Despite the best efforts of various national and international organizations, Brazil's National Network Against the Trafficking of Wild Animals (RENCTAS) estimate over 38 million wild animals are taken from the forests of that country every year.

Over 1 billion dollars are estimated to have been made by local traffickers each year through the sales of rare species to international collectors, most of whom live in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
Birds are the biggest trade item, making up 82% of caught animals, and most do not survive the trip.

For more information, read the article here at the BBC website, and for more on international bird trafficking specifically, read the World Parrot Trust site.

FurNation and the various user pages it hosts are back online.

'Nuff said.

Mara, a 14 year old lioness, joined Jambi, a rare male tiger, in being felled by a batch of tranquilizer-tainted meat that was shipped to the Wellington Zoo in New Zealand earlier this month.

A sequel to the popular "Walk with Dinosaurs", "Walk with Beasts" will bring to life the species of mammals and birds which flourished after the demise of the dinosaurs. From the likes of the wooly rhinoceros and sabretooth tiger to more obscure but equally fascinating creatures such as the terror birds and the early ancestors of whales. Those not able to watch on BBC One when it premieres this Thursday can still enjoy the website, complete with pictures, video clips, facts, and the mammalian family tree.

Some of the yiffnet servers have decided to shutdown quoting complaints they got about Sibe. This reportadly includes DNS services for Yiffnet.

You can get more details from these sites:

http://www.pridelands.org/irc/
and
http://furry.ao.net/closed.html



Pridelands.org lists the following yiffnet IRC servers still operational: yiff.furry.de, irc.critter.net, and irc.chameleon.net.

About a month ago I sent in an article titled "Disney animation to Close Down". That was actually not a fact but an opinion, and so I should have chosen a different title. Here are more details.

To some degree the aerodynamics of birds can be studied by methods derived from aeronautical engineering, but it has become clear that the bird wing has some properties that have no counterpart in aircraft. Some entirely new principles are beginning to emerge. The Lund Wind Tunnel is a window on a world which has never before been accessible to observation.

Further Confusion 2002 will offer two writing workshops.

The limit is six authors.

Each author who wishes to have a story criticized needs to submit it to Further Confusion not later than December 1, 2001. Those authors selected will receive notice via email of their selection. They will also receive a copy of the manuscripts from the other authors in their group.

Cows in India are being given ID cards in an effort to stop cattle smugglers from Bangladesh.

Two amusing stories off the newswire that I felt were worth sharing. Both from a week ago or so...



Moose Narrowly Escapes Halloween Goblins in Terror


Swingset Attacks Area Moose, Suffers Consequences

If you hate folks stealing artwork, direct your attention to Furnation's webpages here (and everywhere where your furry artist on Furnation is). Full info on Furnation's webpage.

Midwest FurFest is just over a week away; we're look forward to the furry invasion of Chicago! For some last minute details, check out the Midwest FurFest November newsletter, posted below. And don't forget to look up your harried Flayrah.com editor in the artshow when you're here!

For all the amateur astromomers out there, this year's Leonid show promises to be spectacular.

In North America, the show will start at 11:00 pm EST on November 17th, and peak at 5:00 am EST. At 4000 meteors predicted per hour, that'll be pretty spectacular, but if you live in Australia, Japan or other parts of the Pacific rim, tune in at about 1:00 am to 4:00 am on the 19th because 8000 to 14000 are predicted per hour at that peak (but it'll be morning in North America, so we won't see them).

The Leonids peak every 33 years, but after next year (which will be marred by a full moon) we won't seen this sort of display until the end of the century, as the pattern is broken by Jupiter's effect on the comet trails that cause these yearly desplays.

I'm not sure if anyone saying they are going out of business or leaving the fandom is news, as 90% of the time it is a very temporary situation, with the person or business returning after "a flood of support" - but I just got a message from FurBuy saying that they are going out of business effective December 1, with the domain name and auction software up for sale.

No, I don't know if they really mean it this time, that's just the email they sent out.

After a tragic accident in which a zookeeper at the London Zoo was crushed by an elephant, the zoo has announced that all three of its elephants will be moved to a country location. This ends a nearly 200 year presence of elephants in London, and has sparked a controversy over urban zoos and whether retaining large animal displays in them is humane and appropriate.