Another typical CITES meeting - economics rule, intelligence withers on the vine: “Opposition grew today against a proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna, with several Arab countries joining Japan in arguing it would hurt poor fishing nations and wasn’t scientifically justified.” What a quotation, what a farce. Surely, rational people might ask, wouldn’t the extinction of the bluefin tuna hurt ‘poor fishing nations’ even more?

This is one of those ideas that might be a total train wreck, but might be a train wreck that one would want to watch.  I’m generally not a fan of pigeon racing, especially because losing birds are often abandoned or killed, but at least they are domesticated animals and not wild birds being captured and caged.  Thoughts?

You really must click through to see the image of this extraordinary leucistic Atlantic Puffin.  Seriously, click through right now; this puffin is too cool to miss!

While we’re talking about Spoon-billed Sandpipers it would be remiss of me not to point out the series of (typically) superb posts on David Sibley’s blog Sibley Guides. There are videos, original sketches, photos, and David’s original insights from his recent trip to Thailand. Let’s just hope that with big guns like David and Graham Chisholm writing about this critically-endangered Asian shorebird more and more North Americans will support the ongoing conservation efforts…