Wolves sacrificed to grizzly reintroduction

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

DEER LODGE, MONTANA––The mid-July
mauling deaths of two wolf pups amid the high-profile
annihilation of the Boulder pack to which they belonged
almost went overlooked. But two sanitized accounts of
the deaths appeared on August 5.
“Federal workers captured three of the five
Boulder pack pups in mid-July,” wrote Kortny Rolston of
the Montana Standard, “and put them in a pen in Idaho
with two adult male wolves. Joe Fontaine, Montana wolf
recovery project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, said they learned recently that two of the penned
pups are dead.
“‘At this point it’s pure speculation, but we
think one of the males killed two of the pups,’” Fontaine
told Rolston.

Sick circus elephant dies in hot truck

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

ALBUQUERQUE––King Royal Circus employee
Derrell Benjamin Davenport, 23, of Laredo, Texas, and John
Davis, 19, of Champaign, Illinois, were cited for alleged cruelty
and a variety of Animal Welfare Act and vehicular offenses
on August 7, after an African elephant named Heather died in
an overheated, poorly ventilated trailer that Davenport left in
the parking lot of a hotel where by fluke the Albuquerque Zoo
was holding its annual meeting.
A police bicycle patrol noticed the truck swaying and
investigated circa 9 p.m..
Two other elephants and eight llamas survived.
“That trailer was not made to carry anything with a
heartbeat,” said Albuquerque police officer Duffy Ryan.
The interior temperation of the truck was reportedly
120 degrees Fahrenheit. But a preliminary necropsy indicated
Heather died of an intestinal infection, rather than of heat
stress, as animal control officers initially suspected.

Animal control & rescue abroad

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

The Royal SPCA of New South
Wales, Australia, on June 28 won State
Parliament passage of a new cruelty law
which bars steeplechasing and hurdling
with horses, steel-jawed traps, the serving
of live food in restaurants, grinding sheep’s
teeth, attending cockfights, docking dogs’
tails after five days of age, clitoridectomizing
greyhounds to prevent detection of doping,
and dogs riding untethered in open
vehicles. The law also renews a clause
from the previous legislation that allows
private parties to bring cruelty cases.
The Czech Union of Nature
Conservation magazine NIKA recently
published an English edition to familiarize
the rest of the world with Czech environmental
efforts. Copies are available c/o
NIKA, Slezaka 9, 120 29 Prague 2,
Czechoslovakia. Generous gifts to cover
printing and postage will be appreciated.

Salton Sea crisis breaks rehabbers

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

IRVINE––The 12-year-old
Pacific Wildlife Project avian rehabilitation
center in Irvine, California, is reportedly
near collapse after spending $80,000
to treat about 1,000 birds who were sickened
by botulism last summer at the
Salton Sea.
About 14,000 birds died near the
inland sea, and another 5,000, of at least
40 species, have died so far this year.
Director Linda Evans billed the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service for the funds, coincidental
with the construction by volunteers
of a $90,000 emergency treatment facility
near the Salton Sea National Wildlife
Refuge, but refuge manager Clark Bloom
said the refuge had no money to send her.

SHELTERS

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Anchorage, Alaska, has adopted a
new animal control law as of July 1, and turned
the $1.4 million animal control contract over to a
new contractor, Allvest Inc., replacing TLC Inc.,
which had held the contract for 13 years. Allvest,
unlike TLC, will have a full-time veterinarian, a
fleet of six heated 4-wheel-drive animal pickup
vehicles, a lost-and-found web site, and will
encourage volunteers to work directly with animals.
Allvest also operates rehabilitation halfway
houses for humans.
The U.S. military support service contracting
firm Brown & Root, of Houston,
Texas, in early summer sent Galveston County
Animal Shelter director Shirley Tinnin a n d
Rosenberg animal control officer Nora Angstead
to Bosnia for 11 days, to train 60 Bosnians in
humane rabies control. Tinnin and Angstead fulfilled
the job on unpaid administrative leave.

CIVIL SERVICE

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Whistleblowers
The Professional Institute of
the Public Service, representing
Canadian public scientists, on August 7
demanded passage of a whistleblower
protection law promised by the Liberal
goverment during the 1993 election
campaign and recommended in 1995 by
Auditor General Denis Desautels, but
not yet introduced to Parliament.
Instead, the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans responded to the recent disclosure
of extensive falsification of official
data pertaining to cod, salmon, and
seals by circulating a 1982 disciplinary
code which lists public criticism of the
department as an offense on the same
level as mutiny and fraud. As A N IMAL
PEOPLE reported in July/August
(“Scientists say Canada falsified data”),
outside scientists revealed in May and
June that the DFO concealed evidence
that Atlantic cod have been overfished
to endangerment, and undercounted the
1996 offshore sealing kill, officially
262,402, by as much as 100%.

Roger Rabbit redoux

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

According to the July edition
of Paw Prints, newsletter of Volunteer
Services for Animals in Providence,
Rhode Island, American SPCA president
Roger Caras told the group’s
recent fundraising banquet about “the
detrimental effect so-called no-kill shelters
have had on the efforts of humane
organizations, as many people now
erroneously believe that unwanted animals
are no longer euthanized so it’s
okay to not neuter their pets.”
One could also erroneously
believe from Caras’ 1996 book A
Perfect Harmony that neutering rabbits,
the third most popular house pet
species, is pointless, since he seriously
asserted there that they are capable of
asexual reproduction.

What did John Muir think of whaling?

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

SEATTLE––Ingrid Hansen, conservation
committee chair for the Cascade Chapter of the
Sierra Club, apparently lost a battle but won a war
July 19 when the executive committee rejected her
motion that the Washington-based chapter should
“support the Makah Tribe’s proposal to take five
gray whales per year,” but also defeated executive
committee member Bob Kummer’s counter-motion
that the club should “oppose all taking of whales.”
As Hansen explained in an April 9 letter
to Makah Whaling Commission member Ben
Johnson Jr., national Sierra Club positions tend to
follow the recommendations of the local chapters
closest to the issues. The San Francisco-based
national office of the Sierra Club last spring asked
the Cascade Chapter if it had a position on Makah
whaling. A nonposition, if precedent holds, could
keep the influential Sierra Club on the sidelines as
the Clinton/Gore administration advances the
Makah application to whale before the International
Whaling Commission this October.

MARINE CONSERVATION

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Hoping to gain influence
against Atlantic Canadian sealers, the
International Fund for Animal
Welfare gave $10,000 to the Liberal
Party of Canada in 1996, following
gifts of $46,000 to the Progressive
Conservatives and $42,500 to the
Liberals in 1993. “In hindsight,” IFAW
Canadian director Rick Smith recently
told Maria Bohuslawsky of the Ottawa
Citizen, “the intransigence of the Liberal
government in terms of environmental
issues, and lack of access to the government
that groups such as ours have,
would indicate the donation was illadvised.”
Pocketing the money, the
Liberals boosted the sealing quota from
185,000 in 1995 to 283,000 this year.

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