Animal health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Fifteen thousand cattle have
died so far in Tanzania from an outbreak
of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia––
and it could spread to Zambia, Malawi,
and the rest of southern Africa, United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza-
tion animal health officer Peter Roeder
warned on March 29. “Cattle movements
from Uganda and Kenya, sometimes as
result of civil strife, have already caused
major outbreaks in Zaire and Rwanda,” he
said.
Canine distemper is on the
wane in Serengeti National Park, says
Melody Roelke-Parker, chief veterinarian
for Tanzania National Parks––after it
killed 80% of the now rebounding lion
population.

Read more

WORLD WILDLIFE REPORT

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Asia
About 30,000 orangutans remain in Borneo, say Indonesian offi-
cials, but only about 300 survive in East Kalimantan province, due to rainfor-
est logging and poaching––plus 165 orangs kept at a rehabilitation centre in
Samboja, near the Sungai Wein jungle preserve. Rescued from smugglers,
most suffer from hepatitis and/or tuberculosis contracted in captivity.
Thai authorities circa January 20 confiscated 21 endangered
Burmese bear cubs from a smuggler who boasted of having already shipped 70
cubs to South Korean restaurants this year alone––and got off with an on-the-
spot fine. The cubs were taken to a captive breeding center, where three died
within a day.

Read more

Religion & Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Dewey Bruce Hale, 40, of
Enigma, Georgia, on January 18
became the 74th confirmed rattlesnake
bite fatality since Pentacostal churches
took up snakehandling as a test of faith,
derived from Mark 16, “In my name
they shall take up serpents,” and Luke
10: “I give unto you power to tread on
serpents and scorpions.” The snakehan-
dling ceremonies are legal only in
Georgia and West Virginia.
The animist tradition of sac-
rificing a beast “to notify the ancestors”
upon occupying a new home has created
new tensions in South Africa as black
families move into formerly all-white
communities. Often called, the SPCA
of South Africa is unable to intervene
because the sacrifices are legal under
laws guaranteeing religious freedom.

Read more

Wildlife & People

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

A hungry hippopotamus,
rampaging through rice fields and
upsetting canoes in the Selingue dam
district of Mali, was said to have
magical powers in January after elud-
ing vigilantes for more than a month.
Alaska Department of
Fish and Game officers shot a
mama moose because of “ill disposi-
tion” on January 14 at the University
of Alaska campus in Anchorage, after
she tried to kick professor Bruce
Kappes as he sprinted to class. A few
days earlier the moose fatally stomped
Myung Chin Ra, 71, when he tried to
pass her to enter a building.

Read more

Hunting

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:
Robert “Buzz” Barry, 64, assis-
tant executive director of the Sportsmen’s
Alliance of Maine, told reporters on January
21 that he’s giving up hunting mammals after
40 years because of second thoughts he’s had
since a TV debate with an anti-hunter in
November; because his anti-abortion convic-
tions have caused him to review his attitudes
toward the sanctity of life; and most of all
because of the pain and fear he’s seen in the
eyes of animals he’s killed. He asserted, how-
ever, that he isn’t an “anti,” and said he hadn’t
yet decided if he’ll quit shooting birds.

Read more

Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Trafficking
At least six sao las died dur-
ing 1994 due to human contact, from a
population of under 200, reports David
Hulse, World Wildlife Fund representa-
tive in Vietnam. A goat-like bovine with
horns like those of an antelope, the sao la
was only discovered in 1992. The sao la
was quickly protected by law, but TV
crews offering bounties for the chance to
videotape one have inspired poor vil-
lagers to try to trap them. “It has become
very hard for us to protect our animals,”
Viet wildlife officer Le Du Thuan recent-
ly told New York Times c o r r e s p o n d e n t
Philip Shenon. “In the 1970s we had
3,000 tigers, and now maybe we have
200. We had 300 rhinos in 1975; now
we have between 10 and 25. There are
now so many smugglers. And the prob-
lem is getting worse, not better, because
the demand from mainland China is
growing, because China is getting rich.”
The demand isn’t only from the mainland,
however. Observed an anonymous mer-
chant, “The Taiwanese people like
Vietnam because they know there are still
many animals in the forest here.
Sometimes they buy these animals to eat
them, sometimes for medicine. This is a
very good business for us,” while it lasts.
Rebuffed in a bid to lift t h e
six-year-old global ban on ivory traffick-
ing at the November meeting of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, Zimbabwean direc-
tor of national parks and wildlife Willie
Nduku told media on December 2 that his
government has declined offers of up to
$30 million U.S. for its 30-metric-ton
ivory stockpile. Some of the ivory has
been confiscated from smugglers; the rest
from government “culling.”
Partly due to the ban on ele-
phant ivory sales and partly because
elephants are now scarce, ivory poach-
ers have turned to hippos, whose tooth
vory––more brittle than elephant
tusks––goes for about $70 a kilo on the
black market, about a seventh the price of
tusk ivory. The hippo population of Zaire
is down from 23,000 in 1989 to about
11,000 today, says Newsweek.
Seizures of animals and ani-
mal products entering the U.S. illegally
from Mexico are up 40% since 1989,
says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The $2 billion traffic accounts for a third
of the global cash volume in wildlife traf-
ficking, according to Interpol. The
understaffed USFWS law enforcement
division has only nine agents along the
2,000-mile Mexican border; Mexico has
just three. Mexico hasn’t made an arrest
for illegal wildlife trafficking since join-
ing CITES in 1991. Said Agriculture
Secretariat spokesman Roberto Loeza
Gallardo, “The traffic in endangered and
exotic species does not exist here.” But
his office isn’t far from the Sonora
Market, where Homero Aridjis of El
Grupo de los Cien recently counted 106
animals of internationally recognized
endangered species offered for sale.
Biodiversity in Peru’s Bay of
Paracas National Reserve and Madre
de Dios rainforest is jeopardized by
poaching, fishing with explosives, unau-
thorized mining, and log piracy, S a n
Francisco Chronicle c o r r e s p o n d e n t
Lawrence J. Speer reported recently.
Environmental protection has been
ignored for a decade while the govern-
ment has focused on the now seemingly
ended Shining Path insurgency.
Endangered species
Australian biologists o n
December 7 said they’ve found five
Gilbert’s potoroos, a small marsupial
believed extinct since 1869, in a nature
reserve 255 miles south of Perth.
Canadian environment minis-
ter Sheila Copps has pledged to intro-
duce an omnibus endangered species act
next spring. Canada now protects endan-
gered species through subsections of 12
unrelated federal laws plus a hodgepodge
of provincial laws.
The newly formed European
Environmental Agency, an arm of the
European Union, reported on December
11 that from a third to half of all the fish,
reptiles, mammals, and amphibians
native to Europe are either threatened or
endangered, principally due to habitat
loss and pollution.
The Chinese river alligator,
or gharial, declared endangered by the
United Natons in 1973, is reportedly
thriving in captivity. Fewer than 500
remain in the wild, but there are now
6,000 at a breeding center in eastern
Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces.
The center is looking into marketing pos-
sibilities––and alligator birth control.
RESTORE:
The North
Woods has warned the Department of the
Interior that it may sue if the department
does not respond by the end of January to
a petition to protect the Atlantic salmon
under the Endangered Species Act. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
National Marine Fisheries Service ruled
in January 1993 that such protection may
be warranted. The petition is reputedly
the first ever filed which falls under the
jurisdiction of both agencies.
Habitat
Gorillas, chimpanzees, mon-
keys, and elephants are among the 210
mammal species and 766 bird species
imperiled by the invasion of Zaire’s
Virunga National Park by an estimated
200,000 Rwandan refugees––including
about 30,000 soldiers of the deposed for-
mer Rwandan government, who far out-
number the park wardens and are much
more heavily armed. About 10% of the
12,800-square-mile park, tree-covered
since before the Pleistocene epoch, has
already been deforested, partly for fire-
wood but mostly for sale by the soldiers,
who have found logging––and poach-
ing––to be quick sources of cash.
Established by Belgium in 1925, Virunga
had been closed to all human activity but
scientific study since the mid-1970s.
A Rwandan silverback gorilla
named Mkono was killed in November by
a land mine, the African Wildlife
Foundation said December 12. Fewer
than 30 silverbacks remain in Rwanda.
Heavy November rains r a i s e d
the Everglades water level to its highest
point since 1947, drowning at least 80 of
the 2,000 deer who were believed to live
in the vicinity of the Miccosukee Indian
Reservation, while countless other deer
became vulnerable to alligators. Though
hard on deer, the high water is expected
to benefit most other Everglades wildlife.
Bear Watch, a new anti-bear
hunting group, may be contacted at POB
1099, Ganges, British Columbia,
Canada V0S 1E0; 604-537-2404

Hunting

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

An unidentified American, two Germans, and a South
African safari guide waited in Tanzania on December 15 until the old-
est bull elephant in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park and three male
companions wandered over the border, then blew them away point-
blank from a jeep. Often photographed by tourists, all four elephants
were virtually tame. The eldest, dubbed R.G.B., was 47 years old,
and had been studied by researcher Cynthia Moss since 1976. As the
killing was legal, the American will be allowed to import his trophies.
Showing similar hunting skill, John Joyce, 53, and Robert
Gerber, 70, of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, were arrested on
November 24 in connection with the baiting, trapping, and jacklight-
ing of a 494-pound bear out of season. They were caught trying to fig-
ure out how to remove the carcass from a heap of doughnuts.

Read more

Friends of Animals saves elephants at CITES: YEARS OF AID TO AFRICAN ANTI-POACHING EFFORTS PAYS OFF

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

FORT LAUDERDALE––Facing 14 other African nations aligned as a block,
South Africa on November 15 withdrew a proposal to remove elephants from protection
under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
South Africa sought the downlisting in order to sell parts from elephants culled to
limit park populations. The funds, it claimed, would go to conservation. The most con-
tentious item on the agenda at the triennial two-week CITES conference, ended November
18, the downlisting was backed by Zimbabwe, Japan, Australia, the World Conservation
Union, the trophy hunting lobby, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service head Mollie Beattie,
striving to ingratiate herself with hunting groups which have privately lobbied for her ouster.
Officially, the U.S. and the European Union
were committed to abstain––leaving elephants
with few influential friends.

Read more

CITES meet brings global wildlife crime crackdown

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

Pakistani officials on October 26 freed 86 endangered houbara bus-
tards in the Dera Ghazi Khan desert, a day after seizing them from poachers
who were trying to bootleg them to the Middle East through Karachi. The
release was the figurative opening ceremony for two weeks of international
legal, political, and investigative gymnastics, as nations around the world
cracked down on wildlife trafficking on the eve of the CITES triennial meeting
in Fort Lauderdale ( page 1).
Taiwan, under U.S. trade sanctions for failing to halt wildlife traf-
ficking, on October 28 increased the fines and jail penalties for violating its
wildlife protection law; on November 3 gave rhino horn dealers 30 days to reg-
ister their stocks before facing seizure; on November 7 pledged it would honor
a proposed global ban on importing birds’ nests; and on November 10
announced a pact with South Africa to crack down on the rhino horn trade.
Hong Kong, also on October 28, proposed stiffer wildlife trafficking
penalties similar to those Taiwan introduced the same day.

Read more

1 27 28 29 30 31 34