March 26, 2005

Thylacine bounty madness!

Channel-surfing in a motel recently, I found an Animal Planet show on the possible survival of the thylacine, or "Tasmanian tiger," a marsupial predator whose last example supposedly died in a Tasmanian zoo in the 1930s.

The show was all pointless animated graphics, shots of attractive people dashing around SE Australia in a Jeep, and other people with with electric auras surrounding their heads--a high ratio of razzle-dazzle to actual information, but it did make this point: stockmen and others keep seeing what look like the thylacine or finding animals killed by a big predator. And other than feral dogs, it's the only possibility for Australia.

Now the Australian media are getting into the quest, with publications offering bounties.

The Bulletin magazine has offered a $1.25m reward, to celebrate the publication’s 125th anniversary.

However a report in the Mercury newspaper said another offer has topped it.

“We’ve been gazumped by the Bulletin so we’re going with (our $1.75m reward) now,” Stewart Malcolm of Thylacine Expeditions told the Mercury.

March 23, 2005

I an testing to see if this appears-- if it does I will be contributing.

March 15, 2005

Food blogging

After all, what is more natural than food. I've been Googling food blogs, and I won't even begin to try to list them all. It's a perfect marriage: A blog is perfect for discussing your particular place in detail, and so is the idea of trying to support local producers as much as possible. You could even make an argument (in some cases) for local "commercial" produce over "organic" avocados flown in from Chile, for example.

Some blogs critique industrial agriculture, for instance. I like that. But I also like "cooking for engineers" -- must be a "guy thing," but this makes sense.

March 08, 2005

Greens and Guns

Ted William's recent article in Audobon lambastes hunters, anglers, and environmental activists for failing to make common cause.

In political and financial strength, the 47 million Americans who hunt and/or fish are to environmentalists what the NFL is to Pop Warner football. So you'd think that the environmental community would be doing some manipulating of its own—or at least communicating. But it consistently blows opportunities.

Yup.

March 01, 2005

The cranes are coming

National Geographic provides a live Web camera for watching the cranes' spring migration on the Platte River in Nebraska. Dawn and dusk (Central Time) are the best times to check it.

On the San Luis Valley flyway here in Colorado, the town of Monte Vista is preparing for annual Crane Festival. You can also read about last year's crane festival in this article by a first-time visitor.