Poachers

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

California wardens on

January 28 broke up the Ace

Hunting Club, a bear poaching ring

allegedly run by William Jim Taek

Lee, 35. Trophy hunters paid Lee

$1,500 apiece to be guided to bears;

Lee then sold bear parts both local-

ly and to Korea. The operation

reportedly killed 30 bears and net-

ted $600,000 In a parallel but

apparently unrelated case, t h e

Pennsylvania Game Commission

five days later charged Tae-Ukand

Elaine S. Kang of Coatesville,

Pennsylvania, with illegally traf-

ficking in bear galls.

Zoo notes

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Saved from bankruptcy two years

ago by public donations of $1.2 million and a

gift of $2.4 million from Kuwait, the London

Zoo in 1993 recorded a profit of nearly

$500,000––its first profit since 1976.

The Duke University Primate

Center on January 31 achieved the first birth

in captivity of a golden crowned sifaka, a

highly endangered lemur.

Birds

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The January/February edition of World Watch, the journal of the

Worldwatch Institute, postulated that wild birds are the “canaries in the coal mine”

whose decline warns of forthcoming ecodisaster. The article cited studies finding that

1,000 of the 9,600 known bird species are endangered or threatened; 70% of known

species are decining in numbers; and 2,600 species are involved in international trade.

Under pressure to provide targets for hunters and faced with crashing

populations of most migratory waterfowl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is consid-

ering lifting a ban on goose hunting along the Pacific Flyway. The ban was imposed to

protect the cackling Canada goose and the Pacific white-fronted goose, whose num-

bers dropped from 300,000 to 28,500 and from 500,000 to 93,900 during the 1980s,

but are now back up to 164,300 and 275,100, respectively.

Coyote-killing “like calling a girl”

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

GILLETTE, Wyoming––Coyote, fox,

and rabbit-killing contests and bounty programs

popped up around the west in midwinter––in

response, organizers said, to a year-old moratori-

um on coyote-killing by the federal Animal

Damage Control Program, won through a lawsuit

filed by the Humane Society of the U.S. Ranchers

argued that nonlethal coyote control hasn’t worked,

citing an American Sheep Industry Association

report that coyotes in Wyoming and Colorado have

learned to run sheep dogs to exhaustion, attack

them in packs, and split up so that some can divert

the dogs while others kill sheep. They claimed huge

livestock losses to an alleged overpopulation of coy-

otes and foxes, although killing contest participants

averaged only two dead coyotes and one dead fox

per 18 days of hunting. ASIA and other ranch lob-

bies are trying to lift the ADC moratorium––along

with a ban on the use of spring-fired traps called M-

44s that shoot poison into coyotes’ mouths. The

traps are banned to protect eagles, who likewise

may snatch the bait with fatal consequences.

ALASKAN WOLF MASSACRE: SIERRA CLUB BREAKS BOYCOTT

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska––Alaska’s “ground-based” wolf-killing campaign in

Game Management Unit 20A, south of Fairbanks, was more than $50,000 over bud-

get in early February, with only 84 wolves killed out of a quota of 150––tending to

affirm the view of wolf expert Gordon Haber, Friends of Animals, and the Alaska

Wildlife Alliance that the state greatly overestimated the wolf population of the area

to begin with. Only $100,000 was to be spent on the wolf-killing, including $30,000

for personnel and $15,000 for helicopter rentals, but by mid-January personnel costs

were already over $60,000 and helicopter rentals were at $23,000, the AWA reported.

Finding the federal Airborne Hunting Act impossible to enforce when state

law allows “trappers” to spot wolves from the air, land, walk 300 feet, and shoot

them, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on December 22 proposed a ban on killing

any free-ranging wolves or wolverines on Alaskan National Wildlife Refuges the

same day a hunter is airborne. Killing trapped wolves would still be permitted.

SPECTACLES

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

A group of Ecuadoran school children

in late January donated their allowances, sold toys,

and performed on street corners to raise funds to

feed polar bears, elephants, seals, and horses aban-

doned in Quito by the Circus of Czars, from St.

Petersburg, Russia. The circus manager vanished

with the receipts from a successful tour, leaving the

human performers stranded, as creditors seized

their equipment. As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to

press, help was reportedly en route from business

leaders and environmental groups.

Good deeds

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Veterinarians Jeff Young and

Mark Chamberlain of Planned

Pethood Plus held their third annual

male cat neuter-a-thon in Boulder,

Colorado, on January 30––and donated

their $7 per cat fee to Mission Wolf, a

refuge for wolves and wolf hybrids in

Silver Cliff, Colorado.

Tucson veterinarians Reuben

Merideth and Barbara Page in early

January donated a $1,400 cataract

removal operation to give partial sight to

a bighorn lamb, who was apparently

abandoned by her mother after going

blind but was rescued by hikers who

turned her over to the Arizona Game

and Fish Department. The lamb will

probably be donated to a zoo or a cap-

tive breeding program.

Klein quits fur

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Designer Calvin Klein announced

February 11 that his firm had not renewed a

labeling agreement with Alixandre Furs of

New York City, which expired at the end of

January, and would no longer be involved in

the fur trade. Klein followed the examples of

other top designers including Georgio

Armani, Bill Blass, and Carolyn Herrera.

He said a PETA protest at his office on

January 25 had nothing to do with his deci-

sion, which was reached in November 1993,

“Unfortunately,” he stated, “PETA was not

aware of our previous decision,” although it

was widely rumored in the garment trade.

PETA nonetheless claimed a victory, seek-

ing to offset the embarrassment suffered in

New York gossip columns after model

Christy Turlington proclaimed that she’d

rather wear nothing than fur––just a month

after she appeared in a fur ad in the

November issue of the Paris edition of

Vogue. Memories linger of actress Kathleen

Turner admitting at the PETA inaugural ball

in January 1993 that she wears fur, but not of

endangered species (which would be illegal

to buy in the first place).

Fur

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

While the ISO moved to accept

padded leghold traps as “humane,” a

Massachusetts judge ruled they are not on

December 27, 1993, overturning a 1989 rul-

ing by the state Division of Fisheries and

Wildlife that padded traps were not banned by

the state law that banned steel-jawed leghold

traps in 1974. “It is apparent from the opera-

tion of the Woodstream ‘soft-catch’ trap,”

Suffolk Superior Court judge Patrick King

wrote, “that it will cause injury to many ani-

mals.”

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