Lousiana Supreme Court allows local cockfighting ban

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

NEW ORLEANS–Cockfighting is legal in Louisiana because no
state law says it isn’t. However, since no law expressly authorizes
it either, Caddo Parish has the right to ban it, the Louisiana
Supreme Court ruled on January 19.
“The decision overturned a district court order which kept
Sheriff Steve Prator from enforcing the parish animal cruelty
ordinance,” wrote Janet McConnaughey of Associated Press. “The
parish ban was passed in 1987, but Prator said it had never been
enforced until numerous complaints about cockfights at the Piney
Woods Game Club and the Ark-La-Tex Game Club Inc. prompted him to
look into the parish laws.”
The clubs sued, arguing that parrots and canaries are the
only birds covered by the state anti-cruelty law. Ark-La-Tex
secretary Drena Nix told McConnaughey that she expects to sue again,
since her club was given a business license when opened in 1997.

Zoo, conservationists buy out hunting rights

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

PITTSBURGH, VANCOUVER –The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium and
the British Columbia-based Raincoast Conserv-ation Foundation have
each taken sizeable habitats away from trophy hunters with recent
land acquisitions.
The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium announced on January 9 that it
is spending $2.5 million to buy the 615-acre Glen Savage Ranch from
Jerry and Iris Leydig of Fairhope, Pennsylvania.
“The ranch now offers hunting of whitetail deer, elk, red
stags, wild boar, buffalo and black bear. That will end,” wrote
Bill Zlatos of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Instead, the ranch
will become “an education and conservation center for breeding
elephants and other animals,” Zlatos said.
The Raincoast Conservation Found-ation on December 12, 2005
disclosed that a month earlier it paid $1.35 million Canadian (about
$1 million U.S.) to acquire the guiding and outfitting rights to more
than 20,000 square kilometers of B.C. coastal habitat stretching from
northern Vancouver Island to Princess Royal Island.
“Raincoast, with the six first nations that occupy the
territory, intends to put an immediate end to commercial hunting in
the area,” wrote Nicholas Read of the Vancouver Sun. “No one from
outside B.C. will be permitted to kill animals in the region for
sport. B.C. residents, who operate under different regulations,
may continue to hunt in the area, but members of the first nations
hope to see an end to that early next year.”

North America

League Against Cruel Sports gets a break

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

LONDON–The Royal Mail has agreed to
accept £2,000 from the League Against Cruel
Sports in lieu of as much as £500,000 in postage
due fees claimed after hunters hijacked a
fundraising appeal.
“A plea to supporters for donations to a
free billing address ended up involving the bomb
squad, police and Royal Mail fraud
investigators,” recounted Helen Nugent of The
Times of London.
“Problems began when hunt enthusiasts
heard about the drive. A round-robin e-mail was
sent to hunters urging them to send Christmas
cards, empty envelopes, and bulky packages.
Within a fortnight, van loads of bricks,
telephone directories, heavy books, abusive
letters and animal excrement were sent to the
league’s offices in South London. One hunter
posted a dead squirrel.”

Letters [March 2006]

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Hoarding cases

In declining to hear the Jenny Jones hoarding case [as
described in “U.S. Supreme Court endorses seizure of hoarded
animals,” March 2006], the Supreme Court did not uphold the right
of humane societies and animal control agencies to seize animals from
alleged hoarders and charge convicted hoarders for their care. It
did not uphold anything. The Court simply refused to hear the case,
as it refuses to hear all but a small percentage of cases brought to
it.
–Steve Wise
Boston, Massachusetts
<WiseBoston@aol.com>

Letters

BLM asks beef ranchers to buy wild horses

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Bureau of Land Management director Kathleen
Clarke and Public Lands Council president Mike Byrne on February 21,
2006 sent letters to more than 15,000 holders of BLM grazing permits,
asking them to buy some of the 7,000 wild horses and burros whom the
BLM was directed to sell “without limitation” by a stealth rider
slipped through Congress in November 2004.
Equine advocates decried the letter as a proposed “final
solution” for wild horses and burros.
“Any excess animal or the remains of an excess animal shall
be sold, if the excess animal is more than 10 years of age or the
excess animal has been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least
three times,” stipulated the rider, introduced by Senator Conrad
Burns (R-Montana).
The Public Lands Council “represents permittees who hold
leases and permits to graze livestock on the federal lands in the
West administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the United
States Forest Service. It also coordinates the federal lands
policies of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, American
Sheep Industry Association and the Association of National
Grasslands,” says the PLC letterhead.

Drought tests Kenyan and Zimbabwean hunting policies

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

NAIROBI, HARARE–The vultures inspecting drought-parched
Kenya and Zimbabwe have counterparts in the corridors of national
capitols, watching to see whose wildlife management mode will fail
first.
Kenya, since banning sport hunting in 1977, has made
non-consumptive wildlife watching the nation’s second largest and
best known industry.
Much of the faltering Zimbabwean economy is based on trophy hunting.
The Kenyan model requires attracting large numbers of
tourists, who in good times employ thousands of hotel staff,
drivers, guides, and souvenir vendors.
The Zimbabwean model draws far fewer people, who seek much
less by way of accommodation, minimizing the need for up-front
investment in infrastructure. Yet trophy hunters spend considerably
more per person than wildlife-watchers.

Chinese “Year of the Dog” begins with good omens

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

The Year of the Dog, observed throughout the regions of Asia
sharing cultural affinity to China, has rarely been auspicious for
dogs.
1910, for example, brought famine and a rise in dog-eating
to Korea, following a Japanese invasion. In 1922 the Chinese
Communist Party declared that dogs are social parasites. The
notoriously dog-hating Mao Tse Tung became head of the Chinese
Communist Party in 1934, began his rise to national rule in 1946,
and in 1958 purged both dogs and songbirds, after the Great Leap
Forward brought famine on a globally unprecedented scale.
The 1994 Year of the Dog predictably began in Beijing with a
dog massacre. The Beijing Youth News estimated that as many as
100,000 dogs inhabited the city when the killing started. The
Beijing Evening News pretended that dogs found by the police were
taken to “an animal shelter run by the Public Security Ministry,” but
China bureau correspondent Jan Wong of the Toronto Globe & Mail
learned otherwise.
Chief dog-killer Li Wearui boasted to Wong that his team beat
to death 351 dogs in 10 days. His assistant Fei Xiaoyang preferred
strangling dogs with steel wire. The Beijing Legal Daily published a
photo of police dragging a dog to death behind a jeep.

Ring-necked parakeets might take over London

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

LONDON–Ring-necked parakeets, brought
to Britain from India as exotic pets in Victorian
times, formed feral populations in London in the
early 20th century. They struggled through the
cold British winters for most of 100 years before
global warming changed the climate in their favor.
The United Kingdom Phenology Network,
described by Independent environmental editor
Michael McCarthy as “a massive database of the
timing of natural events, such as oak leaves
appearing, frogs sprawning, and swallows
returning,” has established that biological
spring comes to Britain three weeks earlier now
than 40 years ago.
Despite the significance of this finding
to agriculture, forestry, and species
conservation, the British government recently
cut off funding for the Phenology Network
headquarters at Monks Wood, in Cambridgeshire,
and also axed the Centre for Ecology and
Hydrology research stations at Winfrith, in
Dorset, and Banchory, near Aberdeen.

Europe

Falcons, chickens, & avian flu

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Falconing, along with factory farming, cockfighting,
bird-shooting, wild bird trafficking, and keeping caged songbirds,
has emerged as a factor in the increasingly rapid global spread of
the deadly H5N1 avian influenza.
As the March 2006 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, 92
humans in seven nations had died from H5N1. More than 30 nations had
experienced H5N1 outbreaks since 2003, 14 of them since February 1,
2006. Hit, in chronological order, were Iraq, Nigeria,
Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Iran, Austria,
Germany, Egypt, India, France, and Hungary.
More than 200 million domestic fowl have been killed in
mostly futile efforts to contain H5N1, according to the United
Nations Food & Agriculture Organization–almost entirely because of
the persistence of practices long opposed by the humane community.
Falconing became implicated when five trained hunting birds
died from H5N1 at a veterinary clinic in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi agriculture ministry officials confiscated and killed 37
falcons who were kept at the clinic.

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