America program is working to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres of wildlife habitat…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Walmart Adds 218,000 Acres to Wildlife Habitat Protection Program

Could Housing Developments Fund Nature Reserves?

Image credit: Avon Wildlife Trust Lloyd has noted that sprawl is the death of us all , and we know that managing sprawl is more about proper planning than it is about fancy LEED-certified buildings. But given the fact that new housing continues to be built, often on previously unused land, how do we manage the pressure on wildlife and habitats… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Could Housing Developments Fund Nature Reserves?

TreeHugger’s 30 Most Popular Posts of November

Photo: Amazing Scrap Sculptures Of Wildlife By Edouard Martinet These beautiful robot fish sculptures by French artist Edouard Martinet were just one of our 30 most popular posts of November. The other 29 are after the jump. We know you work hard and don’t have time to see every single post we publish, so now you can kick back and see some of the best of what you might of missed. Enjoy! … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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TreeHugger’s 30 Most Popular Posts of November

What the FDA doesn’t want you to know about GE salmon

One of the arguments against expanding the FDA's powers over food safety is that the agency has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to enforce existing laws and to regulate aggressively in the face of corporate lobbying. Unfortunately, we now have more evidence that the FDA may indeed be a bad-faith regulator. The Center for Food Safety has unearthed convincing evidence that the FDA is attempting to freeze out marine and fisheries experts from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its rush to approve biotech company AquaBounty's genetically modified salmon for human consumption. According to documents obtained by the consumer group via a Freedom of Information Act request, the FDA has held only “preliminary” discussions with these agencies regarding AquaBounty's product and has not allowed government scientists to review some of the company's “confidential” data. According to an email sent between staffers at Fish and Wildlife and NOAA, they've been kept out of the loop for some time: Shortly after the Atlantic salmon was listed as endangered, several of us from USFWS and NMFS spent 2 days down in Maryland meeting with AquaBounty and FDA about development of genetically modified salmon and discussion around the need for FDA to engage in Section 7 consultation with the Services. We never heard a peep out of FDA or AquaBounty after that. It's ironic that the FDA, an agency so bureaucratically unprepared to regulate GE foods that it considers AquaBounty's salmon the same way it would a “veterinary drug” has decided that this process has no place for scientists who actually understand fish biology and marine ecosystems. Specifically, the Center for Food Safety accuses the FDA of having “knowingly withheld a Federal Biological Opinion by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) prohibiting the use of transgenic salmon in open-water net pens pursuant to the U.S. Endangered Species Act.” cont. added by: JanforGore

Malaysian Smugglers Nabbed with Hundreds of Lizards

Image credit: foto.rajith /Flickr Whether they are destined for local markets, neighboring countries, or beyond, the wildlife of South East Asia are on the move—hidden in the nets, crates, and even carry-ons of opportunistic smugglers. The latest victims of this alarming trend are the more than 400 monitor lizards rescued from smugglers trying to cross the Malaysia border…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Malaysian Smugglers Nabbed with Hundreds of Lizards

Super Rare Asian "Unicorn" Captured, Dies in Captivity

Image Credit: AP Photo/World Wide Fund for Nature As far as endangered species go, it’s mostly bad news , with the occasional positive story . Well this news seems to fall somewhere in the middle: in late August, a group of Laotian villagers in the Annamite Mountains captured a saola, one of the rarest animals on the planet. The Bolikhamxay Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office, advised by the IUCN Saola Working Group and the Lao Programme of the Wildlife Conservation Societ… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Super Rare Asian "Unicorn" Captured, Dies in Captivity

Massive Fish Kill in Mississippi Not Due to BP Spill, State Biologists Say

Photo via Stuff Biologists from the Louisiana Fish & Wildlife Department have determined that a massive fish kill that occurred in the mouth of the Mississippi River — that resulted in grisly pictures like the one above ricocheting around the web — was not caused by the BP spill. So what was to blame?… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Massive Fish Kill in Mississippi Not Due to BP Spill, State Biologists Say