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Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Good News for Frogs and Their Friends

By Jeff Nesmith | Tuesday, December 26, 2006, 01:50 PM

Not to be outdone by other groups with other priorities, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums on Tuesday announced its ”Top 10 Wildlife Conservation Success Stories for 2006” They include:

— Experts at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the San Diego Zoo have found a safe way to perform vasectomies on elephants in order to control burgeoning populations in some national parks.

— For the first time since 1847, a pair of trumpeter swans nested successfully in Illinois and brought forth two healthy chicks. Other zoo-bred birds being reintroduced to the wild include the Guam rail, Attwater’s prairie chicken, the California condor, the Micronesian kingfisher and the palila, a critically endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper.

— Sea World or Orlando and Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo have reintroduced 475 endangered manatees to Florida waters.

— Twenty-five years ago a handful of black-footed ferrets, thought to be extinct, were discovered. All known to be in existence were captured and bred in zoos to prevent their extinction. Today, over 1,000 live in the wild, scurrying about, killing prarie dogs and hiding from hawks.

— Frogs, toads and salamanders, threatened with extinction by a devastating and uncontrollable fungus disease, are being bred in captivity as a hedge against extinction.

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Happy New Year. Send Money.

By Ken Herman | Tuesday, December 26, 2006, 01:44 PM

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In a year-end missive e-mailed today, Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, says the liberals are coming to town and his group needs funds to fend off their efforts.

It is, Perkins said, “the calm before the storm.”

“In just a few days the new Congress will meet. When they do, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union and their allies will begin their fresh assault on everything from abstinence programs to the child tax credit to the Pledge of Allegiance,” he wrote. “The drive to fund the killing of human embryos will gain steam. Advocates of thought-control hate-crime laws will press their case and liberal leaders like Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton will be listening, and anxious to please them.”

Your dollars, Perkins wrote, will fund “a war chest to defend marriage and protect the unborn.”

And, he noted, your fellow taxpayers will help subsidize the council’s political efforts.

“If you can afford to make a tax-deductible year-end gift, you can rest assured we will put your donation to good use for the ideals we’ve always championed,” Perkins wrote.

In a curious sidenote, the FRC website version of the “Take Action Alert” (which carries today’s date) includes this message:

“This information is no longer relevant due to its time sensitive nature and is provided for historical purposes.”

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