Space for the birds

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

How far should habitat protection
go? How big is critical habitat?
A four-ounce common tern banded
at Helsinki University in Finland last June
gave a holistic answer on January 24 when
captured by ornithologist Clive Minton of
Victoria, Australia, having winged 16,000
miles, 125 miles a day, since she left
Finland on or about August 15. The flight
broke the record held since 1956 by an Arctic
tern who flew 14,000 miles, from White
Russia to Fremantle, Australia.
Swallow-tailed kites have been
known to make one of the longest migrations
of any raptor since the 1960s, when a kite
banded in southern Florida was shot in southeastern
Brazil, but their winter habitat was
discovered only this past winter, when ecologist
Ken Meyer of the Big Cypress National
Preserve tracked a kite from Florida to the
same part of Brazil through the use of a tiny
satellite transmitter, weighing just a twelfth
of an ounce, glued to the kite’s tailfeathers.

A sheep who keeps ethicists awake

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

EDINBURGH––Embryologist Ian
Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh,
Scotland, on February 23 announced the birth
of a lamb cloned from a mammary gland cell
taken from one adult ewe, fused with an egg
cell of another adult ewe, and implanted into a
surrogate mother last July.
The first known successful cloning of
a mammal from fully developed adult cells, the
experiment was done by a team of 12, of
whom only Wilmut and three others knew the
details––and the announcement was delayed
until the team patented the lamb, named Dolly.

FISH & WILDLIFE SERVICE USES REFUGES AS PROP FOR FUR TRADE

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Any illusions that animal and
habitat defenders might have had that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service is acting in good faith as regards trapping in National
Wildlife Refuges would appear to be shattered by a newly leaked
28-page memo issued to “All Refuge Managers” on January 28
by Stan Thompson, acting Division of Refuges chief.
The Thompson memo makes clear, in thinly veiled
language, that refuge managers are to back fur trade opposition
to the twice-delayed European Community ban on the import of
pelts from animals possibly caught by leghold trapping.
The memo further indicates that a Congressionally
mandated internal review of trapping within National Wildlife
Refuges is to be done in such a manner as to produce documents
of propaganda value in opposition to the EC ban.

Deer hunting kills birds

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

PHILADELPHIA– – Managing
deer to suit hunters may be the major cause
of vanishing songbirds.
“We’re talking about vireos, warblers,
ovenbirds, all birds who use that bottom
five feet” of the forest ecosystem,
explained National Zoo wildllife biologist
William McShea as far back as 1992,
assessing deer damage to the Shenandoah
Valley, in Virginia. “These birds are all
declining in eastern forests.”
But that’s a message the National
Audubon Society avoided last December 12
at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
near Tinicum, Pennsylvania. Unveiling a
new national program to encourage bird
habitat conservation, the speakers addressed
“habitat loss” and “fragmentation,” blaming
development rather than deer nibblings.

Brucellosis, bison, wardens and the horses they ride in on

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL
PARK––The guns fell silent on January 31,
at least temporarily, after shootings and shipments
to slaughter killed 25% of the bison in
America’s most famous herd. News video of
bison falling dead and a Fund for Animals call
of a boycott of tourism to Montana brought a
change of plans from National Park Service
director Roger G. Kennedy, Forest Service
chief Michael Dombeck, and Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service administrator
Terry L. Medley.

Who is the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service servicing?

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––In the last week of January,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service embraced a partnership with
the trophy hunting organization Safari Club International, permitted
the U.S. Navy to kill every endangered ovenbird on
Farallon de Medinilla 2.5 times each, and advanced a scheme
to kill coyotes, purportedly to rebuild the endangered
Columbian whitetailed deer population on the heavily overgrazed
Washington mainland sector of the Julia Butler Hansen
Refuge, along the Columbia River.

TRIBUTE TO CARL SAGAN

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Carl Sagan, astronomer, pioneer
in exobiology, and author of many best-selling
books, died of pneumonia on December
20, 1996, at age 62 from complications
resulting from a bone marrow transplant
which, ironically, had cured him of
myelodysplasia, a bone marrow disease he
had battled for two years.
Sagan actively and sympathetically
participated in public discussion of animal
rights for at least the last 20 years of his scientific
career. He viewed intelligence as the
definitive requirement for the possession of
rights, rather than the capacity to suffer, but
did not draw the line at the limits of human
intelligence. He remained aware of animal
suffering, raising it in works that might otherwise
have been quoted in defense of unrestricted
animal use.

OBITUARIES

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Judi Jones, 51, director of operations
since 1989 for the Friends of the Sea
Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna
Beach, California, died January 13 of complications
after gall bladder surgery. A registered
nurse, Jones began helping Friends of
the Sea Lion as a volunteer in 1983. The animal
care staff at Sea World San Diego on
January 17 named a rescued baby gray whale
J.J., in her honor.

Obituaries

STRATEGIES FOR ACTIVISTS FROM THE CAMPAIGN FILES OF HENRY SPIRA

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

“This handbook is a project of Animal Rights International, POB 214, Planetarium Station, New York, NY 10024, and is not for sale.”

If you’re serious about
activism, meaning serious about
getting results, not just venting
spleen, drop Henry Spira a note
requesting Strategies for Activists.
Asking for some of the same information
is more-or-less how I got to
know Spira, 16 years ago, as a frustrated
Quebec newspaper muckrake.
I’d exposed fraudulent
manipulation of animal tests to
defend corporate and governmental
entities against liability in connection
with reckless toxic chemical
use, but even though I’d caught
bureaucrats reversing the course of
major rivers, on paper, to deny evident
pollution, I hadn’t been able to
convert exposure to reform.

« 1 … 463 464 465 466 467 … 648 »