Severe Drought in Amazonia Drying Up Rivers

One hundred and forty-one river dolphins have been found dead and many more are trapped in super-heated shallow pools.  People are affected by shortages of supplies and water since rivers are the main means of transportation.  Water levels are at historic lows, which also affects fishing.  The state of Amazonas has declared a state of emergency; public officials say the drought may effect half a million people by the end of the year. The state's governor met with President Luis da Silva to discuss relief plans.

The drought is intensified by a strong El Niño which prevents the formation of rain clouds.  Climate change also contributes to the drought conditions by increasing evaporation that dries out soils and vegetation. This drought is expected to last longer than previous episodes. The Amazon River at Manaus was recorded at 55 feet, six feet lower than last year. The record stands at 45 feet recorded in 2010.

Grey Wolf Spotted in SoCal

For the first time in one hundred years, a grey wolf was spotted in Southern California.  A grey wolf, known officially as OR-93 [photo] traveled from Oregon to SoCal. 2021.  Her epic journey ended in a vehicle collision along I-5 about 50 miles north of Los Angeles. Recently, A wolf was spotted by a biologist doing restoration work in Giant Sequoia National Monument ravaged by wildfires.  Later DNA analysis of hair and scat samples showed an adult female wolf.  She is the leader of the southernmost California pack in a region of the Sierra Nevadas that has not been occupied by wolves in a century.  She and her four offspring are direct descendants of famous OR-7, the first wolf known to cross into California. Biologists are cautiously optimistic that the Tulare pack will adapt to their environment only 130 miles away from Los Angeles, if left undisturbed.

But the Tulare Pack is already causing friction with local livestock owners and logging managers.  Conservationists have urged post-fire logging operations be suspended until the impact of such activities on wolves can be assessed.  California lists grey wolves as endangered; they cannot be killed unless in defense of humans.  The law provides for full market value payments to owners whose livestock are killed by wolves.  A new program even compensates owners for stress impacts from the presence of wolves within a pack territory.  So far, there have been no confirmed kills by wolves in the region. 

Once numbering in the millions, wolves are thought to be reduced to only 7500 in the lower 48 states causing herbivore numbers to explode. The apex predators are needed to restore balance to affected ecosystems. Yellowstone National Park has benefitted immensely from the reintroduction of wolves in the 1990s. About two dozen wolves live in northern California including the Lassen Pack (Lassen and Plumas Counties), Beckworth Pack (eastern Plumas County) and Whaleback Pack (eastern Siskiyou Counties)  A pack of all black wolves near Shasta has not been seen since their discovery in 2015; presumably they were killed after incidents of livestock predation.

TWIT: Lying Liars LLC

Allen Weisselberg, the former CFO of Trump Org, is on five years probation for his conviction in the tax fraud case brought against him by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.  The conditions include that he testify in subsequent cases and that he not be convicted of other crimes.   It seems that people around Don 'Legit' have a problem with truth-telling as does the boss himself.  

Weisselberg testified in the civil fraud case brought by the New York Attorney General this week. According to a journalist who has followed the misfortunes of the Trump's business empire he may have committed perjury. Dan Alexander of Forbes magazine accused the Weisselberg of perjury in an article on Thursday. One of the lies Trump used to inflate his worth on financial documents is the size of his penthouse apartment.  He reported it as 30,000 sq.ft. when is just shy of 11,000. Weisselberg testified he did not consider the size of the apartment when calculating Trump's net worth, calling it "de minimus" several times during his testimony. Alexander says communications and reporters' notes show Weisselberg actually did take into consideration the apartment's size during a dispute with Forbes over the its value.  Eventually after more than three years of discussion, Weisselberg convinced reporters that it was worth more than the figures Forbes used after accepting the 30,000 sq. ft. figure. Trump even gave Forbes reporters a tour of the apartment, during which he emphasized the size of his pad.  Subsequently in 2016 Forbes found property tax records that listed the apartment at 10,996.

Trumpilini, in his usual ad hominem fashion has called Alexander a "psycho writer". Chalk up another defamation suit for Trumpillini. He has been at war with the "globalist rag" since it dropped him from its infamous richest list due to his twisting of financial facts. AG Letitia James is aware of the reporting from Forbes and is evaluating whether Weisselberg should be prosecuted for perjury. That is bad news for Weisselberg since a conviction would mean he would go back to jail to serve the remainder of his tax fraud sentence.

Way down home in Ft. Pierce, the MAGA jurist is up to her tricks again. She has apparently settled on a strategy of incremental delays in scheduling the Mar-a-Lago trial--which is almost entirely in her discretion-- that do not give the government an opportunity to file an interlocutory appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. She  terminated a Garcia hearing on potential conflicts of interest among defense attorneys this week after chastising a government attorney for wasting the court's time. The government wanted to restrict co-defendant Nauta's attorney Woodward from cross examining a government witness since Woodward represented the witness previously during grand jury proceedings. Defense counsel objected to arguing this issue since it was not raised prior to the hearing. The judge agreed saying,“I do want to admonish the government for frankly wasting the court’s time,” Cannon said. She added she was “disappointed” that David Harbach, one of the prosecutors, had raised the request without warning, and without citing supporting cases from the southern district of Florida. And so it goes.

credit: D. Bell

Wackydoodle axes:  Wanna know my net worth?

Chart of the Week: Gaza Strip

More: The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza within 24 hours, apparently in a prelude to a full scale invasion of the the territory.  Knowledgeable observers say moving over a million people in such a short period of time is impossible.  The UN says such a movement would have "devastating humanitarian consequences" and has called for a recession of the order to avoid turning a tragedy into "a calamitous situation".  The Israeli Air Force has dropped 6,000 bombs on what it calls "Hamas targets".  

Over 2.3 million Palestinians exist in what amounts to the open-air prison of Gaza Strip.  It has been under quarantine by Israel since 2007, and the target of three military operations of 2009, 2012 and 2014 in which thousands of Palestinians died.  Israel is preparing another retaliatory incursion into the territory, sure to be larger in scale than previous ones. What Hamas perpetrated is inexcusable, but neither is the killing of civilians who have nothing to do with the terrorist group. Concentrated aerial bombardment has already killed over 1500 inhabitants including children of the densely populated Strip, which is about the size of the Detroit (138 sq. mi.) Look at the chart:

One of the members of the hard-right government controlling Israel said that Gaza should be "returned to medieval times". A similar callous expression was used by a US official during the Vietnam War, when he said he wanted to 'bomb North Vietnam into the Stone Age'.  Israel's brutal concentration and dehumanization of Palestinians since the 1987 Intifada is a root cause of the vicious Hamas breakout. Military destruction of civilian infrastructure, economic oppression, and severe restriction of movement has not solved the problems of Islamic terror or of an independent, viable state of Palestine. Is this seige to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto? Since declaring war Israel has cut off food, water and electricity in Gaza, which action is itself a war crime. The proper role of the United States in this latest violent episode is to restrain its quisling state (over $260 billion in aid since the founding of Israel), provide humanitarian assistance, and prevent a widening of the conflict.

Pope Francis: Laudato Deum

drought; credit Oxfam

Now that the next global climate conference COP28 has been co-opted by the fossil fuel industry (the conference is being held in the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate, and the conference chairperson is a fossil fuel executive. Pope Francis has issued a follow up statement to his ground-breaking encyclical, Laudato Si in which he expressed the need to care for our common home. That document was aimed at influencing the 21st COP held in Paris in December 2015.  Then came the criminal destroyer, Don 'Legit'. He withdrew the United States from the voluntary goal of holding the Earth's increase in global temperature to 1.5ºC above a 1900 basline. All serious negotiations on climate action stalled for the next four years.

The pontiff is bluntly critical of elites who are failing to secure global action to reduce the threats of climate change in his new statement on climate, Laudato Deum. Instead of embracing alternative energy generation, nations increased the subsidies for fossil fuel by $7 trillion annually. Francis notes that increasingly violent weather patterns and the impact of higher temperatures disproportionately impacts poor people. Africa is home to half the world's population, but contributes minimally to global carbon emissions. Nevertheless, he holds out some hope for COP28, “To say there is nothing to hope for [from COP28] would be suicidal,” the pope writes, “for it would mean exposing all humanity, especially the poorest, to the worst impacts of climate change.”

flood; credit Greenpeace

As head of the world's largest religion--there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world--he has rarely avoided controversy. Nor is he a science denier, either. In his statement he devotes 25% of it to citing the scientific studies supporting the real phenomenom of climate change to contradict, "dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even in the Catholic Church." The pope claims that environmental degradation is tantamount to sin, involkiing his namesake's deep love and connection to nature. He advocates all peoples of faith to recognize our technological progress is "turning against us".

TWIT: Secrets for Sale

credit: R. Bolling

Update:  In a response to defendant Trump's motion for yet more time to review classified discovery, Special Counsel Smith hinted that the government is prepared to show a motive for Don 'Legit's" illegal retention of classified material at Mar-a-Lago.  Government attorneys wrote "That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute;at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute; what is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them—all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence." They maintain that the defendant has not shown valid reasons for further delay of his trial.  Meanwhile pro-Trump judge Aileen Cannon has paused the trial schedule until a SCIF is erected in the Ft. Pierce courthouse, handing yet another victory to his legal team.

[5/10/2023} US Person pleased to post that his estimation that Don 'Legit' stole the classified documents from the White House and stashed them around the 'ultra-secure' Mar-a-Lago resort because he saw value, either pecuniary or trade, in the secrets is partially vindicated. Sympathetic commentators have been attempting to minimize his crime by asserting that he suffers from some sort of compulsive-obsessive disorder.  No.  Trumpillini is all transactional, all the time.  Even his marriage to Melania is an exclusive personal services contract. He illegally retained the secret documents not as souvenirs, but for future influence peddling or outright sale.

ABC reported today that the rogue former chief executive told a foreign national at Mar-a-Lago in April 2021 about US nuclear submarine secrets. Details of the "silent service" are some of the most closely guarded US national security secrets.   The man receiving the information is an Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt, who shared the information with others. Pratt purchased access to Der Leader by buying a club membership.  Under the Espionage Act that constitutes "dissemination", which is also illegal.  The incident was reported to Special Council Jack Smith and Pratt has been interviewed several times by federal investigators.  In the conversation Pratt had with Trumpillini about Australia buying US submarines, the criminal defendant told him how many warheads US subs carry and how they can approach Russian subs without being detected.  Pratt relayed the information to numerous individuals including ten Australian government officials and six journalists.  Subsequently, Australia agreed to purchase three Virginia-class submarines from the United States

In reaction to the story, commentators were quick to point out that Trump spoke to Putin multiple times in person when they were completely alone except for translators.   The translation records are unavailable despite repeated requests. Conservative pundit George Conway said,"Everyone who has accused P01135809 [defendant Trump] of selling the nation’s secrets should profusely apologize. Out of innate charity, he gives them away for free," Or Not!  Don 'Legit' has finally outright asked MAGA Judge Cannon that is Mar-a-Lago Papers trial be delayed until after the 2024 election.

Loose lips

Grizzlies Need Room

More:  Grizzlies are large, strong, and potentially dangerous animals.  The couple that was killed in Banff National Park recently, was camping deep in the Park when a female grizzly attacked their camp.  Family members said the couple were outdoor enthusiasts who used bear protocols.  Authorities responded to a satellite distress message; the couple and their dog were found dead outside their tent with an empty can of bear spray.  The bear was shot and killed by rangers.  A necropsy showed the bear to be nearing the end of her life with low fat reserves and worn teeth.  She was facing a slow death by starvation, and no doubt attacked the campers out of desperation.  The incident was the first fatal attack in half a century.

On a less tragic note, it is the annual "Fat Bear Week" in Katmai National Park, AK. Katmai bears are gorging on salmon in preparation for their annual winter hibernation.  Park rangers have created a contest bracket in which the public can vote for their favorite fat bear from posted photos.  Voting continues until "Fat Bear Tuesday", October 14th, when a bear with the most votes will be declared the winner.  Adult bears can pack on 200-300 pounds in a few weeks of feasting!

{04/10/2023} Biologists know that grizzly bears need a lot of room to survive.  But suitable habitat is becoming scarse as humans expand development ever further into the northern Rockies.  One solution that works is connecting existing protected land with corridors that bears can use for foraging and mating.  The Forest Service should be interested in creating more corridors and protecting the ones that already are in place.  Alliance for the Wild Rockies says that is not the case, and is suing the Forest Service to halt the massive twenty-year logging plan in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana.

The Middleman Project covers 141,799 acres including logging and burning in old growth forests President Biden promised to protect.  This landscape happens to be adjacent to Gates of the Mountains Wilderness were grizzlies still live.  It is a key corridor between Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park ecosystems.  Yet the Forest Service plans to bulldoze forty-six miles of new logging roads and ninety miles of reconstructed roads in the Wilderness.  Tragically most bears are killed within 3 miles of a road since it gives poachers and hunters easier access to bear habitat.  The area is experiencing an exodus of elk due to human activity.  Elk is the main prey species for grizzly bears.  The Service has a poor record of enforcing closed roads, and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks says there are already too many roads in the area for elk to remain undisturbed.

Additionally, the Service cynically avoided its legal responsibility for maintaining suitable lynx habitat by removing 125,000 previously mapped lynx habitat from the project boundaries.  The agency contends that the project will improve wildfire protection.  This is misleading.  No amount of burning and road building will make forests "fireproof".  Best available scientific evidence indicates making homes more fire resistant by installing non-flammable roofs and decks and by removing vegetation within the curtilage.  The survival of the "white house" in Lahaina's conflagration  is a stark example of what can be achieved with this approach.  Opening forests to more drying sunlight and wind are significant factors in the most destructive wildfires.  The Forest Service needs to wake up to what the courts are telling them:  follow environmental rules, not the wishes of industry.  You can help preserve the Northern Rockies biome and grizzly survival in the wild by donating to the Wild Rockies Alliance here.