Wal-Mart will cash your tax refund — in hopes that you’ll spend it there

refunds are available. Taxpayers would then be able to pick up the cash — up to a maximum $7,500 — at any store through the Wal-Mart MoneyCenter or customer service desk. Wal-Mart isn’t releasing a full list of the tax preparers participating and says consumers will need to ask their tax preparers if the program, called Wal-Mart Direct2Cash, is available. People who use online tax software, or who do their own taxes, wouldn’t qualify. The tax preparer may charge a fee of up to $7 for the service, and Wal-Mart says it isn’t charging a fee for people to pick up the cash in store. The company acknowledged Tuesday that the new program could make it easier for people receiving sizable checks — the average refund issued last year was about $2,800 — to spend some of that money in Wal-Mart. “It’s always a good thing, we believe, to have customers in our stores who have jingle in their purses and in their wallets,” Eckert said during a conference call. Wal-Mart is going after a very particular type of customer. Because the option is only available through roughly 25,000 tax preparation locations partnering with the company, it excludes the millions of people who might file their tax returns online using tax preparation software. And while about two-thirds of taxpayers receive tax refunds, the company is targeting the minority of taxpayers who still depend on snail mail to receive that cash. Of the 109 million tax refunds issued last year, about 77 percent were direct deposited, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Consumers wouldn’t access the cash any sooner than they would if they had the money directly deposited into their bank accounts — which the IRS does at no cost. The latest option is separate from the tax preparation services Wal-Mart already offers in 3,000 stores through a partnership with Jackson Hewitt. With the tax season launching Tuesday, consumer advocates are warning about programs that charge people fees to receive tax refund checks they could otherwise access for free. For instance, the National Consumer Law Center cautioned that some paid tax preparers charge $25 to $60 for refund anticipation checks, which make it possible for people to deduct tax preparation fees from their tax refunds. Wal-Mart says that for people who opt to get a paper check, its new program removes the worry over having a check get lost in

(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
For the majority of taxpayers, the tax refund is a bonus that seamlessly shows up in their bank account each spring.
But Wal-Mart is giving another option to the minority of taxpayers who might otherwise wait for a check to hit their mailbox: pick up the refund, in cash, at any Wal-Mart store.
The move is the latest effort by Wal-Mart to target consumers who may not have a bank, who work mostly in cash, and for whom a tax refund is probably the biggest windfall they’ll see all year. “We know tax refunds can be one of the largest financial payouts of the year for many of our customers,” Daniel Eckert, senior vice president of services for Wal-Mart U.S., said in a statement.
Here’s how it would work. Taxpayers filing their tax returns at one of the 25,000 participating tax preparation locations could choose to pick up their refunds inside a Wal-Mart store. When the return is processed, refunds will get released to Tax Products Group (TPG) or Republic Bank & Trust Company, the banks Wal-Mart is partnering with for the program.
The banks will e-mail taxpayers to let them know that their state and federal refunds are available. Taxpayers would then be able to pick up the cash — up to a maximum $7,500 — at any store through the Wal-Mart MoneyCenter or customer service desk.
Wal-Mart isn’t releasing a full list of the tax preparers participating and says consumers will need to ask their tax preparers if the program, called Wal-Mart Direct2Cash, is available. People who use online tax software, or who do their own taxes, wouldn’t qualify. The tax preparer may charge a fee of up to $7 for the service, and Wal-Mart says it isn’t charging a fee for people to pick up the cash in store.
The company acknowledged Tuesday that the new program could make it easier for people receiving sizable checks — the average refund issued last year was about $2,800 — to spend some of that money in Wal-Mart. “It’s always a good thing, we believe, to have customers in our stores who have jingle in their purses and in their wallets,” Eckert said during a conference call.
Wal-Mart is going after a very particular type of customer. Because the option is only available through roughly 25,000 tax preparation locations partnering with the company, it excludes the millions of people who might file their tax returns online using tax preparation software.
And while about two-thirds of taxpayers receive tax refunds, the company is targeting the minority of taxpayers who still depend on snail mail to receive that cash. Of the 109 million tax refunds issued last year, about 77 percent were direct deposited, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
Consumers wouldn’t access the cash any sooner than they would if they had the money directly deposited into their bank accounts — which the IRS does at no cost.
Wal-Mart has rolled out a slew of banking related services in recent years. In October, thousands of stores began serving as bank branches for GoBank, allowing people to make deposits or to open an account with the otherwise mobile banking platform. By then, Wal-Mart already offered a prepaid debit card, credit card, check cashing and money transfers.
The latest option is separate from the tax preparation services Wal-Mart already offers in 3,000 stores through a partnership with Jackson Hewitt.
But Wal-Mart is looking beyond banking in its efforts to get people to come into its stores. Last year, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company partnered with an online insurance Web site to help customers compare and enroll in health insurance plans. Earlier in the year, it began opening primary care centers inside of its stores.
With the tax season launching Tuesday, consumer advocates are warning about programs that charge people fees to receive tax refund checks they could otherwise access for free. For instance, the National Consumer Law Center cautioned that some paid tax preparers charge $25 to $60 for refund anticipation checks, which make it possible for people to deduct tax preparation fees from their tax refunds.
Wal-Mart says that for people who opt to get a paper check, its new program removes the worry over having a check get lost in the mail and that it can help reduce the steep fees some might face to cash in their refund checks.
For instance, some people may have to pay a check cashing fee of between 1 percent and 2 percent of the check account. On the average $2,800 refund, that would amount to a fee of $28 to $56. Some tax preparers may also charge a processing fee for issuing a refund check.
Still, the service isn’t faster — or cheaper — than having the money directly deposited into your bank.


What issues face the approximately 28% of Americans with limited or no access to traditional banks?

Granting retail stores like Walmart, Target, and Safeway bank charters will help the 10 million underbanked Americans unable to afford the costs associated with traditional banks. Studies indicate that the unbanked depend on lower fees offered by prepaid debit cards and/or money orders to pay bills or cash checks instead of the using payday loans or cash checking services. Eliminating some government regulations and having more retail stores offer prepaid debit cards such as Walmart's successful Bluebird American Express card which does not require credit checks will help the underbanked better manage their finances. Exclude documents related to loans.

Find research that supports this financial question.

Wal-Mart going head-to-head with banks with prepaid American Express card

Wal-Mart
The card will act much like debit or credit cards — except those products are covered by much stricter consumer protection laws. Customers can use the new card to get roadside assistance, bank from their smartphones and, eventually, write checks out of an account linked to the card.
Such prepaid cards have grown in popularity in the wake of the credit crisis that left millions of Americans outside the traditional banking system. Yet consumer advocates warn that issuers of prepaid cards do not always explain the fees or rules associated with their products. Some of those products, the advocates argue, are used to prey on the financially vulnerable.
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is examining whether new rules need to be written for prepaid cards.
Wal-Mart officials said the new card, called Bluebird, will have broad appeal beyond the “non-banked” or “underbanked.” They are aiming the card squarely at customers of the banking industry, which has fought vigorously to keep Wal-Mart from obtaining a bank charter.
This undated image provided by American Express shows the Bluebird prepaid card that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and American Express announced Monday. The companies say users of the new card will not face a minimum balance requirement, overdraft charges or other fees typically imposed by banks. (AP)
Company executives said users of the new card will not face a minimum balance requirement, overdraft charges or other fees typically imposed by banks.
They can use the card to withdraw cash from a network of 22,000 ATMs and can use it where American Express cards are accepted, Wal-Mart officials said. The card would carry fraud protections similar to those with traditional credit card products and, officials argued, would be more transparent than other prepaid cards.
Wal-Mart and American Express will not conduct credit checks on applicants.
“There are consumers who are waking up and saying, ‘The value that I used to get from my traditional checking account just isn’t there given the complex maze of fees I have to navigate,’ ” Daniel Eckert, vice president of financial services for Wal-Mart U.S., said in an interview. “We’ve put out a product that offers them an alternative.”
Wal-Mart is among several big box retailers, including Target and Office Depot, that are trying to peel off bank customers with prepaid cards.
Banks are also pushing such prepaid products, but many of these institutions cannot match the ubiquitous Wal-Mart’s ability to sell credit products to consumers. Over the past decade or so, Wal-Mart has tried on several occasions to obtain a bank charter but has been repeatedly beaten back by the banking industry.
Now, with Bluebird, Wal-Mart customers could conceivably cut banks out of their lives, some analysts said.
“What’s interesting about this product is that anybody can manage their money on a day-to-day basis without ever really having to step foot in a bank branch,” said Jennifer Teshcer, president and chief executive at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a think tank. “Banks will continue to play an important role in safeguarding our funds,” she added, “but whether they will continue to be the front door for the mass market is what’s at stake.”
According to a recent government survey, nearly 1 million households exited the banking system from 2009 to 2011. One in four American households, or 28.3 percent, had one bank account or no bank accounts as of last year. A third of these households told researchers that they did not have enough money to open and fund an account.
Consumers have been hit with a flurry of fee hikes as banks try to offset the loss of revenue from a government-imposed cap on debit card transaction fees. The average monthly service fee on checking accounts, for instance, topped $5.48 in September, up 25 percent from the prior year, according to Bankrate.com.
As these fees mount, more consumers are turning to prepaid cards. Consulting firm Mercator Advisory Group estimates that the market for prepaid debit cards may reach $150 billion this year.
Wal-Mart already offers a MoneyCard in a partnership with a company called Green Dot, and officials said that initiative would continue. But on Monday, after Wal-Mart’s announcement with American Express, Green Dot’s stock plummeted more than 20 percent.


Reston firm turns to decades-old technology to set up mobile banking in Central Asia

pretty straightforward.” The company offers more complex programs for tablet and Internet users, and it has an intricate cloud-based system for processing and securing transactions. But for the most part, GeoPay relies on text messages, which even the simplest of mobile phones can access. The first outpost The small population of Kyrgyzstan — roughly 5.5 million — and the prevalence of pay-as-you-go cellphone services there made it a particularly good place to start, Feeley said. In August 2011, the company opened an outpost in Kyrgyzstan and hired nine employees to oversee the marketing and management of GeoPay. “We wanted to start in a market that was smaller so we could turn the dials and fine-tune the product, the marketing and the consumer experience before we go to the next level,” Feeley said. For now, funds from all GeoPay accounts are pooled behind-the-scenes into one aggregate bank account. Eventually, Feeley said, users will be able to link individual checking accounts to their mobile phones. “That would provide a true mobile wallet for people who do have bank accounts,” Feeley said, “and also provide traditional financial institutions the ability to sell to our consumers or promote their products and graduate that consumer up into a financial facility.” The company is constantly updating its platform, Feeley said. He plans to add loyalty programs for frequent users and to partner with daily deals sites to offer location-based deals to GeoPay users. Feeley would not discuss revenue figures, but he said he and others had invested more than $1 million in the company to date. The biggest challenge The biggest challenge, he said, is marketing the system to customers and merchants who may be wary of financial institutions and traditional fee structures. There are other limitations, too. Phone lines can go down. Kiosks can stop working. “No matter how you’re trying to connect to something, there are third parties, and you’re sometimes only as good as they are,” Feeley said. “That could be a mobile operator, that could be an Internet provider, that could be a banking system or a kiosk. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong.” But, he added, there is plenty of room to grow, particularly given that one-third of the world’s population does not have bank accounts, according to the World Bank. “This is going to evolve,” Feeley said. “We’re only in the infant stages of mobile banking.”

Not all new ideas for technology have to be, well, new.
As the start-ups around it tinkered with the cutting edge, a Reston company called GeoPay stuck by decades-old technology — the same used in messaging systems that led to the earliest cellphones — to create a mobile-banking platform.
The start-up, founded in 2011, provides cellphone-based banking services for people who might not otherwise have accounts at financial institutions. The simpler the interface, the more people the system could reach in the developing world, GeoPay said.
“Right away, we wanted to take advantage of older, but extremely well-deployed technology,” said Sean Kidder, chief technology officer of GeoPay. “For us, it’s about how many customers we can reach, not whether someone who’s hip and cool may turn their nose up at the technology we’re using.”
GeoPay introduced mobile banking to Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia, in October. Since then, more than 40,000 people, 2,000 merchants and 80 bank branches have signed up.
This is how the system works: Consumers add money to their online accounts using existing kiosks — the same machines they would use to add funds to pay-as-you-go cellphone plans. The money is associated with an individual’s mobile-phone number, and it can be used to pay bills or buy goods and services using a messaging-based system.
“It’s essentially like text-messaging the transaction to a merchant or to a peer,” said Darren Feeley, founder and chief executive of GeoPay. “The beauty of this is that it provides lightweight, basic financial services for those who ordinarily would not have them.”
Most transactions are $10 to $20, Feeley said. There is no charge for mobile-to-mobile transfers, but cash withdrawals, which typically take place at banks, carry a 1.5 percent fee.
Feeley said GeoPay not only ensures that a person’s money is safe — funds are insured — but also acclimates users to the idea of leaving their money with financial institutions.
“If you lose your wallet with cash, it’s gone,” he said. “If you lose your phone, we can always reverse the transaction or credit it to your new phone number, or whatever it is. There’s a lot more flexibility in the digital world.”
Programs similar to GeoPay have been introduced in other countries, as well. Standard Bank of South Africa and Dutch-Bangla Bank in Bangladesh have created mobile-banking apps, and the British Department for International Development has ongoing efforts to encourage the rise of phone-based banking.
Feeley, who used to work for AOL’s payments and acquisitions group, said he got the idea for GeoPay a few years ago. He recruited a team that consisted largely of former AOL colleagues and got to work.
It took about a year to develop and test a prototype for GeoPay. The first step, Kidder said, was to establish the app’s core functions: How would money be deposited? Where would the funds go? What would a phone-to-phone transfer look like?
“We had a lot of strong plumbing to build,” Kidder said. “After that, we just layered new user interfaces on top. In terms of the coding, it’s pretty straightforward.”
The company offers more complex programs for tablet and Internet users, and it has an intricate cloud-based system for processing and securing transactions. But for the most part, GeoPay relies on text messages, which even the simplest of mobile phones can access.
The first outpost
The small population of Kyrgyzstan — roughly 5.5 million — and the prevalence of pay-as-you-go cellphone services there made it a particularly good place to start, Feeley said. In August 2011, the company opened an outpost in Kyrgyzstan and hired nine employees to oversee the marketing and management of GeoPay.
“We wanted to start in a market that was smaller so we could turn the dials and fine-tune the product, the marketing and the consumer experience before we go to the next level,” Feeley said.
By the end of this year, the company plans to expand to Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States, where  20 percent of adults do not have bank accounts, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.
For now, funds from all GeoPay accounts are pooled behind-the-scenes into one aggregate bank account. Eventually, Feeley said, users will be able to link individual checking accounts to their mobile phones.
“That would provide a true mobile wallet for people who do have bank accounts,” Feeley said, “and also provide traditional financial institutions the ability to sell to our consumers or promote their products and graduate that consumer up into a financial facility.”
The company is constantly updating its platform, Feeley said. He plans to add loyalty programs for frequent users and to partner with daily deals sites to offer location-based deals to GeoPay users. Feeley would not discuss revenue figures, but he said he and others had invested more than $1 million in the company to date.
The biggest challenge
The biggest challenge, he said, is marketing the system to customers and merchants who may be wary of financial institutions and traditional fee structures. There are other limitations, too. Phone lines can go down. Kiosks can stop working.
“No matter how you’re trying to connect to something, there are third parties, and you’re sometimes only as good as they are,” Feeley said. “That could be a mobile operator, that could be an Internet provider, that could be a banking system or a kiosk. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong.”
But, he added, there is plenty of room to grow, particularly given that one-third of the world’s population does not have bank accounts, according to the World Bank.
“This is going to evolve,” Feeley said. “We’re only in the infant stages of mobile banking.”


Consumer watchdog launches overdraft inquiry

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to launch an inquiry Wednesday into banks’ overdraft practices, which have been in regulatory crosshairs in recent years. The CFPB’s inquiry also will focus on bank overdraft policies, how they market the plans, and their impact on low-income and young consumers. The agency will solicit feedback from the public. “Overdraft practices have the capacity to inflict serious economic harm on the people who can least afford it,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. “We want to learn how consumers are affected, and how well they are able to anticipate and avoid paying penalty fees.” Overdraft fees have long irked consumers, who have complained that withdrawals of as little as $3 from their bank accounts have resulted in penalties as high as $37. As the recession squeezed Americans’ budgets and anger at the financial industry reached fever pitch, regulators and lawmakers began moving to curtail banks’ fees. Meanwhile, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued guidelines calling for the smaller banks it oversees to set limits on the number of times customers can be charged overdraft fees in one day and offer alternatives to those who overdraw their accounts more than six times in a year. Its guidelines encompass checks and recurring payments. One thing regulators left unaddressed, however, was the order that banks processed charges. That issue has been winding its way through the nation’s court system instead. In 2010, a California judge ordered Wells Fargo to return $203 million in overdraft fees to customers whose transactions were reordered. Chase, Bank of America and several other banks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to settle a separate class-action lawsuit over the practice. The CFPB said it is seeking information on how prevalent the practice remains and how it affects consumers. It is also concerned about a 2008 FDIC report that found that 9 percent of checking account customers made up about 84 percent of overdraft charges, suggesting that the fees were concentrated among low-income customers. The bureau said it also hopes to educate consumers about the overdraft rules. It is launching a campaign called “What’s your overdraft status?” and has developed a “penalty fee box” that would appear on checking account statements to help consumers understand any overdraft charges.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to launch an inquiry Wednesday into banks’ overdraft practices, which have been in regulatory crosshairs in recent years.
The bureau said it will look into whether banks are reordering customers’ debit-card charges to maximize overdraft fees. Reordering transactions can double or triple penalties, and the practice has been the target of several class-action lawsuits against the nation’s biggest banks.
The CFPB’s inquiry also will focus on bank overdraft policies, how they market the plans, and their impact on low-income and young consumers. The agency will solicit feedback from the public.
“Overdraft practices have the capacity to inflict serious economic harm on the people who can least afford it,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. “We want to learn how consumers are affected, and how well they are able to anticipate and avoid paying penalty fees.”
Overdraft fees have long irked consumers, who have complained that withdrawals of as little as $3 from their bank accounts have resulted in penalties as high as $37. As the recession squeezed Americans’ budgets and anger at the financial industry reached fever pitch, regulators and lawmakers began moving to curtail banks’ fees.
In 2010, the Federal Reserve began prohibiting banks from imposing overdraft charges unless a customer had signed up for the service. The rule only applies to debit-card transactions, not to checks or recurring withdrawals such as automatic bill pay.
Meanwhile, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued guidelines calling for the smaller banks it oversees to set limits on the number of times customers can be charged overdraft fees in one day and offer alternatives to those who overdraw their accounts more than six times in a year. Its guidelines encompass checks and recurring payments.
As a result of the new regulations and consumer uproar, several banks, including Bank of America, ended their overdraft programs all together. A poll by Consumer Reports shortly after the Fed’s ban went into effect found that only 22 percent of customers had opted into the service. Of those customers, more than half had experienced an overdraft in the past six months, the poll found.
One thing regulators left unaddressed, however, was the order that banks processed charges. That issue has been winding its way through the nation’s court system instead. In 2010, a California judge ordered Wells Fargo to return $203 million in overdraft fees to customers whose transactions were reordered. Chase, Bank of America and several other banks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to settle a separate class-action lawsuit over the practice.
The CFPB said it is seeking information on how prevalent the practice remains and how it affects consumers. It is also concerned about a 2008 FDIC report that found that 9 percent of checking account customers made up about 84 percent of overdraft charges, suggesting that the fees were concentrated among low-income customers.
The bureau said it also hopes to educate consumers about the overdraft rules. It is launching a campaign called “What’s your overdraft status?” and has developed a “penalty fee box” that would appear on checking account statements to help consumers understand any overdraft charges.


T-Mobile enters prepaid card market

T-Mobile enters prepaid card market

John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, speaks at T-Mobile's Un-carrier 4.0 press event at International CES on Jan. 8 in Las Vegas. (Jeff Bottari/AP Images for T-Mobile) Advocacy groups, however, have raised concerns that issuers of prepaid cards are not always transparent about the fees or rules associated with their products. And while the cards act much like debit or credit cards, they are not covered by the same strict consumer-protection laws. But Michael Goo, vice president of marketing at T-Mobile, said that the telecom company is offering Americans an affordable way to manage their money through its Mobile Money service. Customers can use the Visa-branded card to pay bills, deposit checks via a smartphone camera and make purchases. There are no overdraft fees, no minimum balance requirements and no charges for withdrawing cash from 42,000 ATMs across the country, he said. “There is a significant portion of Americans, 68 million adults, that rely on alternative financial services or don’t have traditional accounts, and this product will help free them in terms of time savings and cost savings,” Goo said. “Our product is incredibly consumer-friendly.” On its Mobile Money Web page, T-Mobile said there will be charges for “non-typical use,” such as using an out-of-network ATM or putting rush demands on checks to be cashed. Company officials said in an e-mail it would charge $2 for such services, but the cost is not explained on its Web site. The inability of consumers to get clear information about the terms of such products has riled lawmakers and regulators. Within the past month, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) introduced separate legislation to require prepaid card issuers to fully disclose all fees tied to the product. Disclosure is at the heart of the rules the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to write before the end of the year. The bureau has said it will work on an industry-wide standard on fee disclosure, overdraft and other issues, such as limits to consumer liability in the event of cards being stolen. “These cards can be a substitute for a checking account and help usher people into the financial system, but unlike a checking account, the terms can change at any time,” said Susan K. Weinstock, director of the Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. In the past, proponents of prepaid cards cautioned that new disclosure

John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, speaks at T-Mobile's Un-carrier 4.0 press event at International CES on  Jan. 8 in Las Vegas. (Jeff Bottari/AP Images for T-Mobile)
T-Mobile on Wednesday became the latest retailer to barrel into the banking world with the introduction of a prepaid card, entering the market just as lawmakers and regulators move to impose tougher consumer protections on such products.
The use of prepaid cards has exploded in the wake of the credit crisis that pushed millions of Americans outside of the traditional banking system. Chain stores, including Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Target, have entered the marketplace with broad access to those consumers left on the sidelines.
Advocacy groups, however, have raised concerns that issuers of prepaid cards are not always transparent about the fees or rules associated with their products. And while the cards act much like debit or credit cards, they are not covered by the same strict consumer-protection laws.
But Michael Goo, vice president of marketing at T-Mobile, said that the telecom company is offering Americans an affordable way to manage their money through its Mobile Money service. Customers can use the Visa-branded card to pay bills, deposit checks via a smartphone camera and make purchases. There are no overdraft fees, no minimum balance requirements and no charges for withdrawing cash from 42,000 ATMs across the country, he said.
“There is a significant portion of Americans, 68 million adults, that rely on alternative financial services or don’t have traditional accounts, and this product will help free them in terms of time savings and cost savings,” Goo said. “Our product is incredibly consumer-friendly.”
On its Mobile Money Web page, T-Mobile said there will be charges for “non-typical use,” such as using an out-of-network ATM or putting rush demands on checks to be cashed. Company officials said in an e-mail it would charge $2 for such services, but the cost is not explained on its Web site.
The inability of consumers to get clear information about the terms of such products has riled lawmakers and regulators. Within the past month, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) introduced separate legislation to require prepaid card issuers to fully disclose all fees tied to the product.
Disclosure is at the heart of the rules the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to write before the end of the year. The bureau has said it will work on an industry-wide standard on fee disclosure, overdraft and other issues, such as limits to consumer liability in the event of cards being stolen.
“These cards can be a substitute for a checking account and help usher people into the financial system, but unlike a checking account, the terms can change at any time,” said Susan K. Weinstock, director of the Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In the past, proponents of prepaid cards cautioned that new disclosure requirements would increase compliance costs that would be passed on to consumers. That apprehension has waned as regulators have warmed to the idea of a simple fee disclosure box, said Jennifer Tescher, president and chief executive of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, a think tank.
“There is very little fear and trepidation around the prepaid rules that the CFPB might issue,” she said. “If anything, the industry is waiting for rules and will welcome them because it will help to further legitimize the product. ”
The high fees once associated with prepaid cards have largely declined as well-heeled firms, such as Wal-Mart and JPMorgan Chase, have entered the market. To remain competitive, more companies have lowered their costs or waived charges altogether.
T-Mobile will automatically waive monthly fees for its wireless customers. Analysts say the move into prepaid debit cards is a natural fit for the company, considering its established base of prepaid wireless customers.
“Prepaid wireless customers usually fall into a few categories: very budget-conscious, young or credit issues prevent them from getting a [traditional] wireless plan,” said Terrence P. Maher, corporate counsel at the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association, a trade group. “These demographics also may be interested in a general-purpose, reloadable card, for the very same reasons.”


Find information about increasing numbers of coyotes in suburban Maryland and any impacts on other species.

As coyotes have moved into the area other animals such as feral cats have been driven out. This can lead to the downturn of the number of birds killed by the cats. While coyotes are natural predators, which get rid of rodents, they also have an impact by attacking people and their pets.  Find information on the growing coyote population in Maryland and its impact on other species. Relvant documents must include references to Virginia.

Research the impact of a growing animal population on local ecosystems for this question.

USDA’s Wildlife Services killed 4 million animals in 2013; seen as an overstep by some

A coyote keeps pace with a car (not seen) as it runs down the road in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)
For years, the massive toll of wild animals exterminated by the federal government as a service to everything from airports to ranches has bounced up and down like a yo-yo. Last year it was up again.
The more than 4 million animals shot, poisoned, snared or trapped by the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in fiscal year 2013 included 75,326 coyotes, 866 bobcats, 528 river otters, 3,700 foxes, 12,186 prairie dogs, 973 red-tailed hawks, 419 black bears and at least three eagles, golden and bald.
Though there’s a list of animals killed, there’s little data showing the cause for each killing, the methods used and the reasons behind mistakes that lead to massive kills of animals that aren’t targeted.
At least two members of Congress have called Wildlife Services secret and opaque for failing to provide more information, and there are mounting calls for an investigation into how it operates.
Wildlife Services says that it responds to requests by government agencies nationwide and works to “resolve human/wildlife conflicts” in a strategic way. “As wildlife damage increases, requests for assistance also increase,” said spokeswoman Carol Bannerman. Ranchers and farmers pay half the agency’s costs of killing animals that they view as a threat.
In 2012, the USDA Wildlife Services reports the number of wild animals terminated, freed, released, relocated or dispersed. Here are the top 10 killed or euthanized.
But the agency provided no explanation for why the kill total can be 1.5 million in one year and 5 million the next.
Near the turn of the century, it hit a staggering 4 million. Two years later, in 2001, it fell to about 1.5 million and stayed relatively low for six years. But in 2008, the number of kills rocketed to 5 million before trending downward to 3 million over the next four years.
Now it’s back up, well past 4 million in the most recent count, and critics are pressing for a better explanation for why.
Wildlife Services’ primary purpose is to eradicate invasive creatures introduced from other parts of the world. They include greedy feral hogs, giant swamp rats called nutria, big aggressive Argentine lizards called tegus and swarms of hungry starlings that destroy the habitats of animals native to the United States.
But the agency also kills native animals en masse, sometimes based solely on a homeowner’s or farmer’s perception of a threat.
Birds that invade airports and swipe cattle feed at farms contribute to the high totals. Non-native European starlings, sparrows, pigeons and such accounted for 87 percent of animals killed. Birds in general are singled out as a nuisance.
The rise in the number of exterminated animals came despite growing scrutiny and protest.

Last December, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition demanding that the agency explain the exact reasons why it makes each kill of a native animal, for whose benefit and the methods used. The petition called Wildlife Services “a rogue agency” that was “out of control.”
At the time, a Wildlife Services spokeswoman, Lyndsay Cole, responded that it kills birds at 800 airports nationwide so they won’t gum up the works of airplanes. Cole said the department kills some animals that are a threat to endangered animals. Other animals, such as raccoons, are eliminated as part of the National Rabies Management Program.
Cole said the agency is guided by a science-based decision-making model. For example, wolves are killed to “lessen the negative impacts of expanding wolf populations,” even though those populations are still recovering from earlier government programs that aimed to exterminate them.
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.) has railed against the secret methods of Wildlife Services, at one time calling it “one of the most opaque and obstinate departments I’ve dealt with.” DeFazio has asked to know what goes into poisons used by the agency that are a danger to people and harmless animals but hasn’t gotten an answer. “We’re really not sure what they’re doing.”
Wildlife Services has been around under different government names for more than a century. It essentially cleared away wildlife for America’s westward expansion.
In a 2012 report, Wildlife Services relied on a National Agricultural Statistics Service survey to show that wildlife caused $944 million in agricultural damage in 2001.
Atwood dismissed the “science-based model” Cole mentioned as a document that “basically says they can use whatever methods at their disposal whenever they want.”
Her organization’s petition called on the USDA and the Obama administration to develop a policy based on ecological science, showing how removing animals from the wild affects the natural balance of the habitats.
In the Northeast, for example, the elimination of red wolves led to a proliferation of coyotes, which the wolves rarely tolerate in their range. Coyotes push away foxes, which prey on deer mice, which spread ticks.
The execution of wolves and other predators, such as bears, allows deer to proliferate across the country, destroying trees that serve as habitat for other animals.
Atwood described Wildlife Services’ work as “a staggering killing campaign, bankrolled by taxpayers” and happening “beyond the view of most Americans.”
Related:
Petition targets ‘rogue’ killings by Wildlife Services
Officials give up on evicting pythons from Everglades
Virginia acts to reduce population of feral pigs


Why you really need to stop driving on beaches

them over while they’re trapped. Vehicles pose some less direct threats as well. Off-roading vehicles can be frightening and disruptive to adult birds, who may be inclined to fly away any time a vehicle comes down the beach. “If you’re repeatedly flushing birds away from young chicks, you have a lot of different things happening,” Addison says. “Chicks and eggs are exposed to temperature stress if parents aren’t able to be with them. They’re exposed to predators — crows, gulls, raccoons, foxes, coyotes. And also, if adults are stressed out really badly at a colony by too much chronic disruption, they may choose to abandon the site.” Too much driving on the beach can contribute to habitat degradation as well, says Comins. “It tends to really greatly contribute to beach erosion and certainly to the detriment of dune vegetation, which is important for stabilizing these beaches,” he says. In parts of the country where off-roading is allowed, Addison recommends local authorities at least establish a buffer zone around prime nesting areas to keep disturbances at a minimum. But these type of measures have become highly contentious in some places. At North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore, for instance, debates over off-roading on the beach have been a source of bad blood for years. In February 2012, the National Park Service restricted off-road vehicle access to the beach to certain times and places after environmentalists filed a lawsuit calling for better protections on local wildlife. In response, a group of outraged community members created the Cape Hatteras Access Preservation Alliance and filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the new regulations. The group argued that the National Park Service overlooked any compromises that would have maintained vehicle access to the beach and protected wildlife at the same time. The new regulations are also potentially damaging to the tourist-oriented local economy, the group said. The lawsuit was unsuccessful. Many of these looser restrictions are viewed as a step in the right direction by the Cape Hatteras Access Preservation Alliance. But the proposal has environmentalists worried that the National Park Service could “potentially roll back the gains that birds and sea turtles have made since the better management has been implemented,” says Addison, from Audubon North Carolina. According to Addison, these gains have included an increase in the number of sea turtle and shorebird nests on the beach, as well as greater success for

American oystercatcher at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia. (Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr)
For off-roading enthusiasts, a relaxing drive on the beach in warm weather may seem like an innocent enough activity. For the nesting shorebirds who make their home along the coastline this time of year, it’s another story.
Whether vehicles are allowed on beaches varies from one state — and, in some cases, from one city — to the next. But in places where the practice is allowed, driving along the beach may be causing all kinds of problems for coastal birds, such as piping plovers and oystercatchers, especially in the spring and summer months when they’re nesting and raising chicks, according to environmentalists. The most obvious of these is the risk of crushing delicate eggs.
According to Patrick Comins, director of bird conservation for Audubon Connecticut, many shorebirds do a great job of camouflaging their nests, scraping shallow indentations in the beach and laying their sandy-colored eggs inside. “You can be five feet away from a nest, see it, take your eyes off of it, and then you can’t find it again,” Comins says.
But once the chicks hatch, they don’t stand a much better chance against vehicles on the beach.
New chicks can easily fall into the ruts made by tire tracks along the shoreline and get stuck, says Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina. At the very least, they risk becoming separated from their parents this way — worst case scenario, another vehicle may come along and run them over while they’re trapped.
Vehicles pose some less direct threats as well. Off-roading vehicles can be frightening and disruptive to adult birds, who may be inclined to fly away any time a vehicle comes down the beach. “If you’re repeatedly flushing birds away from young chicks, you have a lot of different things happening,” Addison says. “Chicks and eggs are exposed to temperature stress if parents aren’t able to be with them. They’re exposed to predators — crows, gulls, raccoons, foxes, coyotes. And also, if adults are stressed out really badly at a colony by too much chronic disruption, they may choose to abandon the site.”
Too much driving on the beach can contribute to habitat degradation as well, says Comins. “It tends to really greatly contribute to beach erosion and certainly to the detriment of dune vegetation, which is important for stabilizing these beaches,” he says.
In parts of the country where off-roading is allowed, Addison recommends local authorities at least establish a buffer zone around prime nesting areas to keep disturbances at a minimum. But these type of measures have become highly contentious in some places.
At North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore, for instance, debates over off-roading on the beach have been a source of bad blood for years. In February 2012, the National Park Service restricted off-road vehicle access to the beach to certain times and places after environmentalists filed a lawsuit calling for better protections on local wildlife.
In response, a group of outraged community members created the Cape Hatteras Access Preservation Alliance and filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the new regulations. The group argued that the National Park Service overlooked any compromises that would have maintained vehicle access to the beach and protected wildlife at the same time. The new regulations are also potentially damaging to the tourist-oriented local economy, the group said. The lawsuit was unsuccessful.
But tensions are running high again this spring, after the National Park Service proposed scaling back some of the restrictions it put in place for both vehicles and pedestrians on the beach, such as reducing buffer zones between beach-goers and nesting sites.
Many of these looser restrictions are viewed as a step in the right direction by the Cape Hatteras Access Preservation Alliance. But the proposal has environmentalists worried that the National Park Service could “potentially roll back the gains that birds and sea turtles have made since the better management has been implemented,” says Addison, from Audubon North Carolina. According to Addison, these gains have included an increase in the number of sea turtle and shorebird nests on the beach, as well as greater success for shorebirds in raising their young.
The numbers appear to back her up, at least in part: In 2012, the year the beach management practices were implemented, biologists counted 17 waterbird colonies, and in 2013 they counted 19 — up from 12 colonies in 2011 and 10 in 2010. And the gains extend to other wildlife as well, such as sea turtles, which also lay their delicate eggs in the sand. In 2010 and 2011, biologists counted only 153 and 147 nests respectively, while these numbers rose to 222 nests in 2012 and 254 in 2013. (The number of colonial waterbirds and sea turtles both took a dive in 2014, the most recent year that data is available. Environmentalists say they still don’t know what is behind the drop, but extreme weather events, predators and human disturbances, including foot traffic, may all have played a role.)
Biologists pay attention to these numbers because so many shorebirds species are experiencing declines or have low populations as it is. One prime example, according to Comins, is the piping plover, a favorite among shorebird enthusiasts. Populations throughout the U.S. are listed as either endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and its protection is a high priority among coastal conservationists.
Other declining shorebirds include the American oystercatcher and several species of tern, says Comins, and there are many other species that also nest on the shoreline and can benefit from traffic restrictions on beaches.
Cape Hatteras isn’t the only place with these kinds of regulations in place. In Cape Cod, officials have been known to limit or close certain off-roading corridors on the beach to protect nesting shorebirds, particularly piping plovers. On parts of Long Island, driving restrictions are put in place during nesting season as well.
And even in places like Comins’ state of Connecticut, where driving on the beach is not permitted, certain areas of the beach are fenced off during nesting season to protect shorebirds from pedestrians. The key in these situations, Comins says, is to foster community awareness about the plight of shorebirds and balance beach recreation with the welfare of the birds. “It’s a goal of ours to make sure that people have access to the shore and that the birds also have a chance for success,” he says.


Keeping cats inside for their — and other animals’ — safety

Courtland Milloy’s Jan. 1 Metro column, “This tabby could teach dogs a thing or two,” started well with the adoption of a stray cat but then delivered the wrong message about cat ownership. Milloy noted that the cat captured the family’s love but added that they “let the cat come indoors, then go back out as she pleased.” He said that, “Outdoors, she behaves like a tiger. . . . She is, quite frankly, awesome — except for the times when she brings her kill home to show off and play with.” This perpetuates the notion that it is natural and normal to allow cats to hunt outdoors. Yes, the Milloy cat behaves like a tiger: Cats, both domestic and strays, are particularly devastating to native birds and mammals, killing an average of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year. In fact, cats are one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. Granted, many cats are feral, and there are mixed arguments about how to address that population. But pet owners should not add to the problem by allowing their cats to prowl around neighborhoods to prey on wildlife. Cats also face dangers: cars, dogs, coyotes and even licking antifreeze and sewer sludge. Fortunately, Milloy’s cat can learn to enjoy life as an indoor-only pet. I love cats and have converted outdoor felines to be happy inside dwellers. And the birds and other wildlife are luckier for it. Kasha Helget, Alexandria The writer is a member of the Arlington Regional Master Naturalists. ● In his Jan. 1 Metro column, Courtland Milloy mentioned that his son gave a stray cat a bowl of milk. Other than kittens, cats cannot properly digest milk. It makes them sick. Peter Miller, Martinsburg, W.Va.

Granted, many cats are feral, and there are mixed arguments about how to address that population. But pet owners should not add to the problem by allowing their cats to prowl around neighborhoods to prey on wildlife. Cats also face dangers: cars, dogs, coyotes and even licking antifreeze and sewer sludge. Fortunately, Milloy’s cat can learn to enjoy life as an indoor-only pet. I love cats and have converted outdoor felines to be happy inside dwellers. And the birds and other wildlife are luckier for it. Kasha Helget, Alexandria ● Peter Miller, Martinsburg, W.Va.


How officials will try to figure out what killed 13 bald eagles on a Maryland farm

a practice that Clark said is illegal. “Whatever killed those birds, they didn’t get far, and that means it was extremely toxic,” Clark said. In 2008, authorities tried to get rid of a hefty rat population on an island in Alaska by using poison. But gulls and eagles were attracted by the scent of the dying rodents, and 46 eagles ended up dead, according to Ellen Paul, executive director of the Ornithological Council. Another theory is there could be something like botulism or a naturally occurring blue-green algal toxin that got into area vegetation. Waterfowl eat that vegetation and then the eagles may have eaten the waterfowl and died. “Thirteen [eagles dead] in one spot is either something natural occurring, or there was some type of poison involved,” said Bill Bowerman, an eagle expert and head of the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Maryland. Experts say that vehicles are one of the biggest killers of bald eagles these days. As development has encroached on their habitat, eagles are eating less fish and are scavenging more. They often are hit by vehicles as they eat carcasses on roads or are sickened from eating out of dumps or landfills, experts said. In Maryland, there is a $10,000 reward being offered from several agencies and groups for any information in the recent Eastern Shore case. The 13 dead bald eagles that were found this weekend included at least three mature birds, with the signature white heads and brown bodies. Two of the birds were close to maturity, officials said, and the rest were considered immature, with no white feathers. Bald eagles are no longer on the endangered species list, but they are considered a protected species, according to the Natural Resources Police. Last year, 18 raptors died from gunshot, poisoning or getting entangled in fishing lines or landscape netting, according to the Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research. Raptors include eagles, hawks and owls. An official with the organization said that 13 other raptors who suffered similar incidents were rehabilitated and returned to the wild. Thirty years ago, eight bald eagles were found dead in Maryland. Officials said they think those birds may have been poisoned. And two years ago, two bald eagles were shot and killed in one week in Montgomery County. It is illegal to shoot eagles without a permit from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

One of the bald eagles found dead in a farm field on Maryland’s Eastern Shore over the weekend. A total of 13 were found. (Courtesy of Maryland Natural Resources Police)
The carcasses of 13 bald eagles that were found over the weekend in a field on Maryland’s Eastern Shore have been sent to a forensic laboratory in Oregon that’s been dubbed the CSI lab for animals, where they will undergo a thorough analysis to figure out what caused their deaths.
The eagles were discovered Saturday by a man who told authorities he was out on the property looking for antlers deer had shed when he saw what he thought was a dead turkey. Turns out it wasn’t.
It was four dead eagles, and after wildlife officials searched the area, they found nine more dead eagles in the field near the intersection of Richardson and Laurel Grove roads in Federalsburg.
There were no obvious signs of trauma to the birds. And it was not immediately known what exactly killed them, said investigators from the Maryland Natural Resources Police and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But there are several theories, including that they died from some sort of poison. It is the largest single such incident of dead eagles in 30 years in the state, experts said.
The 13 dead bald eagles found in a field on Maryland's Eastern Shore have been sent for analysis to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Lab, the CSI of labs for animals, in Ashland, Ore. (Courtesy of National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory)
The carcasses were sent Monday night to the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Ore., , officials said. The federal lab has been dubbed the “CSI for Animals” in an article by Boston’s NPR station. In its promotional information, the lab bills itself as a crime lab that is “very much like a ‘typical’ police lab, except the victim is an animal.”
The rare forensic lab was founded in the 1980s. Officials there have told of how they often get a wide range of evidence from eagle talons to decomposed boa constructors, wolves and skunk carcasses.
Officials at the lab said the 13 eagles from Maryland will go through the same process as other carcasses: They’ll be physically examined by vet pathologists, X-ray images will be taken, and samples of liver, stomach, kidney, urine and blood will be collected and analyzed. Screenings will also be done to look for possible poisons, and a necropsy will be conducted.
The lab has about 30 employees and a $5 million annual budget. It examines 100 to 1,000 cases a year that involve about 15,000 items ranging from feathers to carcasses.
In Maryland, there are theories — lots of them.
One is they were poisoned. An area landowner may have sprayed a chemical on a field and that could have adversely impacted the eagles. Or poison used to kill rodents could be the culprit. The rodents may have died outdoors, then the eagles ate the carcasses and were poisoned in turn.
Ed Clark, president and founder of the Wildlife Center of Virginia, said there are two most likely scenarios of how the eagles died. They may have eaten carcasses left from a euthanized horse or cow. Or they ate bait that was laced with poison that was intended for coyotes or other predators — a practice that Clark said is illegal.
“Whatever killed those birds, they didn’t get far, and that means it was extremely toxic,” Clark said.
Eagle experts recalled other cases involving large-scale deaths of eagles.
In 2008, authorities tried to get rid of a hefty rat population on an island in Alaska by using poison. But gulls and eagles were attracted by the scent of the dying rodents, and 46 eagles ended up dead, according to Ellen Paul, executive director of the Ornithological Council.
Another theory is there could be something like botulism or a naturally occurring blue-green algal toxin that got into area vegetation. Waterfowl eat that vegetation and then the eagles may have eaten the waterfowl and died.
“Thirteen [eagles dead] in one spot is either something natural occurring, or there was some type of poison involved,” said Bill Bowerman, an eagle expert and head of the Department of Environmental Science and Technology at the University of Maryland.
Experts say that vehicles are one of the biggest killers of bald eagles these days. As development has encroached on their habitat, eagles are eating less fish and are scavenging more. They often are hit by vehicles as they eat carcasses on roads or are sickened from eating out of dumps or landfills, experts said.
In Maryland, there is a $10,000 reward being offered from several agencies and groups for any information in the recent Eastern Shore case.
The 13 dead bald eagles that were found this weekend included at least three mature birds, with the signature white heads and brown bodies. Two of the birds were close to maturity, officials said, and the rest were considered immature, with no white feathers.
Bald eagles are no longer on the endangered species list, but they are considered a protected species, according to the Natural Resources Police.
Last year, 18 raptors died from gunshot, poisoning or getting entangled in fishing lines or landscape netting, according to the Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research. Raptors include eagles, hawks and owls. An official with the organization said that 13 other raptors who suffered similar incidents were rehabilitated and returned to the wild.
Thirty years ago, eight bald eagles were found dead in Maryland. Officials said they think those birds may have been poisoned.
And two years ago, two bald eagles were shot and killed in one week in Montgomery County. It is illegal to shoot eagles without a permit from the U.S. Department of the Interior.


Bald eagles are adapting to city living

A bald eagle perched in a tall tree along Fones Cliffs in Singerly, Va. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
If there’s a time of year to see a bald eagle, this is it. But those who spot one during the current nesting season won’t be observing quite the same national bird as in decades past.
“The main thing is they just don’t really care as much about people anymore” and now can be found nesting in residential areas, said Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, based in Ithaca, N.Y.
According to scientists, changes in the behavior of the bald eagle — from a bird once found only deep in the wild to one willing to cohabitate with humans — are the result of laws that protect the bird and have helped the species recover after nearly dying out in the early 1960s. The government is empowered to go after those responsible for the death of bald eagles — even if it’s unintentional (such as in the case of a New York farmer who received a fine and probation last year after several eagles died from poisoned meat he had set out to kill coyotes). Federal and state officials are investigating what happened to 13 bald eagles found dead recently near a farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Bald eagles “are coming in on their own and putting their nests in people’s front yards, and in parks and in gardens and things like that. That just didn’t happen in the ’60s and ’70s,” McGowan said. “They’d pick a big tree that was way the heck away from all the people.”
Two bald eagles perch near their nest just south of Alexandria, Va. (John Mcdonnell/The Washington Post)
While bald eagles are still rare in large cities, researchers have documented eagle nests recently not just in the Washington area, which boasts the largest numbers on the East Coast, but also in New York — where in 2015 the first nesting pair was spotted in more than 100 years — Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Miami, where a pair built a nest atop a cellphone tower.
The bald eagle’s historical range covers most of North America. The bird was hunted for sport before the Bald Eagle Protection Act of 1940 outlawed the practice; that ban was reinforced by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act in 1962. The pesticide DDT was found to cause eagle and other species significant difficulties with reproduction. By 1963 America’s iconic bird was on the verge of dying out in the nation’s 48 contiguous states. But with the banning of DDT in 1972,combined with more federal and state protection and recovery efforts, the species has made a steady rise.
The number of breeding pairs in the 48 contiguous states increased from a low of 487 in 1963 to 9,789 in 2006, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which removed the species from the endangered list in 2007.
While that federal agency no longer publishes regular national figures on the bird’s status, Bryan Watts, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said that a conservative estimate would put the number of pairs in the Lower 48 states today at around 24,000. Watts said that the Chesapeake Bay region has the largest bald eagle population along the Atlantic Coast, with about 2,000 nesting pairs, although Florida also has a large population.
A bald eagle grabs a fish from the Haw River. (Gerry Broome/AP)
Other areas with large numbers of bald eagles include Alaska (where the bird was never threatened), the Great Lakes, the Pacific Northwest and the Yellowstone area.
Every winter, Watts and a small team of researchers estimate the bald eagle’s Chesapeake Bay population, using a small airplane to survey established nests.
The species’s growth, particularly on the bay, has been remarkable, he said. “If you go back to the 1980s and early 1990s, we had virtually no eagles in urban areas,” he said, “and our perception of eagles was that they needed fairly remote places away from humans — and they probably did at that time.”
But now, researchers say, as eagle populations have expanded and the birds may no longer consider humans to be predators, suburbs and urban areas near waterways provide attractive nesting areas. In the Washington area, it’s not just the Chesapeake Bay that provides a good home; in recent years nests have been seen near Ronald Reagan National Airport and the Beltway, and recently one couple has made a home at the National Arboretum in Northeast Washington.
In New Jersey, scientists reported only one active bald eagle nest in 1982 — in the middle of a remote swamp.
(Gerry Broome/AP)
“We had this now naive idea that this is what eagles in New Jersey needed, so we were thinking, where else are these great forests?” said Kathleen Clark, leader of the state’s eagle project, which released 60 young birds between 1983 and 1991. “But nest number 2 was on the edge of a farm field,” she said. “With nests 2, 3 and 4, we started seeing they were keying into where there was food and not exclusively large tracts of forests.” New Jersey’s efforts have resulted in the establishment of 161 nests today, many in densely populated suburbs close to New York City.
Clark and other eagle researchers said it would be a mistake to assume that all bald eagles have become tolerant of people; in fact, many shy away from human activity, and the Fish & Wildlife Service recommends keeping away from nests to avoid disturbing them.
Watts, meanwhile, said the growing number of eagles has meant that he and his team have been able to observe aspects of eagle behavior that weren’t evident in the past.
“It used to be, when I started flying in the early ’90s, you rarely would see birds that were guarding” against intrusions by other eagles, he said. Now, there is real competition for prime nesting locations on the Chesapeake. He has been observing more and more fights within the population, and more of the birds are being admitted to rehab centers for injuries.
An American bald eagle bags a fish in the prime fishing grounds below Conowingo Dam in Harford County, Md. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)
Watts said the birds spend less time foraging, which causes an increase in the adult mortality rate, bringing population stability. Stable numbers, he said, are a sign that the bald eagle community has reached a healthy point.
Watts and Clark said the growing Chesapeake Bay eagle population has helped increase numbers in nearby states as the birds move there to set up nests.
McGowan said he realized that bald eagles had begun to adjust to humans when he came across a nest in Virginia’s Norfolk Botanical Garden a few years ago.
“You could walk right up to it, and it’s in the middle of the . . . [garden] with sidewalks all around it,” McGowan said. “This is not a scared wild bird that we have to worry about disturbing a nest. Here it is, right in the middle of fairly heavy traffic.”
The nest proved to be a little too close to humanity, though. One of the eagles using that nest was killed after it was hit by a plane at a nearby airport. The nest was relocated to a more placid spot.
While it’s still nesting season, McGowan said he encourages people to get out of their warm houses with a pair of binoculars and catch a glimpse of an eagle for themselves.
“They have a wingspan bigger than your arms. They have toes about the same size as your fingers, only they’ve got giant claws on them. You don’t have to be a birder to appreciate a bald eagle. They’re an impressive freaking animal.”
But don’t get too close, he said. “There are inevitably going to be human-wildlife conflicts as wildlife comes back,” McGowan said. “But to me, what a good problem to have.”
The return of the bald eagle is “arguably one of the greatest success stories that our nation has seen,” Watts said. “It’s a really rare situation where we as a culture can say that we changed the trajectory of an entire species. That’s what happened.”


Small dog attacked and killed by coyote in Northern Virginia

A coyote attacked and killed a small dog in Fairfax County, and authorities are warning area residents to be cautious with their pets.
The incident occurred in the midafternoon on May 5 in a forested area near the 6100 block of Yellowstone Drive, which sits in the Parklawn community in the Alexandria section of the county.
The dog was a 5-year-old Jack Russell. On that day, the dog was outside with its owner and playing with a toy. Police said they did not have the dog’s name.
The toy, police said, went over a fence, and the owner let the dog out of the yard to go get it. But the dog went into the woods and was attacked, apparently by the coyote.
Police said no humans were hurt.
Officials said wildlife specialists are “monitoring coyote activity” in the area and warned “dogs are vulnerable to coyote confrontations, especially when unattended.”
Officials with the Fairfax County Police said that although the animals may be considered a nuisance, experts will not catch coyotes because it is illegal in Virginia to capture and relocate animals.
The county’s Animal Services Division said it will use searches and cameras to monitor coyotes in the area. It is also working with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to determine whether more needs to be done.
Experts said coyotes will only attack humans if provoked. “It is extremely rare for a coyote to attack a human unprovoked,” said Officer Tara Gerhard, a spokeswoman for Fairfax County Police.
Coyotes have expanded from the plains areas of the western United States as their competitors have gradually disappeared. They now can be found in parts of Rock Creek Park in the District. And, they have been found in New York’s Central Park. On rare occasions, they attack people.
Authorities said while it is not uncommon for coyotes to have run-ins with dogs, they are more likely to occur at certain times, particularly in coyote mating season, from January to March, and when coyotes are caring for their young between March and August.
But officials said “unprovoked conflicts between humans and coyotes are extremely rare.”
Experts said coyotes are “an established part of the local wildlife community” in the county and that “the mere presence of coyotes should not alarm you.”
Still, they offered tips on how to prevent contact with a coyote, including never feeding one, securely covering trash bins and never leaving cats outdoors or dogs unattended — even in a fenced yard. Officials also suggested installing sensor lights or motion-activated sprinklers around a home to ward off wildlife.
In December, authorities said a dog was killed by a coyote in the Annandale area of Fairfax County. There was a report in 2012 of coyotes attacking a dog in Daniels Run Park in Fairfax City, and a cat being hurt after coyotes attacked it in the Pasadena area of Anne Arundel County.
Correction: This story was updated to reflect that officials believe one coyote was involved in the attack, not a pair of coyotes.
dana.hedgpeth@washpost.com


Coywolves, coyote-wolf hybrids, are prowling Rock Creek Park and D.C. suburbs

Perfectly adapted to living among humans, coywolves eat just about anything, including deer, mice, feral cats and last night’s leftovers from your garbage can. (Photo by Jonathan Way)
On an overcast morning in May, Melissa Farley, 25, and her dog, Kai, went for a hike in Rock Creek Park. They were walking on the outskirts of the public golf course when two creatures emerged from the woods.
“At first, I thought they were stray dogs or lost dogs,” Farley says. “They were really beautiful, kind of grayish and cool in color, and almost as big as Kai.”
Kai, a 60-pound German shepherd mix, took off after them. Farley listened helplessly as the animals fought in the underbrush. When Kai returned, dog and owner sprinted back to their Brightwood condo.
When Farley reported the incident to rangers the next day, they told her she’d had a run-in with Rock Creek Park’s resident coyotes.
Farley, however, isn’t so sure.
“I’ve seen a lot of coyotes out west,” says Farley, who recently returned to D.C. after six years in Los Angeles. “This was no average coyote.”
Farley probably saw a coywolf — a coyote-wolf hybrid — says Javier Monzon, a genetics researcher at Stony Brook University in New York.
Regular coyotes, which are native to the American Southwest and the Great Plains area, tend to be tawny-colored and weigh around 25 pounds. Coywolves run upward of 45 pounds and come in an array of hues, including gray and black.
“We’ve known for a while that most Eastern coyotes are hybrids to some degree, and now we’re finding a greater degree of hybridization than anyone expected,” Monzon says.
In lay terms: The coyotes in Rock Creek Park are probably coywolves.

Just a few hundred years ago, coyotes stuck to the plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. As humans killed off wolves, coyotes took over their territory. The coyotes that pressed north into Canada came across the remnants of wolf populations and interbred, creating a hybrid creature that’s small enough to live undetected among humans, but large enough to feast on fawns (though perhaps not full-sized deer).
In other words, they are perfectly adapted to the I-95 corridor, Monzon says.
“The more deer there are around, the more wolf-like the coywolves tend to be,” he says.
Coywolves are about 62 percent coyote, 27 percent wolf and 11 percent dog, according to a 2013 paper by Monzon published in Molecular Ecology. Researchers have found them as close as Quantico, Va., and surrounding Prince William County, and game-management officials have confirmed their presence in Laytonsville, Md., in Montgomery County.
A Rock Creek Park spokesman denies their existence in D.C., however.
“We don’t have any evidence to suspect that our coyotes here in Rock Creek Park are anything other than just normal coyotes,” says the park’s acting deputy superintendent, Jeremy Sweat.
Game officials tend to shy away from the term “coywolf,” since it sounds scary, like “werewolf,” says Megan Draheim, a professor at Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources, National Capital Region.
“It’s not my favorite term either,” she says. “To be a coywolf sounds like half-coyote, half-wolf, and that’s not really what we’re talking about. We are talking about coyotes that have interbred with timber wolves and have some wolf genes in them. It can be fairly negligible or it can be more,” she says.
Wolf genes seem to be spreading quickly and thoroughly through the Eastern coyote population, Monzon says. His 2013 study found that even Ohio coyotes had wolf genes, a surprising finding that suggests coywolves are moving south from New England through the D.C. area and circling back westward.
We won’t know the precise genetic makeup of Rock Creek Park’s canids until someone conducts a study, but they look pretty wolf-y to D.C. resident Gareth Wishart.
The 28-year-old conservationist, who’s tracked coyotes in Montana and wolves in Spain, says he’s seen coywolves in Rock Creek Park on two different occasions, most recently in January.
“It came to within about 8 yards of us,” says Wishart, who took a friend to the park for some wildlife spotting one evening.
“Their size is really noticeable — how much bigger they are than coyotes out west. They are much stockier and you can notice the difference in the size of their skull.”
Wishart, who wrote about an earlier coywolf encounter for Gizmodo.com, was thrilled to find the apex predators in such an urban park.
“It’s a presence you can really feel when you’re out in the woods I think,” he says. “It’s one that I appreciate, at least, and I hope others do as well.”
Farley has a different perspective. Though Kai escaped with just two puncture wounds on his hindquarters, both dog and human are wary of the woods these days.
“I liked it better when I was growing up in D.C., and we didn’t have any coyotes or coywolves or whatever,” she says. “But they’re here now, so what are you going to do?”
Are they dangerous?
Not to humans, though outdoor cats and unattended dogs have reason to be concerned.
The most important thing is to walk your dog with a leash, says Rock Creek Park’s acting deputy superintendent, Jeremy Sweat. Coyotes have been living in Rock Creek Park since at least 2004, and there have been only two reported attacks, both on dogs that were running through the woods off-leash, he says.
“Especially in the spring and early summer, a lot of these coyotes might have dens in the park. They might have young pups. If a dog approaches them off leash, they are much more likely to act aggressively to protect their young or protect their territory,” Sweat says.
If the presence of coyotes or coywolves makes D.C. slightly scarier for pets, that goes double for rodents, says Megan Draheim, a professor at Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources, National Capital Region.
“They eat a lot of rats and mice,” she says. “That’s something we can all appreciate.”

More stories about animals in D.C.:
There’s more to wildlife in D.C. than street rats
Bao Bao’s going to be big in 2014
Rusty vs. Bao Bao in song


For rare species, the future is in the freezer as zoos manage a conservation effort

The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute is at the forefront of an ambitious attempt to save animals threatened with extinction by studying them relentlessly, putting information in a “stud book” that follows them from birth.
She’s not just another girl with a pretty face living in the District’s outermost exurbs.
Amani, an eye-catching cheetah feline, has a proud name that means aspiration and a strong family line that traces to Namibia and South Africa. Her rich genes make her one of the most important individuals in her small community just outside Front Royal, Va. Unlike people who pay up to $2,000 for ancestral DNA tests, Amani got hers free, courtesy of biologists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute who study her every move, hoping her cubs will help increase the thinning cheetah populations at zoos across the country.
Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Shenandoah National Park, the 3,200-acre institute is at the forefront of an ambitious attempt by American zoos to save animals threatened with extinction by studying them relentlessly. Like zoos across the world, every animal at the institute and the zoo in the District is assigned a name that goes into a giant family album called a “stud book” that follows them from birth.
“We take data from every single animal in a population that’s being managed,” said Sarah Long, director of the Population Management Center at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which guides animal management at 220 accredited zoos.
Zoos are taking extraordinary steps to overcome three key challenges: sustaining their populations without allowing breeding between animals with similar genes, replacing animals without taking too many from the wild, and replenishing hundreds of species of threatened and endangered wild animals that are disappearing throughout the world.
Seven newborn black-footed ferrets at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, July 24, 2014. The black-footed ferret is one of the most endangered animals in the world. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
More than 400 biologists and researchers volunteer for stud book duty, laboriously pecking data into a computerized tome for every species. “They write down who the parents were, where they came from in the wild, tracking the pedigree, the family tree,” Long said. “We look at all the events in the animal’s life, if they’ve been transferred from another zoo, if they’ve given birth, if they’ve moved into an exhibit.
“We analyze the . . . birth rate and death rate to predict how many offspring they’ll have in a given year. We need to plan for that and produce more births. We do the family tree to determine who should mate with whom to avoid inbreeding.”
It’s actually much deeper than that. Zookeepers not only encourage every animal from ferrets to rhinoceros to breed naturally, they’re in the middle of an all-out effort to cryogenically freeze and preserve semen, even taking samples from animals a few days after they’ve died, so that it can be resurrected in a way with the birth of offspring through insemination as much as 10 years later.
That happened just last month, when the frozen semen of Jimmy, an Asian rhinoceros, was rushed from the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden to the Buffalo Zoo in a Volkswagen to inseminate Tashi, who gave birth nine years and change after the father’s death. It worked, to the amazement of biologists, because even though an animal’s cells don’t die at the instant they do, freezing semen and preserving living cells is a tricky business that has resulted in scores of failures.
One remarkable success is panda bears. A study released last week attributed a combination of artificial insemination and natural mating to “high levels of genetic diversity and low levels of inbreeding” among captive giant pandas. Pandas no longer have to be captured in the wild for breeding, according to the study published in the online journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution.
The National Zoo has its own example, Bao Bao, a female panda cub conceived “as the result of a precisely-timed artificial insemination . . . by scientists from the Conservation Biology Institute and China,” the zoo’s Web site says. The zoo is expected to celebrate her birth in less than a month, on Aug. 23.
The institute near Front Royal is studying and breeding 22 species, as small as the endangered American black-footed ferret — 800 of which have been bred through artificial insemination — and as big as the Mongolian Przewalski’s horse, which bears an eerie resemblance to horses in ancient cave paintings.
“This species was extinct in the wild in the 1960s,” said their caretaker, Budhan Pukazhenthi, a research scientist. Scientists started breeding the few captive horses that remained in that decade. Now there are 1,600 globally mostly due to artificial insemination with frozen and thawed semen, and nearly a third have been reintroduced in the wild.
About 300 ferrets bred at the institute are now roaming the American plains, eating prairie dogs, their staple diet, and trying not to get eaten by coyotes. That’s nothing compared with the 100,000 that should be there, said Paul Marinari, the institute’s senior curator and stud book keeper for the species.
The issue of not allowing unrelated animals to breed exploded into the public realm in February when the Copenhagen Zoo slaughtered a healthy 18-month-old giraffe, Marius, because he could not be used in the zoo’s breeding program.
Marius’s genes were already well represented in that zoo’s population. So the managers fed Marius a last meal of rye bread, his favorite, and killed him with a shot from a bolt gun. In a step that drew worldwide condemnation, they butchered his corpse in front of zoo visitors, many of them children, and fed it to lions.
Some critics accused zoos of trying to play God in the animal kingdom, but American scientists have heard enough of that jab. “Certainly I don’t think we’re playing God,” said Barbara Durrant, the reproductive physiologist who oversees the research arm that houses the so-called Frozen Zoo of semen and biological material of 9,000 birds, reptiles, mammals and other animals.
What happened in Copenhagen is extremely rare, where an animal was put down even as other zoos in Europe wanted to take it. That death is nothing compared with the countless animals that have disappeared from wildlands everywhere from Africa to Idaho due to habitat loss caused by humans, biologists said.
A special issue of Science, published Thursday online, is devoted to what it calls the startling rates of animal declines and extinctions “through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors.”
“Current research . . . suggests that if we are unable to end or reverse the rate of their loss, it will mean more for our own future than a broken heart or an empty forest,” wrote Sacha Vignieri in the introduction.
Zoos aim to be part of the solution.
“We’re correcting what human interference has caused,” Durrant said firmly. “That’s not God’s plan.”
Zoos in America haven’t always been this enlightened. When they need animals to keep family members in their populations from inbreeding, risking some type of genetic mutation, they often simply grabbed them from the wild.
In the 1970s, when the new Endangered Species Act limited such captures, zoos in the United States increased their efforts to trade animals to keep sex out of the family.
That’s how Amani wound up at the National Zoo in Rock Creek Park, where the population of cheetahs was thinning, nearly 30 years later. She was born at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Ore., the daughter of Bryden, imported to the United States from Namibia, and Missy, imported from South Africa, both carrying genes that had not been introduced at the zoo in Rock Creek.
Amani arrived in 2007 with her spotted honey-colored coat and big caramel cat eyes, and soon biologists were salivating over her potential to diversify the cheetah gene pool. Within two years, she was ushered to the institute nearly 100 miles west in the mountains where the breeding program is run.
Getting cheetahs to couple is often a nightmare, and so it was with Amani. Artificial insemination isn’t an option because biologists haven’t figured out the ovarian cycle of females; only one artificial insemination in Cincinnati has been successful in a long list of failures.
So cheetah biologist Adrienne Crosier undertook a painstaking process to mate Amani. Males that are kept far from pens holding females were brought close. Biologists know a female is in heat, ready to breed, when males smell her and bark in a chirplike stutter.
If barking happens, they’re brought face to face. If they like each other, it’s on. Often, they don’t. Amani rejected several males before finally mating and bearing a single cub, Nick. A lone cub is a problem because cheetahs normally abandon single cubs, who don’t feed enough for their mothers to keep producing milk.
Crosier thought Nick was doomed. In desperation, she took Nick from his inattentive mother and gave him Zazi, a second mother that birthed a single cub at the same as Amani.
“I was nervous. It was a big risk,” Crosier said. Zazi might have killed a cub that wasn’t her own. Crosier slept in a cramped shed near Zazi’s pen to monitor her, and when that got old, slept in four-hour shifts at home between racing to the sanctuary.
“I think she knew right away he was different,” she said. “And you know, she picked up both, groomed them both, fed them both. She was amazing.”
Amani has had three litters since Nick, and she was seen frolicking with members of the third litter last week. Cubs from the first two litters are now at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and the Dallas Zoo, and two females from the third litter have been assigned to an exhibit at the Walt Disney World Resort.
Crosier watched as the big cat stretched and twisted her body to lick an adoring cub. “Amani has been an excellent mother,” she said.
More from The Washington Post:
Afraid of 150,000 pythons? Visitors have nothing to worry about
Paddle the Potomac lures millenials with promises of adventure
These sounds cause mud crabs to cringe with fear


How have plant-based foods been re-branded and positioned for mainstream grocery stores?

Several factors have contributed to the current plant-based trend, formerly vegan. Among them are the rise in wellness culture, scientific findings of increased cancers from eating too much red and processed meats, environmental concerns, and marketing tools used by the vegan community. Concern for the future of world's food supply and the impact of climate change are other factors which have contributed to the plant-based trend. Only documents related to plant-based products are relevant.

Research the reasons behind a specific dietary trend for this question.

With possible meat shortages looming, a dietitian talks substitutes

Beans [Taking care of yourself during the pandemic, from head to toe] Soy [There are lots of yogurts out there, but which ones are healthy?] Mock meats Dairy Meat extenders Registered dietitian Cara Rosenbloom is president of Words to Eat By and specializes in writing, nutrition education and recipe development. She is the co-author of “Nourish: Whole Food Recipes Featuring Seeds, Nuts and Beans.”

Customers in some parts of the country are finding empty meat cases when they go grocery shopping. It’s not because people are hoarding hamburger along with toilet paper (though there is some of that going on), but because there are disruptions in the meat supply chain. Meat-processing plants around the nation have had to close temporarily because of coronavirus outbreaks, meaning meat could be less available and more expensive throughout the summer.
On May 8, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) reported a 40 percent drop in pork production capacity and a 25 percent drop in beef production capacity. It said at least 10,000 workers at meat-processing plants had been infected or exposed to the coronavirus, and at least 30 had died. Millions of animals have been euthanized because of the bottleneck in processing.
Whether you’re having trouble sourcing or paying for meat, or you’ve been thinking about exploring  a more plant-based diet, now is a good time to pivot to some meatless meals or try out strategies for stretching out the meat you do buy. Here’s some information about beans, soy and mock meats to keep in mind. Check out the links for recipe ideas.
Beans
Although beef, chicken and pork provide protein, iron and zinc, these nutrients can be found in a wide variety of other foods, such as low-cost legumes like beans, lentils and soy. These environmentally sustainable options are also rich in fiber, which many Americans fall short of. (There’s no fiber in meat.) Studies show that people who eat more beans and soy may have a lower risk of heart disease than people who consume fewer legumes.
According to the U.S. Dry Beans Council, the most popular beans among Americans are pinto, navy, great northern, red kidney and black beans. I add garbanzo beans (chickpeas) to my list, too. All of these varieties have about 11 to 14 grams of protein per 6-ounce serving (cooked) and can be purchased canned or dry depending on your budget and cooking skills.

[Taking care of yourself during the pandemic, from head to toe]
Canned beans cost about 9 cents per ounce and can be used right out of the can — no cooking skills required! Dry beans, which are less expensive at about 7 cents per ounce, require more finessing. They need to be soaked and boiled before eating (see instructions here), which can take a few hours
. Once cooked, beans can then be used in soups, dips (such as hummus or spicy black bean dip), atop salads, in burger patties, as a filling for burritos and stuffed peppers, in curries or mixed with pasta, quinoa or rice.
If you are new to cooking legumes from scratch, start with dry lentils. They don’t require soaking and are faster to cook than dry beans. Split red lentils have 13 grams of protein per 6-ounce serving (cooked) and cook to an oatmeal-like consistency in about 15 minutes. They are ideal for lentil soup, stew or curry.
Green, brown or black lentils have 14 grams of protein per 6 ounces (cooked) and can be prepared in 20 to 30 minutes. Unlike split red lentils, they hold their disc shape when cooked, so don’t use them when recipes specifically call for red lentils. These varieties are great for salads, pasta dishes, curries and tacos, or they can be roasted for maximum crunch.
No article that includes beans is complete without mentioning the bothersome gas and bloating that may accompany bean-based meals. This unpleasant side effect is caused by beans naturally fermenting in the gut, which is a good thing! It feeds the growth of probiotics, which aid digestion and enhance immunity. But yep, it can be uncomfortable and embarrassing.
If you are new to beans, start by adding a just few tablespoons to meals, and work up to eating larger amounts. Your digestive system will slowly adjust and gas will be reduced. In one small study, about half of bean-eaters reported increased gas when eating pinto beans, but only 19 percent had gas with black-eyed peas — so maybe try those first. There are many cooking tips for reducing gas, such as adding fennel seeds or kombu seaweed to the cooking water, or soaking beans in baking soda. These methods have not been scientifically proven to reduce gas, but it can’t hurt to try.
Soy
Soy products are another option that people might be wary of because soy has been erroneously linked to increased cancer risk. Marji McCullough, a dietitian and the senior scientific director of epidemiology research at the American Cancer Society, says soy foods have actually been associated with reduced risk of breast and prostate cancer in recent studies. “Soy foods like tofu and edamame are an excellent source of high-quality protein and are a healthy alternative to meat,” says McCullough.

[There are lots of yogurts out there, but which ones are healthy?]
If you’re new to soy, start with tofu. When crumbled, firm tofu resembles ground meat and is great to use for chili, burgers and tacos. Cubed firm tofu can be stir-fried, but I prefer baking or pan-frying it until it’s super-crispy. Its neutral flavor is a blank canvas, so you’ll need to add sauce or spices. Firm tofu contains 28 grams of protein per 6-ounce serving, at 16 cents per ounce.
Soft or silken tofu has a consistency closer to yogurt or jelly and is perfect for dips and smoothies. It has 16 grams of protein per 6 ounces (18 cents per ounce). You can also try edamame (whole immature soybeans from the pod), which have 23 grams of protein per cup and cost 14 cents per ounce. For those who are concerned about genetically modified foods (which is too complicated a topic to cover here), you can choose non-GMO or organic soy.
Mock meats
You may also consider using mock meats, such as Beyond Burger made from pea protein or Impossible burgers, deli meats and veggie dogs made from soy. But these foods are highly processed, and McCullough says it’s better to eat whole foods in their natural form. Plus, these mock meats come with a steep price tag: Beyond Burgers cost about $1 per ounce — that’s more expensive than ground beef at 26 cents per ounce!
Dairy
If protein is your goal and you’re not opting for plant-based meals, try dairy products. Greek yogurt and cottage cheese are both high in protein, with 17 to 20 grams of protein in 6 ounces. They cost 11 cents per ounce.
Meat extenders
Rather than replacing meat, some people may be looking for ways to stretch a small amount of ground beef, pork or poultry to feed a large family. You can substitute a quarter, third or half of your ground meat for crumbled firm tofu, cooked lentils or mashed beans. Known as “meat extenders,” these nutritious ingredients work well when mixed with meat in chili, burgers, Shepherd’s pie, casseroles, lasagna and burritos. Beans and lentils won’t noticeably change the taste or texture of the recipe, and they keep lean meat juicy by adding moisture.
Whole grains are another popular meat extender. Add one cup of raw quick oats (13 grams of protein) or cooked quinoa (9 grams of protein) per pound of raw ground meat, then cook as usual. Some people like adding chopped raw or sautéed mushrooms, because their already meaty texture and matching umami flavor is the perfect foil for meat. Keep in mind that while these are an inexpensive meat substitute, mushrooms are not a good source of protein at just 2 grams per cup.
Want to keep your culinary color palette consistent when including extenders? Use white beans, chickpeas, oats or button mushrooms with chicken and turkey, and pair brown lentils, black beans and portobello mushrooms with red meat.

Registered dietitian Cara Rosenbloom is president of

Words to Eat By

and specializes in writing, nutrition education and recipe development. She is the co-author of

“Nourish: Whole Food Recipes Featuring Seeds, Nuts and Beans.”