MARINE MAMMALS

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Seal hunt

Canada on April 11 denied an allegation by the

International Fund for Animal Welfare that the Shanghai

Fisheries Corporation and a sealing industry delegation from

the Magdalen Islands of Quebec met the day before in Hong

Kong to sign a deal to increase the export of seal penises to

China. “Because it’s penises, people laugh,” said IFAW

spokesperson Marion Jenkins, “but the Chinese medicine

market has been responsible for the near extinction of the

tiger and the rhino.” Despite the lack of other apparent

viable markets, the seal slaughter shifted from the

Magdalens to Newfoundland in mid-April, encouraged by a

quota of 186,000 and a federal bounty of 20¢ per pound on

seal carcasses landed. Newfoundland fisheries minister Bud

Hulan claims the Atlantic Canada seal population is circa

eight million, and that the seals are contributing to the

decline of cod, recently pronounced “commercially extinct.”

However, current research by Thomas Woodley and David

Lavigne, of the International Marine Mammal Association,

indicates there are no more than 3.5 million harp seals, prob-

ably fewer; 400,000 hooded seals; and 142,000 grey seals,

the only species whose numbers are increasing. Cod make

up only about 1% of the seals’ diet.

Animal health

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Zoos

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Yan Yan, a female giant panda on a

five-year loan from the Beijing Zoo, on April 14

joined Bao Bao, the Berlin zoo’s solitary male,

whose former partner Tien Tien died of a viral

infection in 1984. Yan Yan was taken from the

wild at age three months in 1985. The World

Wildlife Fund ripped the Berlin loan and the loan

of two pandas to the San Diego Zoo as “a danger-

ous precedent,” which could “lead to further

depletion of an already fragile wild panda popula-

tion,” via further removals from the wild. WWF

has asked the secretariat of the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species to

restrict panda loans to captive-bred animals. The

Dept. of the Interior on March 30 proposed such a

rule to govern future panda loans to the U.S.

Zoos

April 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

SAN DIEGO GETS PANDAS, LOSES RHINOS

SAN DIEGO––The San Diego Zoo

is dusting off plans to exhibit pandas––and

struggling to recover from the abrupt extinc-

tion of its Sumatran rhino breeding program.

Eighteen months after refusing to

give the zoo a panda bear import, Interior

Secretary Bruce Babbitt reversed himself on

January 14, after a personal visit to the facili-

ty, and granted the permit as the prototype for

a new national panda policy to be announced

in mid-March. Two pandas, a 13-year-old

male named Shi Shi and a three-year-old

female named Bai Yun, are expected to arrive

in spring on a 12-year loan from China.

MARINE MAMMALS

April 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

The clock is apparently running out on the sea

lion/steelhead conflict in Puget Sound, in favor of sea lions

who were caught, caged, and sentenced to death in February

under 1994 revisions to the Marine Mammal Protection Act,

for menacing the last steelhead from the endangered Lake

Washington winter run as they approached Ballard Locks. A

variety of nonlethal methods have failed to deter the sea lions,

but a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society proposal to relocate

them to San Francisco Bay and a publicity-grabbing cage

occupation by Ben White of Friends of Animals apparently

bought them time until the salmon run was over. Forthcoming

amendments to the Endangered Species Act are expected to

relieve authorities of the duty to save the last fish of particular

runs when the species as a whole is not endangered.

A female orca calf, stillborn at the Vancouver

Aquarium on March 8, died from blood loss due to a pre-

maturely ruptured umbilicus. “A calf experiencing this kind

of catastrophic event would be doomed whether in an aquari-

um or in the wild,” said consulting veterinarian David Huff.

The calf was the third the Vancouver Aquarium has lost, with

none surviving longer than 97 days. The death came five days

after an infant orca died at the Kamogawa Sea World (no rela-

tion to the U.S. Sea World chain) in Japan. The losses, along

with that of another infant orca at Sea World San Antonio on

December 28, renewed protest against trying to breed orcas in

captivity. However, noted MARMAM online bulletin board

host Robin Baird, “A large proportion of the killer whale

calves who have not survived have been from two particular

mothers, both at aquaria which have not had a single surviving

calf.” Orca calves born at U.S. Sea World facilities by contrast

have a better survival rate than wildborn counterparts.

Dolphins to leave Steinhart after two decades

April 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

SAN FRANCISCO––Amphrite and Thetis are

moving. Kept in an admittedly undersized tank at the

Steinhart Aquarium since 1975 and 1978, respectively, the

two female Pacific whitesided dolphins will join others of

their kind at a state-of-the-art oceanarium elsewhere “within

three to nine months,” new Steinhart director Robert Jenkins

told ANIMAL PEOPLE in early March. “It’s not a question

of if, or when,” Jenkins added. “It’s just a matter of com-

pleting the logistics.”

One big unknown is the length of time it will take to

re-sling-train the dolphins. “They’ve been sling-trained

before, and they’ll remember,” Jenkins said. “But they may

need practice before they’re ready to leave.”

Moral relativism & Marine World

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

VALLEJO, California––Any day now the fishing

crews of Iki, Japan, may string nets between their boats and,

banging metal objects together to make a noise that carries

underwater, herd scores of Dall’s porpoises and pseudorcas

into an inlet to be harpooned and hacked apart with machetes.

Spring is the season for such massacres, conducted intermit-

tently at least since 1900 and almost annually since 1967

despite international protest. The traditional rationale is

reducing competition for yellowtail; also, much of the por-

poise and whale meat is either eaten or sold.

A few months later, Eskimo hunters in power boats

will shoot walruses up and down the Bering and Arctic

coasts, ostensibly for meat but perhaps mostly to get ivory

tusks, according to witness Sam LaBudde, a research biolo-

gist and native of Alaska who has observed the killing for

Friends of Animals. LaBudde’s testimony is backed by

Alaskan eco-journalist Tim Moffat. Some hunting parties

retrieve whole carcasses, those that don’t sink; others just

hack off tusked heads, carve out genitals, and leave the rest,

contrary to Marine Mammal Protection Act requirements.

Willy may be freed

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

MEXICO CITY––Keiko, the orca star of the 1993 film

Free Willy!, will be relocated to a new facility under construction at

the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport by November, Free Willy-

Keiko Foundation president David Phillips announced on February

6––and this time, after many false alarms, the deal was confirmed by

Oscar Porter, general director of Keiko’s present home at the Nuevo

Reino Aventura amusement park in Mexico City.

Keiko, believed to be about 16, will be accompanied by

some of the Nuevo Reino Aventura staff, Porter said, praising him

for having “developed a very special sensitivity, intuiting and perceiv-

ing people. Keiko is very affectionate,” Porter continued, “especially

toward children, ‘showering’ them constantly with his outstanding

jumps. He is so intelligent that he has been able to learn more than 54

different routines.”

Dirty pool: (Part II of a two-part investigative series)

December 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

VANCOUVER, KANSAS CITY,

CHICAGO––Propaganda wins converts to

causes by reducing issues to good against evil,

forcing observers to take sides. Propaganda is

among the most effective tools of warfare;

but like warfare itself, it exacts a high price

from those who use it. Much as the dead

from either side don’t “win” a war, propagan-

dists for any cause often find themselves

obliged to wage wars they can’t afford simply

because they chose to use exaggerated

rhetoric in trying to win a simple reform. The

nature of propaganda is that in making broad

accusations of bad faith by the opponent, it

cuts off communication, making enmity out

of disagreement and mendacity out of misun-

derstanding.

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