The new rules would restrict the shooting of species including the distinctive woodcock, and the striking pintail, goldeneye and pochard ducks, all of which are classed as under threat and have seen their populations fall sharply in recent years.
"One of the funky things about Massachusetts is we have these 'blue laws' that go back to the Puritan times. Now, we've been able to overcome some of them through history. We stopped burning women at the stake and we allowed people to drink alcohol. But, we still have a Sunday ban on hunting. It doesn't make any sense," the governor said Thursday during a press conference.
An unnamed tourist saw it and told Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises. Moore told SFGATE that he was initially skeptical, but the guest's iPhone footage left little room for doubt. The video shows, not a sea lion or an otter, but an actual Canis latrans, doggedly dogpaddling, then clambering out of the water, noticeably shaky and struggling to settle tired paws on the craggy rocks.
Once hunted to extinction in France, wolves began crossing over from Italy after gaining protected status under the 1979 Bern Convention. But they have been killing more livestock, too, with 12,000 farm animals lost last year, according to preliminary figures. Under current rules, farmers can only shoot wolves if they attack animals inside a protected enclosure -- a restriction centrist President Emmanuel Macron's government said would now be relaxed.
The work suggested that resistance arises from a relatively large number of sites, each with relatively minor effects. For example, the sites in the genome identified by quantitative trait analysis typically boosted resistance by about 10 points on the researchers' 100-point scale. In the genome-wide analysis, 17 individual genetic differences were associated with about a quarter of the heritable resistance traits.
The wolves arrived in May of last year, just days after Paul Roen had driven his cattle back up to their summer pasture in Northern California's Sierra Valley. He started finding the bleeding bodies of calves-some still alive, so badly paralyzed that they'd need to be shot. After weeks of this, Roen finally saw a kill himself. "One wolf grabbed a cow and spun her around, while another grabbed a calf," he told me. "He tore it into three pieces in 30 seconds."
Wildlife populations are in decline. Recreation sites are crowded and often underfunded. Wildfires are larger, more destructive and harder to control. Climate change is reshaping natural systems, from ocean fisheries to mountain snowpacks, faster than institutions can respond. At the same time, communities are being asked to host new energy projects, transmission lines and mineral development - often without clear processes, adequate resources or trust that decisions are being made in the public interest.
The next morning, I checked the critter-cams and saw the bear again, now captured by a camera I'd placed by a little mesh-covered opening near the small basement under my house. I watched as a massive shape emerged from the hole. My brain refused to believe it. The bear looked too large to fit in that tiny gap. I watched it again, shocked. My hands started to sweat.