NEWSHUNTING

So many feral swine have gone loose from canned hunting ranches throughout Michigan, destroying crops and property along the way. Fear of disease transmission to domestic pigs is a threat not to be taken lightly either. In response, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment (MDNRE) established open hunting season on the massive omnivores last year and, more recently, decided it was time to classify them as an invasive species.

Michigan Wildlife Conservancy agrees that the state needs to take action. "Hogs will pollute streams, vegetable crops, root up crop fields, destroy forest regeneration and kill pets.  They eat livestock, deer fawns and ground nesting birds," said Dennis Fijalkowski, Executive Director of Michigan Wildlife Conservancy. "Wild hogs carry 31 known diseases, some of which can be transmitted to humans.  Pseudorabies alone has the potential to wipe out some of our agricultural industry."

But instead of going forward and declaring swine illegal, MDNRE has bowed to Governor Rick Snyder’s request to give legislators until October 8th to come up with a solution.

Following the annual International Whaling Commission conference, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is using the Pelly Amendment to impose sanctions on Iceland for engaging in whale hunting. The law states that a country in violation of global conservation standards for fisheries is eligible to receive economic sanctions.

Many thanks go out to the more than 11,000 Change.org members who signed Greenpeace’s petition pressuring Secretary Locke to take action against Iceland.

The IWC imposed a moratorium on whaling back in 1984 to protect whale populations from threat of extinction. Iceland, Norway and Japan continue to hunt whales despite the ban in place. U.S. officials are particularly concerned with Iceland because the country has increased its fin whale quota to levels that scientists believe threaten the species' survival, and the industry is trying to create new markets for fin whale meat.

In a statement regarding his decision, Secretary Locke noted: “It's critical that the government of Iceland take immediate action to comply with the moratorium." Now it is up to President Obama to decide the level of economic and diplomatic sanctions that will be imposed on Iceland.

Bernard Unti, who has served on Humane Society International's IWC delegation since 2007, is senior policy adviser and special assistant to the president/CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.

Delegates to the International Whaling Commission’s 63^rd annual meeting on July 11-15 in Jersey (Channel Islands) can and should support proposals favoring transparency in governance and operations and the creation of a South Atlantic whale sanctuary. Doing so would help to set the IWC on a better course after 2010’s international battle royale over a compromise to lift the global moratorium on commercial whaling. That proposal, supported even by the United States, would have granted Japan legal commercial whaling quotas in its own coastal waters in exchange for a voluntary reduction in its "scientific" whaling in Antarctica.

It’s been ten years since the last formal transparency proposal surfaced at IWC, and in the continuing stream of details concerning vote buying, subsidized travel, and other perks for delegates, a serious attempt at reform is overdue. The Jersey proposal, sponsored by the United Kingdom, seeks to enhance overall processes for decision-making, observer group participation, integrating the findings of the IWC Scientific Committee into IWC deliberations, timely publication of reports, and funding the participation of developing countries, among other concerns.

Go Daddy’s Bob Parsons isn’t the only CEO who likes to blow off steam by blowing away wildlife.

Photos published last month by Robert Hirschfeld on Smile Politely show Jimmy John Liautaud, founder and CEO of the 1,000-franchise Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches chain, posing next to fallen elephants (or, as the safari company's captions refer to them, a “78 lbs tusker” and “79 lbs tusker”).

In another photo, Liautaud is beaming behind a dead brown bear he paid to shoot in Alaska.

Liautaud wrote about paying to kill a buck on a canned hunt in his article “My Year of Hunting in 2009,” published two years ago in Hunting Illustrated: “This was the luckiest situation I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime … For Johnny to let this deer grow to be so old and mature, and to let me hunt him, was extremely generous.”

There are currently more than 1,000 captive hunting facilities in the United States that are "extremely generous" to those who pay to kill their animals.

The feral swine problem in Michigan has gotten so out of control that the state wants to declare the animals an invasive species in the hopes of stopping the damage that the exploding population of pigs can cause to the ecosystem and farms. Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment is so anxious to get rid of them that hunting feral swine is allowed 365 days a year.

These animals originated from game ranches, where they were imported for hunters to shoot in fenced-in areas. With these massive swine, escape from the fences is not a matter of if, but when. As a result of these escapes, feral swine have been confirmed in at least 69 of Michigan's 83 counties.

An invasive species designation would prevent any ownership of Eurasian boars and razorbacks that are imported or bred locally for use as trophy hunts at canned hunt ranches. No stranger to hunting controversy, Ted Nugent is a very vocal supporter of the canned hunt industry. As an owner of one of these businesses, he wants to preserve the lucrative trophy swine hunt opportunity.

Immediately following the publication of the budget bill in the Federal Register, Idaho and Montana announced plans to open the wolf hunt season. This is in addition to other lethal wolf management techniques that are being explored – gassing pups in dens, aerial hunting and trapping, to name a few.

What does wolf hunting have to do with the federal budget? A last-minute rider was attached to the budget bill, for purely political reasons, that stripped wolves of their endangered species protections. Not only did Congress cross a line in micromanaging the Endangered Species Act, but they're also accused of violating the separation of powers doctrine.

The rider didn't actually make changes to law itself, but instead reversed the court decision that re-listed wolves as endangered species — a decision which has been appealed and is still an open case before a judge. Lawsuits calling the constitutionality of the budget bill rider into question have been filed.

Fin whales living in the waters around Iceland have been given a temporary reprieve from being hunted by humans this summer. Hvalur, the top whaling company in Iceland, has postponed their hunt as a result of the earthquakes and tsunami that hit Japan earlier this year.

Iceland exploits a loophole in the International Whaling Commission’s commercial whaling moratorium by claiming their hunts are for scientific research purposes. Once the whales are slaughtered the meat is sold for consumption, primarily to Japan.

The disasters in Japan destroyed three whale processing plants and the Japanese market for whale meat is just about non-existent. Most people are trying to rebuild their lives and worry about the nuclear crisis; whale meat is a delicacy that is not high on the priority list right now.

Hunters call it "training," animal protection groups call it a bloodsport. Coyote and fox penning is the practice where packs of dogs are set upon wild coyotes and foxes trapped in fenced enclosures. The dogs run the terrified captive animals to exhaustion, often tearing them apart once they have them cornered.

To stock the pens, coyotes and foxes are trapped with leghold traps, crammed into small cages and shipped (sometimes hundreds of miles with no food or water) to these facilities where hunters pay to let their dogs loose on the victims.

This cruel practice is legal in at least 19 states. Last year, Florida was debating whether to regulate or ban penning. The Sunshine State did the right thing, thanks to pressure from a coalition of animal advocates, and opted for the ban. Now it's Indiana's turn.

The latest message from Canadians? The seal hunt isn't worth it.

A new poll conducted by International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) shows that over two-thirds (68 percent) of Canadians are opposed to using tax dollars to fund the commercial seal hunt. The survey was conducted by Environics Research Group for IFAW, and compiled the information from a random sample of 2,140 Canadian adults, between the dates of April 12-21, 2011.

With the federal election just around the corner, Canadian politicians should pay attention to these poll results. The current Canadian administration set a record-breaking quota for the seal hunt this year, sanctioning the deaths of 400,000 seals.

These deaths were approved despite that fact that the Gulf of St. Lawrence is experiencing the worst ice conditions on record, which has already cost the lives of many harp seal pups. But Canada's current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who The Economist recently called "a dinosaur on climate change," doesn't give a hoot about wildlife populations.

A few decades ago, the wolves of the Great Lakes region faced extinction. The number of gray wolves in Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan has since grown, but still faces threats.

Their cousins to the west, the gray wolves of the Rocky Mountains, will be the first species ever to be removed from the Endangered Species List. The decision has spurred federal officials to threaten Great Lakes wolves with the same fate.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying for years to cross wolves off of the Endangered Species List, but hasn't been successful due to lawsuits and warnings by wildlife advocacy and environmental groups. The agency says wolves attack livestock, hunting dogs and big game (which prevents the human hunter from getting a trophy kill), but instead of turning to nonviolent, alternative measures of control, the agency wants permission to kill wolves.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argues that allowable killings are necessary to control the population in certain areas of the Great Lakes Region. The Center for Biological Diversity doesn't agree. Their lawsuits are part of the reason why protections have remained intact. The group believes that removing the wolf from protected status will only unravel the progress that's been made toward restoring them.