A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:
While Japan was killing whales,
Brazilian president Fernando Henrique
Cardoso on September 19 designated an
offshore sanctuary for southern Atlantic
right whales in their “nursery” along the
lower coast of Santa Catarina state.
The decree rewarded 20 years of
work by Southern Right Whale Project
founder Jose Truda Palazzo Jr., who at
age 18 rediscovered the whales after they
were believed to have been hunted to extinction.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:
WASHINGTON D.C., TOKYO––
Aware that support of Norwegian and Native
American whaling is the one environmental
albatross around U.S. Vice President Albert
Gore’s neck in his Presidential bid, outgoing
President Bill Clinton gave anti-whaling sanctions
against Japan a high profile as the campaign
hit the home stretch.
The piece-de-resistance was a
September 13 announcement delivered by
White House Chief of Staff John Podesta that,
“The President is directing the Secretary of
State to inform the Japanese government that it
will be denied future access to fishing rights in
U.S. waters.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:
Wolfsong Ranch moving, tests canine chemosterilant
WILLCOX, Az.––Art and Mary Bellis, cofonders of the Wolfsong Ranch sanctuary, intend to meet a January 1, 2001 deadline for disposing of the 160 resident wolf hybrids, set by the Cohise County Planning and Zoning Commission, by moving to a 440-acre site near Rodeo, New Mexico– 11 times larger than their present site outside Wilcox, Arizona.
Art and Mary Bellis began taking in wolf hybrids in 1988, Mary Bellis told ANIMAL PEOPLE. They incorporated the Wolfsong Ranch Sanctuary Foundation and deeded their property to it in 1996, but ran afoul of neighbors whom Mary Bellis describes as “primarily a family of local ranchers and their friends, employees, and members of the local ranchers’ association.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:
HAMILTON, Montana––With at least five national
animal disaster relief teams now on the job, and increasingly
well-prepared local disaster relief plans covering most of the
more populated portions of the U.S., members of the United
Animal Nations’ Emergency Animal Services entered August
feeling a bit like Maytag repairmen: nobody calling, nothing
much to do except hold more seminars to train more help to
assist the 3,400 UAN-trained volunteers already available to
respond when all hell breaks loose.
”There have been no disasters where we were needed
so far,” UAN president Jeanne Westin remarked to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on August 7.
Thirteen western states were gripped by some of the
hottest droughts in years––but neither UAN nor any of the other
national animal rescue outfits do rainmaking.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:
CAPE TOWN, South Africa – –
Christina Pretorius of the South African
National Foundation for the Conservation of
Coastal Birds on August 23 quietly closed the
former railway warehouse in Salt River that
for two month was a makeshift hospital for
22,000 oil-soaked penguins, who were aided
by 40,000 volunteers working in teams under
102 experts flown in from around the world.
More than 17,000 now clean and
healthy penguins had already been released to
follow 20,000 uncontaminated penguins home.
Another 2,600 penguins were still in special
care at other locations.
“If we can move 10,000 birds off in
three days, we’ve done as much as we can
do,” Western Cape Nature Conservation penguin
expert told Mike Cohen of Associated
Press back on July 3, 10 days after the
Panamanian bulk ore carrier Treasure sank
and spilled 1,300 tons of oil into the water
surrounding Robben and Dassen Islands.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:
From Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Paul Salopek came word on August
6 that brothers Antonio and Luis Faceira of Angola are working with Wouter van Hoven of
the University of Pretoria Center for Wildlife Management in South Africa to restore
wildlife to the 3.5-million-acre Quicama National Park, near the capital city of Luanda.
Each a military general in the regime headed since 1979 by President Jose Eduardo
Santos, the Faceira brothers have fought Jona Savimbi and his UNITA insurgency for 25
years. Altogether, counting the last years of Portuguese rule, Angola has been almost continuously
at war since 1961.
Both sides have reputedly ravaged wildlife––for meat, target practice, and
money. Salopek mentioned reports of government officials strafing antelope from helicopters.
Craig Van Note, executive director of the World Wildlife Fund trade-monitoring
subsidiary TRAFFIC, in 1988 accused UNITA of killing as many as 100,000 elephants
over the preceding 12 years, in order to trade ivory for arms with the former apartheid government
of South Africa.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:
JOHANNESBURG, HARARE,
WASHINGTON D.C.––Reputedly the oldest
white rhino in the world, with the longest
horn, Long Tom, 36, roams the Thomas
Baines Game Reserve near Grahamstown,
South Africa.
Long Tom is a widely renowned living
symbol of the African wild––and, to
many, of male potence, not least because he
is still siring young. His most recent offspring
was reportedly born on August 22.
The Eastern Cape Nature Conservation
Department hopes the birth will make
wealthy hunters more eager than ever to mount
Long Tom’s head and horn on a wall, or to
grind his horn into a purportedly aphrodisiacal
powder which in Asia is believed capable of
assuring men that they will sire sons.
Because the Eastern Cape Nature
Conservation Department estimates that permission
to kill Long Tom may fetch as much
as $75,000 at auction, he may go to the block
on September 8.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2000:
INDIA, MONGOLIA, KENYA––Among the most
ancient of living bird species, vultures feasted at the extinction
of the dinosaurs. Cartoonists often depict them thriving on the
demise of humanity.
But even the notoriously well-fed vultures of India
are in deep trouble now, in apparent indirect consequence of
drought and flooding cycles afflicting much of the earth.
Associated with global warming, droughts and floods
should be good for vultures, littering the land with carrion.
But Bombay Natural History Society chief scientist
Vibhu Prakash reports that the total numbers of the four main
Indian vulture species are down by 97% since 1990. The
Kanpur population has dropped from 4,000 to as few as eight.
At Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur, there were
2,000 resident vultures in 1986. Only 150 nesting pairs
remained by 1997. This year only eight vultures have even visited
Keoladeo––and none nested.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2000:
North American people are better
buffered against calamities associated with
global warming than Asians and Africans––
but reminders were abundant during the summer
that technological advances helping
humans to keep water, food, and fuel flowing
where needed are not necessarily able to
save animals, even when the effort is made.
On July 28, for instance, after
nearly nine months of legal maneuvering, a
tentative agreement was announced among
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, ranchers holding water
leases, Defenders of Wildlife, Forest
Guardians, and the Middle Rio Grande
Conservancy District over the allocation of
Rio Grande water needed by both corn and
alfalfa growers and the endangered Rio
Grande silvery minnow and Southwest willow
flycatcher (a small bird).