Posts Tagged ‘animals’

Animal-Vehicle Accidents Cost $8 Billion A Year, But Designers Have Found A Sustainable Solution

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

“WASHINGTON – At a picturesque spot in the mountains near the ski resorts of Vail and Breckenridge, Colo., two streams of traffic converge: people driving east and west on Interstate 70, and animals – black bears, cougars, bobcats, elk and deer – headed north and south to feed and mate. When they collide, the animal is almost always killed and the vehicle badly damaged, even if the driver is lucky enough to escape injury.

The obvious solution is a bridge or a tunnel for the animals, but how do you build one they will use?”

What do you think?

Do you think wildlife bridges should be paid for by the government, or by nonprofit interest groups like the one that sponsored this design project? Have you ever been in an accident involving a wild animal?

Chicken Gas Chambers For Humanity

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

If nobody wants to be reminded that their chicken was slaughtered before arriving in the supermarket, then how can chicken producers advertise their new “humane” slaughtering process?

  • Your typical chicken arrives at the slaughterhouse on a truck. It’s plucked from its cage and hung upside-down with its legs shackled to a rail that takes it first to an electrical stunner, and then to a machine that slits its throat and bleeds it to death.
  • But electrical stunners aren’t perfect, and the ethics of hanging already-stressed live chickens upside-down for the last minutes of their lives are sketchy. So some producers are starting to use a gas-based alternative to the electrical stunner.
  • You can call it “controlled atmosphere stunning,” “sedation stunning,” or “slow induction anesthesia,” but the new method uses a carbon dioxide gas chamber to knock the birds out before they’re slaughtered, vastly reducing the stress, pain, and suffering that come with traditional methods.

Facts & Figures

  • Bell & Evans, one of the companies using the new gas-stunning method, “processes” 200,000 chickens a week.
  • Tyson Foods, which uses electrical stunners, slaughters more than 1 million chickens per week.
  • Companies in Britain and Nebraska that already use “controlled atmosphere stunning” tend not to advertise this fact on their product packaging.

Best Quote

“People don’t want to know too much. It’s hard to sell humane killing as a concept.” – Marc Cooper, Senior Scientific Manager in the Farm Animals Department of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, London

Taking Drivers To Task For Destroying Wildlife

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Roadkill is finally acknowledged as a serious environmental and human safety issue.

  • Individuals and state-sponsored research groups are increasingly using GPS technology and the Internet to pinpoint where critters are being mowed down on America’s roads.
  • The California Roadkill Mapping System has created the first website that involves volunteers combing the roads to collect roadkill information.
  • Researchers hope to use the information for two primary purposes: to accurately assess the impact of cars on wildlife and to highlight “hot spots” that would benefit from additional signage or other preventative strategies.

Facts & Figures

  • The Humane Society estimates that 1 million animals are killed on roads each day; the Federal Highway Administration says that 1-2 million large animals are killed every year.
  • Roughly 200 people die each year as a result of hitting animals while driving.
  • There are 4 million miles of public road in the U.S., and about 258 million vehicles using those roads.

Best Quote

“For some people the only contact they have with wild animals is when they run them over,” said Fraser M. Shilling, the lead researcher on the project. “This is the first time people have been able to record roadkill online and I think it will change our understanding of what our road system is really doing to wildlife.” – Fraser M. Shilling, Lead Researcher, California Roadkill Observation System (a research project by the University of California, Davis)

Feds Propose Polar Bears No Longer Walk on Thin Ice

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Amid dueling agendas for Alaska’s future, the polar bear’s plight is being given some serious attention in Washington.

  • The melting of sea ice has left polar bears vulnerable, as the disappearing ice forces them onto land where food is harder to find and conflicts with humans are frequent.
  • The federal government has proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska – this would be the largest habitat zone ever established to protect a species from extinction.
  • Conservationists have warned that proposals for new offshore oil and gas development will conflict with these protection efforts as they will substantially add to  greenhouse emissions and the melting of sea ice.

Facts & Figures

  • If the root problem of their melting habitat is not addressed, the polar bear could disappear from U.S. waters within the next 100 years.
  • The proposed habitat covers three separate areas along the northern and northwestern coasts of Alaska: the coastal barrier islands, sea ice over the continental shelf in waters less than 980 feet deep; and terrestrial denning habitat from five miles to the 20 miles inland.
  • About 1,500 polar bears are believed to live in the Southern Beaufort Sea. The other significant population is in the Chukchi Sea. They haven’t been counted for 20 years, but at that point there were 2,000.

Best Quote

“Today’s announcement…acknowledges that some of the most sensitive areas on land and in the offshore waters of America’s Arctic – including much of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – are key to the species’ survival.” – Cindy Shogan, Alaskan Wilderness League