Category: Europe

British close to banning fox hunts–– if Labour keeps deal

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

LONDON––Did International Fund for Animal
Welfare founder Brian Davies retire from the IFAW board of
trustees after the election of the new Labour government of
Britain to put himself in line for a high-level appointment, or
because his million-pound gamble that Labour will halt hunting
might not pay off?
Or was it really all just as he said, to focus on his
work with the Political Action Lobby, PAL for short, an independent
pro-animal organization claiming 50,000 supporters?
Davies gave Labour the equivalent of $1.5 million on
September 1, 1997, after Labour leader Tony Blair pledged to
permit a free vote in the House of Commons to ban hunting
with hounds. Blair seemed to retreat, however, as the May 1
election approached and hunting supporters formed a trade
union, The Union of Country Sports Workers. Eventually
Blair appeared to indefinitely postpone the free vote, in which
Members of Parliament would be allowed to vote their consciences
instead of a particular party line.

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NORWAY OFFERS DEAL TO AFRICA: “You kill elephants, we’ll kill whales.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

HARARE, Zimbabwe––Hosting the
10th triennial conference of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species,
June 9-23, Zimbabwe intends to press the
home advantage, seeking to lift the 1989
CITES moratorium on international ivory sales.
With Namibia and Botswana, and with South
African endorsement in principle, Zimbabwe
hopes to move the southern African elephant
population from CITES Appendix I, the list of
endangered species barred from trade, to
Appendix II, meaning a species warrants monitoring
but may be traded.
South Africa, as in 1994, wants to
resume selling white rhino horn––but if CITES
agrees to such sales in principle, will settle for
a temporary “zero quota,” giving demand a
chance to rise in anticipation, even as the political
flak settles.

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Britain protects 33

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

LONDON––British environment
secretary John Gummer on February 1 proposed
the addition of 33 species to the
Wildlife and Countryside Act, the British
equivalent to the ESA, including the basking
shark, stag beetle, water vole, pool
frog, clearwing moth, and pearl mussel,
and recommended delisting only one, the
vipers bugloss moth, which he said is now
out of danger. The basking shark, endangered
by the Asiatic shark fin soup trade,
would become the first shark protected by
British law. The water vole, having a leading
part in the classic British children’s story
The Wind In The Willows, is the “warm
fuzzy” creature on the list, expected to lead
public opinion toward protection of all.
The stag beetle, according to the
Joint Nature Committee, advising Gummer,
is jeopardized by “the increasing trade in
this species, especially on mainland Europe
but also in Britain.” The source of the
demand is that, “Occasionally it is used for
dissection to demonstrate the insect structure
in educational establishments.”

NORWAY SEEKS WATSON EXTRADITION

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

AMSTERDAM––Held in a Dutch maximum security
prison since April 2 on an Interpol warrant from Norway,
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson will
go to court May 26 in hopes of avoiding extradition on threeyear-old
charges of allegedly ramming the Norwegian coast
guard vessel Andennes, sending a false distress signal, and
trespassing in Norwegian waters, in addition to the charge of
being an accessory to the dockside scuttling of the whaling ship
Nybraena in 1992 for which he was first detained.
The additional charges were laid on April 18. The
District of Haarlem Court had on April 3 ordered that Watson
be kept on the Interpol warrant for 20 days to allow Norway
time to prepare an extradition case. That warrant, however,
asked only that Watson be sent to Norway to serve a 120-day
jail sentence he and colleague Lisa Distefano received in absen –
tia in May 1994 for their purported roles in the Nybraena sink –
ing. The vessel was later refloated and is still killing whales.
“Norway now claims we personally sank the vessel,”
Distefano told ANIMAL PEOPLE from the Sea Shepherd
offices in Venice, California, “but the Lofoten court record
notes, ‘The two were not in the country and could not take
direct part.’” Watson and Distefano had offered to go to
Norway for the trial if Norway would guarantee their safety and
agree to a change of venue from the Lofoten Islands, the hub of
the Norwegian whaling industry, which Distefano described as
“the source of numerous death threats against us.”

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A “FINAL SOLUTION” IS PROPOSED FOR WHALES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

REYKJAVIK, Iceland––Apparently hoping to lure
Iceland back into the International Whaling Commission, IWC
secretary Ray Gambrell on March 1 in Reykjavik proposed a
“final solution” to the stalemate within IWC over permitting the
resumption of commercial whaling. So-called “traditional and
cultural” whaling would be permitted within the 200-mile
Economic Exploitation Zones that nations maintain over fisheries,
while high seas whaling would remain forbidden.
According to High North Web News, published by
the pro-whaling High North Alliance, “Gambrell explained that
his optimism was based on the closed and informal IWC commissioners
meeting in Grenada in January.”
Politically, the Gambrell “final solution” might work.
It would authorize the present unilateral Norwegian commercial
whale hunt, a similar hunt off Iceland, the coastal hunt Japan
seeks to revive, and all existing and proposed aboriginal hunts,
including those of the Makah off Washington and the Maori off
New Zealand. If high seas fishers killed some whales too, then
transferred the corpses to whalers inside the 200-mile limit
before heading to port, no one need know about it.

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Burros abroad

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

In a desperate March 13 fax, Animal
Responsibility Cyprus asked for help in determining
and perhaps averting the fate of about 2,500 burros who
are to be removed from a herd estimated at 3,000, now
roaming the Turkish-occupied Karpasia area. Terming
the burros “part of the disappearing fauna of Cyprus,”
ARC indicated suspicion that the burros might end up
going to slaughter by an Italian firm abbreviated as
SASS, in either Italy or Turkey. “These are the progeny
of the working burros left behind by their owners
when they fled the 1974 Turkish invasion,” an ARC
press release explained. “Turkish Cypriot environmentalists
in the occupied areas are fighting the play to
destroy the Cyprus burros––please support them. The
illegal regime has no embassies you can approach,” the
release added, “because they are not recognized.

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A sheep who keeps ethicists awake

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

EDINBURGH––Embryologist Ian
Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh,
Scotland, on February 23 announced the birth
of a lamb cloned from a mammary gland cell
taken from one adult ewe, fused with an egg
cell of another adult ewe, and implanted into a
surrogate mother last July.
The first known successful cloning of
a mammal from fully developed adult cells, the
experiment was done by a team of 12, of
whom only Wilmut and three others knew the
details––and the announcement was delayed
until the team patented the lamb, named Dolly.

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LAND O’ THE FIRST GREENS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

DUBLIN––Legend has it that the
only animals ever feared and hated in Ireland
were snakes and wolves. St. Patrick so thoroughly
rousted the snakes, between 440 and
450 A.D., that not even fossils remain to
show they were ever there. Wolves were
extirpated––officially––in the 19th century,
but occasional sightings, probably of escaped
wolf hybrids, are still reported.
Legend also has it, though ANIMAL
PEOPLE hasn’t found confirmation,
that an ancient Gaelic law ordained that farmers
must feed their beasts or release them,
perhaps the earliest humane law, if it really
existed, in any part of Europe.

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Humanitarians confront the Cold War legacy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

“Hello,” Ioana Stoianov posted to various
Internet bulletin boards on November 11. “I’m a 23-
year-old student from Romania, and I’d like to do
anything in order to improve the dogs’ lives in my
country. For example, in a big town, Braila, the
dogs without a master are shot to death, and it’s
legal! Can’t we do something? Please write me.”
Her message, which could as easily have
come from the rural U.S., was just one of many like it
posted recently from inside the former Soviet empire.

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