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BOOKS: And the Waters Turned to Blood

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

And the Waters Turned to Blood:
The Ultimate Biological Threat
by Rodney Barker
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020), 1997. 352 pages, hardcover, $24.00

It’s a shame how this book
has been hyped. “Deadlier than
Ebola!” trumpets one press release,
building expectations of a Creightonesque
biological thriller. But
Pfiesteria piscicida is no fiction, and
frightening though the microorganism
may be, it doesn’t hold a candle
to the real horror of its discovery––
that without the tenacity of one outspoken
scientist, the world would
still be unaware of it.

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BOOKS: Turtle Bay

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Turtle Bay
by Saviour Pirotta,
art by Nilesh Mistry
Farrar, Straus & Girous (19 Union Square
West, New York, NY 10003), 1997.
28 pages, hardcover, $15.00.

Turtle Bay, about old Japanese sponge
diver who sweeps a remote beach to prepare it for
loggerhead turtle nesting, might be the best way to
explain to a child why a favorite beach (or a part of
it) is off limits, whether to help sea turtles, piping
plovers, clapper rails, or any other animals whose
needs conflict with human recreation.

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BOOKS: Scarlett Saves Her Family

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Scarlett Saves Her Family
by J.C. Suares & Jane Martin
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 1997.
96 pages, 50 photos, $20 hardcover.

You probably know the story of Scarlett ––the
New York alley cat, featured in People and elsewhere,
who on March 29, 1996 made five trips into a burning
building to save her kittens. Scarlett suffered severe
burns, but was rescued in turn,. with her family, by firefighter
David Giannelli. Scarlett and four kittens were
restored to health and placed for adoption by the North
Shore Animal League. The fifth kitten succumbed to panleuopenia,
an airborne virus that probably compounded
the after-effects of smoke inhalation.

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Marine life notes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Researchers at Auckland University in Wellington, New
Zealand, in mid-August announced that DNA typing of 30 samples of
whale meat bought in Japanese supermarkets found remains of humpback
and fin whales, confirming cearlier findings by conservation groups that
contraband species are being killed and sold. Neither humpbacks nor fin
whales have been killed legally since 1986, when the International Whaling
Commission moratorium on commercial whaling began. Japan did later buy
whale meat from abroad that was frozen before 1986, a Japan Fisheries official
told the New Zealand Press Association, but the most recent purchase,
of humpback meat from Iceland, was in 1991. Similar DNA findings
obtained by EarthTrust scientists were published by the peer-reviewed journal
Science in 1994, but Japan Fisheries has repeatedly challenged the data.

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Shock treatment for marine mammals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Bob Fletcher, president of the 200-vessel
Sportfishing Association of California, is touting a
high-energy ultrasonic anti-sea lion device, developed
by Pulsed Power Technologies, of San Diego, with aid
of a federal grant. According to Los Angeles Times
hunting/fishing columnist Pete Thomas, the device
produces “a brief concussive wave of energy that
affects the inner ears of mammals close enough to be
affected.” Fletcher told Thomas that it makes sea lions
“take off like scalded dogs.”
Added Pulsed Power Tecnologies president
Dick Ayres, “The fur huggers won’t be happy with
anything that annoys marine mammals, but this is by
far the most effective and least intrusive device that has
come out.” The west coast fishing industry, including
Fletcher, is lobbying in support of a recent National
Marine Fisheries Service recommendation that it should
be allowed to start killing pinnipeds “in situations
where California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals conflict
with human activities, such as at fishery sites and
marinas,” if nonlethal deterrents don’t work.

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Marine life feels the heat

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Global warming and krill fishing by Russia, Japan,
and the Ukraine have tipped the biomass balance of the
Antarctic to favor salp, another microscopic creature of little
food value to marine mammals, Antarctic Marine Living
Resources program researchers reported in June.
Generating red tides, salp blooms kill as well as
compete with krill. The rise of salp and decline of krill reportedly
coincides with a 35% drop in the krill-dependent King
George Island population of Adele penguins.
The decline of Antarctic krill is not why record numbers
of blue whales and other baleen whales gathered this summer
off the Farallon Islands, experts said, since North Pacific
baleen whales migrate no farther south than the equator, but
warm water currents called El Nino, also tentatively linked to
global warming, have depleted the cetacean food supply in
parts of the North Pacific.
The depletion hit sea birds too, especially common
murres, who failed to nest this year along the Oregon coast.
Northern currents have reportedly warmed so much that southeast
Alaska salmon netters recently hauled in a one-ton Mola
mola––an oceanic sunfish usually found off Mexico. Pacific
mackerel have followed the warm currents to hit newly
released chinook salmon hard off Vancouver Island.

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Making a bear problem

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

STOKES STATE FOREST, N.J.––With bills to ban bear
hunting pending before the New Jersey House and Senate, and a proposed
bear management plan awaiting consideration by the New Jersey
Fish, Game, and Wildlife Advisory Council in August, the New Jersey
Department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife needed a dramatic late July
incident to make their case that an estimated 350 to 550 bears,
statewide, pose an imminent threat to human safety.
Making that claim in support of an attempt to start a bear hunt
last year, without having a case to cite, NJ/DFGW officials were
embarrassed when opponents pointed out that New Jersey has never had
a bear incident doing noteworthy harm to a human.
Thus the NJ/DFGW was quick to ballyhoo a July 23 campground
encounter at Stokes State Forest, in which ranger Rob Sikoura
purportedly defended campers by rousting a mama bear and cubs, but
was forced to shoot the mama in self defense when she charged him as
he followed her across 40-foot-wide Flat Creek.

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Wolves sacrificed to grizzly reintroduction

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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.

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Sick circus elephant dies in hot truck

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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.

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