Catch-22 and Canadian sealing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––Atlantic Canadian
sealers are ready to smear the ice with the blood and brains of
285,000 harp and hooded seals, the biggest sealing quota in 15
years, unleashing the frustrations of yet another year idle
because they fished cod to commercial extinction, elected
politicians who let them do it, blamed seals for falling catches,
and remain representatives of the corner of Canada with the
least economic prospects, the lowest average level of education,
and the most alcoholic violence.

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A “FINAL SOLUTION” IS PROPOSED FOR WHALES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

REYKJAVIK, Iceland––Apparently hoping to lure
Iceland back into the International Whaling Commission, IWC
secretary Ray Gambrell on March 1 in Reykjavik proposed a
“final solution” to the stalemate within IWC over permitting the
resumption of commercial whaling. So-called “traditional and
cultural” whaling would be permitted within the 200-mile
Economic Exploitation Zones that nations maintain over fisheries,
while high seas whaling would remain forbidden.
According to High North Web News, published by
the pro-whaling High North Alliance, “Gambrell explained that
his optimism was based on the closed and informal IWC commissioners
meeting in Grenada in January.”
Politically, the Gambrell “final solution” might work.
It would authorize the present unilateral Norwegian commercial
whale hunt, a similar hunt off Iceland, the coastal hunt Japan
seeks to revive, and all existing and proposed aboriginal hunts,
including those of the Makah off Washington and the Maori off
New Zealand. If high seas fishers killed some whales too, then
transferred the corpses to whalers inside the 200-mile limit
before heading to port, no one need know about it.

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Recreational mayhem

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Zimbabwe environment
and tourist minister Chen
Chimuten-gwende said after discussions
on March 8 with French environment
minister Corrine Lepage
that France has eased its former
strong opposition to resumed traffic
in elephant products, and may favor
“controlled” trade in ivory and hunting
trophies in June, when
Zimbabwe hosts this year’s triennial
meeting of the Convention on
International Trade in Engangered
Species. French prime minister
Alain Juppe is an avid hunter.

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More killing by the Nature Conservancy

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

SANTA CRUZ ISLAND––To “restore” a
“natural” Channel Islands ecology that may never have
been anything but a succession of invasions, The
Nature Conservancy and National Park Service are
close to killing every wild mammal bigger than a fox on
the five southern California coastal islands––including
the last descendants of Spanish livestock on Santa Cruz
Island, introduced circa 1720. The pigs were killed
because they carried endogenous psuedorabies, a threat
to mainland hog producers. As many as 35,000 sheep
were killed on TNC land, say rescuers, who have been
allowed to round up and remove another 2,500 sheep,
poultry, horses, and burros from 6,200 acres that the
Park Service on February 10 seized by order of
Congress from the last holdouts against a forced sale.

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FIXING THE WILD HORSE PROGRAM

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

BY ENZO GIOBBE, COFOUNDER, HORSEAID

Does HorseAid agree that 90%
of the horses adopted through the Bureau
of Land Management go to slaughter, as
alleged in a recent expose by Martha
Mendoza of Associated Press?
No. We cannot find any evidence
to substantiate the 90% figure,
allegedly tossed out by a BLM official
who now denies he said it. Based on years
of investigation, recognizing that there are
still a lot of “Mom and Pop” rendering
houses that do not report brands, and factoring
in the unreported traffic in horses for
slaughter in Canada and Mexico,
HorseAid puts the figure for all the horses
who have ever gone through the BLM program
somewhere between 35% and 60%.

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Burros abroad

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

In a desperate March 13 fax, Animal
Responsibility Cyprus asked for help in determining
and perhaps averting the fate of about 2,500 burros who
are to be removed from a herd estimated at 3,000, now
roaming the Turkish-occupied Karpasia area. Terming
the burros “part of the disappearing fauna of Cyprus,”
ARC indicated suspicion that the burros might end up
going to slaughter by an Italian firm abbreviated as
SASS, in either Italy or Turkey. “These are the progeny
of the working burros left behind by their owners
when they fled the 1974 Turkish invasion,” an ARC
press release explained. “Turkish Cypriot environmentalists
in the occupied areas are fighting the play to
destroy the Cyprus burros––please support them. The
illegal regime has no embassies you can approach,” the
release added, “because they are not recognized.

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Wild Burro Rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE––Removing 16
jacks and six jennies from alpine habitat one doesn’t normally
associate with the California desert, Wild Burro Rescue has for
the third straight year averted a National Park Service massacre.
Much hard work is still ahead, gentling the burros, adopting them
out, and trucking many to their destinations, but the hardest job,
convincing the Park Service that nonlethal burro control is possible,
is gradually becoming accomplished.
The Mojave National Preserve burro population may be
markedly less than the Park Service estimate of 1,800, Chontos
told ANIMAL PEOPLE. After removing about 50 burros in previous
years, he said, the WBR team found none in the low desert
this year, while above the snow line they found mainly bachelor
bands––an indication that most Mojave jennies, who tend to stay
at the lower levels, have either been captured and removed, or
were shot several years ago, before WBR got involved.

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LETTERS [April 1997]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Native tradition
When we go into the sweatlodge,
during prayers, and upon
leaving the sweatlodge, we are
taught to say, “Hou Mi Takuye
Oyacin,” which means, “All our
relations.” With these words we
honor and bless all living things.
How then can people go
out and murder and eat innocent animals
who are our brothers and sisters?
I view this as cannibalism.
When people wear animal and bird
body parts and feathers, for whatever
reason, that is wrong. If animals
could speak, I am sure they would
ask to live and be free. Yet killing
animals continues, with people trying
to justify it by claiming it is done
“in the proper way,” with “respect,”
and that tradition and culture must be
carried on.

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Playing politics to win

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

The strength of the animal protection vote should be clear from the November
1996 referendum victories won against various especially abusive forms of hunting and
trapping in Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, and even Alaska.
Similar victories came in 1994, in Arizona, California, and Oregon, which then
passed the legislation that it affirmed last year. Referendum losses have come only in Idaho
and Michigan, two of the states with the highest ratio of hunters per capita.
Independent polls by Gallup, the Associated Press, and others have shown rising
support for animal protection, including endangered species protection, for more than a
decade. In November, this translated at last into political victory––in a manner distinctly
separate from other voting trends. All eight referendum victories came in states which also
elected conservative governors or legislatures, or both, in either 1994 or 1996. The animal
protection vote cut across partisan lines, as demographic studies have projected it should
since at least 1990. People who voted for fiscal conservatism and “family values” often
firmly rebuked traditional hunting-and-trapping-oriented wildlife management.
Animal protection lobbyists should be on a roll. Legislators should be aware that
when they pick up a gun for a photo-op, they lose as many votes as they gain.

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