{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-fox-isolated-island-and-waste/", "A Fox, An Isolated Island, and Waste", "2016-07-18", "2016", "2016-07", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul released the latest edition of \u2018The Waste Report,\u2019 an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.\n\nIn today\u2019s report, Dr. Paul shines a light on the Department of Defense offering a grant opportunity of nearly $100,000 to monitor the health of the Arctic Fox population on the island of Shemya. The fox is not native to the island, not endangered, and not proven to be successful at achieving the grant\u2019s stated rationale of preventing aircraft-bird collisions. In fact, the Air Force considers foxes themselves to be hazards.\n\n\u2018The Waste Report\u2019 can be found HERE or below.\n\n***\n\nNear the tail end of the Aleutian Islands (farther west than Hawaii), sits Shemya, a two-by-four-mile island that is home to Eareckson Air Station (EAS) and nearly $100,000 of government waste.\n\nThe Department of Defense (DOD) recently published a $99,000 grant opportunity to monitor the population of the Arctic Fox on Shemya.[1] The stated rationale for this project is that the foxes appear to be in declining health, and their presence is perceived to reduce the Bird/Aircraft Strike Hazard. It all seems reasonable until you look a little deeper.\n\nJust 200 miles from Russia in the middle of the North Pacific, EAS was an important air strip during WWII and the Cold War, housing both bomber and fighter groups. However, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, that utility diminished quickly, and EAS was basically closed in 1995. Today, the once-vibrant airfield handles about three flights a week.[2]\n\nWhile avoiding aircraft-bird collisions is certainly an important and worthwhile goal, the use of the Arctic Fox in this endeavor is not proven to be successful. You see, though the fox will hunt sea birds, it much prefers small animals such as rodents, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). In addition, according to the Air Force\u2019s own Bird/Wildlife Strike Hazard (BASH) Management Techniques, foxes also present a hazard, and it recommends using \u201cpyrotechnics to frighten these species\u201d or occasionally shooting them to keep them away from airfields.[3]\n\nBut maybe there is a reason to spend almost $100k to save the Arctic Fox! Perhaps the fox is endangered? Nope. According to the WWF, there are several hundred thousand Arctic Foxes in the world, earning them the status of \u201cLeast Concern.\u201d Interestingly enough, the foxes are not even native to the island, having been introduced decades before the Air Force arrived. In fact, generally the fox \u201clives inland, away from the coasts.\u201d[4] Getting inland is hard to do on an island where you are never more than a mile from the water.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T20:57:58Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-fox-isolated-island-and-waste/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9075608104467392, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}