Australia pays Eritrea to take sheep–and has a new live transport incident

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

PORTLAND, Australia– The Australian live sheep export trade
had just begun to regroup after the three-month Cormo Express debacle
when economic disaster hit again– induced this time by Animal
Liberation South Australia campaigner Ralph Hahneuser.
The Cormo Express sailed Fremantle with 57,937 sheep on
August 5, bound for Kuwait, where they were to be unloaded and
trucked to Saudi Arabia. Arriving on August 22, the sheep were
refused entry to Kuwait, however, because some had developed scabby
mouth disease en route.
After no other nation would accept the sheep, the Australian
government repurchased the consignment from the Saudi buyer for $4.5
million U.S., halted all further sales of livestock to Saudi Arabia,
and investigated means of slaughtering and disposing of the sheep
short of returning them all to Australia, where the sheep industry
no more wanted them than the Saudis did.

Radio Ethiopia investigates dog-shooting at Bale Mountains National Park

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

ADDIS ABABA–The shooting of homeless
dogs at Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia,
and the history behind it, reported on page one
of the November 2003 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE,
reached the Ethiopian public for the first time
on December 15 via Radio Ethiopia.
“The journalist sent to report what was
going on reported the reality,” e-mailed Homeless
Animal Protection Society cofounder Efrem
Legesse, including “the interviews he got from
us, the local community living around the park,
the park warden, and Ethiopian Wolf Conservation
Program director Stuart Williams. It was
broadcast three times at noon, when most
Ethiopians listen to the news.”

Court calendar

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

The Constitutional Court of South Africa in November 2003
upheld the September 2001 conviction of Kalahari Raptor Center
co-director Chris Mercer for violating the Nature & Environmental
Con-servation Ordinance of 1974 by rescuing three baby caracals
instead of killing them, as mandated by the Problem Animal Control
Ordinance of 1957. Initially convicted and fined, Mercer won a
discharge and waiver of the fine on appeal to the High Court, but
was unsuccessful in seeking to overturn the 1957 law through the
Constitutional Court because the court held that he had only been
charged under the 1974 law. Publicity about the case helped to win
amendments to the Gauteng Province wildlife law, which no longer
requires that “problem” animals be killed without specific cause.

Study confirms: corruption kills wildlife

November 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

NAIROBI–Corruption kills wild-life, confirms data published
in the November 6, 2003 edition of the British scientific journal
Nature.
The findings were based on a comparison of elephant and rhino
populations with the national “Corruption Perception Indexes”
produced by the watchdog group Transparency International during the
years 1987-1994.
The findings support the arguments of Youth for Conservation,
the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and the Nairobi office of
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in their continuing
effort to maintain the 1977 Kenyan national ban on sport hunting.
Yet study authors Robert J. Smith, R.D.J. Muir, M.J.
Walpole, Andrew Balmford and Nigel Leader-Williams paradoxically
concluded with an implied endorsement of “sustainable use,” such as
hunting, to fund conservation. This was probably because the study
made no effort to trace the relationship between legal hunting and
corruption.
Wildlife policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–backed by much of the same money–threaten to replace the
principle of protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by being hunted or
captured for sale.

Conservation group experts urged dog shooting in Ethiopia

November 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

GOMA, Ethiopia–Why were free-roaming dogs shot in November 2003 in and around Bale Mountains National Park, Ethiopia? How much did the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme and Born Free Foundation have to do with it?

Why, after Homeless Animal Protection Society of Ethiopia cofounder Hana Kifle photographed a probable rabid wolf in August, was the EWCP vaccination program for pet dogs and working dogs, underway since 1996, not extended to homeless dogs?

Oral rabies vaccination of the Ethiopian wolves was reportedly approved by the Ethiopian government on November 7, apparently long after the EWCP first requested permission to use it.

But the dog-shooting continued.

“After we reported that the health problem occurred among the critically endangered wolves,” HAPS president Efrem Legesse told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “the vet team came to the area [weeks later] and decided to destroy all dogs. Without spending much time at all where the wolves are dying, they finally convinced the park warden that shooting is the only solution.

BOOKS: The Wilderness Family: At Home with Africa’s Wildlife

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

The Wilderness Family: At Home with Africa’s Wildlife by Kobie Kruger
Ballantine Books (c/o Random House, 299 Park Ave., New York, NY
10171), 2001. 381 pages, hardcover, $26.95.

The Wilderness Family, as published in the U.S. and Britain,
is actually two former South African best sellers combined under one
cover. The first book, Mahlangeni, appeared in 1994. All Things
Wild & Wonderful followed in 1996.
Both are autobiographical accounts of the lives of Kruger
National Park ranger’s wife Kobie Kruger and family.
Inspired by Born Free, the autobiography of the late Kenyan wildlife
advocate Joy Adamson, Kobus and Kobie Kruger in 1980 took over
management of the remote Mahlangeni ranger station, taking their
three young daughters with them into the bush.

Bush policy & bushmeat

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

WASHINGTON D.C., NAIROBI– Wildlife
policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–and backed by much of the same
money–threaten to replace the principle of
protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by
being hunted or captured alive for sale.
The proposed amendments represent such an
extreme interpretation of the “sustainable use”
philosophy advanced since 1936 by the National
Wildlife Federation and since 1961 by the World
Wildlife Fund that even WWF endangered species
program director Susan Lieberman was quick to
denounced the U.S. versions.
“Money doesn’t always mean conservation,”
Lieberman told Washington Post staff writer
Shankar Vedantam. “To me, the theme is allowing
industry to write the rules.”

Wild lions hunted to the verge of extinction

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

LONDON–Wild African lions have been hunted to the brink of
extinction, warn researchers Laurence Frank of the University of
California and David Macdonald of the Oxford University Wildlife
Conserv-ation Research Unit.
Frank, writing in the September 18 edition of New Scientist,
has investigated African lions, hyenas, and other large predators in
Kenya for more than 20 years. Macdonald, editor of the Encyclopedia
of Mammals, directed a recent five-year study of lion conservation
in Zimbabwe and Botswana.
The wild African lion population has fallen from 230,000 to
23,000 in under 20 years, said Frank. Cheetahs have fallen to
15,000 and wild dogs to 5,500 over the same time, but were far fewer
to begin with.
All are in trouble, Frank explained, but lions are declining
the most rapidly, as the most dangerous of the large African
predators and the species most coveted for a trophy.

The apartheid legacy in wildlife conservation

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

The apartheid legacy in wildlife conservation
by Chris Mercer, co-director, Kalahari Raptor Centre

Twelve years after Nelson Mandela walked to freedom, South
Africa is still struggling to overcome the crippling legacy of
apartheid in environmental affairs.
Affirmative action appointments are intended to transform and
democratize nature conservation, but the awaited transformation is
slow in coming–and one of the most unfortunate aspects of the delay
is that some of our most ruthless people are meanwhile exporting the
canned hunting industry, which is a legacy of apartheid, throughout
Africa.
Desperately poor nations are too often seduced by the promise
of the money to be made from hunting, demonstrated by some of the
same South African entrepreneurs whose involvement in gun-running and
ivory and rhino horn poaching helped to uphold the apartheid regime
by destabilizing much of the black-ruled portion of the continent.
The apartheid regime instituted three goals for wildlife
management, each directly contributing to the growth and
profitability of the hunting industry, to the detriment of almost
everyone else. These goals were:

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