Editorial: Flight from our origins

December 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

Crossing Kenya in a low-flying Twin Otter, we recently felt transported in time as
well as space. Behind was the Eden-like Masai Mara National Park, spreading into the
Serengeti Plain of Tanzania with only an occasional cement obelisk to mark the boundary.
Hunting has been banned in the Mara, as in all of Kenya, since 1967. Though
there is some poaching, mostly by non-Kenyan marauders, most of the wildlife has little
fear of human observation. Within just 48 hours we watched a mother cheetah chirping
occasional admonitions about rough play and wandering out of sight to her five cubs, who
treated a parked cluster of tourist vehicles as if they were a playground; saw lions mating
almost as if in performance for us; stopped for a hyena who seemed as complacent in his
mud puddle as any person in a bathtub; gaped at nonchallant herds of elephants, hippos,
and Cape buffalo; and exchanged curious stares with any number of zebras, wildebeests,
Thomson’s gazelles, giraffes, vervet monkeys, baboons, etc.

Editorial: Amazing Amazon rainforest reality

March 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Chugging up the Rio Tambopata, one of the major Amazon tributaries, in a
motorized canoe, we were struck during a January 1999 visit to the Tambopata-Candama
Reserved Area in southeastern Peru by the contrast between the Amazonian rainforest as it
is and the image most people have of it––an image crafted over the past few decades chiefly
by conservation groups.
Funding rainforest research, documentary film-making, lobbying, and even the
start-up of ecotourism, most of these organizations have also rather blindly stumbled down
the tangled trail blazed since 1961 by the World Wildlife Fund.
WWF, as ANIMAL PEOPLE has often pointed out, is not just the world’s
wealthiest and most influential wildlife advocacy group: it also happens to be the world’s
best-disguised lobby for sport hunting and other consumptive wildlife use.
WWF founder Peter Scott was the duck-shooter who introduced the North
American ruddy duck to England; WWF and allies now clamor for an expanded ruddy
duck season and no bag limit, on the bio-xenophobic claim that ruddy ducks are miscegenating
English white-headed ducks into illegitimate hybrids.

9th circuit tells feds to obey ESA

July 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––The 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on June 24
that the federal Bureau of Reclamation must
obey both the Endangered Species Act and
California state species protection laws in
allocating water to Central Valley farmers,
even though so doing may put the bureau in
violation of 40-year-old water use contracts.
If the ruling survives an expected
appeal to the Supreme Court by the defendants,
it may be invoked to help compel
other federal agencies to conform to the ESA,
a frequent point of contention in cases
involving everything from fencing along the
U.S./Mexican border to the failure of the
National Marine Fisheries Service to inspect
shipments of shark fins passing through
Hawaiian airports en route from foreign fishing
vessels to markets in Japan.

Raising a crop of fire

July 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

DALLAS, MANILA, KUALA
LUMPUR––Martha Hovers, attending 300
dogs at the Animal Refuge Foundation sanctuary
in Sherman, Texas, saw the smoke from
the burning Las Chimalapas biosphere refuge
and environs on May 27 and knew it was no
ordinary fire: the clouds were too dark, too
thick, too high. advancing as one dark blanket.
She called ANIMAL PEOPLE to make
sure we were on the story.
Among the largest dog sanctuaries in
the U.S., ARF is about as far from Las
Chimalapas as it could be and yet remain in
Texas. Mexico is most of a day’s drive south.
Las Chimalapas is in Oaxaca, toward the
southern end of Mexico, 2,000 miles away,
while the also burning El Triunfo nature reserve
is in Chiapas, even farther south.
Guatemala, where other forest fires
contributed more smoke to the blanket, is more
southerly still.

NATURE CONS

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Burning prairie annually to keep
woody brush down, aggressively promoted
by The Nature Conservancy on public
lands in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and
Wisconsin, may be counterproductive,
wildlife biologist Ann Swengel of Baraboo,
Wisconsin, recently told Mark Ward of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. After a decade
of studying prairie butterflies, Swengel has
reportedly discovered that frequent burning
may be driving the most specialized and
habitat-specific species to extinction. Her
findings are supported by University of
Wisconsin at Green Bay plant ecologist
Jeff Nekola, who has found that burning
grasslands to keep out non-native plants also
tends to destroy the rare habitat-specific
species he most wants to keep. Swengel and
Nekola spoke to Ward about 18 months after
Voice for Wildlife director Davida Terry
documented Nature Conservancy duplicity
in attempted prairie restoration within the
Chicago greenbelt. TNC volunteers, Terry
found, were girdling trees and setting fires
on public lands with official approval but little
or no public awareness and consultation.

“Science fiction” comes true

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

The current global ecological catastrophe is no surprise
to ANIMAL PEOPLE. Publisher Kim Bartlett and web
site manager Patrice Greanville recognized the threats of global
warming and climate change to animals at least as far back as
June 1988, when they were editor and editor-at-large, respectively,
of The Animals’ Agenda magazine.
I was then a Quebec-based environmental freelance,
whom they soon afterward hired as Animals’ Agenda news editor.
Knowing I had written extensively for more than a decade
about global warning and related climate issues, mostly for
rural newspapers and specialized environmental media, Bartlett
and Greanville asked me to discuss the effects of global warming
on animals. They published my response in November
1988 as a guest installment of Greanville’s “Dateline:

Watching the world go to hell

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

INDONESIA, THAILAND,
BRAZIL, TIBET, NEW ZEALAND,
CALIFORNIA, FLORIDA––Wildlife officials
rescued eight orangutans including four
babies from the path of flames in early
February at Kutai National Park in East
Kalimantan, Indonesia, but found the
remains of two others in poachers’ traps.
A third orang was killed on March
12 when according to Indonesian media she
apparently mistook two farmers who had
been drafted into a firefighting force for
attackers, and rushed them to defend her
baby. She reportedly bit three fingers off one
of the men before the other man beat her to
death with a machete. Antara, the Indonesian
state press agency, hinted that the men
might actually have killed the mother in
attempting to steal and sell her baby.

EPA WANTS TO REGULATE FACTORY FARMS AS INDUSTRIAL POLLUTERS

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Environ-
mental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner
on March 5 personally announced an EPA plan
to regulate livestock feedlots, hog barns, and
poultry sheds like industrial plants.
For the first time invoking the Clean
Water Act against agricultural polluters, the
EPA will require about 6,600 of the biggest
factory-style farms in the U.S. to obtain pollution
permits and undergo routine federal
inspection. Anyone keeping more than 1,000
animal units, defined as 1,000 cattle, 2,500
swine, or 100,000 hens, would fall under the
new rules, to be phased in over seven years.
Not long ago, such a notion would
have been politically decried as a bureaucratic
assault on God, Mom, fried chicken, and
hamburgers, possibly thought up by animal
rights activists.

Logging & grazing

January 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––The 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals just before Christmas lifted injunction
it imposed in July aganst logging on 13 National
Forest tracts in northern Arizona and three in New
Mexico, and allowed grazing to resume on 715 leaseholds
that Forest Guardians and the Southwest Center
for Biodiversity alleged were illegally administrated.
Forest Guardians and the Southwest Center
for Biodiversity argued that the logging and grazing
could harm endangered, threatened, and otherwise
protected species, including the Mexican spotted owl
and northern goshawk. The July injunction had temporarily
voided 177 of the 202 grazing leases in the
Coronado National Forest. But it didn’t end the issue:
as the 9th Circuit verdict was imminent, Forest
Guardians on December 12 filed another suit, seeking
to remove about 10,000 cattle from National Forests
alongside four rivers in Arizona and three rivers in
New Mexico, on grounds they may harm 18 endangered
species.

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