OBITUARIES

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Bruno Zehnder, 52, of Manhattan,
froze to death in an Antarctic blizzard
circa July 7, returning from an expedition to
photograph breeding emperor penguins.
Zehnder was reportedly about a mile from
safety at Mirnyy Station, a Russian research
base which he had missed by 50 yards despite
flares set out to guide him. Born in Bad
Rogov, Switzerland, Zehnder emigrated to
New York City in 1977, after making his
first international reputation with photographs
of Vietnam after the Vietnam War, but his
real home was Antarctica, where he lived
much of each year at the bases of Chile, New
Zealand, the U.S., Denmark, and Russia.
Zehnder married Heather May of New York
City in 1984 at Marambio, an Argentinian
research station, surrounded by tuxedo-clad
penguins––but the marriage lasted just three
years, as the penguins seemed to be his more
enduring love. “His frequent sojourns in
Antarctica resulted in photos that won several
prizes,” The New York Times r e m e m b e r e d ,
among them the 1987 United Nations
Environmental Protection Prize, the 1990
BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year
award, and election to the Royal Geographic
Society. “One of his most widely published
pictures was of a pair of emperor penguins in
tender embrace with a chick between them,”
the T i m e s recalled. “Another, made last
year, was of a mother emperor penguin trying
vainly to feed her chick, whose beak had
frozen closed.” The photo helped draw international
attention to the threat of global
warming to penguin survival.

Obituaries

REVIEWS: Music

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Adventures at Catfish Pond
Bob “Catfish” Hodge

All Spirits Sing
Joanne Shenandoah

Penguin Parade
Banana Slug String Band

If A Tree Falls
Anthology produced by
Darryl Cherney & Leib Ostrow

Music for Little People/EarthBeat
(POB 1460, Redway, CA 95560),
1997. Each $9.95/cassette, $15.98/CD.

As a college student, Delilah
Cooper infiltrated an early false front for the
wise-use movement, documented the then hidden
identities of the people behind it, and sent
the information to the editor of ANIMAL
PEOPLE. When we disclosed those identities,
the organization vanished almost
overnight, without a forwarding address.

BOOKS: And the Waters Turned to Blood

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

And the Waters Turned to Blood:
The Ultimate Biological Threat
by Rodney Barker
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020), 1997. 352 pages, hardcover, $24.00

It’s a shame how this book
has been hyped. “Deadlier than
Ebola!” trumpets one press release,
building expectations of a Creightonesque
biological thriller. But
Pfiesteria piscicida is no fiction, and
frightening though the microorganism
may be, it doesn’t hold a candle
to the real horror of its discovery––
that without the tenacity of one outspoken
scientist, the world would
still be unaware of it.

BOOKS: Turtle Bay

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Turtle Bay
by Saviour Pirotta,
art by Nilesh Mistry
Farrar, Straus & Girous (19 Union Square
West, New York, NY 10003), 1997.
28 pages, hardcover, $15.00.

Turtle Bay, about old Japanese sponge
diver who sweeps a remote beach to prepare it for
loggerhead turtle nesting, might be the best way to
explain to a child why a favorite beach (or a part of
it) is off limits, whether to help sea turtles, piping
plovers, clapper rails, or any other animals whose
needs conflict with human recreation.

BOOKS: Scarlett Saves Her Family

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Scarlett Saves Her Family
by J.C. Suares & Jane Martin
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 1997.
96 pages, 50 photos, $20 hardcover.

You probably know the story of Scarlett ––the
New York alley cat, featured in People and elsewhere,
who on March 29, 1996 made five trips into a burning
building to save her kittens. Scarlett suffered severe
burns, but was rescued in turn,. with her family, by firefighter
David Giannelli. Scarlett and four kittens were
restored to health and placed for adoption by the North
Shore Animal League. The fifth kitten succumbed to panleuopenia,
an airborne virus that probably compounded
the after-effects of smoke inhalation.

Marine life notes

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Researchers at Auckland University in Wellington, New
Zealand, in mid-August announced that DNA typing of 30 samples of
whale meat bought in Japanese supermarkets found remains of humpback
and fin whales, confirming cearlier findings by conservation groups that
contraband species are being killed and sold. Neither humpbacks nor fin
whales have been killed legally since 1986, when the International Whaling
Commission moratorium on commercial whaling began. Japan did later buy
whale meat from abroad that was frozen before 1986, a Japan Fisheries official
told the New Zealand Press Association, but the most recent purchase,
of humpback meat from Iceland, was in 1991. Similar DNA findings
obtained by EarthTrust scientists were published by the peer-reviewed journal
Science in 1994, but Japan Fisheries has repeatedly challenged the data.

Shock treatment for marine mammals

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Bob Fletcher, president of the 200-vessel
Sportfishing Association of California, is touting a
high-energy ultrasonic anti-sea lion device, developed
by Pulsed Power Technologies, of San Diego, with aid
of a federal grant. According to Los Angeles Times
hunting/fishing columnist Pete Thomas, the device
produces “a brief concussive wave of energy that
affects the inner ears of mammals close enough to be
affected.” Fletcher told Thomas that it makes sea lions
“take off like scalded dogs.”
Added Pulsed Power Tecnologies president
Dick Ayres, “The fur huggers won’t be happy with
anything that annoys marine mammals, but this is by
far the most effective and least intrusive device that has
come out.” The west coast fishing industry, including
Fletcher, is lobbying in support of a recent National
Marine Fisheries Service recommendation that it should
be allowed to start killing pinnipeds “in situations
where California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals conflict
with human activities, such as at fishery sites and
marinas,” if nonlethal deterrents don’t work.

Marine life feels the heat

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Global warming and krill fishing by Russia, Japan,
and the Ukraine have tipped the biomass balance of the
Antarctic to favor salp, another microscopic creature of little
food value to marine mammals, Antarctic Marine Living
Resources program researchers reported in June.
Generating red tides, salp blooms kill as well as
compete with krill. The rise of salp and decline of krill reportedly
coincides with a 35% drop in the krill-dependent King
George Island population of Adele penguins.
The decline of Antarctic krill is not why record numbers
of blue whales and other baleen whales gathered this summer
off the Farallon Islands, experts said, since North Pacific
baleen whales migrate no farther south than the equator, but
warm water currents called El Nino, also tentatively linked to
global warming, have depleted the cetacean food supply in
parts of the North Pacific.
The depletion hit sea birds too, especially common
murres, who failed to nest this year along the Oregon coast.
Northern currents have reportedly warmed so much that southeast
Alaska salmon netters recently hauled in a one-ton Mola
mola––an oceanic sunfish usually found off Mexico. Pacific
mackerel have followed the warm currents to hit newly
released chinook salmon hard off Vancouver Island.

Making a bear problem

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

STOKES STATE FOREST, N.J.––With bills to ban bear
hunting pending before the New Jersey House and Senate, and a proposed
bear management plan awaiting consideration by the New Jersey
Fish, Game, and Wildlife Advisory Council in August, the New Jersey
Department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife needed a dramatic late July
incident to make their case that an estimated 350 to 550 bears,
statewide, pose an imminent threat to human safety.
Making that claim in support of an attempt to start a bear hunt
last year, without having a case to cite, NJ/DFGW officials were
embarrassed when opponents pointed out that New Jersey has never had
a bear incident doing noteworthy harm to a human.
Thus the NJ/DFGW was quick to ballyhoo a July 23 campground
encounter at Stokes State Forest, in which ranger Rob Sikoura
purportedly defended campers by rousting a mama bear and cubs, but
was forced to shoot the mama in self defense when she charged him as
he followed her across 40-foot-wide Flat Creek.

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