SPACE

Meet Phaethon, a weird asteroid that thinks it’s a comet

The Conversation
September 3, 2024 

This curious rock orbits within 20 million miles of our Sun. Science Photo Library/Alamy

What’s the difference between an asteroid and a comet? A comet is basically a dirty iceball composed of rock and ice. The classic image is of a bright “star” in the night sky with a long curved tail extending into space. This is what happens when they approach the Sun and start emitting gases and releasing dust. It normally continues until there’s nothing left but rock or until they fragment into dust.

Asteroids, on the other hand, are primarily just rocks. They might conjure up notions of Hans Solo steering the Millennium Falcon through an implausibly dense “asteroid field” to escape a swarm of TIE Fighters, but mostly they just quietly orbit the Sun, minding their own business.

Yet these two space objects are not always as mutually exclusive as this would suggest. Let me introduce Phaethon, a “rock comet” that blurs the definitions between asteroid and comet, and let me tell you why it will be worth paying attention to this fascinating object in the coming years.

Phaethon was discovered by chance in 1983 by two astronomers at the University of Leicester, Simon Green and John Davies. They came across it orbiting the Sun while analysing images collected by a space telescope called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (Iras). Soon after, other astronomers recognised that Phaethon is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower – one of the brightest meteor displays in Earth’s calendar.

Every December, as our planet crosses the dusty trail left behind by Phaethon, we are treated to a brilliant spectacle as its dust grains burn up in our atmosphere. Yet Phaethon’s behaviour is unlike that of any other objects responsible for a meteor shower.

Unlike typical comets that shed substantial amounts of dust when they heat up near the Sun, Phaethon doesn’t seem to be releasing enough dust today to account for the Geminids. This absence of significant dust emissions generates an interesting problem.

Phaethon’s orbit brings it extremely close to the Sun, much closer than Mercury, our innermost planet. At its closest approach (termed perihelion), its surface temperature reaches extremes of around 730°C.

You would expect such intense heat to strip away any volatile materials that exist on Phaethon’s surface. This should either expose fresh, unheated layers and shed huge volumes of dust and gas each time it passes close to the Sun, or form a barren crust that protects the volatile-rich interior from further heating, leading to an absence of gas or dust release.

Neither of these processes seem to be occurring, however. Instead, Phaethon continues to exhibit comet-like activity, emitting gas but not an accompanying dust cloud. It’s therefore not shedding layers, so the mystery is why the same crust can still emit volatile gases each time it is heated by the Sun.

Our experiment

I led newly published research aimed at addressing this puzzle by simulating the intense solar heating that Phaethon experiences during its perihelion.

We used chips from a rare group of meteorites called the CM chondrites, which contain clays that are believed to be similar to Phaethon’s composition. These were heated in an oxygen-free environment multiple times, simulating the hot-cold/day-night cycles that occur on Phaethon when it is close to the Sun.

The results were surprising. Unlike other volatile substances that would typically be lost after a few heating cycles, the small quantities of sulfurous gases contained in the meteorites were released slowly, over many cycles.

This suggests that even after numerous close passes by the Sun, Phaethon still has enough gas to generate comet-like activity during each perihelion.

But how might this work? Our theory is that when Phaethon’s surface heats up, iron sulphide minerals held in its subsurface break down into gases, such as sulphur dioxide. However, because the surface layers of Phaethon are relatively impermeable, these gases cannot escape quickly. Instead, they accumulate beneath the surface, for example in pore spaces and cracks.

As Phaethon rotates, which takes just under four hours, day turns to night and the subsurface cools. Some of the trapped gases are able to “back-react” to form a new generation of compounds. When night turns to day again and heating restarts, these decompose and the cycle repeats.

Why this matters

These findings are not just academic but have implications for the Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa)‘s Destiny+ mission, set to launch later this decade. This space probe will fly past Phaethon and study it using two multispectral cameras and a dust analyzer. It will hopefully gather particles that will provide further clues about the composition of this enigmatic object.

How Destiny+ will visit Phaethon:

Either way, our research team’s theory of Phaethon’s gas-emission processes will be crucial for interpreting the data. If we are proven right, it will redefine how scientists think about solar heating as a geological process by making it relevant not only to comets but also to asteroids.

Crucially, Phaethon is not alone. There are about 95 asteroids that pass within 0.20 astronomical units (nearly 19 million miles) of the Sun. Whatever we learn from Phaethon could offer insights into their behaviour and long-term stability, too.

Finally, you may be wondering how all this relates to the Geminid meteor shower. Most likely, Phaethon was emitting dust many years ago. This would have produced the debris band that creates the Geminid shower each time the particles come into contact with Earth’s atmosphere. When we talk about gifts that keep on giving, it’s hard to think of a better example.

Martin D. Suttle, Lecturer in Planetary Science, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Old satellite to burn up over Pacific in ‘targeted’ re-entry first

By AFP
September 6, 2024

An artist's illustrtaion of the Cluster satellite mission to study Earth's magentic field - Copyright EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY/AFP/File Anne RENAUT
Bénédicte REY

After 24 years diligently studying Earth’s magnetic field, a satellite will mostly burn up over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday during a “targeted” re-entry into the atmosphere, in a first for the European Space Agency as it seeks to reduce space debris.

Since launching in 2000, the Salsa satellite has helped shed light on the magnetosphere, the powerful magnetic shield that protects Earth from solar winds — and without which the planet would be uninhabitable.

According to the ESA, Salsa’s return home will mark the first-ever “targeted” re-entry for a satellite, which means it will fall back to Earth at a specific time and place but will not be controlled as it re-enters the atmosphere.

Teams on the ground have already performed a series of manoeuvres with the 550-kilogram (1,200-pound) satellite to ensure it burns up over a remote and uninhabited region of the South Pacific, off the coast of Chile.

This unique re-entry is possible because of Salsa’s unusual oval-shaped orbit. During its swing around the planet, which takes two and half days, the satellite strays as far as 130,000 kilometres (80,000 miles), and comes as close as just a few hundred kilometres.

Bruno Sousa, head of the ESA’s inner solar system missions operations unit, said it had been crucial that Salsa came within roughly 110 kilometres during its last two orbits.

“Then immediately on the next orbit, it would come down at 80 kilometres, which is the region in space already within the atmosphere, where we have the highest chance (for it) to be fully captured and burned,” he told a press conference.

When a satellite starts entering the atmosphere at around 100 kilometres above sea level, intense friction with atmospheric particles — and the heat this causes — starts making them disintegrate.

But some fragments can still make it back down to Earth.

– Fear of ‘cascading’ space junk –

The ESA is hoping to pinpoint where Salsa, roughly the size of a small car, re-enters the atmosphere to within a few hundred metres.

Because the satellite is so old, it does not have fancy new tech — like a recording device — making tracking this part tricky.

A plane will be flying at an altitude of 10 kilometres to watch the satellite burn up — and track its falling debris, which is expected to be just 10 percent of its original mass.

Salsa is just one of four satellites that make up the ESA’s Cluster mission, which is coming to an end. The other three are scheduled for a similar fate in 2025 and 2026.

The ESA hopes to learn from these re-entries which type of materials do not burn up in the atmosphere, so that “in the future we can build satellites that can be totally evaporated by this process,” Sousa said.

Scientists have been sounding the alarm about space junk, which is the debris left by the enormous number of dead satellites and other missions that continue orbiting our planet.

Last year the ESA signed a “zero debris” charter for its missions from 2030.

There are two main risks from space junk, according to the ESA’s space debris system engineer Benjamin Bastida Virgili.

“One is that in orbit, you have the risk that your operational satellite collides with a piece of space debris, and that creates a cascading effect and generates more debris, which would then put in risk other missions,” he said.

The second comes when the old debris re-enters the atmosphere, which happens almost daily as dead satellite fragments or rocket parts fall back to Earth.

Designing satellites that completely burn up in the atmosphere will mean there is “no risk for the population,” Bastida Virgili emphasised.

But there is little cause for alarm. According to the ESA, the chance of a piece of space debris injuring someone on the ground is less than one in a hundred billion.

This is 65,000 times lower than the odds of being struck by lightning.

Bay Area Reds

by Paul Buhle

 August 1, 2024
Facebook

TwitterReddit

Image Source: Cover art for the book “San Francisco Reds” by Robert W. Cherny

The story of the US Left has been pretty much ups and downs, more downs than ups, something hardly surprising in world capitalism’s leading nation with a working class historically divided by race and ethnicity. Among the most startling cases is surely the California Story. Where else would a leading revolutionary of the 1880s also be a leader of the anti-Chinese movement (in San Francisco) and soon, the savant of a utopian colony in the Redwoods? Where else would a millionaire socialist, that is to say Gaylord Wilshire, publish a popular leftwing magazine and get a major city street named after him? And so on.

The California Socialist Party of pre-1920 days elected mayors, guided at least some craft unions, had quite a following among displaced Yankees and a scattering of ethnic groups. The rough conditions of what would one day become known as the Left Coast meanwhile prompted IWW-like, semi-anarchist labor activism. It is a bitter irony that Communists, the successor to all this, could not find their way until the middle 1930s, and that a major portion of the early failure falls upon their own blunders and those of Communists far away. In the end, they built quite a movement but not much of a Communist Party proper. There may be a moral here.

Robert Charny’s new book, San Franciso Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958, is narrowly cast around the CP structure, membership, tactics and projects. If the framework of this wonderful study leaves out much, it nevertheless offers insights in abundance. Research on personalities, some of it from the Moscow files recovered only in recent decades, is rich and dense. He offers a close look at people widely known, including LA leader Dorothy Healy and not-quite-communist ILWU champion Harry Bridges, about whom Cherny’s own biography is an outstanding contribution. He also offers a view of many Communists hardly known at all.

In doing so, he strays from the Bay Area of the book’s title across California, often usefully, albeit sometimes arguably stretching the narrative too thin. There is or could be so much more to say about the State party. Communist Hollywoodites, actors, writers and others once the source of damning headlines, play no role here, for instance. Missed here, most of all, is the way in which the Popular Front enabled a movement to grow far beyond its presumed natural borders.

One large insight hides behind the text and is not quite properly Charney’s subject at all: how different things were for the Left, East of California.  Repression hit everywhere during the First World War. The Wobblies were practically if not entirely wiped out by violent raids on their headquarters and arrests of their leaders. Socialist newspapers were banned by the neat trick of removing their mailing permits. That some erstwhile socialists joined in the global crusade of Woodrow Wilson, all but urging the repression of their erstwhile comrades,  did not help matters.

By contrast, in mostly but not entirely urban parts of the East and parts of the midwest,  immigrant groups especially but not only from Eastern and Southern Europe would bounce back strong in the 1920s, their newspapers and networks transferred from Socialist to Communist without much disruption. In factory neighborhoods where blue collar populations walked to work, the ethnic clubs built support through services, family entertainment and hopes for unionization. In New York but not only there, Leftwing Yiddish culture in the golden age of “Yiddish Broadway” prompted a vast network of leftish activities, speaking or singing to a population facing severe anti-Semitism. Calfornia was not so lucky.

The Syndicalism Acts of California in 1921, aimed at an IWW already repressed but with capabilities in agriculture, also hit the new Communist movement hard. The small collections of Communists, barely emerging from the 1919 spit in the Socialist Party, limped into the internecine wars of competing communist factions (not to mention the work of Bureau of Investigation operatives), and damaged themselves badly. The further sectarian impulse to separate Communists from the “merely” but often popular reformist socialists successfully separated them from a populistic sentiment symbolized in radical novelist Upton Sinclair. Later on, that bitter opposition cost them dearly.

From another angle, the New York leadership of the Communist Party repeated the lack of insight shown by the leadership of the earlier Socialist Party, from their Chicago headquarters, and for that matter the  New Left, Trotskyist and Maoist small-scale organizations later on. None could quite grasp the need for different approaches and the vast political opportunities in the complex and contradictory California scene. All expressed degrees of frustration, as if California leftists just couldn’t see what needed to be done.

Cherny beautifully explains the flawed, worse than flawed, internal logic of the CP toward its California faithful in the 1920s to the early 1930s and this takes up the first three chapters of the book. They could not win for losing, and every new opportunty seemed to present a lost opportunity. An elderly Communist explained to me, in the later 1970s, that after the Trotskyist and Lovestoneite (“Left” and “Right” so called deviations) had been expelled at the end of the 1920s, factionalism repeated itself as personality versus personality within the leadership, and this was abundantly clear when local and regional Communists tried to climb back from failed efforts.

In the California case, it was possible to rally large numbers behind Robert La Follette in 1924, but the national leaders went a different direction. By the early 1930s, California Communists launched major defense campaigns for imprisoned unionists, drawing in young actor James Cagney among others, but could not manage to create a “front.” Any more than they hold onto the Mexican-American agricultural workers, who had last supported the Wobbly efforts to organize them.

By mid-book, Cherny moves onward to the Popular Front years or rather to 1934, anticipating the Party’s golden age. The San Francisco “General” Strike, which effectively brought the Longshoremen from relative isolation into a union of great influence and Harry Bridges from obscurity to global fame, marked a turn in more ways than Communists abroad could easily grasp. Bridges himself sturdily denied affiliation with the CP, and it was as an influence within the ILWU (some would say control, others would say that local leadership could never be categorized in this fashion) that the Left moved forward. Membership did not surge forward in the expected European Communist fashion. Men and women in the Bay Area and far beyond, buillding the ILWU all the way to Canada and Hawaii, would fight to the point of laying down their lives and yet feel no urge to join (more likely, to stay in) a Communist organization.

That the same 1934 marked the CP’s running a candidate against Upton Sinclair marked a foolishness not repeated until 1948, when the CP seemed to have little  room to manuever. In between, especially through the unions but also in related campaigns of all kinds, including the brave support of racial minorities, the Party filled in many of its gaps of influence on labor and liberalism. Characteristic but not much discussed here is the Peoples Daily World, more lively, with better prose and illustrations, than the Daily Worker back in New York. Or consider the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, the most openly gay union in the CIO and the most obviously Red, allied closely to the ILWU. Nothing in global Communist movements could have predicted this.

Or for that matter, the Communist chicken-farmers around Petaluma, north of San Francisco, rushing to help striking Mexican-American workers and risking their own livelihoods. As repression struck, they fell back upon their own Yiddish-based communal culture of music and literature, recalling the ghetto struggles a world and half a century away in Eastern Europe.

Leftwing Californians had some great human material to work with, including a dedicated cadre of screenwriters, a handful of them future Oscar winners, but also a wide-ranging and often unexpected cadre of members and supporters. A section of the middle class, Yankee and Jewish, had mostly held back from the CP until the Popular Front and then entered full flush. Fundraisers could be held in Charlie Chaplin’s mansion with Lucille Ball welcoming guests including plenty of high profile actors, labor leaders and liberal politicians. We can wince today at Ring Lardner’s quip that the CP had the smartest intellectuals and the prettiest girls in Hollywood, noting the “girls” were smart and active and given to asserting their own rights.

Cherny points to the repressive power of California conservaties and the State taking swift action at any sign of weakness. Following years of anti-fascist agitation, the CP entered isolationism 1939-41 and lost a lot of its support—regaining most of it, and more, after Pearl Harbor. But HUAC investigations, already begun in the “Pact Period,” would be back soon and more deadly than ever. That the Congressional “investigating” comittees were openly anti-Semitic helped discredit reactionary claims in advance, but future California politicians, greatly aided by the FBI (Ronald Reagan’s own brother was an agent), had already set a trap that Communists and their allies could hardly evade.

For my taste, writing as a social historian, the Party history pre-1945 is rather too thin in seven chapters, the history 1945-58 arguably too thick in the final two. So much social history exists in the former, so little in the latter, especially after 1948, when the California CP, like its national counterpart, pretty much falls apart. And yet even here, the ILWU as anti-racist unionism across California, the return of Communist veterans (perhaps no longer party members) to assisting the organization of farm workers, and the role of Communist-influenced Democrats in the California state legislature as well as local offices—all this “counted,” if not in CP terms.

Cherny is at his strongest when he offers insights from the personal angle, much about what leaving a hectic political life for a personal life meant. A recognition that the glorious era of the CP was really over, certainly, but also a sense, insufficiently expressed here, that the country had changed. The unionized part of working class had established a certain status, at least for a generation. Consumer goods, inexpensive automobiles, even blue collar suburbs could allow depoliticized leftwingers feel as if they could live “normal” lives, especially when FBI harassment had done its career-worst and left them alone.

The links with the movements of the 1960s-70s might have been developed suggestively, although this could logically be part of another book. A curious bit of research into the youth culture scene of LA during the 1960s has turned up nightclubs owned by savvy former CPers. Others of the fading generations hit the streets all the way up to Santa Cruz, where hundreds relocated in the 1970s-80s, leafletting and agitating for political and environmental causes as long as their legs could hold them.

Some of the many oldtimers still around, Japanese-American Communist Karl Yonenda most notably, became the subject of great admiration, considered kindly grandfathers and grandmoothers to the new generation, offering contacts, sympathetic advice and assistance. Another might become the documentary photographer of the Vietnam Day Committee in San Francisco, Harvey Richards, capturing demonstrations when the commercial press had not caught up (or not been allowed to catch up) with the new mass movements. Perhaps more than any other sector, aged Communists of color met up successfully with young activists in every possible venue, explaining things that had never been well understood within the “white” Left.

All that said: a good book, a necessary book.

Paul Buhle is a retired historian, and co-founder, with Scott Molloy, of an oral history project on blue collar Rhode Islanders.

Turkey debates fate of millions of stray dogs

Istanbul (AFP) – The Turkish parliament on Sunday started an emotional debate on a law aiming to clamp down on millions of stray dogs that opponents say could lead to a vast animal euthanasia campaign.

Issued on: 28/07/2024 - 

Animal rights groups have called for a mass sterilisation campaign and opposition parties have vowed to fight the law 

© Yasin AKGUL / AFP

The government estimates there are four million stray dogs and the law, which will be debated over several days, will allow the killing of sick animals and those with "negative behaviour".

The maximum fine for abandoning dogs would be increased 30-fold to 60,000 lira ($1,800).

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said ahead of the debate that Turkey faces a problem "like no other civilised country" which was "growing exponentially". A growing number of rabies cases particularly worries the government.

Authorities have denied however that they want a mass euthanasia. Erdogan said that people want "safe streets".

Animal rights groups have called for a mass sterilisation campaign and opposition parties have vowed to fight the law, even if it is passed in its current state.

The Republican People's Party, which controls Istanbul and other major cities, has said its mayors would not apply the law. Demonstrations have been held in recent weeks, including inside parliament.

The government has said mayors that refuse to carry out the law could be jailed. And it has banned visitors' access to parliament to avoid protests.

The debate has revived discussion of a 1910 measure under the Ottoman authorities when tens of thousands of stray dogs were rounded up in Istanbul and sent to a deserted island in the Marmara sea.

The dogs ate each other and most died of hunger.

© 2024 AFP

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAY 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=STRAYS

STRAY

Turkish police scuffle with protesters rallying against bill targeting stray dogs
Reuters
Fri, July 26, 2024 


Turkish police scuffle with protesters rallying against bill targeting stray dogs
Animal rights activists take part in a rally in Istanbul

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish police scuffled with protesters in the capital Ankara on Friday during a demonstration against plans to round up millions of stray dogs.

The plan, presented to parliament by President Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK Party earlier this month, has alarmed animal lovers who say a mass neutering campaign would be a better solution than locking dogs up in shelters.

Police pushed back the protesters as they tried to gather in the city centre, leading to scuffles.

The demonstrators held banners reading, "You cannot round them up, you cannot jail them, you cannot kill them" and "Take back the law".

"People here are those taking care of many animals. What is this grudge? Do you want the dogs and cats on the street to be killed?" one protester said through a megaphone.

Under the draft law, municipalities would be charged with moving strays off the streets and into shelters until they are adopted. Aggressive dogs or any with untreatable diseases would be put down.

The population of street dogs in Turkey is estimated to be 4 million, and 2.5 million dogs have been neutered in the past 20 years by municipalities, according to the draft bill.

There are currently 322 animal shelters with a capacity to host a total of 105,000 dogs, the bill says.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Gareth Jones)


Thousands protest in Istanbul against bill they fear will lead to mass cull of stray dogs

Euronews
Sat, July 27, 2024 

Thousands protest in Istanbul against bill they fear will lead to mass cull of stray dogs

Thousands of people have gathered in Istanbul to protest against proposed legislation that critics fear will lead to the mass killing of stray dogs across Türkiye.

The draft bill aims to regulate the country's millions of stray dogs and make streets safer but animal rights advocates are concerned many animals would be put down or end up in neglected, overcrowded shelters.

Demonstrations against the bill, which was proposed in mid-July, have been an almost-daily occurrence for the past several weeks as the proposed legislation makes its way through the judicial system.

A parliamentary committee approved the draft earlier this week, and the full assembly is scheduled to have a final vote in the coming days with deliberations starting on Sunday.

The government estimates that around four million stray dogs roam Türkiye's streets and rural areas.

Although many are harmless, numerous people, including children, have been attacked in Istanbul and elsewhere.

Protest in Istanbul against bill critics say could lead to mass culling of stray dogs, July 27, 2024 - Screenshot from AP video 4508835

The proposed legislation mandates that municipalities collect stray dogs and house them in shelters where they would be neutered and spayed.

Dogs that are in pain, terminally ill, pose a health risk to humans or are aggressive would be put down.

Municipalities would be required to build dog shelters or improve conditions in existing ones by 2028.

The legislation is a watered-down version of an initial proposal, which reportedly called for the strays to be rounded up, housed in shelters and euthanised if they are not adopted within 30 days. That proposal, which was not submitted to parliament, sparked a public uproar, with animal rights activists arguing it would result in the mass extermination of unadopted dogs.

But animal rights activists worry that some municipalities might kill dogs on the pretext that they are ill, rather than allocate resources to shelter them.

The government denies the bill would lead to a widespread culling and the country's justice minister said anyone killing strays "for no reason" would be punished.
Why does Türkiye need to control its stray dog population?

A report released by the Safe Streets and Defense of the Right to Life Association, an organisation campaigning for the removal of all stray dogs from the streets, says that 65 people have died in street dog attacks since 2022.

The government promised to tackle the issue earlier this year after a child was severely injured after being attacked by dogs in the capital Ankara.

A woman feeds a stray dog in the Kadikoy neighbourhood in Istanbul, July 6, 2024 - Francisco Seco/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved

Despite existing legislation that requires stray dogs be caught, neutered and spayed, and returned to the spot where they were found, a failure to implement those regulations over the past years has caused the feral dog population to explode, animal rights groups say.

They argue that proper implementation of these regulations would be sufficient to control the population.

Britain has recently issued a stray dog warning for travellers to Türkiye, stating that they often form packs and can be aggressive. It has advised visitors to be cautious and avoid approaching them.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAYS 

STRAY

Turkish legislators hold tense debate on bill to control stray dogs. Critics fear a mass culling

A stray dog rests outside Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, Wednesday, July 3, 2024. A Turkish parliamentary commission on Wednesday began a tense debate on a bill designed to manage the country’s large stray dog population which animal … more >

By Suzan Fraser - Associated Press - Wednesday, July 17, 2024

ANKARA, Turkey — A Turkish parliamentary commission began a tense debate Wednesday on a bill to manage the country’s large stray dog population that animal advocates fear could result in the widespread killing of the animals.

The legislation, submitted to parliament by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, is pitting groups advocating for safer streets free of the feral dogs against animal rights activists who are demanding the withdrawal of the bill.


Erdogan has stated that approximately four million stray animals are wandering the streets and rural areas of Turkey. While many of them are docile, an increasing numbers of dogs are seen roaming in packs and numerous people have been attacked.

The legislation being debated in parliament’s agriculture and rural affairs commission is a diluted version of an initial proposal that would have required the strays to be rounded up, housed in shelters and euthanized if they are not adopted within 30 days.

That proposal, which was leaked to the media, had ignited a public uproar, with animal rights activists arguing it would result in the mass extermination of unadopted dogs.

The revised proposal forces municipalities to remove the stray dogs from the streets and place them into shelters where they would be neutered and spayed. Dogs that are sick, believed to have rabies or exhibiting aggressive behavior would be euthanized.

Municipalities would also be required to build dog shelters or improve conditions in existing shelters by 2028.

The revised bill has failed to ease concerns, with activists arguing that certain municipalities may opt for the easy solution of conducting a mass culling of the stray animals instead of allocating resources toward shelters.

The parliament’s agriculture and rural affairs commission meeting began tumultuously when the committee chair demanded that media, NGO representatives and other observers exit the room, citing insufficient space to accommodate everyone. The meeting was later moved to a larger room.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAYS 

STRAYS

Turkey proposes bill aimed at managing large stray dog population. Critics say it’s inhumane


A stray dogs rests at Kadikoy sea promenade in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, July 4, 2024. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party on Friday July 12, 2024, submitted to parliament a controversial bill aimed at managing the country’s large stray dog population. Critics are concerned that the proposed legislation will result in dogs being confined to cramped shelters and potentially lead to the killing of many of the animals. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)


Pro animal rights activists shout slogans during a protest in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, May 24, 2024. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party on Friday July 12, 2024, submitted to parliament a controversial bill aimed at managing the country’s large stray dog population. Critics are concerned that the proposed legislation will result in dogs being confined to cramped shelters and potentially lead to the killing of many of the animals. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Updated 10:25 AM MDT, July 12, 2024

Updated , July 12, 2024

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party submitted to parliament Friday a controversial bill aimed at managing the country’s large stray dog population. Critics are concerned that the proposed legislation will results in dogs being confined to cramped shelters and potentially lead to the killing of many of the animals.

The bill is pitting animal rights activists against those calling for measures to make the streets safe from the feral dogs.

Erdogan has said that an estimated four million strays are roaming Turkey’s streets and countryside.

The legislation is a watered-down version of an initial proposal, which reportedly called for the strays to be rounded up, housed in shelters and euthanized if they are not adopted within 30 days. That proposal, which was not submitted to parliament, had ignited a public uproar, with animal rights activists arguing it would result in the mass extermination of unadopted dogs.

Abdullah Guler, a senior legislator from the ruling party, told reporters that under the revised proposal, stray dogs would be removed from the streets and placed into shelters where they would be neutered and spayed.

The dogs that are at risk of rabies, exhibit aggressive behavior and have no possibility of being rehabilitated would be euthanized, Guler said.

Municipalities would be required to enhance and improve conditions in existing shelters while people would be encouraged to adopt the dogs, the legislator added.

Erdogan’s ruling party and its nationalist and Islamist allies hold a majority in parliament and the bill is likely to pass when it reaches the floor. No date has been set.

A report released by the Safe Streets and Defense of the Right to Life Association, an organization campaigning for the removal of all stray dogs from the streets, says that 65 people have died in street dog attacks since 2022.

The government promised to tackle the issue earlier this year after a child was severely injured after being attacked by dogs in the capital Ankara.

Despite existing legislation that requires stray dogs to be caught, neutered and spayed, and returned to the spot where they were found, a failure to implement those regulations over the past years has caused the feral dog population to explode, animal rights groups say.

They argue that proper implementation of these regulations would be sufficient to control the population.

Britain has recently issued a stray dog warning for travelers to Turkey, stating that they often form packs and can be aggressive. It has advised visitors to be cautious and avoid approaching them.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAYS 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for STRAY 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DOGS 

 

Hatcheries can boost wild salmon numbers but reduce diversity, research shows

by Jeff Richardson, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Differences between two male pink salmon highlight morphological diversity in the species.

 Credit: Julia McMahon

The ability of salmon hatcheries to increase wild salmon abundance may come at the cost of reduced diversity among wild salmon, according to a new University of Alaska Fairbanks–led study.

The number of juvenile salmon released into the North Pacific Ocean by hatcheries increased rapidly in the second half of the last century and remains at over 5 billion each year. Salmon hatcheries have helped push annual pink salmon harvests in Prince William Sound from about 4 million fish prior to hatchery programs to roughly 50 million in recent years.

Using data collected from pink salmon streams in Prince William Sound, Alaska, through the Alaska Hatchery Research Project, researchers determined that many hatchery-raised fish are straying onto natural spawning grounds and interbreeding with wild populations. In a related study, researchers used simulations developed with the real-world data to ask what this continued input of hatchery fish might mean for wild populations.

"Even if only a small percentage of hatchery-origin fish stray into wild populations, a small fraction of a huge number can still be a lot," said Samuel May, lead author of the studypublished in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

"We were interested in exploring the long-term consequences of hatchery straying for wild population recruitment and resilience."

Life-history diversity is a distinguishing characteristic of wild salmon, which are specifically adapted to the local conditions of their home streams. Simulations showed that wild fish population sizes increased because more fish reproduced than would have without hatchery strays.

Those increases came at a cost: As hatchery-origin gene variants spread into wild populations, diversity among those populations was reduced.

"Wild populations can be very different from one another, but hatchery fish are often more alike. If many individuals with relatively similar traits are introduced into diverse populations, it can make those populations more alike. Lower diversity among populations can reduce resilience to future changes," said May, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral fellow at UAF's College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Previous studies have shown that hatchery-origin salmon, which may be adapted to environments different from those they stray into and which don't face the same evolutionary pressures as fish born in natural streams, produce about half as many offspring as wild fish.

Introducing those gene variants into wild salmon populations could potentially affect their ability to adapt to future challenges in nature.

The simulations tapped into an ongoing project in Prince William Sound that has gathered tissue samples from hundreds of thousands of pink salmon since 2011. The Alaska Hatchery Research Program has collected samples from 30 streams in the region, providing a huge collection of DNA and other data for conducting research to inform Alaska policies and sustainable resource management.

This unprecedented sampling effort allows researchers to recreate the family trees of pink salmon from five of these sampled streams in the region and determine which fish can be traced back to hatcheries.

May cautioned that, as with any simulation, it can be difficult to fully capture all the complex relationships in nature. Modeling for the study was specific to pink salmon in Prince William Sound, he said, and overarching conclusions about other systems or species should be done with care.

"The same things that make these kinds of models incredibly useful in specific contexts—like their simplifying assumptions and being parameterized with empirical data—also make them misleading if applied in the wrong context," May said.

Other contributors to the paper included authors from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Alaska Hatchery Research Project is a collaborative endeavor between the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, hatchery operators, nongovernmental organizations and academics.

"Salmon hatcheries in Alaska have become a flash point, making discussions of policy options mired in contention and acrimony," said Peter Westley, a UAF associate professor of fisheries and principal investigator for the project.

"Hopefully, this work can guide conversations by serving as an agreed upon reality—hatcheries can increase salmon abundance of both hatchery and wild individuals, but it comes with an inherent trade-off for wild fish ecological diversity such as run timing."

More information: Samuel A. May et al, Salmon hatchery strays can demographically boost wild populations at the cost of diversity: quantitative genetic modelling of Alaska pink salmon, Royal Society Open Science (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.240455

Journal information: Royal Society Open Science 

Provided by University of Alaska Fairbanks Reproductive success improves after a single generation in the wild for descendants of some hatchery Chinook salmon

Rescue street dogs, or euthanise them? Turks split over its strays

By Victoria Craig, BBC News, Ankara

BBC
Gokcen Yildiz cares for 160 street dogs at her property outside Ankara


Under the shade of a leafy green apricot tree on a scorching summer afternoon, Gokcen Yildiz scoops up a squirming ball of light-brown fur.

It licks her all over the face and she breaks out in giggles.

But laughter gives way to a more serious tone as she points to the dog's back legs, which are missing paws. A sign, she says, of the abuse some of Turkey’s street dogs are subjected to.

Ms Yildiz is a secondary school physics teacher by day, street-dog advocate by night. The canine she’s holding is one of 160 she’s collected on the property where she lives on the outskirts of Turkey’s capital city, Ankara.

Her dogs are a small fraction of the estimated four million that make up the country’s street-dog population.

It’s a problem that has fiercely divided public opinion: are stray dogs a neighbourhood fixture to be looked after and loved?

Or does the government need to take more drastic solutions, like those state media are reporting that it's considering - including euthanasia?

On her 15,000 sq m property, Ms Yildiz looks after elderly and disabled dogs, and those with psychological or behavioural issues.

“It is not my job, but I look after dogs in need,” she said. “I always experience financial worry because the economy is getting harder. When the price of petrol increases, everything like pet food or the medicine I give, or the vet expenses - everything goes up.”


Turkey's government estimates the country now has around four million street dogs


She said she feels anxious about finances, but her bigger concern is what will happen to the dogs if she doesn’t collect them.

“The dogs outside of here eat every two or three days, but they’re alive. They’re not about to die. That’s what really worries me,” she said.

Lawmakers from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) are working on a new bill aimed at getting dogs off the streets.

It hasn’t yet been introduced into the country’s parliament, but state media report it could require municipalities to collect stray dogs, shelter them for around 30 days, and if the animals are not adopted in that time, euthanise them.

The latter provision has outraged animal rights activists - and Turkey’s dog lovers, like Ms Yildiz - but it’s also raised questions about whether existing facilities across the country could handle additional responsibilities.

Only about one third of the nation’s provincial and district municipalities have shelters, according to Doctor Murat Arslan, president of the Turkish Veterinary Medical Association.

Getty Images
Some have protested against the planned law - but polls suggest a majority think something must be done

He said this had been one of the problems with an existing law, which requires dogs to be sterilised and then returned to the streets where they lived.

“In order to manage the animal population, street dogs needed to be collected, sterilised, given some vaccinations, and then released back to the street. However, not every municipality had shelters or facilities where these operations could be carried out. Especially in small municipalities, there are neither shelters nor sufficient employment of veterinarians.”

If this law, enacted 20 years ago, had been enforced, the street-dog population wouldn’t be so large today, Dr Arslan said.

Animal abandonment and overbreeding and selling of dogs had also allowed the street-dog population to rise, he told the BBC. Although animals are microchipped and registered in a centralised database, officials needed to be better at following through with fines for owners when animals were found to have been thrown out on the street, he added.

Regardless of what led to the problem, campaign groups like Safe Streets Association argue a solution is needed to take dogs permanently off the street.

Getty Images
Stray dogs have become an issue all across Turkey

Attorney Meltem Zorba is a volunteer for Safe Streets. She works with families that have been victims of stray-dog attacks, and points to government statistics that show over the past five years, street dogs have contributed to 55 deaths, more than 5,000 injuries, and 3,500 traffic accidents.

“We have been pressuring for legal change for three years,” she said. “There should not be stray dogs on the streets. These attacks on people causing death, traffic accidents, and other animals being attacked are unacceptable.”

She’s calling for a legal requirement to take dogs off the streets for good - rather than the catch-and-release protocol in place now. Ms Zorba also says the dogs pose other concerns including rabies and public health issues arising from dog faeces in public places, such as parks and playgrounds.

“This is rationality,” she said of the creation of new legislation, adding that euthanasia should be a last resort and a result of an animal being deemed too sick or posing a risk to society.

That’s where a national consensus seems to be building. A recent opinion poll showed nearly 80% of respondents supported measures to take dogs off the street and provide shelter. But less than 3% believed collected dogs should be euthanised.

Both Ms Zorba and Ms Yildiz support a government solution that would allow dogs to be taken off the streets, collected in newly-built shelters around the country, sterilised, and looked after through the end of their lives, if not adopted.

It’s believed that ministers plan to provide local authorities with fresh funds to implement any new law on stray dogs.

But it’s unclear whether the government - already dealing with an economic crisis that’s seen inflation climb to 75% this year - has the resources available for such a solution.