Coloradans seek trap ban initiative

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

DENVER––Colorado People Allied With
Wildlife will on Febuary 1, 1996 begin seeking the
54,000 signatures needed to put an anti-trapping, snaring,
and wildlife poisoning initative on the 1996 state
ballot. A Colorado State University survey commissioned
by the Colorado Division of Wildlife found earlier
this year that 61% of the electorate would favor
such a ban, with 28% opposed and 11% undecided.
Addresss CPAW c/o Robert Angell, 702 S. Corona
St., Denver, CO 80209; 303-722-3966.
“The decision to try a ballot initiative was
made after all other avenues were exhausted,” said
Angell in an October 9 appeal. “In 1990 an anti-trapping
bill was shredded in the state senate natural
resources committee. Last year a bill to appoint
wildlife commissioners in a different manner and to
reorganize and reorient the activities of CDOW met a
similar fate in the state senate agriculture committee.

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Sea Wolf seeks to spare foxes

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.––The Sea
Wolf Alliance is seeking final U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service approval for an experiment
in the nonlethal humane extirpation
of non-native blue foxes from Elma and
Inikla islands in the eastern Aleutians, to
be supervised by Alaska Maritime National
Wildlife Refuge senior biologist Ed Bailey.
“If the immuno-contraceptive
which is the subject of our study proves to
be permanent in blue foxes,” reports Sea
Wolf Alliance president Jeanne McVey, “it
will be used by the USFWS in place of
lethal methods of fox removal, such as
leghold traps and cyanide. On some of the
larger, more rugged islands, our immunocontraceptive
will, we hope, be used in
place of poisoned drop-baits.”

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European trapped fur import ban closer––maybe

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

DENVER – –The likelihood Europe
will finally implement a 1991 ban on the
import of U.S. and Canadian trapped fur––if
only as a gesture––increased October 2 when
International Standards Organization technical
committee on trap standards chair Neal
Jotham, of Canada, acknowledged that,
“There is no possibility of reaching a consensus”
on what constitutes a “humane” trap.
The ISO concession enables the
enforcement of European Council Regulation
32254/91, adopted five years ago as an ultimatim
to the fur industry to either end cruel
trapping or cease the import of trapped fur.
Under the regulation, use of leghold traps
will simultaneously be banned throughout the
EC nations, effective on January 1, 1996.
As much as 70% of all fur trapped
in the U.S. is exported to Europe. Thus the
import ban, if it sticks, could cripple the
already declining trapping industry.

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Hunting predators

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

California governor Pete Wilson on
October 17 signed a bill to put the state ban on
puma hunting back before the voters. The state
legislature halted puma hunting in 1972, when the
puma population was estimated at 2,400. An initiative
approved by voters in 1990 made the halt “permanent,”
except when pumas threaten people or
livestock. Hunting groups claim the puma population
is now up to 6,000, and have amplified reports
of puma sightings over the past few years, especially
since two women were killed in separate
attacks during 1994.

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ELEPHANTS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The Smithsonian Institution
and Malaysian National Parks and
Wildlife Protection Department o n
October 5 began an attempt to track rogue
elephants by satellite. The idea is to head
the rogues––believed to be just a few individuals
among a wild herd of about
2,000––away from potentially lethal conflicts
with farmers and villagers. The
Smithsonian has used the same technology
to track mountain goats in India and Tibet,
and turtles in the Philippines. The transmitter/collar
each elephant must be made
to wear costs $6,000, project coordinator
Michael Stuwe said, and the annual cost
of tracking could be as high as $10,000
per elephant.

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Trafficking

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service on September 25 intercepted 60 bear
gallbladders that were hidden among a ton
of reindeer antlers arriving from Russia at
the Anchorage International Airport.
Hong Kong customs officers on
October 4 seized 1,500 dried dog penises,
airmailed from Thailand labeled “Chinese
medicine.” To be sold as a tonic to boost
male sexual performance, the penises were
valued at 87¢ each.
British Columbia on October 17
laid 29 charges of smuggling bear gallbladders
against 11 individuals and businesses as
result of a July raid on several stores in
Vancouver’s Chinatown.

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RELIGION & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Brigitte Bardot “was the picture
of elegance,” for a September 27 audience
with Pope Jean Paul II, a day before her
61st birthday, Reuter correspondent Jude
Webber reported, “clad in a tight brown
trouser suit, low-cut pink top, wearing flowers
in her upswept long hair.” Said Bardot
after visiting the Pope, “We talked of animals,
of course. He told us he thought of
them, and they need our help.” Bardot quit
her film career in 1973 to devote herself to
animal protection.
Monsoon floods inundated the
temple at Pathum Thani, Thailand, in
early October, revealing to newspaper
photographers an elephant named
D i a m o n d whom abbot Pra Kru Udom
Pawana-pirat has kept chained to a tree for
nearly 20 years to attract worshippers. The
temple sells the visitors food to give
Diamond––but he rarely gets enough.
Diamond “is skinny, bony, and not healthy,
especially mentally,” said Friends of the
Asian Elephants Foundation representative
Leutchai Kladsri, who tried unsuccessfully to
buy him. Objected Pawana-pirat, “I never torture
him.”
Radio “sex doctor” Ruth
Westheimer read from a prayer book in
Brooklyn on October 3 while a friend swung a
live chicken over his head in a Hassidic Yom
Kippur rite called “shlug kaporos.” After the
swinging, the chickens are killed according to
kosher law and given to the poor.
Faith healers caught a male and
female crocodile on September 30 in
Yaounde, capital of Cameroon; dressed the
male in a fake beard and pants; painted the
female’s claws with red nail polish; and
burned both alive as “bewitched.”

Down in Monterey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

MONTEREY, California––Alarmed by
the decline of sea life within the Monterey Bay
National Marine Sanctuary, stretching from the
Golden Gate area off San Francisco to the vicinity of
Hearst’s Castle at San Simeon, diver Ed Cooper of
Pacific Grove and underwater photographer Kevin
McDonnell of Seaside have proposed strengthening
the existing federal protections by creating an undersea
park straddling the Hopkins Marine Refuge at
Point Cabrillo, just west of the Monterey Bay
Aquarium. The park would ban all fishing and marine
life collection within an area extending 200 to 300
yards offshore, to a depth of 60 feet.

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Still no sweetness and light at Sugarloaf

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

SUGARLOAF KEY, Fla.–– Controversy
over the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary flared again on
October 4 when marine mammal veterinarian Joseph
Geraci, brought from Canada by the National Marine
Fisheries Service to do yet another of many inspections
of the site in recent months, flunked Sugarloaf health
care in a four-page report to Dale Schwindaman,
USDA Deputy Administrator for Regulatory
Enforcement and Animal Care. Geraci called for either
“a major overhaul of SDS philosophy, program and
resources,” or “relocating the dolphins to one or more
facilities with strong established health care programs.”
At issue: Geraci believes the Sugarloaf dolphins
should be kept sling-trained to enable close
inspection and blood-drawing to make sure they do not
transfer disease to the wild population. Sugarloaf director
of rehabilitation Ric O’Barry––who was away at the
time of the inspection––believes all response to human
command must be extinguished, to insure that the dolphins
pursue a wild way of life upon release instead of
hanging around harbors begging.

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