No. 1269, October 31, 2024

Save Painted Bats From a Gruesome Fate

During spooky season we see bats everywhere. But there are places they just shouldn’t be: pinned in display cases or crammed into tiny fake coffins for “decor.”

That’s especially true for rare painted woolly bats, who are collected from the wild to be killed and stuffed as curios — placed dead on walls and shelves thousands of miles from their homes. The United States is the largest known market for trade in these unique orange-and-black bats native to South and Southeast Asia. Their populations are declining, and their biggest threat is overcollection for decor. In just 12 weeks, a recent study found 215 listings for painted bats on Amazon, eBay, and Etsy alone.

Beyond being breathtakingly beautiful, the bats play an important role within their ecosystem and provide natural pest control for people. They aren’t knickknacks.

Thanks to advocacy by Center supporters, Etsy has removed listings for painted bats. Now you can help get them off Amazon and eBay too.

Make Halloween meaningful: Tell retailers to stop driving these delicate animals toward their grave.

Petition Aims to Save Wildlife From Cyanide Bombs

The Center and scores of other conservation groups have petitioned the U.S. Forest Service to ban M-44 devices — aka cyanide bombs — in national forests. These horrifying traps lure victims with scented baits and then blast sodium cyanide into their faces, usually causing tortuous poisoning followed by severe injury or a slow, agonizing death. Cyanide bombs are meant to wipe out “pests” like coyotes and foxes, but since they work indiscriminately, they also kill endangered species and pets (and injure people).

Last year we helped make the Bureau of Land Management ban cyanide bombs across the lands it manages: 245 million acres. If the Forest Service bans them too, that would add another 193 million acres where they couldn’t be used.

Help stop this cruel killing with a gift to the Center’s Saving Life on Earth Fund.

Help Us Save Giant Clams

Following the Center’s notice of intent to sue, in July NOAA Fisheries proposed to protect 10 species of giant clams under the Endangered Species Act.

The largest giant clams grow to be 4.5 feet long and weigh nearly 500 pounds. Because they're prized for their meat and extraordinary shells, overharvesting and international trade have decimated their populations. Climate change has also hurt them, warming the coral reefs where they live in the Red Sea and Indo-Pacific.

Tell NOAA Fisheries to finalize protection for these marvelous clams now.

Protect Colorado’s Remarkable Native Cats

We’ve partnered with Cats Aren't Trophies — aka CATs — in Colorado to support Proposition 127. Every year in the state, trophy hunters and commercial trappers kill 500-plus lions and up to 2,000 bobcats.

Prop 127 would ban trophy hunting and commercial trapping of mountain lions and bobcats for their heads, hides, and fur while retaining the authority of wildlife managers to do what’s needed to protect livestock, pets, or people from any problem cat.

Prop 127 deserves to pass because it does all this:

• Protects lions and bobcats from cruel and unsporting “hounding,” where trophy hunts end with a cat cornered and shot out of a tree.
• Halts commercial fur-trapping of bobcats for their plush spotted coats.
• Puts a stop to the orphaning of lion and bobcat kittens, doomed because trophy hunters shoot their moms by the hundreds.
• Maintains the balance of nature, since 1) wild cat populations are self-regulating, and 2) lions limit the spread of the deadly, incurable brain-wasting disease now afflicting Colorado deer and elk.

Help protect these beautiful felines by voting “yes” on Prop 127.

Judge Nixes Project Threatening Desert Tortoises

In response to a 2021 lawsuit from the Center and partners, a judge has rejected a federal greenlight of activities — including a vast network of off-road vehicle routes in the Western Mojave region of the California Desert Conservation Area — that are driving desert tortoises and other threatened and endangered wildlife toward extinction.

“I’m grateful the court found that federal officials can’t just make empty promises,” said Lisa Belenky, a Center attorney. “It’s long past time for the Bureau of Land Management to curb ORV threats to tortoises and rare plants like the Lane Mountain milk vetch in California’s irreplaceable deserts.”

Rare Woodpeckers on Their Way to Recovery

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just announced that red-cockaded woodpeckers have recovered enough to be downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

These charismatic black-and-white birds live in family groups and raise young together. While other woodpeckers excavate cavities in dead trees, this species bores nest holes only in living pines of a certain age, usually 60-80 years.

“Although they still face serious threats, red-cockaded woodpeckers are making an incredible comeback thanks to the Act,” said the Center’s Will Harlan.

Revelator: Roaming Leopards, Picky Otters

The Revelator’s new column “This Month in Conservation Science” returns with links to more than two dozen recent studies. Read about picky otters, shrimp who live in trees, roaming leopards, overheated turtles, and more.

If you don’t already, subscribe to the free weekly Revelator e-newsletter for more wildlife and conservation news.

That’s Wild: Being Eaten Isn’t Always the End

Certain baby eels, an article in Current Biology reveals, don’t just give up the ghost after they’re swallowed by a fish. Instead they use tail movements to back out to freedom — a process that can now be observed in X-ray videos.

Juvenile Japanese eels, or Anguilla japonica, use the fish’s esophagus as an initial escape route, then hightail it out of the body and back into the ocean through the exit marked GILLS.

Watch it all happen for yourself.

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Photo credits: Painted woolly bat by Pitoon Kitratanasak/Shutterstock; coyote courtesy NPS, red fox by Keepers Holly/USFWS; giant clam courtesy NPS; bobcat by Smith Grayson/USFWS, mountain lion courtesy NPS; Mojave desert tortoise courtesy USFWS; red-cockaded woodpecker by Martjan Lammertink/USFS; leopard by Jason Shallcross; Japanese eel by 국립국어원/Wikimedia.

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