Month: April 1997

Space for the birds

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

How far should habitat protection
go? How big is critical habitat?
A four-ounce common tern banded
at Helsinki University in Finland last June
gave a holistic answer on January 24 when
captured by ornithologist Clive Minton of
Victoria, Australia, having winged 16,000
miles, 125 miles a day, since she left
Finland on or about August 15. The flight
broke the record held since 1956 by an Arctic
tern who flew 14,000 miles, from White
Russia to Fremantle, Australia.
Swallow-tailed kites have been
known to make one of the longest migrations
of any raptor since the 1960s, when a kite
banded in southern Florida was shot in southeastern
Brazil, but their winter habitat was
discovered only this past winter, when ecologist
Ken Meyer of the Big Cypress National
Preserve tracked a kite from Florida to the
same part of Brazil through the use of a tiny
satellite transmitter, weighing just a twelfth
of an ounce, glued to the kite’s tailfeathers.

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A sheep who keeps ethicists awake

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

EDINBURGH––Embryologist Ian
Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh,
Scotland, on February 23 announced the birth
of a lamb cloned from a mammary gland cell
taken from one adult ewe, fused with an egg
cell of another adult ewe, and implanted into a
surrogate mother last July.
The first known successful cloning of
a mammal from fully developed adult cells, the
experiment was done by a team of 12, of
whom only Wilmut and three others knew the
details––and the announcement was delayed
until the team patented the lamb, named Dolly.

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FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE USES REFUGES AS PROP FOR FUR TRADE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Any illusions that animal and
habitat defenders might have had that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service is acting in good faith as regards trapping in National
Wildlife Refuges would appear to be shattered by a newly leaked
28-page memo issued to “All Refuge Managers” on January 28
by Stan Thompson, acting Division of Refuges chief.
The Thompson memo makes clear, in thinly veiled
language, that refuge managers are to back fur trade opposition
to the twice-delayed European Community ban on the import of
pelts from animals possibly caught by leghold trapping.
The memo further indicates that a Congressionally
mandated internal review of trapping within National Wildlife
Refuges is to be done in such a manner as to produce documents
of propaganda value in opposition to the EC ban.

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