“Wildlife” on The Daily Caller

When I started hunting, friends and family asked me why. My father didn’t hunt and most of my friends didn’t hunt. I wasn’t really sure why. When I was 12, I just felt compelled to ride my bike to a hunting club that was giving a hunter-safety course. I soon learned to answer this question by just saying I like to be out in the forest. It was just too personal to tell them how the forest sounds when it wakes to a frosty October morning; how it feels to watch a buck slip toward you under copper-colored trees; how geese give November a melody; even how I loved the smell of the gun oil on my Sears, Roebuck & Co. .22 rifle and the Stevens single-shot 16-gauge that had been my grandfather’s. (more)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are donating $2 million to the Namibian sanctuary where they spent Christmas with their kids. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories about its actions in the Gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, which was keenly sensitive to comparisons between its response and former President George W. Bush’s much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina. (more)

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin fired darts from a crossbow at a gray whale off Russia’s Far Eastern coast on Wednesday in the latest in a series of man-versus-nature stunts designed to cultivate the image of a macho leader. (more)

NO MAN’S LAND — Three miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, this island of dense brush, rocky beaches, and squawking birdlife is aptly named. No one has lived here for nearly 60 years, and the public is banned from its 628 acres. (more)

TOKYO (AP) — A quarter-century ban on commercial whaling — one of the world’s most successful preservation agreements — could crumble altogether if conservationists cannot persuade Japan to cut back on the tradition it champions. (more)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A federal judge on Monday denied the state of Alaska’s request for a preliminary injunction to kill wolves, a step it said was needed to protect a caribou herd on an island in the Aleutian chain that is a subsistence food source for rural Alaskans there. (more)

U.S. and Canadian ecologists say it might be better to set hunting and fishing time limits rather than rely on setting quotas on the number of animals taken. (more)

American Rifleman and American Hunter field editor Bryce Towsley does exactly what he title says. He’s out in the field, rifle in hand. Recently, Towsley went out on a leopard safari and returned with these amazing pictures. (more)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t just a mess for the people who live or work on the coast. If you drink coffee, eat shrimp, like bananas or plan to buy a new set of tires, you could end up paying more because of the disaster. (more)

BOSTON  — New England’s centuries-old fishing industry is going to change dramatically under new rules that promise autonomy for fishermen and better protection for fish but have so far mainly inspired uncertainty. (more)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP’s Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles says the company welcomes an offer of U.S. military help to end a large oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (more)

Nearly half the world’s primate species are in danger of extinction, according to a report released Wednesday by a major conservation group. (more)

TOKYO (AP) — Seafood-loving Japan — having faced years of international pressure to stop whaling — finds itself with a potentially bigger fight over a highly prized type of tuna that conservation groups say is being fished to extinction. (more)

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Gray wolves killed livestock in Montana at the rate of an animal per day in 2009, stirring a backlash against the predators in rural areas and depleting a program that compensates ranchers for their losses. (more)

When it comes to natural disasters, Haiti seems to have a bull’s-eye on it. That’s because of a killer combination of geography, poverty, social problems, slipshod building standards and bad luck, experts say. (more)

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Oil and gas companies face more drilling delays and higher costs because of a new U.S. Bureau of Land Management policy for protecting sage grouse in Wyoming, according to the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. (more)

YARMOUTH, Maine (AP) — The massive elm tree that shaded the corner of East Main Street and Yankee Drive was sick. Like so many others in so many of America’s towns in the 1950s, it was stricken with Dutch elm disease. (more)

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Federal biologists have proposed the first open ocean habitat protections for the endangered leatherback sea turtle along the West Coast, an action that could affect future development of offshore renewable energy, aquaculture and desalination plants. (more)

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is directing its Wyoming offices to consider certain restrictions for oil and gas drilling, new wind turbines and other types of development in sage grouse habitat. (more)