ESA update

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:
WASHINGTON D.C. Senators
Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), with co-sponsors
Bennett Johnston (D-La.), and Richard Shelby
(R-Ala.), on May 9 introduced the first of three
expected Republican drafts of a revised
Endangered Species Act. Largely authored by
timber industry lobbyists, the Gorton bill would
end the federal obligation to try to save all
endangered species. Instead the Secretary of the
Interior would be allowed to rule that a species
should go extinct. The bill would also lump
together captive and wild animals in counting
populations, meaning for instance that hatchery-
bred salmon, with little ability to survive in the
ocean, would count toward meeting the conser-
vation goals of endangered runs. In addition, the
bill would virtually preclude the designation of
protected critical habitat, and require taxpayers
to cover costs of routine corporate compliance.

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LAB SHORTS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Using pigs to grow spare parts
for humans came closer to reality with
the late April announcements that a team
at the Lahey Hitchcock Clinic in
Burlington, Massachusetts, had trans-
planted pig tissue into the brain of a 59-
year-old man in hopes of reversing
Parkinson’s disease, while a team at Duke
University created genetically engineered
pigs whose bodies include two human pro-
teins that prevent hyperacute tissue rejec-
tion. “In societies where animals are
killed in the tens of millions for food,”
wrote Dr. John Favre of the London
University Institute of Child Health, in a
Nature Medicine editorial accompanying
publication of the Duke data, “it would be
difficult to argue on ethical grounds for a
proscription on the killing of a tiny num-
ber of pigs to save the lives and restore the
health of sick and dying patients.”

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PETA, Romero court updates

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

The Nevada Supreme Court has
withdrawn their January 27, 1994 reversal
of the $4.2 million libel verdict won by
orangutan trainer Bobby Berosini in August
1990 against PETA, PETA director of inves-
tigations Jeanne Rouch, the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, PAWS executive
director Pat Derby, and dancer Ottavio
Gesmundo. An FBI probe of alleged conflicts
of interest in other Nevada cases found that
8th Judicial District Judge Jack Lehman is an
advisor to the Animal Foundation of Nevada,
a Las Vegas low-cost neutering organization.
Lehman was appointed by Governor Bob
Miller to serve on the three-judge panel that
heard the PETA appeal of the Berosini ver-
dict, after Chief Justice Robert Rose with-
drew and two other justices were occupied

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GROWLS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Wilderness Society president Jon
Roush, who makes $125,000 a year, in
February and March sold $140,000 worth
of old growth timber from an 80-acre tract on
his 763-acre Montana ranch, bordering the
Bitteroot National Forest. “The area he cut,”
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
reported in The Nation of April 24, “is less
than two miles from a national wilderness area
and well within the boundaries of the
Salmon/Selway Ecosystem ––the largest com-
plex of wild land in the Lower 48 and home to
elk, black bears, mountain lions, and grey
wolves.” Roush in 1983 successfully sued the
U.S. Forest Service, contending that logging
and roadbuilding would irrevocably harm the
watershed. The roads built then were used to
remove the logs from his own land.

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People

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Esther Mechler, founder of the
low-cost neutering referral service Spay/USA
and the Focus on Animals video library, has
won the first annual Geraldine R. Dodge
Humane Ethics in Action Award, a prize of
$10,000 to be used as the winner sees fit.
Begun in 1990, Spay/USA made circa 1,500
referrals a year through 1993; taken over by
the North Shore Animal League in mid-1993
and now run as part of the NSAL-affiliated
Pet Savers Foundation, it made 8,640 refer-
rals, resulting in 14,002 neutering opera-
tions, during the first three months of 1995.
Dennis White, former head of the
American Humane Association animal pro-
tection division, has left, after 19 years, for
undisclosed personal reasons.

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Hunting

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Johnie Young, treasurer of a group trying to repeal the
ban on bear and cougar hunting with dogs approved by Oregon
voters last November, pleaded no contest in November 1990, along
with his wife Diana, to poaching bears and trafficking in bear paws
and gall bladders. State police records indicate Young killed 32 black
bears, including cubs, between April 1987 and June 1989––along
with three cougars and a bobcat. A police undercover video showed
Young leading several hunting parties who used dogs to tree bears,
shot the bears out of the trees, and allowed the dogs to maul the bears
after they fell.

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Fund tries to save bison, mountain goats

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, the Fund
for Animals was scrambling to prevent the shooting of
from 80 to 150 bison who had wandered from Yellowstone
National Park into the Gallatin National Forest, north of
West Yellowstone, Montana. Montana state veterinarian
Clarence Siroky said state wardens would try to chase the
bison back into Yellowstone with helicopters, but would
shoot them to prevent the spread of brucellosis, a disease
causing stillbirths in cattle, if that tactic failed. Although
there is no evidence that bison can transmit brucellosis to
other species of cattle under natural conditions, and only a
small portion of the Yellowstone herd is believed to be
infected, Montana officials shot 420 bison who left the
park during the winter.

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Agriculture

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Twelve activists were arrested and
two hurt at Brightlingsea, England, on
April 18, as they failed to halt the export of
1,200 sheep to Belgium, following an April 12
ruling by the High Court that local authorities
had no right to ban live animal exports. The
ruling undid export bans won through a winter
of protest at all major British cattle ports.
Australia’s effort to resume sheep
sales to Saudi Arabia after a four-year hiatus
hit a snag on May 8 when Saudi inspectors
diverted the first cargo of 75,000 sheep to

Jordan because they didn’t think the sheep
were healthy enough to be unloaded at Jeddah.
A second ship carrying 30,000 sheep changed
destinations voluntarily. Australia sold up to
3.5 million sheep a year to Saudi Arabia before
1991, when the frequent arrival of diseased
sheep caused the Saudis to cut off the trade.

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WARRANTS TIE PROVIMI VEAL, LAMB TO ILLEGAL DRUGS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

MILWAUKEE––Newly unsealed
search warrants executed in September 1994
by U.S. Customs Service special agent Steve
Sutherland allege the closest links yet
between the Provimi Veal Corporation, of
Waukesha, Wisconsin, the largest distribu-
tor of milk-fed veal and lamb in the U.S.,
and the illegal use of clenbuterol, a banned
steroid. The drug speeds the growth of calves
and lambs––but humans who eat clenbuterol-
tainted meat may suffer an accelerated heart
rate, muscle tremors, headaches, dizziness,
nausea, fever, and chills.
According to the warrants, copies
of which were obtained by Humane Farming
Association investigator Gail Eisenitz, the
clenbuterol traffic directly involved Aat
Groenvelt, who founded Provimi in 1962,
introduced the use of the veal crate to North
America, and was also instrumental in pro-
moting the popularity of “milk-fed spring
lamb,” essentially the meat of lambs raised
like veal calves.

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