Category: Politics

The Summit and the top of the heap

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SACRAMENTO––Belton Mouras, founder of both
the Animal Protection Institute and United Animal Nations,
resigned the UAN presidency on March 26 in a seeming replay
of his exit from API almost exactly ten years before.
Mouras founded API in 1968, after about six years as
California representative for the Humane Society of the U.S.,
and went on to found UAN later in 1987.
Former UAN staffer Jeane Westin now chairs the
UAN board, while former vice president Deanna Soares has
become executive director. Mouras almost immediately
accepted a job as development officer for the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, while former UAN program director
Vernon Weir resigned separately to take a similar post with the
Association of Sanctuaries (TAOS).
Mouras told ANIMAL PEOPLE that push came to
shove after UAN received two major bequests and enjoyed an
unusually successful direct mail appeal on behalf of the UANsponsored
Emergency Animal Rescue Service. By fluke, the
appeal reached recipients just as the late January flooding in
California put EARS in the news.

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Congressional politics

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

The Fund for Animals Congressional Scorecard for the 104th Congress gave Senators 25 points each for opposing federal subsidies to the mink industry, opposing a moratorium on new Endangered Species listings, opposing funding of the BION space experiments on monkeys, and opposing bills that would have weakened the Endangered Species Act. Achieving 100 each were 13 Democrats and two Republicans: Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (both D- Arkansas); Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii); Tom Harkin (DIowa); Edward Kennedy and John Kerry (both D-Massachusett); Carl Levin (D-Michigan); Paul David Wellstone (D-Minnesota); J. Robert Kerrey (D-Nebraska); Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire); Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey); Ron Wyden (D-Oregon); Fred Thompson (R-Tennessee); Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and James Jeffords (R-Vermont); and Patty Murray (D-Washington). Representatives gained 25 points each for opposing mink subsidies, opposing making hunting an official purpose of the National Wildlife Refuge system, opposing funding of the USDA Animal Damage Control program, and opposing weakening the “dolphin-safe” tuna import standard. Fifty-one Representatives scored 100, among whom the only Republicans were Jan Meyers, Kansas, and Dick Zimmer, New Jersey. The scorecard is available from the Fund at 200 West 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
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Marine mammal info denied to public

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Congressional
Research Service senior analyst Gene Buck advised
online correspondents on March 5 that, “In response
to evolving CRS policy, I believe it is prudent that I
suspend providing my weekly fishery and marine
mammal summaries to non-Congressional parties, and
retract all permission previously granted for use of this
material. CRS is sensitive to perceptions that its material
is more widely available than might be helpful in
fulfilling its limited role of serving Congress. Thus I
am taking this step to terminate what could be perceived
as an inappropriate exposure of CRS material.”
Pressed for explanation, Buck insisted,
“The decision to stop posting my summaries was
entirely voluntary on my part after several meetings
with higher-level CRS management and attorneys earlier
this week. Last week, CRS received an irate letter
from several constituency groups expressing concern
that some of my work was out of bounds and should
be restricted to the legislative limits that we work only
for Congress. This related to the wide distribution of
one of my draft reports for peer review and comment.”

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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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Playing politics to win

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

The strength of the animal protection vote should be clear from the November
1996 referendum victories won against various especially abusive forms of hunting and
trapping in Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, and even Alaska.
Similar victories came in 1994, in Arizona, California, and Oregon, which then
passed the legislation that it affirmed last year. Referendum losses have come only in Idaho
and Michigan, two of the states with the highest ratio of hunters per capita.
Independent polls by Gallup, the Associated Press, and others have shown rising
support for animal protection, including endangered species protection, for more than a
decade. In November, this translated at last into political victory––in a manner distinctly
separate from other voting trends. All eight referendum victories came in states which also
elected conservative governors or legislatures, or both, in either 1994 or 1996. The animal
protection vote cut across partisan lines, as demographic studies have projected it should
since at least 1990. People who voted for fiscal conservatism and “family values” often
firmly rebuked traditional hunting-and-trapping-oriented wildlife management.
Animal protection lobbyists should be on a roll. Legislators should be aware that
when they pick up a gun for a photo-op, they lose as many votes as they gain.

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Who is the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service servicing?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––In the last week of January,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service embraced a partnership with
the trophy hunting organization Safari Club International, permitted
the U.S. Navy to kill every endangered ovenbird on
Farallon de Medinilla 2.5 times each, and advanced a scheme
to kill coyotes, purportedly to rebuild the endangered
Columbian whitetailed deer population on the heavily overgrazed
Washington mainland sector of the Julia Butler Hansen
Refuge, along the Columbia River.

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Longlines and Gore

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

HONOLULU––If allegations
issued by former U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service special agent Carroll E. Cox stand
up, senior officials of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service have for at least six years
buried evidence of illegal threats to endangered
species on a scale that if exposed
could rattle trade relations, the primacy of
the Nature Conservancy in Western Pacific
conservation projects, and even the office
of U.S. vice president Albert Gore.
If Cox is lying, he says, “I’m a
zero, and my career is over. I’ll never work
in the wildlife or law enforcement fields
again, or any other field where people care
if you’re telling the truth.”

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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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Wise-use wiseguys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Louisiana governor Mike Foster gave “the first
indication that he plans to run for re-election in 1999,” said
the New Orleans Times-Picayune, by hosting a fundraising
three-day “Spirit of ‘96 Governor’s Duck Hunt” at the Oak
Grove Hunting Club in Creole, December 21-23. Lafayette
businessman Henry Mouton, identified as one of Foster’s
longtime hunting buddies, invited 54 people to join the hunt at
$5,000 apiece. Amenities included a 4:30 a.m. breakfast of
quail and a commemorative shotgun for each participant.

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