Day: March 1, 1997

BOMBS AWAY!

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

by Carroll Cox, Wildlife consultant, Friends of Animals

For many years the U.S. Navy
has leased the western Pacific island of
Farallon de Medinilla, Commonwealth
of Northern Marian Islands, uninhabited
by humans, for use in bombing practice.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service internal
reports indicate that the Navy bombs the
island at least four times a year, and considers
it an especially important target
site because so many other targets have
been placed off limits––chiefly to protect
endangered wildlife. This came to light
when the Navy requested a USFWS permit
to “take” migratory birds incidental
to their bombing activity. At first the
USFWS denied the permit, but then
reversed course and issued it.

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Charities flunk NCIB standards

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

NEW YORK––The National
Charities Information Bureau has
issued negative reports on
Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra
Club, and Project Cure, which
advertises itself as a cancer research
foundation that does not fund animal
experiments.
Defenders, the NCIB said,
“does not meet the standard calling
for the organization to spend at
least 60% of annual expenses for
program activities, nor the standard
calling for the organization to
insure that fundraising expenses, in
relation to fundraising results, are
reasonable over time.”

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BIGGER KITTIES ADD NEW RISK TO ANIMAL CONTROL

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

ARCADIA, Calif.––California Fish &
Game warden Mark Jeeter shot a puma pointblank
on January 28 in a suburban yard.
Once again bloodshed underscored the
warning ANIMAL PEOPLE issued in July 1996
that former pet pumas, not wild pumas, are
forming a dangerous fringe population around
many major North American cities.
Recounted Sergeant Endel Jurman,
field services department supervisor for the
Pasadena Humane Society and SPCA, “My officer
was standing behind the warden when the lion
was shot.” The warden, the PHS/SPCA, and
Arcadia police had all responded late at night to a
homeowner’s complaint that a puma was eating
his 40-pound dog.

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INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION NEWS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Greenpeace International and Greenpeace France
on January 8 sued anonymous author “Olivier Vermont” and
publisher Albin Michel for issuing purported “defamatory
statements, untruths, distortions of the facts and absurd allegations”
in a volume entitled The Hidden Face of Greenpeace:
Infiltration into the Heart of the International Ecology
Movement. According to “Vermont,” who claims to have
worked within both Greenpeace International and Greenpeace
France, only 6% of the funds the Greenpeace organizations
raise is actually spent on environmental protection. He also
asserts that Greenpeace has “secret dealings with certain states
such as China and Russia,” not surprising for an organization
engaged in international environmental diplomacy.

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Money & power

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

George Frampton Jr., Assistant Secretary of the
Interior for National Parks and Wildlife Refuges since 1993,
is to step down on February 14. Frampton, formerly president
of The Wilderness Society, has had an adversarial relationship
with Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), chair of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, since
his days as a trial lawyer trying to stop old growth logging in
the Tongass National Forest. Murkowski held a major interest
in the Ketchikan Pulp Company, now closed, whose logs
came primarily from the Tongass National Forest.
Data from 1,012 foundations published in the current
edition of the Foundation Center’s annual Foundation
Grants Index shows that of the top 14 types of grant recipient,
animal protection and wildlife conservation ranked 13th in
both percentage of grants allocated, at 0.9%, and dollars
received, at $46 million, 0.7% of the funding disbursed. The
pattern closely parallels patterns of individual donations.

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HSUS told to give back Canadian funds

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Ontario Court of Justice judge Bruce C.
Hawkins on January 7 issued an interim order that the
Humane Society of the United States must repay $740,000
to the Humane Society of Canada, in advance of the yet-tobe-scheduled
trial of a lawsuit in which HSC and the
Canadian incorporation of Humane Society International
charge that HSUS improperly seized $1,012,663 in funds
HSC raised within Canada. Wrote Hawkins of the February
1996 seizure, “I cannot imagine a more glaring conflict of
interest or a more egregious breach of fiduciary duty.

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Peter Gerard hires lawyer, repays a principle

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Under pressure from
Friends of Animals and other sponsors to provide a full
accounting of funds received and spent in connection with the
June 1996 World Animal Awareness Week and March for the
Animals, National Alliance for Animals executive director
Peter Gerard, formerly known as Peter Linck, recently
retained attorney Roger Galvin, of Rockville, Maryland, to
tell FoA that as of January 8, “the audit is not completed yet,”
and to argue that FoA “received more benefits in terms of participation
and publicity than its $5,000 contribution warranted.”
The March, crowning the week of activities, drew
just 3,000 participants according to the official National Parks
Service count––3% of the 100,000 Gerard’s fundraising letters
predicted would attend, and 21,000 fewer than the crowd at a
similar march that Gerard coordinated in 1990.

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Abrupt Kathleen Hunter exit from THS recalls “Toronto Massacre”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

TORONTO––Kathleen
Hunter, Toronto Humane Society
executive director since 1986,
departed on January 25 under undisclosed
circumstances.
“The board agreed with the
executive of the society that she is no
longer an employee,” Toronto city
councillor Steve Ellis told Toronto
Star reporter Phinjo Gombu.
“Before the meeting, she was an
employee, but after the meeting she
wasn’t.” Ellis, who holds a THS
board seat reserved for a city representative,
claimed he could say no
more because it was “a confidential
labor relations matter.”

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Organizations

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Humane Society of the U.S. wildlife trade
program director Teresa Telecki, quoted from the
December Utne Reader: “We want to help people rise
from poverty, but not through trophy hunting. We’d
rather see them earning money from cottage industries
such as fish farming and shoemaking.” Along with
overlooking that fish feel pain, too, Telecki failed to
note the role of offshore fish farming in promoting the
killing of seals and sea lions, the frequent massacre of
fish-eating birds at fish farms of all sorts, and habitat
damage by aquaculture ranging from the destruction of
coastal mangrove swamps in Southeast Asia to the pollution
of inland waterways almost everywhere inland
that fish farming has caught on. Telecki also didn’t
stipulate nonleather shoemaking.

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