Day: July 1, 1999

Legislation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg
and U.S. Representative Robert
Menendez, both Democrats from New
Jersey, on June 3 introduced the Safe Air
Travel for Animals Act, to strengthen the
right of persons sending animals by air to be
fully informed of the transport conditions,
and to double the penalty against airlines for
causing the injury, loss, or death of an animal
to $5,000, from the present $2,500.
The state legislatures of New
York and Illinois each recently approved
bills to create a felony penalty for especially
aggressive forms of cruelty to animals––and
New York governor George Pataki has
already signed the New York version into
law. The Illinois version additionally provides
that persons previously convicted of
aggravated cruelty shall be charged with a
felony for a repeated alleged offense.

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Jacques Cousteau’s Silent World

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

PARIS––Bernard Violet, author of
a 1993 biography of the late undersea explorer
and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau, on June 17
disclosed documents he said he had obtained
since Cousteau’s death that may belie many of
Cousteau’s claims about his early career.
Violet likened Cousteau’s alleged
autobiographical misrepresentations to later
instances in which Cousteau used abusive
techniques to get dramatic film footage of wild
marine mammals––techniques which
Cousteau himself eventually acknowledged,
regreted in public statements, and denounced,
even as the films he made helped to create the
international movements to save whales, seals,
and other marine life.

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What seals, bears, coyotes, lynx, pumas, and foxes have in common

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

The House of Commons fisheries committee in early June yanked and rewrote at a secret meeting a scientific report on the interaction of seals and cod off Atlantic Canada to recommend that seals be totally extirpated from northeastern Newfoundland, the southern and northern Gulf of St. Lawrence, and elsewhere “as deemed necessary” to keep seals out of the depleted cod fishery. The rewrite reportedly reversed the findings and recommendations of the committee’s scientific advisors, and was presented to media as “unanimously approved,” while dissenter Peter Stoffer (New Democratic Party, British Columbia) was attending his father’s funeral. The 1999 Atlantic Canada seal hunt ended in June with a reported toll of 244,552 harp seals and 201 hooded seals killed: 89% of the harp seal quota, and just 2% of the hooded seal quota. “Because many seals are shot or clubbed and then escape to die beneath the ice, and because many dead animals are discarded and not properly counted, the actual kill of harp seals in 1999 was probably between 400,000 and 500,000,” projected International Fund for Animal Welfare spokesperson Rick Smith. Many sealers admitted dumping seal carcasses this year, as prices for them collapsed in a glutted market.

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No-Kill notes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Lynda Foro left Sun City, Arizona,
in June to become director of the Pet Savers
Foundation, the outreach arm of the North
Shore Animal League. Her duties will
include continuing all current DTFA projects––the
biggest of which is the annual N o
Kill Conference, co-sponsored by North
Shore/Pet Savers since 1995. (See ads, page 7
and back cover.) The North Shore grants program
remains under the direction of operations
manager Perry Fina, who had divided time
between North Shore and Pet Savers positions.

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Farewells

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Rutgers University law professors
Gary Francione and Anna Charlton in May
closed the Animal Rights Law Clinic, which
they founded together in 1990. “Francione and
I will continue to teach a seminar on animal
rights,” Charlton said. The clinic reportedly
drew about 100 telephone inquiries a week,
but had difficulty attracting enough volunteer
law students and funding to keep up with the
potential caseload.
Cindy Adams, editor of the
American SPCA magazine Animal Watch
since 1990, announced her departure in the
summer 1999 edition and didn’t answer an
ANIMAL PEOPLE inquiry as to where she
was going, why. “Thanks, again, Henry
Spira,” Adams wrote in her final editorial,
“for reminding us that [farm animals] account
for roughly 97% of animal suffering but less
than 5% of animal welfare budgets.”

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Saving turtles

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Indifference on the part of the
Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission
didn’t deter Marianne Allen, animal
abuse director for the Sunshine Ranches
Homeowners Association, after resident
Sharon Armellini reported spotting a turtle
trapper in action. Allen recently led a sweep of
community waterways that freed 25 turtles
from traps and found 10 others who had died in
traps. Trapping and exporting Florida softshell
turtles to Asia and Asian-style markets elsewhere
in the U.S. remains legal, despite a
recent global crash in turtle populations,
caused mainly by human consumption.

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People

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

“The last rodeo that animal rights
activist Eric Mills remembers running out
of town was the Gay Rodeo five years ago,”
began Venise Wagner of the San Francisco
Examiner in a June 16 article about Mills’
opposition to the Juneteenth Black Rodeo, held
in Golden Gate Park on of Emancipation Day.
Wagner never mentioned that Action for
Animals founder Mills also works for gay
rights––a charged omission in a city known for
militant gay activism. Mills said the demo was
a huge success anyhow.

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Some good news, for a change

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

While the Makah tribe of western
Washington killed a whale on May 17, as
described on page one of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, the Blackfeet tribe of
Montana dedicated a corner of their reservation
to a private effort to reintroduce the swift
fox, described by predator expert Todd
Wilkinson in the May 22 edition of The
Christian Science Monitor. Sacred to at least
six Great Plains tribes, swift foxes were
trapped to declared extinction in Montana by
1970, but isolated subpopulations survived in
Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming. Winning
tribal approval of the reintroduction in August
1998, Blackfeet wildlife manager Ira
Newbreast obtained 30 captive-bred swift
foxes from the Cochrane Ecological Institute,
which is supervising swift fox recovery
in Canada, and released them last fall.

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Animal Welfare Associates signs compliance pact

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Animal Welfare Associates Inc., of
Stamford, Connecticut, on May 24 responded to a
warning from the State of Connecticut Commissioner
of Consumer Protection that “AWA’s
advertising, solicitations and other communications
are or may have been misleading in violation of the
Solicitation of Charitable Funds Act” by signing an
Assurance of Voluntary Compliance.
AWA admitted no fault, but pledged “to
cease representing to the public that it provides animal
placement or adoption services unless it shall:
maintain dated records of the identity/description of
each animal accepted, the manner in which each
animal is obtained, and the identity of the person
who accepts each animal or the eventual disposition
of each animal not adopted as a pet”; and “to cease
representing to the public that it in any way operates
an animal shelter.”

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