COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Humane Enforcement
The toughest cruelty sentence ever
issued in Vermont went to Donald Bliss, of
Barre, on a December 14 plea bargain. Bliss
admitted to keeping a starving Belgian mare staked
outside for most of the winter of 1992-1993. He
drew a year in jail with immediate probation, a
suspended fine of $2,000, was ordered to donate
$1,000 to the Central Vermont Humane Society,
and was obliged to pay the town of Barre $1,100
for boarding the mare until she was adopted by
Anne Cole Butler, of Orange.

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Poachers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

California wardens on
January 28 broke up the Ace
Hunting Club, a bear poaching ring
allegedly run by William Jim Taek
Lee, 35. Trophy hunters paid Lee
$1,500 apiece to be guided to bears;
Lee then sold bear parts both local-
ly and to Korea. The operation
reportedly killed 30 bears and net-
ted $600,000 In a parallel but
apparently unrelated case, t h e
Pennsylvania Game Commission
five days later charged Tae-Ukand
Elaine S. Kang of Coatesville,
Pennsylvania, with illegally traf-
ficking in bear galls.

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Zoo notes

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Saved from bankruptcy two years
ago by public donations of $1.2 million and a
gift of $2.4 million from Kuwait, the London
Zoo in 1993 recorded a profit of nearly
$500,000––its first profit since 1976.
The Duke University Primate
Centeon January 31 achieved the first birth
in captivity of a golden crowned sifaka, a
highly endangered lemur.

Birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The January/February edition of World Watch, the journal of the
Worldwatch Institute, postulated that wild birds are the “canaries in the coal mine”
whose decline warns of forthcoming ecodisaster. The article cited studies finding that
1,000 of the 9,600 known bird species are endangered or threatened; 70% of known
species are decining in numbers; and 2,600 species are involved in international trade.
Under pressure to provide targets for hunters and faced with crashing
populations of most migratory waterfowl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is consid-
ering lifting a ban on goose hunting along the Pacific Flyway. The ban was imposed to
protect the cackling Canada goose and the Pacific white-fronted goose, whose num-
bers dropped from 300,000 to 28,500 and from 500,000 to 93,900 during the 1980s,
but are now back up to 164,300 and 275,100, respectively.

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Coyote-killing “like calling a girl”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

GILLETTE, Wyoming––Coyote, fox,
and rabbit-killing contests and bounty programs
popped up around the west in midwinter––in
response, organizers said, to a year-old moratori-
um on coyote-killing by the federal Animal
Damage Control Program, won through a lawsuit
filed by the Humane Society of the U.S. Ranchers
argued that nonlethal coyote control hasn’t worked,
citing an American Sheep Industry Association
report that coyotes in Wyoming and Colorado have
learned to run sheep dogs to exhaustion, attack
them in packs, and split up so that some can divert
the dogs while others kill sheep. They claimed huge
livestock losses to an alleged overpopulation of coy-
otes and foxes, although killing contest participants
averaged only two dead coyotes and one dead fox
per 18 days of hunting. ASIA and other ranch lob-
bies are trying to lift the ADC moratorium––along
with a ban on the use of spring-fired traps called M-
44s that shoot poison into coyotes’ mouths. The
traps are banned to protect eagles, who likewise
may snatch the bait with fatal consequences.

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ALASKAN WOLF MASSACRE: SIERRA CLUB BREAKS BOYCOTT

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska––Alaska’s “ground-based” wolf-killing campaign in
Game Management Unit 20A, south of Fairbanks, was more than $50,000 over bud-
get in early February, with only 84 wolves killed out of a quota of 150––tending to
affirm the view of wolf expert Gordon Haber, Friends of Animals, and the Alaska
Wildlife Alliance that the state greatly overestimated the wolf population of the area
to begin with. Only $100,000 was to be spent on the wolf-killing, including $30,000
for personnel and $15,000 for helicopter rentals, but by mid-January personnel costs
were already over $60,000 and helicopter rentals were at $23,000, the AWA reported.
Finding the federal Airborne Hunting Act impossible to enforce when state
law allows “trappers” to spot wolves from the air, land, walk 300 feet, and shoot
them, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on December 22 proposed a ban on killing
any free-ranging wolves or wolverines on Alaskan National Wildlife Refuges the
same day a hunter is airborne. Killing trapped wolves would still be permitted.

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SPECTACLES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

A group of Ecuadoran school children
in late January donated their allowances, sold toys,
and performed on street corners to raise funds to
feed polar bears, elephants, seals, and horses aban-
doned in Quito by the Circus of Czars, from St.
Petersburg, Russia. The circus manager vanished
with the receipts from a successful tour, leaving the
human performers stranded, as creditors seized
their equipment. As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to
press, help was reportedly en route from business
leaders and environmental groups.

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Good deeds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Veterinarians Jeff Young and
Mark Chamberlain of Planned
Pethood Plus held their third annual
male cat neuter-a-thon in Boulder,
Colorado, on January 30––and donated
their $7 per cat fee to Mission Wolf, a
refuge for wolves and wolf hybrids in
Silver Cliff, Colorado.
Tucson veterinarians Reuben
Merideth and Barbara Page in early
January donated a $1,400 cataract
removal operation to give partial sight to
a bighorn lamb, who was apparently
abandoned by her mother after going
blind but was rescued by hikers who
turned her over to the Arizona Game
and Fish Department. The lamb will
probably be donated to a zoo or a cap-
tive breeding program.

Klein quits fur

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Designer Calvin Klein announced
February 11 that his firm had not renewed a
labeling agreement with Alixandre Furs of
New York City, which expired at the end of
January, and would no longer be involved in
the fur trade. Klein followed the examples of
other top designers including Georgio
Armani, Bill Blass, and Carolyn Herrera.
He said a PETA protest at his office on
January 25 had nothing to do with his deci-
sion, which was reached in November 1993,
“Unfortunately,” he stated, “PETA was not
aware of our previous decision,” although it
was widely rumored in the garment trade.
PETA nonetheless claimed a victory, seek-
ing to offset the embarrassment suffered in
New York gossip columns after model
Christy Turlington proclaimed that she’d
rather wear nothing than fur––just a month
after she appeared in a fur ad in the
November issue of the Paris edition of
Vogue. Memories linger of actress Kathleen
Turner admitting at the PETA inaugural ball
in January 1993 that she wears fur, but not of
endangered species (which would be illegal
to buy in the first place).
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