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Mongolia Govt Gave Don Jr. A Rare Permit To Shoot Endangered Sheep

Mongolia Govt Gave Don Jr. A Rare Permit To Shoot Endangered Sheep

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

The rocky highlands of Central Asia, in a remote region of Western Mongolia, are home to a plummeting population of the largest sheep in the world, the argali. The endangered species is beloved for its giant curving horns, which can run over 6 feet in length.

On a hunting trip this August, Donald Trump Jr. shot and killed one.

His adventure was supported by government resources from both the U.S. and Mongolia, which each sent security services to accompany the president’s eldest son and grandson on the multiday trip. It also thrust Trump Jr. directly into the controversial world of Mongolian trophy hunting — a polarizing practice in a country that views the big-horned rams as a national treasure. The right to kill an argali is controlled by an opaque permitting system that experts say is mostly based on money, connections and politics.

Trump Jr. received special treatment during his summer trip, according to records obtained by ProPublica as well as interviews with people involved in the hunt. Listen to the episode.

The Mongolian government granted Trump Jr. a coveted and rare permit to slay the animal retroactively on Sept. 2, after he’d left the region following his trip. It’s unusual for permits to be issued after a hunter’s stay. It was one of only three permits to be issued in that hunting region, local records show.

Afterward, Trump Jr. met privately with the country’s president, Khaltmaagiin Battulga, before departing the capital of Ulaanbaatar back to the U.S., according to Khuantai Khafezyn, a local government official in the region where Trump Jr. hunted the argali and a former government official with knowledge of the meeting. It isn’t clear what was discussed. Trump Jr. wouldn’t answer questions about the meeting. Representatives for Battulga haven’t responded to requests for comment.

“What are the chances the Mongolian government would’ve done any of that to someone who wasn’t the son of the United States’ president?” asked Kathleen Clark, a professor specializing in legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She said that though Trump Jr. is not a government employee, he’s nonetheless politically influential, incentivizing foreign officials such as the Mongolian leader to treat him favorably out of a “desire on the part of a foreign government to curry favor with the president’s family.”

In response to questions from ProPublica about the hunting trip, a spokesman for Trump Jr., an avid outdoorsman, said in a statement it was a purely personal expedition. He purchased the seven-day Mongolian hunting trip at a National Rifle Association charity auction before his father announced his candidacy for president in 2015, the spokesman said, and flew commercial in and out of the country. It’s unclear if the auction item listed an argali or mentioned meetings with Mongolian government officials.

Mongolia is a resource-rich, young democracy that considers the U.S. an important ally as it faces pressure from its powerful neighbors, particularly the Chinese. Legislation introduced this year in Congress would give duty-free treatment to Mongolian cashmere and other products in an effort to increase trade between the two countries — and lessen its reliance on China.

The hunt came just weeks after high-level government discussions — including a White House meeting — between officials from the U.S. and Mongolia, a landlocked country sandwiched between Russia and China. Mongolia refers to the U.S. as its “third neighbor,” relying on America for economic and security support. During that meeting, the Mongolian president gave a horse to President Donald Trump’s youngest son, Barron. Trump named it “Victory.” (The horse, a traditional ceremonial gift, resides in Mongolia.)

The hunting trip Trump Jr. won at auction was sponsored by a Mongolian tourism company and arranged byJandos Kontorbai Ahat, a member of the Mongolian president’s political party. His company, Marmara International LLC, is on the board of the Mongolian hunting association and has been recognized for its work on argali wildlife preservation by the Mongolian Environmental Ministry.

In an interview, Ahat called the trophy hunting permitting system in Mongolia “very political.” He wouldn’t say how he arranged for Trump Jr.’s permit, or acknowledge that the hunt took place, but he praised Trump Jr. “Don Jr. was an upstanding person, he never did anything that was unpleasant,” Ahat said. “He treated people with respect.”

Ahat said the embassy’s defense attache accompanied the hunting party on the trip. Hunting guides and scouts who worked on Trump Jr.’s trip said the president’s son was joined by what they described as five American bodyguards. The U.S. Secret Service doesn’t comment on protection details, according to an agency spokesman. In the statement from Trump Jr.’s spokesman, he said that protection details are determined by the Secret Service, not Trump Jr. Trump Jr.’s spokesman did not comment on who accompanied the president’s son.

The White House, State Department, Defense Department and U.S. Embassy in Mongolia haven’t responded to questions about Trump Jr.’s trip. The NRA declined to comment.

In his statement, Trump Jr.’s spokesman said no government officials from either country organized the trip and said the permits were appropriately obtained via a third-party outfitter, “as is standard in the industry.” It’s not clear what Trump Jr. paid for his hunting excursion, but a review of online promotions shows that Mongolian outfitters typically charge between $24,000 and $50,000 to wealthy Westerners who want to shoot and kill argali. Four members of the Kardebai family, local herders who served as scouts on Trump Jr.’s hunt, confirmed to ProPublica that they were paid for their services but wouldn’t disclose how much or by whom.

While hunting permits are intended to protect the sheep and fund conservation efforts, the population of argalis has plummeted over the last 35 years. The estimated population in the country dropped from 50,000 in 1985 to just 18,000 in 2009, the most recent survey period, said Amgalanbaatar Sukh, a scientist who heads an argali research center in Mongolia. The animals are listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Advocates say trophy hunting can help conserve threatened species by managing the population’s size. They say permit fees go toward supporting local communities, who are paid for their services and keep the meat harvested from the kills. But some conservation biologists and animal rights groups contend the hunting programs are ineffective and can lead to disruption of local ecosystems.

In Mongolia, the permit process has been rife with favoritism, experts say. Obtaining permission to trophy hunt in Mongolia is an insider’s game featuring a poorly tracked quota system, said Nathan Conaboy, a researcher who helped author a 2016 Zoological Society of London study of argali in Mongolia.

Sukh said the permits are often arranged by high-level government contacts in ways privy only to those in the know. There are sometimes discrepancies between the number of permits issued and the official quota figures for argali, he said. The government has allotted 86 such permits to be issued this year, with specific numbers assigned to each hunting region across the country, for a season that lasts from July 1 to Sept. 30. The hunters’ fees are supposed to pay herders and scouts as well as fund surveys and other ram management programs. Sukh said he’d never received government funds to conduct such surveys.

Trump Jr. shot his argali at night, using a rifle with a laser sight, the guides said. He stopped the local hunting guides from dismembering it at the kill site, instead instructing them to use an aluminum sheet to carry the carcass so as not to damage the fur and horns, said Khuandyg Akhbas, 50, one of the guides. He also killed a red deer, which similarly required a permit.

“At night, we couldn’t find where the animal fell, and we used our light from our phones to find the animal,” Akhbas said, describing the argali hunt. “In the morning they took the animal by truck to the mountain and shot a video on top of the mountain.”

The local guides, who said they were impressed by both Trump Jr.’s hunting abilities and his willingness to handle the animal’s dead body, were prevented from posing in photographs with Trump Jr. and the argali carcass. Trump Jr. posted nearly two dozen photos of his Mongolian vacation on Instagram in separate posts from August, October and November. One showed himin a yurt, another witha live eagle and a third depicted himriding a Mongolian horse. He did not post any photos of the argali.

Trump Jr. appears to have been joined in his hunting trip by a Republican donor, according to Instagram posts from late August posted by a Turkish hunting guide, Kaan Karakaya. Karakaya also joined Trump Jr. for the argali hunt, said the local guides. Karakaya and his company, Shikar Safaris, are favored by the Mongolian president’s office to facilitate trophy hunting in Mongolia, said Sukh, the argali expert.

Karakaya posted photos and videos on Instagram featuring an American oil and gas company CEO named Kevin Small killing an argali in August, around the time of Trump Jr.’s trip to the country. In one of the photos of Small posing with the carcass of the sheep, Trump Jr. comments: “Amazing sheep and amazing guy.” The link to the post is no longer working.

Campaign finance records show Small increased his political donations to Republicans in the months ahead of the trip. In March, he gave $50,000 to the Take Back the House 2020 joint fundraising committee, an additional $35,500 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and $10,600 to a super PAC supporting House Republican candidates and the campaign fund for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader. The amount far exceeds his contributions in previous years, federal campaign contribution records show.

Trump Jr.’s spokesman didn’t answer questions about Small. Small hasn’t responded to phone messages seeking comment. Karakaya didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

It’s unclear what happened to the argali trophy after Trump Jr. killed it. To import the fur and horns of the argali he killed, Trump Jr. would have had to apply for and be granted permission by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Trump Jr. didn’t respond to questions about this. A spokeswoman for the service wouldn’t say whether Trump Jr. had applied for such a license.

Homage To A Very Fine Dog

Homage To A Very Fine Dog

As winter approaches, I find myself contemplating the impending death of my Great Pyrenees dog, Jesse — as magnificent an animal as I’ve known. Jesse’s 14 now, elderly for a dog of his size, with ragged, thinning fur. He’s hard of hearing, finding it difficult to get to his feet at times, but still charismatic in his quiet way, still fearless, still on the job.

A rambunctious young retriever tried to jump up to give my wife a kiss in a city park a while back. Shaky legs and all, Jesse put him on the ground. It wasn’t a fierce attack; he understood that the offender was a big puppy. But the Labrador also needed to learn some manners.

No harm, no foul.

Another time, he saved Diane from a charging cow in my neighbor’s pasture. We’d inadvertently walked between a mother and her 2-day-old calf, stashed in a thicket while she grazed with her girlfriends. Without warning, the mama cow lowered her head and charged.

Probably it was a bluff. These were pretty tame cattle, accustomed to having people around, although I owned at least one peevish animal that would have flat run you over. Anyway, we never did find out, because Jesse charged her back. Even with her baby in peril, that cow wanted no part of him. It was all over before I even realized what had happened.

You see, the whole time we’d been lollygagging along, bird-watching and admiring the spring foliage, Jesse had been on the job, alert to danger, guarding his charges.

We’d adopted him at roughly 15 months from a dog rescue specializing in large breeds. I’d learned about Great Pyrenees from an old friend in Montana, who used them on his ranch near the Crazy Mountains. As Basque herdsmen have done for centuries, they put the dogs out with the sheep as puppies, and they never leave them.

When the sheep come up to the barn, the Pyrenees come with them; when the herd heads back out to pasture, the dogs follow. They’re friendly enough toward humans in their aloof way, but they live for the herd. Indeed, I read a recent New York Times article explaining this age-old phenomenon by one of the new breed of academic psychologists who study canine behavior.

(Where was I when scams like the Duke University Canine Cognition Center came into being? Oh, yeah, pondering the mysteries of Jonathan Swift’s sex life. I’d have been a natural. Professors are writing books and getting tenured jobs arguing about whether humans adopted dogs or dogs adopted humans — a conundrum which, like the Swift puzzle, can’t be solved.

(There’s even a guy at Emory University who runs his own dog through an MRI scanner to figure out what the poor beast is thinking. That’s one question I can answer: “For God’s sake, let me out of here and feed me.”

(For that matter, I’m pretty sure how it all started was clever (or injured) wolves getting into human trash: many times in many different places.)

Anyway, young Jesse leaned hard into my leg there at the rescue place, and the woman explained that’s what Great Pyrenees do. For whatever reason, he’d chosen me. I couldn’t say no.

For the next 10 years, Jesse was head of security at our farm outside Little Rock. Cows don’t need a lot of guarding, and neither do horses. But he and his companion Maggie, a Great Pyrenees/Anatolian mix, kept cow-chasing dogs and coyotes completely off the place. Realistically, I suppose, they mainly protected cats. Even today, if I’m looking for his old friend Albert the cat, I walk Jesse down the street until Albert finds us.

One day, I saw him and Maggie burst through the electric fence at warp speed chasing a cougar that had come wandering down the bayou. Another time, Jesse pitched into a pair of coyotes who had one of my neighbor’s goat kids on the ground. He grabbed one and threw it. The other escaped lickety-split. Then he picked up the baby goat and carried it unharmed back to its mother. Nobody taught Jesse to do that; it was centuries of selective breeding in action.

I did wonder how he’d adjust to city life, but he’s done fine. Some months ago, he ran off a would-be burglar at 2 a.m. Six houses on our street got broken into, but not ours. Jesse appears not to think I need protecting, but anybody who tried to harm Diane would have to come through him, and even in his old age, no unarmed man could do it.

As I say, it’s hard to imagine Jesse’s got another winter in him. But his eyes still shine when it’s time for his walk, and he’s eating heartily, so perhaps my fears for him are premature.

It’s always been deeply reassuring having the big dog around.

Federal Fishing Expansion Could Endanger Right Whales

Federal Fishing Expansion Could Endanger Right Whales

Reprinted with permission from DCReport

Donald Trump likes scallops, ordering the seafood for Chris Christie even though the former governor of New Jersey is allergic to them, but a new fishing map that benefits scallop fishermen could push the endangered North American right whale into extinction.

Trump regulators opened about 3,100 square miles of ocean to fishing for scallops and fish that live near the bottom of the ocean such as halibut and flounder that had been closed for more than two decades, including a section of Georges Bank off Cape Cod, Mass., and part of the ocean near southern New England.

Environmentalists say the National Marine Fisheries Service, overseen by Chris Oliver, failed to follow the Endangered Species Act to protect right whales despite published research from its own scientists that showed the move could harm right whales.

“The officials charged with protecting this species appear willing to misrepresent the facts and the science to both the court and the public because they’re hellbent on doing nothing that might save right whales from extinction,” said Erica Fuller, an attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation which sued over the fishing map.

A nonprofit that supports government whistleblowers, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, has asked the Commerce Department to investigate alleged lies or misrepresentations made by NMFS officials in the lawsuit.

The right whale got its name because it was the “right” whale to hunt because it is slow moving and floats after being killed. About 400 right whales, including 95 breeding females, migrate between Florida and Canada. The population has declined by about 20 percent since 2010.

Ten right whales have been found dead this year, including a male nicknamed “Snake Eyes” that was last seen entangled in fishing gear in August in Canadian waters. Deaths from entanglement or being struck by ships are common.

A scallop fishing industry group, Fisheries Survival Fund, said no scallop vessel has ever had an interaction with a right whale. The fund, which spent $290,000 on federal lobbying in 2018, helped develop the new fishing map.

Scallop fishermen harvested 58.2 million pounds of scallops last year, the fifth-highest since 1945. The fund claims changing the fishing map to protect right whales could cost scallop fishermen $140 million to $160 million a year.

A draft environmental review of the new map done during the Obama administration said it could increase whale entanglement, but this language was not in the final environmental impact statement issued under Trump.

Trump regulators also ignored published research by their own scientists including a 2017 paper co-authored by Allison Glass Henry and Peter Corkeron that said most entangled right whales die within six months to a year if they are not freed and a 2017 paper co-authored by Frederick Wenzel that said right whales can be trapped in gillnets.

Trump regulators apparently chose to rely on a paper co-authored by Rosalind Rolland that relied on outdated research and concluded entanglement in fishing gear has not caused a decline in the health of large whales, according to PEER.

If It’s Christmas, It’s Basset Hounds

If It’s Christmas, It’s Basset Hounds

If it’s the Christmas season, it’s time for the Fred and Beverly Santa photo. Our two basset hounds have passed, but the Santa photo lives on—a family classic.

I defy anybody to look at it without smiling: Beverly lolling happily in St. Nick’s lap, with Fred indignant and under restraint: “Never mind taking my picture, get me out of here!”

Santa was a trouper. Fred could pull like a 4-WD pickup.

We can’t imagine life without basset hounds. Indeed, the Lyons Plan for Universal World Peace includes mandatory basset ownership. The stubborn little brutes make you smile every time you look at them.

Did I say little? Fred weighed 85 pounds, all muscle. My wife liked to say he was a large dog with short legs. His feet were enormous.

A basset is basically a beagle on steroids. It’s a French breed, a nation with a seeming predilection for odd-looking dogs. Like beagles, they’re tracking hounds bred to follow game with their great, snuffling noses and giant floppy ears. Also to be persistent, another word for stubborn. Basset hounds aren’t so much disobedient as congenitally immune to discipline, as headstrong as cows.

Also, however, with generous, loving hearts. Bassets love everybody. They’re happy all the time. Gentle too; you almost can’t make them fight. It’s partly the contrast between their eternal optimism and woebegone expression that makes them so lovable.

We came by Beverly in the traditional way: Diane found her at a shelter, then called “Blossom.” An elderly couple had decided she was too much for them and reluctantly surrendered her. My wife passed a stringent adoption interview. We changed her name to honor a friend. Later, she became “Bun Rabbit,” then just “Bun”—like the puppet on Captain Kangaroo.

Fred appeared as the newspaper’s “Pet of the Week.” As our beloved beagle of that name had died, it seemed fated. Fred the basset was an escape artist nobody could keep home. I was confident that I could keep him up, which partly involves plenty of exercise. It wasn’t until we’d agreed to take him sight unseen that we learned he was Fort Smith, 150 miles away. Oh well, that’s what Sunday afternoons are for.

Where Fred really began to live right was our Perry County farm. He thrived on liberty, and particularly enjoyed napping in the haystack with calves. (Indoors he snoozed with cats.) Because of his mellow disposition, cows treated him as an honorary herd member.

He did sometimes woof at horses, which in Fred-speak meant “You run, I’ll chase.” Mostly, they ignored him.

One afternoon I saw a buck being chased along Cypress Creek by our Great Pyrenees, Jesse. Minutes later, Fred came slowly hooting along the scent line. Jesse evidently quit and came home after losing sight of the deer. Fred, however, persevered. By morning, I was frantic.

Our neighbor Macil Davis, then 84, reasoned that the hound certainly hadn’t swum the Arkansas River, therefore must have gone south. Having been born on the place, she knew everybody down that way and was confident she’d find him. Macil’s second phone call located Fred about five miles on the other side of the ridge.

Apparently, Fred had lost the trail after the deer crossed the highway. An old boy driving home from work found him standing on the double yellow line in the middle of Highway 60, looking confused. The dog wore a Little Rock license, but that couldn’t be right, because the city was 50 miles away.

He’d been thinking of calling him “Clyde.”

Blessedly, Fred took the lesson and quit hunting deer. We became famous in our part of the county as those folks that walked their dogs—a largely unknown activity in rural Arkansas. Basically, we walked each other. In summer, you could gauge the temperature by how far the bassets fell behind.

Due to her fondness for cooling off in farm ponds, Bun earned her second nickname: “The Spotted Submarine.”

Then came Fred’s terrible accident. A guy helping me mend fences ran him over with his pickup. Fred’s pelvis was broken, and there was a possibility of spinal damage. He couldn’t stand and wasn’t moving his legs. We carried Fred home and set him gingerly on the floor. His napping partner Martin, an orange tabby kitten, lay beside him, purring.

After a few days, I saw Fred dreaming and moving all four feet in his sleep. No spinal damage. I devised a plan of hydrotherapy. Fashioning a bath towel sling, I dunked him in a 50 gallon water trough. With me holding him, Fred had to paddle to keep his head above water. Then I’d carry him back inside.

We did two-a-days for several weeks. And then one happy afternoon, Fred stood up uncertainly and started learning to walk again.

I tell you I like to cried, as people say in Perry County.