Current Events: December 10, 2009

Prairie Dogs Deemed Not Endangered

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 2, 2009

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Black-tailed prairie dogs were denied protection under the Endangered Species Act on Wednesday after federal officials concluded the once prevalent species showed signs of rebounding.

This article is relevant to our class discussions lately about endangered and extinct species. According to federal officials, the black-tailed prairie dogs are no longer on the endangered species list and are now rebounding back to a healthy population size. There is a problem here though in that there is a new prairie dog poison that is supposed to repel the animals, but it has also hurt a bald eagle and two badgers, actually it killed them and there are other animals supposedly that were harmed by this chemical. I have a problem with this, solely because the prairie dog is a keystone species, so why would we be hurting it more first of all. And secondly, it just got off of the endangered species list, what are we doing that would be okay to go ahead and poison these animals. We need to have a reservoir for these critters so they can come back strong.

Current Events: December 4, 2009

The Doctors Where Real, the Patients Undercover

By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER

Published: November 30, 2009


EDE, the Netherlands — It had all the markings of a television detective show. Posing as patients, three undercover observers got themselves admitted as patients to a locked psychiatric ward to investigate conditions on the inside.

This article is about the conditions of the mental hospitals that people go to in the Netherlands, and around the world. The idea here was to have fake patients go into the hospital and with the help of other undercover people, find the conditions of which the people must live in. To me, this is a very smart idea because it gets a first person perspective on the life of a mental hospital. Although i think that they should actually have the cameras on the patients rather than the visitors to get the full effect. It is important to have these places be as comfortable as possible because the people who live there are very unstable sometimes and need the environment around them to be soothing. Overall i agree with the idea to to surveillance on these wards, but it should be done in more of a discreet and more detailing way.