Month: June 1994

Concessions to hunters win assault rifle ban

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

WASHINGTON D.C.––
The National Rifle Association took
the biggest defeat it has ever suffered
at the federal level in the House of
Representatives on May 5, as Indiana
Democrat Andrew Jacobs Jr. switched
his “no” vote to a “yes,” passing into
law a ban on 19 types of assault rifle,
which though backed by the Clinton
administration, had been expected to
fail by at least 15 votes.
Clinton bought the victory
with a string of concessions to the
hunting lobby. The assault rifle ban,
for instance, names 650 hunting
weapons and mandates that none shall
be outlawed during the 10 years the
assault rifle ban is to be in effect.

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CHILDREN & ANIMALS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

“Higher levels of childhood pet keeping
were related to more positive attitudes toward
pet animals and greater concerns about the wel-
fare of non-pet animals and humans,”
researchers J.S. Paul and James Serpell discovered
in a recent survey of 385 British university students,
published by the Universities Federation for Animal
Welfare (8 Hamilton Close, South Mimms, Potters
Bart, Herts EN6 3QD, United Kingdom). Serpell,
author of In The Company of Animals, now holds
the Marie Moore Chair for Humane Ethics and
Animal Welfare at the University of Pennsylvania.

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MARINE MAMMAL NOTES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:
The Marine Mammal Protection Act was
reauthorized on schedule on April 29, including loop-
holes to let hunters to import polar bear trophies and to
allow the killing of seals and sea lions who eat threat-
ened fish runs at locks and fish ladders. Other provi-
sions include a total ban on intentionally shooting
marine mammals who interfere with fishing, and a pro-
gram to cut accidental kills during fishing to near zero
over the next seven years.
The Liberal Party of Canada convention on
May 15 overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling
for the resumption of offshore seal hunting, halted in
1983 after two decades of international protest. The
Liberals form the Parliamentary majority. Claiming
“the concerns of animal rights lobby groups should not
be put before the concerns of the people of
Newfoundland and Labrador,” the resolution claims
sealing is needed to create jobs because the fishing
industry has collapsed––making no mention that the col-
lapse was caused by overfishing condoned in the name
of job creation by a succession of both Liberal and
Progressive-Conservative governments.

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BRIAN DAVIES FOUNDATION INVESTED IN VIVISECTION

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

LONDON, England––At deadline ANIMAL
PEOPLE was still awaiting International Fund for Animal
Welfare founder Brian Davies’ response to allegations by the
British Broadcasting Corporation expose series Public Eye
that as much as 39% of the Brian Davies Foundation stock
portfolio may be invested with firms that either do vivisection
or are under boycott by other major animal and habitat pro-
tection groups. ANIMAL PEOPLE had, however, received
IFAW’s apparently accidental fax transmission of our request
for comment with four handwritten notes scrawled across it
by at least three different people, discussing how to respond.
The Brian Davies Foundation is a holding corpora-
tion affiliated with IFAW, the sole purpose of which appears
to be managing investments.
IFAW, now under fire for announcing it would not
oppose a plan that could lead to the resumption of commer-
cial whaling (see page one), was just two months ago riding
the crest of outrage over the Canadian sale of 50,000 seal
penises to the Asian aphrodisiac trade––which full-page ads
placed by IFAW in leading Canadian newspapers accurately
linked to child prostitution in Southeast Asia. The issue was
and may still be the hottest for Davies and IFAW since 1983,
when Canada suspended the offshore slaughter of infant harp
seals (though the land-based phase of the killing continues).

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Zoo notes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

A deal to move Ivan the gorilla to the 17-member
colony at Zoo Atlanta has collapsed. Ivan has been kept in a
cage at a now-bankrupt shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington,
for nearly 30 years. Bankruptcy trustee Bianca Harrison claims
the obstacle was that Zoo Atlanta wouldn’t let his keepers to stay
with him during quarantine, wouldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t
be moved again, and wouldn’t promise that he wouldn’t be elec-
troejaculated. Zoo Atlanta says the real issue is that the creditors
think they can get more money for Ivan abroad than the $30,000
the Progressive Animal Welfare Society offered to send him to
Atlanta.
Four gorillas have died at the Columbus Zoo in the
past year––Oscar of a heart attack, Molly and her baby as result
of a premature birth, and Colbi, age six, of apparent severe coli-
tis on May 3. Antibiotic treatments failed.

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Save the whales! DID CLINTON SELL OUT WHALES TO SELL MISSILES?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico––The world will
know by the time you read this whether U.S. president Bill
Clinton sold out whales to sell $625 million worth of missiles to
Norway. As ANIMAL PEOPLEwent to press, Greenpeace and
the World Wildlife Fund, goaded by Friends of Animals, were
applying last-minute leverage to head off the apparent
sellout––including joint protest on May 17 in front of the White
House, a WWF first, while Clinton and vice president Albert
Gore met with Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland inside.
The proposed creation of an Antarctic whale refuge and
the resumption of commercial whaling head the agenda for the
46th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission
(IWC), commencing on May 23. As every year since 1982,
when the IWC decreed the moratorium on commercial whaling in
effect since 1986, Japan and Norway will push to break the
moratorium. As last year, Japan and Norway will also fight the
creation of the sanctuary, seeking the help of Antigua-and-
Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent-and-
the-Grenadines, four tiny Caribbean nations heavily dependent
upon Japanese foreign aid, whose votes were decisive in 1993.

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Who needs low-cost neutering? PART ONE OF A NEW NATIONAL STUDY

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

PORT WASHINGTON, New York––Low-cost neutering doubles the number of
poor people who get their pets fixed––and cuts animal shelter intakes in half.
Any doubts that either shelter administrators or veterinarians may have about the
efficacy of low-cost neutering should be laid to rest by the results of a new national study car-
ried out over the past six months by ANIMAL PEOPLE, under sponsorship of the North
Shore Animal League. The first part of the study, investigating the impact of low-cost neu-
tering on pet overpopulation, is published here. The second part, a comprehensive review of
veterinary experience, will appear in our July/August issue––including veterinarians’ ideas
about how to improve low-cost neutering pro-
grams to get even better results and resolve
grievances that often hamper programs.

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Philippines joins Indonesia in banning monkey business

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

MANILA, The Philippines– – A
high-ranking Philippine official confirmed
May 9 that a long-awaited Philippine ban on
wild-caught monkey exports will take effect
this year, fulfilling a promise made in 1986
and completing a phase-out begun in 1989.
Quoting a radio broadcast by
Philippine Protected Areas and Wildlife
Bureau director Corazon Sinha, the Xinhua
news service reported that the export ban will
cover both wild-caught and captive-bred mon-
keys––a significant extension of the 1989
plan, reiterated in early 1993 by Sinha’s pre-
decessor, Samuel Penafield. Ending all mon-
key exports would ease the burden of enforce-
ment, since officials would not be obliged to
determine where each monkey was born.

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Editorial: What’s wrong with “sustainable use”?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

U.S. World Wildlife Fund president Kathryn Fuller didn’t just rattle the Clinton
administration with her May 12 declaration of opposition to any “first step toward the
resumption of commercial whaling.” More significant was her statement that, “Even if
commercial whaling could be sustainable, it cannot be justified,” a welcome marked depar-
ture from 35 years of WWF policy, which essentially has endorsed any use of wildlife that
even promised to be sustainable.
The most influential of all animal and habitat protection groups internationally,
WWF has been problematic since 1961, when founder Sir Peter Scott, a trophy hunter,
recruited the leadership elite from among fellow hunters who feared that African indepen-
dence would lead to the rapid loss of target species. The elite included longtime WWF
International president Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, who escaped punishment for
allegedly overshooting bird quotas in Italy in the early 1970s to resign, finally, in 1987,
after being implicated in a Dutch bribery scandal. Bernhard was succeeded by another of
the founding elite, Prince Philip, long the honorary head of the British chapter. One of the
world’s most prolific tiger-killers when tigers were abundant, Philip showed his allegiance
to conservation ethics that Christmas by leading his sons Charles, Andrew, and Edward in
killing 10,000 pigeons, 7,000 pheasants, 300 partridges, and several hundred ducks,
geese, and rabbits––all captive-raised––in a six-week vacation bloodbath. This slightly
exceeded Philip’s previous record of 15,500 captive birds killed during a five-week spree.

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