Colorado wildlife officials last week euthanized a male black bear that was suffering from a severe intestinal blockage caused by eating indigestible human trash.
“The bear could not digest food and was very sick,” Colorado Parks and Wildlife area wildlife manager Rachel Sralla said in a Wednesday news release.
CPW received a report about a sick bear in Telluride on Sept. 9, the release said. At that point, the bear was foaming at the mouth and had puffy eyes giving off discharge. He also exhibited a humped posture and a reluctance to move, which suggested serious abdominal pain.
“He would walk about 20 or 30 yards at a time before needing to lay down,” CPW spokesperson John Livingston told CNN.
The bear was in bad enough condition that wildlife officers decided to euthanize him to end his suffering. A necropsy of the bear showed the source of his ill health ― garbage that had created a “plug” between his stomach and intestines.
“There was all these paper towels, wipes, plastic bag type materials, and indigestible food content,” Livingston told CNN.
Some of the trash items found blocking the bear’s intestines.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife
Food could not pass through the plug, which was causing the bear to starve. Additionally, the plug had started accumulating undigested food matter. The mass had started to decompose, leading to a bacterial infection and enlarged intestines.
Sralla said the plug would have ultimately caused the bear a long and drawn-out death.
“When you have a very fat 400-pound bear, it will take it ages to starve to death,” Sralla said in CPW’s news release. “That’s a horrific way to die, decaying from the inside out for that long.”
The incident underscores the importance of proper trash disposal, the agency said. Livingston told the Telluride Daily Planet, a local paper, that it’s crucial for people living in areas with bears to place their garbage in secure containers and wait to set their trash out until the morning of pickup, minimizing the amount of time it’s outside.
“We can’t say it enough, so here it is again,” the Southwest Region division of CPW wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in a post about the incident. “Trash kills bears.”
DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit area woke up Wednesday to some of the worst air quality in the United States as smoke from Canada’s wildfires settled over most of the Great Lakes region and unhealthy haze spread southward, as far as Missouri and Kentucky.
Drifting smoke from the wildfires has lowered curtains of haze on broad swaths of the United States, pushing into southern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and moving into parts of West Virginia.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov site showed Detroit in the “hazardous” range and warned that “everyone should stay indoors and reduce activity levels.” Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Ohio; and Pittsburgh all have “very unhealthy” air. A wider circle of unhealthy air spread into St. Louis and Louisville, Ky.
“The more breaths you’re taking, you’re inhaling, literally, a fire, camp smoke, into your lungs,” said Detroit resident Darren Riley, who said he would wear a mask if he had to go outside at all on Wednesday.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) have issued an air quality alert for Southeast Michigan, which includes the City of Detroit, for Wednesday, June 28, 2023, and ending on Thursday, June 29, 2023, at noon.
The smoke is exacerbating air quality issues for poor and Black communities that already are more likely to live near polluting plants, and in rental housing with mold and other triggers.
Detroit’s southwest side is home to a number of sprawling refineries and manufacturing plants and has battled air pollution for decades. It is also one of the poorest parts of a mostly Black city, which has an overall poverty rate of about 30%. According to a 2022 report by the American Lung Association, the city’s ozone and short-term particle pollution ranked among the worst in the nation.
Freighters pass along the Detroit River with Windsor, Ontario in the background as smoke fills the sky reducing visibility Wednesday, June 28, 2023, as seen from Detroit. The Detroit area has some of the worst air quality in the United States as smoke from Canada’s wildfires spreads southward. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Riley’s own experiences being diagnosed with asthma in 2018 a few years after moving to Detroit and with the poor air quality in parts of the city prompted him to start JustAir, which provides air pollution monitoring.
“Just because you’re born in a certain ZIP code or you’re born into a certain family with a certain skin color doesn’t mean that you should have an unequal go at it,” said Riley, who is Black.
Elsewhere, Milwaukee County Emergency Medical Services has seen a spike in calls for residents with respiratory complaints, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Office of Emergency Management data show a disproportionate amount of calls for respiratory issues – 54.8% – have been for Blacks in Milwaukee, according to the newspaper. Milwaukee County’s population is 27.1% Black.
Acting Chief Public Health Officer Christina Floyd stated the Health Department is recommending that people limit their time outdoors and refrain from any outdoor strenuous activity.
In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson urged young people, older adults and residents with health issues to spend more time indoors and pledged “swift action to ensure that vulnerable individuals have the resources they need to protect themselves and their families.”
Minnesota issued a record 23rd air quality alert for the year through late Wednesday night, as smoky skies obscured the skylines of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana were among other states issuing air quality alerts, and cities including Louisville also advised people to limit prolonged or intense outdoor activity.
“This is particularly thick smoke,” National Weather Service meteorologist Byran Jackson said Wednesday.
Jackson added that another round of smoky air is going through western New York, western Pennsylvania later Wednesday. “And then that continues over the northern Mid-Atlantic. It will persist there into Thursday,” he said.
Across Canada, 490 fires are burning, with 255 of them considered to be out of control.
The flags of Chicago Cubs’ Hall of Fame players Ernie Banks (14) Ron Santo (10) and Ferguson Jenkins fly off the Wrigley Field left field foul pole as a veil of haze from Canadian wildfires shroud high rise buildings along Lake Michigan before a baseball game between the Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies Tuesday, June 27, 2023, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported Monday that 76,129 square kilometers (29,393 square miles) of land including forests has burned across Canada since Jan. 1. That exceeds the previous record set in 1989 of 75,596 square kilometers (29,187 square miles), according to the National Forestry Database.
Some wet weather in Quebec gave firefighters a chance to get ahead of some of the flames, but there hasn’t been enough rain to extinguish the wildfires. Environment Canada meteorologist Simon Legault said he expects rain to stop falling by Wednesday morning in the regions most affected by forest fires. Many of the fires burning in Canada are in Quebec and Ontario, nearer to North America’s most populated areas than western wilderness areas.
Earlier this month, massive fires burning stretches of Canadian forests blanketed the northeastern United States and the Great Lakes region with smoke, turning the air yellowish gray and prompting warnings for people to stay inside and keep windows closed.
Hazy skies continue today with occasional near-surface smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Smoke concentrations decrease a bit this evening before increasing again on Thursday. An Air Quality Alert remains in effect through midnight tonight. #miwxpic.twitter.com/Epzez3KTtv
The small particles in wildfire smoke can irritate the eyes, nose and throat, and can affect the heart and lungs, making it harder to breathe. Health officials say it’s important to limit outdoor activities as much as possible to avoid breathing in the particles.
President Joe Biden could see the impact first-hand Wednesday during a visit to Chicago, where he was expected to promote his renewable energy policies during a major address on the economy. Biden has described the Canadian wildfires as clear evidence of climate change.
The warming planet will produce hotter and longer heat waves, making for bigger, smokier fires, said Joel Thornton, professor and chair of the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.
“You can smell it bad,” said Priti Marwah, who was beginning a run along Chicago’s lakefront on Tuesday. “I run a hundred miles a week, so this is going to be dangerous today. You can feel it … just even parking right there and coming out, I can feel it in my lungs.”
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said a cold front will bring cleaner air from the west across the Great Lakes region by early Thursday.
Associated Press contributors include Trisha Ahmed and Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Ken Kusmer in Indianapolis, Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville, Ky., and Julie Walker in New York.
A family is being investigated after reportedly contaminating a Brazilian waterfall and river with blue dye in an outrageous gender reveal stunt.
Viral videos of the over-the-top stunt last Sunday in the state of Mato Grosso caught the attention of environmental officials, according to several media reports.
The stunt was a violation of Brazil’s federal environmental law, a spokesperson for Mato Grosso’s environment protection agency told The Washington Post.
An unidentified family member behind the stunt is being charged with harming the environment, and an ongoing investigation will determine penalties and fees, according to the agency.
É sério que acharam uma boa ideia colocar corante numa cachoeira?! Tantas maneiras de fazer um chá revelação e conseguiram escolher justo uma com impacto ambiental. pic.twitter.com/YePJ0lPhhQ
Investigators will “determine if there was environmental damage, depending on the material released into the water,” Brazil’s environmental authority SEMA (Secretaria de Estado de Meio Ambiente do Mato Grosso) noted in a statement translated by Gizmodo.
Nevertheless, the agency said dumping a substance into the water “constitutes an infraction” under Brazilian law, and penalties can be as high as the equivalent of $9,300.
The 59-foot-tall waterfall is located in the town of Tangará da Serra, a popular area for eco-tourism. The waterfall spills into the Queima Pé river, which is an important fresh water source for the community, which has been struggling with severe drought.
Most people responding to the video on social media were outraged by the “gender reveal,” an event that is increasingly pitting couples against one another to present the most narcissistically outrageous, often reckless, extravaganzas.
“So many ways to do a gender-reveal party and they chose just the one that has an environmental impact,” Vanessa Costa, a Brazilian forestry engineer and content creator, wrote on Twitter.
She added in an Instagram post: “The act of dyeing the water is pollution. You are polluting those waters, and that’s an environmental impact,” she said.
Another wrote: “Who needs drinking water when you have ‘likes’?”
“What happened to cutting into a cake? Why does nature keep getting damaged because these people think they’re special?” one critic on social media responded to the waterfall stunt, reported The Independent.
