Zoo sends wolves to Mexico:
‘Butterflies’ near extinction:
The number of western monarch butterflies wintering along the California coast has plummeted precipitously to a record low, putting the orange-and-black insects closer to extinction, researchers announced Tuesday.
An annual winter count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 2,000 butterflies, a massive decline from the tens of thousands tallied in recent years and the millions that clustered in trees from Northern California’s Marin County to San Diego County in the south in the 1980s.
Western monarch butterflies head south from the Pacific Northwest to California each winter, returning to the same places and even the same trees, where they cluster to keep warm. The monarchs generally arrive in California at the beginning of November and spread across the country once warmer weather arrives in March.
On the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, another monarch population travels from southern Canada and the northeastern United States across thousands of miles to spend the winter in central Mexico. Scientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern US has fallen about 80% since the mid1990s, but the drop-off in the western US has been even steeper.
The Xerces Society, a nonprofit environmental organization that focuses on the conservation of invertebrates, recorded about 29,000 butterflies in its annual survey last winter. That was not much different than the tally the winter before, when an all-time low of 27,000 monarchs were counted.
But the count this year is dismal. At iconic monarch wintering sites in the city of Pacific Grove, volunteers didn’t see a single butterfly this winter. Other wellknown locations, such as Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove and Natural Bridges State Park, only hosted a few hundred butterflies, researchers said.
“These sites normally host thousands of butterflies, and their absence this year was heartbreaking for volunteers and visitors flocking to these locales hoping to catch a glimpse of the awe-inspiring clusters of monarch butterflies,” said Sarina Jepsen, director of endangered species at the Xerces Society. (AP)
A pair of endangered Mexican gray wolves and their seven pups have been sent from a zoo in New Mexico’s largest city to Mexico as part of conservation efforts in that country.
Officials at the ABQ BioPark in Albuquerque confirmed Tuesday that the wolves were loaded up in separate crates and trucked south last week. The pack of predators will eventually be released into the wild after they learn to hunt and survive on their own.
The zoo is among others in the United States that have partnered with the US Fish and Wildlife Service for decades on
Mexican gray wolf breeding and recovery efforts. Several wolves born at the zoo have been released into the wild over the years, but this marks its first international pack release.
“We’re excited and sad at the same time,” Erin Flynn, ABQ BioPark mammal curator, said in a statement. “It’s a zoo’s dream to directly help a wild population like this. It’s even more powerful and touching for us that it’s our beloved lobo that we’re helping.”
The pack was selected for release in part because it has shown to be a strong family, Flynn said.
The male wolf arrived at the zoo in late 2018 and warmed up to his mate quickly. The two had their first litter of three pups in 2019, marking the first pups born at the zoo in 15 years. Their second litter of seven pups arrived in May 2020.
The female wolf came to the BioPark in 2016 after being born at the Zoológico de San Juan de Aragón in Mexico.
Once across the border, the pack was taken to a “wilding school” near Mexico City by a team from Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro.
Teaching the wolves to hunt will be hands-off, Flynn said. Biologists and environmentalists who have advocated for releasing more wolves into their historic range in northern Mexico and parts of the American Southwest have said less human contact can help ensure better outcomes in the wild. (AP)
credible” explanation that he had “casually” bought it at a market.
The painting is a copy of the “Salvator Mundi” by Leonardo that sold for a record $450 million at a Christie’s auction in 2017. The unnamed bidder was later identified as a Saudi royal who purportedly purchased it on behalf of the Louvre It was supposed to have been unveiled a year later at the museum, but the exhibition was delayed indefinitely and the work hasn’t been seen in public since.
The copy, attributed to the Leonardo school but not the Renaissance artist himself, had been housed in a small museum in a side chapel of the Basilica of
Domenico Maggiore in Naples, which had been closed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Fabbrocini said the discovery was particularly satisfying “because we resolved a case before it was created.” He explained: “The painting was found but its custodian hadn’t realized it was stolen.” (AP)
to prove that she is alive.
The 58-year-old woman says she lives in constant fear, not daring to leave her house in the village of Saint Joseph, in the Loire region. Authorities seized her car over an unpaid debt she contests and which is at the center of her troubles. She fears the family furniture will be next.
Pouchain’s status has prevented her and her husband, who is her legal beneficiary along with her son, from using