Activism

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Robert E. Kazelak, of Hoffman
Estates, Illinois, was charged on March 22
with misdemeanor reckless conduct for
allegedly twice firing a shotgun just over the
head of Chicago Animal Rights Coaliton member
Mike Durschmid six days earlier. Durschmid,
with CHARC president Steve Hindi and
other activists, was on the far side of Illinois
Highway 173, protesting a cage-reared pheasant
shoot at the Richmond Hunt Club in
McHenry County. According to Hindi,
Kazelak “aimed the weapon directly at the
heads of the activists,” making sure he had
their attention before he fired. The incident
was immediately reported to the McHenry
County sheriff’s department, who turned it
over to the Illinois Department of Natural
Resources, who gave it to the McHenry
County State’s Attorney, Hindi said, without
key evidence. The charges were finally filed
only after the shooting drew heavy publicity.

COURT CALENDAR

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Crimes against humans

Thomas Hamilton, 43, of
Dunblane, Scotland, held permits for
hunting weapons including a shotgun and
two rifles, as well as for the four pistols he
possessed as a target shooter and used on
March 13 to kill 16 five-and-six-year-olds,
along with their teacher, wounding 17 others.
Hunters on the America Online
“Animals and Society” discussion board
nonetheless rushed to deny that Hamilton was
a hunter. Some also argued that Hamilton
was not a “pervert,” since though long suspected
of pederasty, he was never formally
charged with an offense. Hamilton purported
to teach outdoor skills to boys for more than
20 years, trying several times to start youth
clubs after he was ousted as a Boy Scout
leader in 1974 for keeping eight boys
overnight in a freezing van. At one point he
allegedly used his shotgun to threaten a boy’s
mother, but when she called the police she
was told they could do nothing because he
was licensed to have the weapon.

International wildlife news

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Africa
Members of 840 Masai
families during the second week in
March opened Kimana Tikondo
Group Ranch, a 15-square-mile forprofit
wildlife sanctuary in southern
Kenya, under the shadow of Mount
Kilimanjaro. Just 17 visitors paid
the $10 entrance fee the first week,
most of them members of a delegation
from the Wildlife Conservation
Society, formerly the New York
Zoological Society. Start-up funding
came from the U.S. Agency for
International Development. Kenya
Wildlife Services director David
Western hopes Kimana Tikando and
similar parks can make enough
money to persuade the Masai that
keeping wildlife is more profitable
than killing it to graze more cattle.

Republicans ready to go on ESA

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.– –
House speaker Newt Gingrich on
March 21 signaled imminent motion
toward passing a long-delayed
Endangered Species Act reauthorization
bill, appointing California representative
Richard Pombo and New
York representative Sherwood
Boelert to co-chair a new
Republican task force on the environment.
Pombo is among the most
aggressive foes of the ESA; Boelert
is among the most prominent proESA
Republicans.

Fur notes

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

World Traders Inc., a six-store
fur chain operating in Maine and New
Hampshire, has gone out of business.
California antifur activist Molly
Attel asks that letters protesting the sale of
coyote-trimmed coats be sent to H.V.
Moore, CEO, Woolrich Inc., Woolrich,
PA 17779.
Earth 2000 National urges holders
of Bon-Ton credit cards to cut them up
and return them to Bon-Ton president
Timothy Grumbacher in protest of his decision
to lease boutique space in each of the
70 Bon-Ton franchises to Pollak Furs.
Messages may be left for Bon-Ton at 717-
757-7660.

Wild felines

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Reduced to a U.S. population estimated
at 350 to 700 by the trapping boom
of the early 1980s, the North American lynx
may now be the most notable casualty of the
Congressionally imposed moratorium on protecting
additional species under the
Endangered Species Act. U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service biologist Lori Nordstrom
recommended in 1994 that the lynx be given
federal protection, beyond the limited protection
already extended by 13 of the 20 states it
once inhabited. However, with the ESA up
for renewal and so-called “takings” of property
rights to protect endangered species a hot
topic in the 1994 Congressional election campaign,
the USFWS denied the listing. The
denial is contested in a recent lawsuit filed by
Jasper Carlton of the Biodiversity Legal
Foundation, with 12 other organizations as
co-plaintiffs.

Mobster lobsters?

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

MEXICO CITY––Homero Aridjis,
president of the influential Mexican environmental
organization Grupo de los Cien
Internacional, on March 10 hinted in an article
published in the Mexico City newspaper
Reforma that politically well-connected drug
dealers may be a “mysterious ‘third partner,’”
along with the Japanese firm Mitsubishi and
the Mexican government, in the Salitrales de
San Ignacio salt mining project. The project
is widely seen as a threat to the gray whale
calving lagoons at the northern end of the
Gulf of California. Aridjis attributed the theory
to Francisco Guzman Lazo, who for nine
years was general director of the Exportadora
de Sal, S.A. salt exporting firm jointly
owned by Mitsubishi and Mexico, and for
seven years was president of Baja Bulk
Carriers, “the Liberian-flagged company
which does all the deep-sea shipping to
Japan, the U.S., and Canada of salt produced
in Guerror Negro.”

The politics of seal slaughter by Captain Paul Watson

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

It isn’t easy being a Canadian. We don’t get a hell
of a lot of respect. To most of the world, especially the U.S.,
we’re a quiet people with an unremarkable history, occupying
a considerable amount of frozen geography.
They’ve heard of maple syrup, Canadian
Club––and that we host the largest single slaughter of a
wildlife species anywhere on Earth.
Our annual massacre of harp and hooded seals is
infamous internationally both for scale and for gruesome cruelty.
The seal club is better known than the rye whisky kind.
Not that it makes economic sense. It doesn’t make
money and hasn’t for decades. The sealers are glorified welfare
bums, living high on subsidies and being paid more for
who they are than what they do.

Mystery deaths

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Theories are many but proof lacking
concerning the causes of recent multiple
mysterious mass deaths of marine mammals
in different parts of the Atlantic. First, from
mid-January to February 22, five or six
northern right whales––the count was disputed––were
found dead in their wintering and
calving area off Georgia and Florida. On
March 11 yet another right whale washed up
at Wellfleet, Massachusetts. The current
northern right whale population is believed to
be no more than 300, and the deaths equal
the total known number of calves from 1995.
Fourteen calves are known to have been born
this year, but three were among the dead.

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