Sacramento County Animals Digest

Sea lions have made their way to Sacramento shores. The mammals typically live in shallow waters in the eastern North Pacific Ocean and hunt for food offshore on the coast. So what are they doing here?

The California Highway Patrol recently celebrated the graduation of nine new canine teams. They will be assigned positions all throughout the state of California.

The School of Veterinary Medicine will open a new emergency room and intensive care unit on May 3, doubling in size to accommodate rapid growth. The caseload has doubled since immediately before the pandemic and is up tenfold since 2013.

Mosquitoes require water to complete their life cycle and California now has a lot of it. More water means an increase in the transmission rate of the vector-borne disease West Nile Virus.

Worms that can jump as high as a foot in the air have been seen locally. “We have had a lot of reports,” said Kevin Martyn, the Sacramento County deputy agriculture commissioner.

The salmon industry, worth about half a billion dollars, is devastated. The culprits: Drought and decades of water diversions and development.

An outside investigator found that an August mass die-off at a UC Davis fish lab was caused by a malfunctioning aquarium sewage system that gave “no early warning signs of an impending catastrophe.”

Climate change models indicate that California’s Central Valley will experience conditions that could threaten the reproductive success of songbirds, according to a study from UC Davis.

For the xixth year in a row, no smelt were found in Fall Midwater Trawl survey–the smelt were once the most plentiful of Delta fish. The indicator species has been in catastrophic decline since water diversion began.

Spring runs of a large minnow numbering in the millions have nourished Pomo Indians since they first made their home alongside Clear Lake more than 400 generations ago.

Sierra 2 Park in the Curtis Park neighborhood is an unofficial dog park, but the city of Sacramento may be ordering leash law enforcement on the grounds of public complaints and lack of fencing.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has unanimously approved its staff recommendation to surrender the license for the four lower PacifiCorp dams on the Klamath River in California and Oregon—and begin the dam removal process.

Drought, human-caused climate change, invasive species and a “legacy” of environmental issues are permanently altering California’s landscape and placing some communities and ecosystems at increasing risk.

Sacramento Zoo head Jason Jacobs says the zoo seeks an endangered white rhino to potentially relocate in five years to the new 60-acre Elk Grove site, near Sky River Casino.

Protestors gather outside Front Street Shelter on Nov. 6 to spotlight what they call overly high rates of euthanasia and substandard conditions at the shelter. Sacramento City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby calls for an audit.

A dozen independent fish scientists are calling for urgent changes to sport fishing rules to save California’s largest freshwater fish after an unprecedented red tide this summer left hundreds of them dead.

On Nov. 6, a group of protestors descended on Sacramento’s Front Street Animal Shelter to condemn what they view as deteriorating animal care and services at the city-run facility.

The park honors Roy C. Marcum, shot and killed on duty in November 2012; dedication ceremony includes animal fair, K-9 unit demonstration and a speech by Sacramento County Supervisor Don Nottoli.

For eight straight days this summer, farmers in far Northern California drained almost all of the water out of a river in defiance of the state’s drought regulations. The move infuriated environmentalists and salmon-dependent Native American tribes downstream.

For the seventh September in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt during its Fall Midwater Trawl Survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

California pet rental laws can get tricky, and are slightly different between subsidized housing and rentals. The Bee breaks down everything that pet lovers need to know.

2022 State of the Birds Report shows decline in more than half of the bird population, with grassland bird species shrinking the fastest. On the bright side, waterfowl are thriving in the nation’s wetlands.

Four Paws 2 Freedom, which started in 2011, has helped military veterans with PTSD gain “personal freedom through the company of a trained service dog,” said board chairman Steve Barnett, a former Army infantryman.

Researchers discovered Aug. 9 that 21,000 fish had died in their enclosures at UC Davis’ Center for Aquatic Biology and Aquaculture. Endangered or threatened native California species, including Chinook salmon and green sturgeon, were among the fish that died.

Dr. Ronald Li, a veterinarian at UC Davis, treated 23 cats rescued from the Tubbs fire in 2017. In addition to the expected traumatic injuries, something else caught Li’s attention. “We noticed clots forming within their hearts,” he said. “But at that time, we didn’t know why.”

The bald eaglet twins hatched in an eyrie considered the closest to Sacramento in recorded history are fledging. Read a first-hand account.

Local horse rescue Hope for Horses (H4H) celebrated its successful move to a new location after three months marked by uncertainty about the group’s future.

Black bears have been sighted uncomfortably close to civilization, including one near a school.

Backers of California’s High Speed Rail project haven’t had much to celebrate, given soaring costs and scaled-back service, but a new poll shows a solid majority of voters still want to move forward and finish the job.

After a ride in a jeep on a dirt road, we arrive at a troubling scene: a fish kill involving an estimated 200 endangered spring-run Chinook salmon.

A proposed bill in the California Legislature would make it easier to kill wild pigs doing damage to agricultural lands. Yet hunting associations are lining up to fight Senate Bill 856.

Sacramento County’s Bradshaw Animal Shelter made the transition to fully reopen to the public, doing away with adoption appointments and restricted hours.