ADC GIVES POOR THE BIRDS

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.–– Thousands
of Canada goose carcasses sent to soup
kitchens around the U.S. by the Animal
Damage Control unit of the USDA might be
full of lead, mercury, lawn chemicals, and
potentially lethal microorganisms––but the
recipients may never know it, Friends of
Animals special investigator Carroll Cox discovered
July 10, while probing such a carcass
giveaway in Virginia.
Contrary to common assumption,
the gift meat is not USDA-inspected.
“The USDA does not regulate or
inspect wild meat,” USDA deputy chief
inspector for the Virginia region Maher
Haque affirmed to Cox.

Licensed to kill

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––You probably
think the Endangered Species Act, Marine
Mammal Protection Act, and Migratory Bird
Treaty Act protect wildlife.
What they actually do is require special
permission to kill or harass wildlife––and
spot-checking recent requests for permits and
exemptions, ANIMAL PEOPLE and Friends
of Animals’ special investigator Carroll Cox
quickly confirmed that the permitting and
exempting procedures are easily and often
manipulated.
“Permitting and exemptions are the
Achilles heel of wildlife law enforcement,”
says Cox, a former special investigator for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and game warden
for the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “With the right permit or an exemption,
you can do anything.”

ESA rewrite looms

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Seven
years of political battling over Endangered
Species Act reauthorization appear headed
toward quick resolution.
The White House in late July signaled
eagerness to lower the profile of ESA
issues before the 1998 presidential campaign,
when both vice president Albert Gore and
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt may seek to
succeed Bill Clinton by building a similar
coalition of moderate conservative and traditional
Democratic support.
As presiding officer over the Senate,
negotiating ratification of international treaties,
Gore has pleased conservatives by favoring
trade over strict species protection under the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, the International
Whaling Convention, and the Declaration of
Panama, recently implemented by repeal of
the “dolphin-safe” tuna import standard (see
page 2). Babbitt has curried conservative
favor, meanwhile, by rapidly increasing the
number of National Wildlife Refuges open to
hunting and fishing: half when he took office,
nearly two-thirds now.

ANIMAL OBITUARIES

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Zooky (above), a husky mix who
was once “the fastest dog ever,” died on June
11 at approximately age 11, from congestive
heart failure that no longer responded to treatment.
Adopted from the Southhold, Long
Island animal shelter in July 1987, Zooky in
her prime outraced every dog of any breed she
ever met. On leash, she loped 25 miles with
ease and begged for more. Yet she was never
really fully domesticated, digging for water
like a coyote and regarding small animals as
potential prey—even newly arrived cats,
though she would eventually accept them as
family. She is missed by the entire ANIMAL
P E O P L E entourage, but especially by her
favorite cats Keeter and Voltaire, who spent
many an evening kneading her and purring.

Uncategorized

HUMAN OBITUARIES

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Jacques Cousteau, 87, died June
25. Often ill as a child, Cousteau swam for
his health near his home in St. Andre de
Cubzac, France. He first dived in 1920 on a
visit to Lake Harvey, Vermont, but only
began diving in earnest after a 1936 car crash
forced him to leave the French Naval
Academy flight school. With engineer Emile
Gagnan, Cousteau in 1943 invented the
aqualung and took up underwater filming,
earning the French Legion of Honor for antiNazi
espionage. In 1950 Cousteau bought the
minesweeper Calypso and re-equipped it as a
floating film and TV studio. The screen edition
of his first book, The Silent World
(1953), won the Grand Prize at the 1956
Cannes Film Festival and his first of three
Academy Awards. Cousteau initially touted
the oceans’ economic potential, but reinvented
himself as the world’s most prominent and
popular ecological crusader in The Living Sea
(1963) and World Without Sun (1965), along
with the ABC specials, The World of Jacques
Cousteau (1966) and The Undersea World of
Jacques Cousteau (1968). “The only creatures
on Earth who have bigger and maybe
better brains than humans are the Cetacea,

Obituaries

REVIEWS: Shiloh

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Shiloh
Starring Michael Moriarty,
Rod Steiger, and Scott Wilson
Warner Brothers Family Entertainment
video. 93 minutes.

Based on the Newberry Award-winning
novel of the same title by Phyllis
Reynolds Naylor, the live-action Shiloh also
resembles the Walt Disney animated classic
The Fox & The Hound. In each film, a hardedged
hillbilly recluse demonstrates the more
obviously despicable aspects of hunting, trapping,
and poaching; kicks and threatens to
kill a dog who doesn’t hunt; and eventually
commits at least one kind act, inspired by the
bond between the dog and in the former, a
boy, in the latter, a fox.

BOOKS: Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Bonobo:
The Forgotten Ape
Text by Franz de Waal.
Photos by Franz Lanting.
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley
Way, Berkeley, CA 94720), 1997.

“With this book,” wrote Meredith Small
in a prepublication blurb, “de Waal and Lanting
ask us to give bonobos their due––to be considered
alongside the better-known common chimpanzee
as close human cousins. How nice to have the
peaceable, sexy bonobo added to the path of
human evolution! Bonobos represent the silver
lining in our ape heritage.”

BOOKS: Bird Brains: the intelligence of crows, ravens, magpies, and jays

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Bird Brains: the intelligence of crows, ravens, magpies, and jays by Candace Savage
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1997. 114 pages, paperback, $18.00.

“The corvids are the top of the line
in avian evolution,” Candace Savage writes,
“among the most recent and successful of
modern birds. From some unknown pinpoint
beginning, they have diversified and expanded
to occupy most of the globe. Whether you go
to the Sahara or the Amazon rain forest,” or
for that matter the Arctic, “you will likely be
met by some kind of crow or crow cousin,”
such as a jay, “who will eye you boldly and
shout if you come too close.”
According to Native American legend,
says Savage, it was a crow cousin,
Raven, who attached visible genitals to male
mammals as a practical joke.

BOOKS: Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery In Nature

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery In Nature
by Harry W. Greene. Photos by Michael & Patricia Fogden.
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way,
Berkeley, CA 94720), 1997. 351 pages, hardback, $45.

Harry W. Greene, curator of
herpetology at the University of
California’s Museum of Vertebrate
Zoology, had the bad luck to be awaiting
the imminent publication of his
opus, the summation of everything
known about snake evolution, just as
Michael Caldwell of the Field Museum
in Chicago and Michael Lee of the
University of Sydney announced perhaps
the most important paleontological
find about snakes ever––”The missing
link between the snake and the lizard,”

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