Wildlife lawsuits

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office
said on May 13 that it intends to appeal an April 6
World Trade Organization tribunal verdict that the
U.S. broke international trade rules by barring the
import of shrimp netted without the use of Turtle
Excluder Devices (TEDS). The import ban was
protested by India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and
Thailand. On May 1, just five weeks after Thai sea
turtle conservationist Manop Kidsarng warned that
the Phuket Island turtle population was in desperate
trouble due to fishing and poaching, the U.S. certified
that Thailand and 38 other nations have adequate
turtle protections in place, and that Thai
shrimp therefore can now be imported.

ALF member disappears

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

SALT LAKE CITY– –Douglas Joshua
Ellerman, 19, who pleaded guilty in February to
three of 16 felony charges filed against him re the
March 1997 pipebombing of the Fur Breeders
Agricultural Cooperative building and trucks at
Sandy, Utah, has reportedly not been seen since
April 30. Ellerman was to appear in court on May 6
to receive a sentencing date.
“In a plea bargain designed to spare him
from a possible life sentence,” wrote Joe Costanzo
of the Deseret News, “Ellerman agreed to cooperate
with investigators who are working to identify others
involved in the bombing. Prosecutors were prepared
to recommend that Ellerman receive less than
the minimum five-year sentence. But word of his
cooperation reached members of the Animal
Liberation Front, who [according to family members] apparently scared Ellerman into flight.”

COURT CALENDAR

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Humane enforcement

The Suffolk County SPCA
on May 3 arrested Thomas Capriola,
27, of Islip Terrace, New York, after
learning from an informant that he produced
so-called “squish” videos under
the business name Foot Fetish Films.
“He has girls wear high heel shoes and
crush mice, rats, guinea pigs, lizards,
and turtles. Either the girls do it, or he
dresses as a girl himself and does it. He
advertises for models. They just don’t
realize what is involved until they get
there,” SC/SPCA detective A d a m
G r o s s told Tom Demoretcky of N e w
York Newsday. Raiding Capriola’s
home, police and the SC/SPCA investigators
reportedly confiscated 36 videotapes,
a small amount of marijuana,
eight weapons, and 10 white mice. U.S.
humane investigators and Scotland Yard
had been investigating Internet distribution
of “squish” videos allegedly sold by
Capriola and one Jeff Vilencia, of
Squish Productions in California, for
approximately one year. Royal SPCA
inspector Martin Daly recently told
Cassandra Brown of the London
Sunday Telegraph that the video purchasers
have frequently also turned out
to be buyers of child pornography.

Message from Jakarta

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

JAKARTA, Indonesia––As dogs, cats, monkeys,
students, and looters are shot in Indonesian streets, against a
backdrop of razed stores, ethnic mayhem, and jungles ablaze
across Kalimantan and Malaysia, Hindu myth almost seems to
explain it all––especially amid the additional reverberations of
five nuclear tests in the Rajasthan desert of India.
The blasts sent a warning to Pakistan, 97% Islamic,
that added to the stress in Indonesia, too, 87% Islamic.
“It is said that when great evil stalks the earth,”
explains Nanditha C. Krishna, honorary director of the C.P.
Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation in Chennai, India, “Vishnu will
appear as Kalki, and the world will go up in flames.”

Easter bunny blasters want more targets

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

DUNEDIN (New Zealand)––Of all the animal massacres
assocated with spring religious observance, the Easter
bunny shoot at Alexandra, New Zealand, most nakedly celebrates
killing for the hell of it.
The 12-member Tuturau Titty Ticklers blasted 712
rabbits to win the 24-hour, 25-team killing contest this year,
as shooters griped of an alleged paucity of targets caused by
the unauthorized release last summer of rabbit calicivirus
(RCD). The bag fell to 5,290, from nearly 24,000 in 1997.
“A group called the Waihou Virus shot more geese
than rabbits,” reported the New Zealand Press Association.
“Eight teams bagged fewer than 100 each.”
That left organizer Martin McPherson to pick among
ending the event, opposing RCD use, or targeting captive animals,
like the Labor Day pigeon shoot at Hegins,
Pennsylvania. Any of the options would belie the purported
higher purpose, in combatting the depredations of feral rabbits.

LETTERS [June 1998]

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Head trips
I have never read such a cogent,
detailed, factual, and ethical explanation
of the current state of biotechnology and
genetic engineering and what it means for
human and animal welfare as “Biotech
head trips,” your December 1997 cover
article. Thank you.

––Jon Christenson
Great Basin News
Carson City, Nevada

Letters

International campaigns & organizations

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

World Animal Net, a project of
former World Society for the Protection of
Animals staffers Wim de Kok and Janice
Cox, offers an online animal protection directory
listing more than 6,000 organizations and
providing links to more than 1,200 web sites,
at >>http://www.worldanimal.net<<. A print
edition, forthcoming, is to supersede the
annual directories of animal protection organizations
published for the past several years
by Bunny Huggers’ Gazette, de Kok said.

Talking to our ancestors

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., WOODSIDE,
Calif.––Eight thousand America
OnLine members on April 28 flooded Koko
the “talking” gorilla with more than 13,000
questions, in the first-ever public interview
of an animal of another species.
Actually “speaking” through a special
computer with a symbolic keyboard,
Koko answered about a dozen inquiries in 45
minutes. Monitored by reporters, who
packed the kitchen of the Gorilla Foundation
headquarters in Woodside, California,
Koko’s longtime teacher/translator Penny
Patterson converted typed text into sign language,
then summarized Koko’s responses
and e-mailed them out.
Koko talked about apple juice, her
favorite foods, her pet cats, her dreams, and
her personal aspirations. Nobody asked how
she’d like to become “bush meat,” the
African euphemism for poached primate.

Editorial: Crime and counseling

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Pending before the California legislature as ANIMAL PEOPLE goes to press is
SB1991, a bill “to require counseling as a condition of probation for any person who is convicted
of killing, maiming or abusing an animal.”
Introduced by state senator Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), SB1991 was
drafted by the Doris Day Animal League, and is endorsed by the Humane Society of the U.S.,
the Animal Protection Institute, and the Fund for Animals, among many other organizations.
SB1991 sounds good, on paper. If enacted, it will no doubt be ballyhooed in mailings
by all who support it as a “victory,” to be emulated in other states.
But Political Animals founder Sherry DeBoer sees SB1991 as at least potentially
“the most destructive piece of anti-animal legislation ever to move in California.”

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