Paw-N-Hand Rescue Resources, Education, and Outreach

09/07/2026

Authorities allege former NFL player LeShon Johnson operated a large-scale dogfighting ring known as "Mal Kant Kennels," resulting in the seizure of nearly 200 pit-type dogs during a raid. He now faces federal Animal Welfare Act charges that could bring years in prison and steep fines.

09/07/2026

UPDATED INFO 9/3/26 🐟🌊 These pictures were taken Thursday of last week by a local in the crabtree road area of our watershed above Spruce Pine. This was one of 2 incidents that happened on the N Toe last week due to suspected poor mining practices of dumping sediment ponds. They have been dealing with this for 3 years with no answers despite reporting it! It happens several times a month. These are the reports we need to monitor, track and REPORT!

A QUICK FOLLOW-UP ON THE NORTH TOE RIVER FISH KILL that happened last weekend

We wanted to share a brief update on the fish kill that occurred sometime between approximately Saturday at 3 PM and Sunday at 12 PM.

We have spoken again with the State and the Riverkeepers, and here is what we know right now:

✅ The river is currently looking good from a health standpoint.
✅ No ongoing fish kills are being observed.
✅ Most of the dead fish have flushed downstream or are no longer being seen.
✅ Whatever caused the event appears to have dissipated rather quickly.

We also learned that there was unfortunately a breakdown in communication between information received by EMS. emergency management and the state agencies responsible for responding and testing. The state said they are trying to find out where that miscommunication occurred. Because of that, water testing was delayed and testing was not done because the source of the kill had dissipated and was not present Tuesday.

And to be clear, NC Outdoor Adventures was not the only group or individuals reporting the fish kill on Sunday.

🥵 WHAT ABOUT THE THEORY THAT HOT WATER CAUSED THE FISH KILL?

Since Hurricane Helene, I have personally monitored water temperatures out of curiosity—and because I was concerned about what losing so much of our river's shade canopy could eventually mean and I feared a heat fish kill! The river is 8 degrees warmer at normal water levels without shade in Red Hill. The river was at its hottest temps this year during exceptional drought conditions in June/July.

If heat was the cause, we would have seen it during those months. We also would have seen other dead fish on our river Sunday which the only dead fish seen began at the area of the Toe along 226 where the mines are and ended at Penland.

There is no question that parts of the Toe River are running significantly warmer during the day than they did before Helene. However, based on what was witnessed, I personally have questions about whether heat alone explains this particular event.

Only one brook trout was observed among the dead fish. Most of the fish affected appeared to be bottom-feeding species—fish that are generally more heat tolerant than cold-water species like trout.

The location where the event began, the species affected, and reports of material appearing to sink toward the river bottom are reasons I believe the possibility of something entering the river deserves continued investigation and observation.

⚠️ That is not an official determination of what caused the fish kill. It is simply based on what was witnessed and why we believe continued monitoring is important. There was a similar incident in 2018 that was an acid leak from one of the mines.

🌊 IS IT SAFE TO GET IN THE WATER?

NC Outdoor Adventures operates approximately 15–18 river miles away from the suspected area, and we have seen no dead fish or signs of contamination from Loafers Glory areas through Green Mountain.

We also operate farther upstream near the suspected area in Spruce Pine, but that section will remain closed for a few more days for our guides, staff, and guests.

The State and Riverkeepers reported seeing no dead fish during their Tuesday visit, meaning there are currently no ongoing fish kills being observed.

As always:

🚫 Stay out of oddly colored water
🚫 Don't swim where you see dead fish
🚫 Don't enter water that smells unusual
📸 Document anything suspicious with a photo, date, and time
📞 Report concerns to NCDEQ

After speaking with the State and Riverkeepers, we were also encouraged to continue documenting and reporting unusual white flows, sediment, or leaking ponds near our waterways.

If you see something concerning, document it and report it. You may also send the information to us for the file we are maintaining—we can keep your name anonymous if needed.

08/31/2026

Researchers installed railroad crossing signals for wild animals in Banff National Park. Bells rang and lights flashed 30 seconds before each train arrived. Grizzly bears, elk, wolves, and coyotes fled the tracks 62 percent earlier at sites with the warning system than at sites without it, gaining an extra 360 feet of distance between themselves and the incoming train. The animals were not trained. Nobody conditioned them. The system was installed, the bells started ringing, and the animals figured out what the sound meant on their own.

Jonathan Backs, a PhD candidate in engineering and biological sciences at the University of Alberta, built the device. It is a small box bolted to the rail that detects an approaching train through vibration and changes in the magnetic field. When the sensors fire, the box triggers flashing lights and a bell sound at a location farther down the track where wildlife has been documented using the rail corridor. The warning begins 30 seconds before the train reaches the site. Thirty seconds is enough time for a grizzly bear standing on the tracks to register the sound, decide to move, walk or run off the rails, and clear the corridor before a train traveling 40 miles per hour covers the remaining distance.

Backs installed the systems at four sites along the Canadian Pacific Railway inside Banff in 2016 as part of a five-year grizzly bear research initiative funded by a million-dollar grant from Canadian Pacific. His supervisor, ecologist Colleen Cassady St. Clair, had been studying why grizzly bears were dying on the tracks at an alarming rate since the early 2000s. The railway was built in 1883. Bears and trains coexisted for over a century without significant mortality. Something changed around 2000.

What changed was the tracks themselves. The cleared rail bed became the easiest travel route through deep mountain snow. Walking on packed ballast costs a bear a fraction of the energy that wading through four feet of powder costs. Vegetation grows abundantly along the sunny, disturbed margins of the corridor: buffaloberry, other shrubs, and grasses that attract bears in spring and fall. Grain spills from freight trains leave piles of wheat and canola along the rails. The tracks became a trail system with a built-in cafeteria, and the bears that discovered this used the railway the way they would use any other travel corridor, except this one had trains on it.

Over a nine-month controlled experiment, Backs alternated warning and control treatments among the four sites, switching which sites had the bells and which did not every two to four weeks to account for seasonal variation. Trail cameras recorded every animal that appeared on the tracks before and during train arrivals. He logged 25 large-animal flight sequences and 149 small-animal sequences.

Large animals fled the tracks an average of 6.5 seconds earlier when the warning was operating, increasing their escape time from roughly 10.5 seconds to 17 seconds. That difference translated to 360 additional feet of space between the animal and the train. Small animals gained 3.3 seconds. The results were published in Transportation Research Part D in 2020.

The system does not scare the animals. Backs was specific about this. The purpose is not to frighten bears off the tracks permanently because frightening them would just push them into deep snow where travel costs more energy and survival gets harder. The purpose is to alert them that a train is coming right now so they move off the tracks for the 30 seconds it takes the train to pass and then walk back on. The bears are allowed to use the corridor. They are asked to step aside when the corridor is about to kill them.

Image is for illustration purposes only

Source: Backs, Cassady St. Clair, et al. (2020), Transportation Research Part D / University of Alberta / Canadian Pacific Railway / Parks Canada / CBC News / Science / The Narwhal / The Revelator.

08/28/2026

The U.S. border wall in Arizona has 13 openings the size of a sheet of printer paper cut into 70 miles of continuous steel bollards. Border Patrol calls them cat doors. They measure 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall. A trail camera filmed a female mountain lion squeezing through one of them and then waiting on the other side while her three spotted cubs followed through the four-inch gaps between the bollards beside it. The largest cat in the American Southwest crossed the border through a hole the size of a piece of office paper because that hole was the only option the wall gave her.

Eamon Harrity at Sky Island Alliance and researchers from Wildlands Network placed 36 wildlife cameras across 100 miles of the Arizona-Sonora border between August 2022 and July 2024. The stretch they studied included roughly 70 miles of 30-foot steel bollard wall, most of it built during the Trump administration, and 30 miles of older waist-high vehicle barriers and barbed-wire cattle fencing. They recorded 9,240 wildlife events involving 20 species. They counted every crossing attempt. They counted every failure.

At the vehicle barriers, 65 percent of wildlife interactions resulted in a successful crossing. Bears walked over them. Deer jumped them. Turkeys flew past. At the 30-foot bollard wall, 9 percent succeeded. An 86 percent reduction. For bears, deer, and wild turkeys, the wall produced a 100 percent reduction. Not one bear, not one deer, and not one turkey was documented crossing the bollard wall during two years of continuous camera monitoring. The four-inch gaps between the steel bollards stopped everything larger than a bobcat. Bobcats, foxes, hares, raccoons, and skunks could compress their bodies enough to squeeze through four inches of space. Mountain lions could not. Deer could not. Bears could not.

The 13 cat doors changed the math for three species. Mountain lions, javelinas, and coyotes were 16.7 times more likely to cross the border wall when they encountered one of the small openings. The cat doors were not designed for mountain lions. An 8.5-by-11-inch opening was intended for bobcats and smaller animals. Nobody expected a 130-pound mountain lion to compress itself through a hole smaller than a laptop screen. The cameras showed it happening anyway.

Harrity described the openings to the Sierra Club: they are too small to be used by humans, but they do make a big difference for some animals. The engineering logic was simple. A hole small enough that no adult human can fit through it but large enough that a bobcat can is a hole that does not compromise border security while allowing some wildlife connectivity. The mountain lions did not read the engineering specifications. They saw an opening and went through it because the alternative was the four-inch bollard gap that their shoulders could not fit between or the 30-foot wall that they could not climb.

The 13 openings are spread across more than 70 miles of continuous wall. That is roughly one opening every five and a half miles. A mountain lion walking the wall looking for a way through must travel an average of nearly three miles before encountering a cat door, assuming it is walking in the right direction. If it is walking the wrong direction, the next opening may be 10 miles away. The cameras documented animals pacing along the wall, hitting the bollards, turning, pacing farther, and either finding an opening or giving up.

The study was published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution in November 2024. Its conclusion was direct: small wildlife passages improved crossing rates for several species but were too scarce and too small for bears, deer, and turkeys to use at all. More frequent and larger openings are urgently needed.

Image is for illustration purposes only

Source: Harrity et al. (2024), Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution / Sky Island Alliance / Wildlands Network / Sierra Club / High Country News / Courthouse News.

08/28/2026

08/22/2026

08/12/2026

Europe approves its first common welfare law for dogs and cats: mandatory microchipping and limits on breeding

The European Union has published Regulation (EU) 2026/1818, the first common legal framework regulating the welfare, breeding, and traceability of dogs and cats across all 27 member states.

Until now, each country applied its own rules, leaving room for the illegal puppy trade and unregulated breeding facilities. The new regulation changes that: it establishes mandatory requirements for breeders, sellers, shelters, and online sales platforms.

Key measures include mandatory microchipping with registration in databases linked across countries, limits on inbreeding and on how often females can be bred, restrictions on mutilations and on breeding extreme physical traits that harm an animal's health, and minimum standards for housing, socialization, and exercise.

The law also prohibits separating puppies from their mother before eight weeks of age, and raises that minimum to twelve weeks for kittens born in breeding facilities.

The regulation generally takes effect on August 31, 2028, with staggered deadlines so breeders and member states can adapt.

It is legal recognition of something those of us who live alongside animals have always known: they are not merchandise.

08/09/2026

08/05/2026

Rescue responsibly my friends! 😬