USDA considers calling birds “animals”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The USDA
on January 28 announced that it will take
comments until March 29, 1999 on a petition
from United Poultry Concerns to amend the
definition of “animal” in the Animal Welfare
Act enforcement regulations to remove the
current exclusion of birds, rats, and mice.
“A short letter is fine,” commented
UPC founder and president Karen Davis,
“but the important thing is that the USDA
hears from the public that we want birds,
rats, and mice to be included in the AWA
regulations.”
The opening of the comment period
marks the farthest advance yet toward removing
the exclusion, made initially because
animal experimenters claimed the cost of
complying with AWA regulations in handling
birds, rats, and mice would be prohibitive.

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Clinton declares war on ferals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

WASHINGTON D.C.—Declaring
war on species not native to the U.S., President
Bill Clinton on February 2 issued an executive
order creating an interagency Invasive Species
Council which within 18 months is to produce a
plan to “mobilize the federal government to
defend against” what Clinton called “aggressive
predators and pests.”
The ISC will be jointly chaired by
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Commerce
Secretary William Daley, and Agriculture
Secretary Dan Glickman. USDA Wildlife
Services, just eight months after the House of
Representatives briefly voted to rescind more
than a third of its funding, would appear to be
the chief beneficiary of $29 million for invasive
species eradication that Clinton included in his
proposed fiscal year 2000 budget, sent to
Congress in late January.

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“I heard a young child scream. I thought he got a deer.”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Four kinds of hunting stories involving children reach
ANIMAL PEOPLE with tedious regularity: children killed
while hunting; children killing their own fathers, brothers,
mothers, or sisters in hunting accidents; children using hunting
weapons to commit murder; and adult authorities working to
lower the minimum age for hunting.
Among the child and teen victims of legal hunting
during 1998:
Isaac Earl Reynolds, 13, of Paonia, Colorado,
killed on his first hunt by his father Earl A. Reynolds’ accidental
discharge;
Marvin Olausen, 9, of Oriska, North Dakota, killed
by an adult hunter’s stray shot as he sat with his mother in a
pickup truck;

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Margaret Wentworth Owings,
85, died on January 21 at Wild Bird, her
clifftop home in Big Sur, California, soon
after publication of her collected writings and
art, Voice From The Sea: Reflections on
Wildlife and Wilderness. Remembered by
Mack Lundstrom of the San Jose Mercury-
News as “the most influential woman in the
California environmental movement,”
Owings was “a protector of wildlife from the
day in 1957 when she watched with her
binoculars as a rifleman killed a Stellar sea
lion near her home. For the next 40 years,”
Lundstrom wrote, “she pushed for laws to
stop a proposal to slaughter 75% of the
California seal lion population.” Pushed by
the fishing industry, the proposal survives in
altered form as the National Marine Fisheries
Service recommendation of February 1999
that the Marine Mammal Protection Act
should be amended to allow the killing of sea
lions and seals who interfere with fishing,
invade marinas, or threaten salmon runs.
Owings cofounded the Rachel Carson
Council in 1965, founded Friends of the Sea
Otter in 1968, was founding president of the
Mountain Lion Foundation, and also held
board posts with the Save-the-Redwoods
League, the Big Sur Land Trust, Defenders
of Wildlife, the African Wildlife Foundation,
the Point Lobos League, and the Environmental
Defense Fund. Without Owings,
said Big Sur Land Trust executive director
Zad Leavy, “the California sea otter might
well be extinct.”

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ANIMAL OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Jake, 20, a bottlenose dolphin,
died on February 3 at the U.S. Navy marine
mammal center in San Diego, after emergency
surgery for a severe stomach infection. Jake
and two other Navy dolphins, Buck and
Luther, were in 1994 retired to the Sugarloaf
Dolphin Sanctuary in Florida, where a team
led by Dolphin Project founder Ric O’Barry
and Lloyd Good III tried to rehabilitate them
for release. The effort ran afoul of internal
strife, heavily influenced by an individual
calling himself Rick Spill. An ANIMAL
PEOPLE investigation found reason to suspect
Spill was actually Bill Wewer, the attorney
and fundraiser who earlier incorporated
both the Doris Day Animal League and the
anti-animal rights group Putting People First.
PPF identified itself at one point as representing
Norwegian whalers. O’Barry and Good
were in court in mid-February 1999, fighting
federal charges for releasing Buck and Luther
in May 1996 without National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration permission.
O’Barry and Good argued that the dolphins
were illegally captured and held in the first
place. Both Buck and Luther were recaptured
within days by Rick Trout, who was originally
also part of the Sugarloaf project, but was
ousted through Spill’s intervention after clashing
with O’Barry in late 1994. Allegedly emaciated
and wounded from fights with wild dolphins,
Luther was returned to the Navy with
Jake, while Buck remains at the Dolphin
Research Center in Grassy Key, Florida.

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BOOKS: Save Our Strays

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Save Our Strays
How We Can End Pet
Overpopulation And Stop Killing
Healthy Cats & Dogs
by Bob Christiansen
Canine Learning Center Publishing
(POB 10515, Napa, CA 94581), 1998.
$15.00 includes postage.

Since 1989 “The Book” in the animal
care-and-control field has been the
National Animal Control Association Training
Guide. Now there is another: Save Our
Strays, by Bob Christiansen. You need
both––and they don’t overlap.

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BOOKS: on vegetarianism & diet

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Everybody’s Somebody’s Lunch
by Cherie Mason
illustrated by Gustav Moore
($16.95, hardcover)
with Teacher’s Guide: The Roles
of Predator and Prey in Nature
by Cherie Mason and
Judy Kellogg Markowsky
illustrated by Rosemark Giebfried
($9.95, paperback)

Tillbury House, Publishers (132 Water St.,
Gardiner, ME 04345), 1998.
Bug Bites:
Insects Hunting Insects…And More
by Diane Swanson
with photos and illustrations from the
Royal British Columbia Museum
Graphic Arts Center Publishing (POB 10306,
Portland, OR 97296), 1997. ($9.95, paperback.)

Cows Are Vegetarians!
a book for vegetarian kids
by Ann Bradley
Healthways Press (www.cowsareveg.com), 1998.
($9.95, paperback.)

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REVIEWS: Animal Law

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

ANIMAL LAW & DOG BEHAVIOR
by David Favre, Esq. and Peter L. Borchelt, Ph.D.
Lawyers & Judges Publishing Company, Inc.
(POB 30040, Tucson, AZ 85751-0040), 1999.
388 pages, hardcover, $97.90 including postage.

ANIMALS AND THE LAW:
A Review of Animals and the State
by Ann Datta et al.
Otter Memorial Paper (Chichester Institute, Bishop Otter Campus,
Chichester, West Sussex, U.K. PO19 4PE), 1998.
104 pages, paperback. $10.00.

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL
WILDLIFE LAW & POLICY, v.I.1
Kluwer Law Intl. (675 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139), 1998.
216 pages, paperback. $135/three issues.

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REVIEWS: Field Guides

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Marine Wildlife
From Puget Sound Through
the Inside Passage
by Steve Yates
Sasquatch Books (615 2nd Avenue,
Suite 260, Seattle, WA 98104), 1998.
264 pages, paperback; $14.95.

On the Trail of Bears
by Catherine & Remy Martin
On the Trail of Whales
by Jean-Michel Dumont
& Remy Marion

On the Trail of Big Cats
by Geraldine Veron
Barron’s Nature Travel Guides
(250 Wireless Blvd., Hauppauge,
NY 11788), 1988. 128 pages each,
paperback, $11.95.

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