Editorial: Handling the money crunch

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

It is axiomatic in fundraising that half the dollars raised by any campaign come
from the ten biggest donors––the coveted “high donors,” whose gifts not only finance good
works, but also permit the quest for additional donors. Even in charity, it takes money to
make money, and without a lump sum to invest in printing and postage, nonprofits have no
means of appealing to the small donors who provide the other half of their support.
High donors are an endangered species this winter, a phenomenon remarked
across the charitable spectrum. From animal shelters and sanctuaries to veterinary schools
and zoos, administrators tell us more people are chipping in, but total donations are down
because big gifts haven’t come. We’re seeing the same thing in the otherwise encouraging
response to our own holiday appeal. And we’re hearing from apologetic former high donors,
including some foundations, that the reasons they’re not giving as much as before have
nothing to do with our work: they’re just tapped out. Economic uncertainty accompanying
the change of political power in Washington D.C. brought a sharp pre-holiday slump in the
money markets, both hurting private investors and cutting into the residuals from which
foundations make grants. People in government jobs are anxious to see how projected cost-
cutting and restructuring will affect them––and this doesn’t just involve federal employees.
As responsibility for the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the disabled is returned to states
and municipalities, state and local budgets will also be restructured. That in turn affects
still more people, including employees of firms that sell to government.

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Sanctuary: THREE-YEAR-OLD TAOS STRIVES TO GROW INTO MISSION

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

DALLAS––With a title dimly echo-
ing William Faulkner’s steamiest novel and an
acronym calling to mind the utopian com-
mune D.H. Lawrence began in New Mexico,
the Association of Sanctuaries might inspire
literary minds to imagine dark plots and tan-
gled motives even without dispute over what
“association” and “sanctuary” should mean.
Is TAOS a representative self-regu-
latory body, as billed, formed by sanctuari-
ans to advance the interests of the greater
sanctuary community? Or is it an activist
group disguised, with an agenda set mainly
by non-sanctuarians, at least some of whom
have little background in sanctuary work?

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Humane enforcement
Charro rodeo horse trainer Jesus
Quinonez, 24, pleaded not guilty to two misde-
meanor cruelty counts on December 7 in Denver.
Quinonez allegedly beat a 2-year-old horse with a
board on October 10. By October 14 the horse was
partially paralyzed, ostensibly from an accident, and
Quinonez kicked and punched him for not getting up.
The case has drawn national attention through a mail-
ing by Animal Rights Mobilization.
Officials in San Bruno, California, on
December 8 asked San Mateo County Superior Court
to apply a law usually used to make property owners
maintain debris-strewn land to alleged animal collec-
tor Ruth Harris, 71, who has repeatedly violated a
court order to obey the city limit of four cats per
household since 1991. More than 100 diseased cats
have been removed from Harris’ feces-saturated
home in four separate raids. To be heard January 6,
the motion if granted will bar Harris from owning
any cats and will allow authorities to spot-check the
house at random to insure compliance.

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Alaska halts wolf-killing; FRIENDS OF ANIMALS VIDEO SHOCKS WORLD; FURRIERS FRET OVER SNARING EXPOSURE

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

ANCHORAGE––The latest Alaskan war against wolves officially ended
December 12, as Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff reportedly finished removing
683 snares set in October from a 1,000-square-mile “game management unit” southwest of
Fairbanks. A dozen dead wolves were retrieved, as well, bringing the winter toll to 36 and
the count since the snaring campaign began in October 1993 to 130.
Admitting that the snares were not monitored often––Alaska has no trap-checking
requirement––the ADFG said it was uncertain if the last 12 wolves were caught before or
after Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Carl Rosier halted the killing on December 1. It
was certain, however, that they died painful and probably lingering deaths. Rosier acted
under pressure from governor-elect Tony Knowles, who pledged November 30 that he would

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Predator control guised as rabies protection: EPA rejects Texas bid to bring back Compound 1080

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

AUSTIN––The Texas Department of Agriculture thought
it might sneak reauthorized Compound 1080 predator poisoning past
the Environmental Protection Agency and an unaware public in the
guise of rabies control. It nearly succeeded.
One of the deadliest chemicals ever deployed against
wildlife, with no known antidote, 1080 is actually a trade name for
sodium fluoroacetate, developed by the Nazis as a nerve gas during
World War II. It came to the attention of the U.S Animal Damage
Control program in 1946, after the now defunct American Journal of
Public Health published the results of LD50 testing done on human
prisoners. Impressed with the lethality and ease of use of 1080, the
ADC quickly adapted it for use against coyotes, killing
millions––along with greater millions of nontarget species, accord-
ing to ADC records, and an average of about one human being per
year. High-profile cases of misuse brought the deaths of three small
children and a firefighter, in separate incidents. Finally, in February
1972, then-U.S. president Richard Nixon banned 1080 by executive
order from both federal use and any application on federal land.

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Yukon wolf-killing goes on

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

KLUANE –Begun at the same time as the just-
halted Alaskan wolf-killing, the Yukon’s wolf purge will
go on as scheduled for three more winters, Yukon renew-
able resources minister Mickey Fisher stated December 21.
Helicopter gunners have killed 94 wolves in the 7,722-
square-mile Aishihik region of the Yukon, adjacent to the
Kluane National Park World Heritage site, during the past
two winters. As in Alaska, the object of the killing is to
make more caribou available to hunters––and is rational-
ized as being for the benefit of indigenous people. But
again as in Alaska, the real issue isn’t meat.
“Big-game hunting outfitters are among the most
vocal promoters of the Yukon wolf-kill, for obvious rea-
sons,” fisheries technician Richard Mahoney pointed out a
year ago in the Seattle Times. “Both the territorial govern-
ment leader, John Ostashek, and his minister for renewable
resources, Bill Brewster, are former hunting outfitters.

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Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Trafficking
At least six sao las died dur-
ing 1994 due to human contact, from a
population of under 200, reports David
Hulse, World Wildlife Fund representa-
tive in Vietnam. A goat-like bovine with
horns like those of an antelope, the sao la
was only discovered in 1992. The sao la
was quickly protected by law, but TV
crews offering bounties for the chance to
videotape one have inspired poor vil-
lagers to try to trap them. “It has become
very hard for us to protect our animals,”
Viet wildlife officer Le Du Thuan recent-
ly told New York Times c o r r e s p o n d e n t
Philip Shenon. “In the 1970s we had
3,000 tigers, and now maybe we have
200. We had 300 rhinos in 1975; now
we have between 10 and 25. There are
now so many smugglers. And the prob-
lem is getting worse, not better, because
the demand from mainland China is
growing, because China is getting rich.”
The demand isn’t only from the mainland,
however. Observed an anonymous mer-
chant, “The Taiwanese people like
Vietnam because they know there are still
many animals in the forest here.
Sometimes they buy these animals to eat
them, sometimes for medicine. This is a
very good business for us,” while it lasts.
Rebuffed in a bid to lift t h e
six-year-old global ban on ivory traffick-
ing at the November meeting of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, Zimbabwean direc-
tor of national parks and wildlife Willie
Nduku told media on December 2 that his
government has declined offers of up to
$30 million U.S. for its 30-metric-ton
ivory stockpile. Some of the ivory has
been confiscated from smugglers; the rest
from government “culling.”
Partly due to the ban on ele-
phant ivory sales and partly because
elephants are now scarce, ivory poach-
ers have turned to hippos, whose tooth
vory––more brittle than elephant
tusks––goes for about $70 a kilo on the
black market, about a seventh the price of
tusk ivory. The hippo population of Zaire
is down from 23,000 in 1989 to about
11,000 today, says Newsweek.
Seizures of animals and ani-
mal products entering the U.S. illegally
from Mexico are up 40% since 1989,
says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The $2 billion traffic accounts for a third
of the global cash volume in wildlife traf-
ficking, according to Interpol. The
understaffed USFWS law enforcement
division has only nine agents along the
2,000-mile Mexican border; Mexico has
just three. Mexico hasn’t made an arrest
for illegal wildlife trafficking since join-
ing CITES in 1991. Said Agriculture
Secretariat spokesman Roberto Loeza
Gallardo, “The traffic in endangered and
exotic species does not exist here.” But
his office isn’t far from the Sonora
Market, where Homero Aridjis of El
Grupo de los Cien recently counted 106
animals of internationally recognized
endangered species offered for sale.
Biodiversity in Peru’s Bay of
Paracas National Reserve and Madre
de Dios rainforest is jeopardized by
poaching, fishing with explosives, unau-
thorized mining, and log piracy, S a n
Francisco Chronicle c o r r e s p o n d e n t
Lawrence J. Speer reported recently.
Environmental protection has been
ignored for a decade while the govern-
ment has focused on the now seemingly
ended Shining Path insurgency.
Endangered species
Australian biologists o n
December 7 said they’ve found five
Gilbert’s potoroos, a small marsupial
believed extinct since 1869, in a nature
reserve 255 miles south of Perth.
Canadian environment minis-
ter Sheila Copps has pledged to intro-
duce an omnibus endangered species act
next spring. Canada now protects endan-
gered species through subsections of 12
unrelated federal laws plus a hodgepodge
of provincial laws.
The newly formed European
Environmental Agency, an arm of the
European Union, reported on December
11 that from a third to half of all the fish,
reptiles, mammals, and amphibians
native to Europe are either threatened or
endangered, principally due to habitat
loss and pollution.
The Chinese river alligator,
or gharial, declared endangered by the
United Natons in 1973, is reportedly
thriving in captivity. Fewer than 500
remain in the wild, but there are now
6,000 at a breeding center in eastern
Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces.
The center is looking into marketing pos-
sibilities––and alligator birth control.
RESTORE:
The North
Woods has warned the Department of the
Interior that it may sue if the department
does not respond by the end of January to
a petition to protect the Atlantic salmon
under the Endangered Species Act. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
National Marine Fisheries Service ruled
in January 1993 that such protection may
be warranted. The petition is reputedly
the first ever filed which falls under the
jurisdiction of both agencies.
Habitat
Gorillas, chimpanzees, mon-
keys, and elephants are among the 210
mammal species and 766 bird species
imperiled by the invasion of Zaire’s
Virunga National Park by an estimated
200,000 Rwandan refugees––including
about 30,000 soldiers of the deposed for-
mer Rwandan government, who far out-
number the park wardens and are much
more heavily armed. About 10% of the
12,800-square-mile park, tree-covered
since before the Pleistocene epoch, has
already been deforested, partly for fire-
wood but mostly for sale by the soldiers,
who have found logging––and poach-
ing––to be quick sources of cash.
Established by Belgium in 1925, Virunga
had been closed to all human activity but
scientific study since the mid-1970s.
A Rwandan silverback gorilla
named Mkono was killed in November by
a land mine, the African Wildlife
Foundation said December 12. Fewer
than 30 silverbacks remain in Rwanda.
Heavy November rains r a i s e d
the Everglades water level to its highest
point since 1947, drowning at least 80 of
the 2,000 deer who were believed to live
in the vicinity of the Miccosukee Indian
Reservation, while countless other deer
became vulnerable to alligators. Though
hard on deer, the high water is expected
to benefit most other Everglades wildlife.
Bear Watch, a new anti-bear
hunting group, may be contacted at POB
1099, Ganges, British Columbia,
Canada V0S 1E0; 604-537-2404

Fish

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Chemical weapons scuttled by the
British after World Wars I and II are blamed by
local residents for the recent deaths of hundreds of
birds and some seals along the coasts of Donegal
and Antrim, Ireland. At least 120,000 tons of
nerve gases and mustard gas were sunk in the area
between 1945 and 1957, where 18 ships full of
similar materials were sunk about 25 years earlier.
A panel of 26 researchers who volun-
teer their efforts on behalf of the Monterey Bay
National Marine Sanctuary is expected to recom-
mend a ban on “chumming” in the area, to take
effect in early 1995. Chumming––dumping blood
and offal into the water to attract sharks––is used
by entrepreneur Jon Cappella to draw rare great
white sharks toward submerged cages of thrill-
seeking divers, anchored near Point Ano Nuevo.
Ano Nuevo is home of one of the world’s biggest
elephant seal and sea lion breeding colonies and is
just a mile from a popular surfing beach.

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MARINE MAMMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Effective January 1, amendments to
the Marine Mammal Protection Act forbid fish-
ing crews to shoot sea lions and seals unless they
menace human life. A violation carries the same
$20,000 fine and up to one year in jail as deliberate-
ly harming whales, dolphins, or sea otters.
Formerly, fishers could get a permit to shoot any
seals or sea lions who stole their catches. As over-
fishing depleted coastal waters, shootings became
more common. The National Marine Fisheries
Service received 250 reports of fatal shootings of
seals and sea lions in 1993, while the Marine
Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, in 1992
treated 80 seals and sea lions wounded by gunfire,
after treating only 37 in the preceding eight years.

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