Sending out the dove

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

LOS ANGELES––Thirty circling
vultures are excellent news for the often
embattled Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego
Wild Animal Park. That’s because the vultures––California
condors, to be exact––are
now using their 10-foot wingspan to soar on
mountain air currents over southern California,
northern Arizona, and southern Utah.
Just 27 California condors remained
alive in 1987, when the last wild member of
the species was lured into captivity despite
militant protest from Earth First! and lawsuits
from the Sierra Club and National Audubon
Society––and the 1987 count was up slightly
from the low of 22, recorded in 1982. By
1985, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
decided to capture the whole population for
protected breeding, just nine wild condors
remained, along with 14 in captivity. There
are now 134 of the giant birds, some of whom
are fanning out more than 200 miles from
release sites, reclaiming habitat they haven’t
occupied in thousands of years.

Great apes practice peace under fire

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

YAOUNDE, Cameroon––Seizing an infant
gorilla, hunter Ntsama Ondo returned home to Olamze village
triumphant in mid-October, certain he’d make his fortune
just as soon as he could sell her to international traffickers––apparently
regular visitors to Olamze, situated near the
border of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
Her troop had another idea, the October 22 edition
of the Cameroonian newspaper L’Action reported .
Apparently following his trail, an estimated 60 gorillas
marched into Olamze single file just before midnight, ignoring
gunfire meant to scare them away as they paraded in
silent protest.
When that didn’t get the infant back, the gorillas
returned the next night. This time they battered the doors
and windows of the houses until the Olamze village chief
ordered Ondo to release the infant.
“Immediately the assailants returned to the forest
with shouts of joy, savouring their victory,” L’Action said.

CITES BEATING LEAVES ANIMAL PROTECTION GROUPS TO REGROUP

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

HARARE––The 10-year global ivory
trafficking ban fell on June 19, as Zimbabwe,
Botswana, and Namibia won approval from the
1997 Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species triennial in Harare,
Zimbabwe, to sell 59 tons of elephant ivory to
Japan in early 1999, after 18 months of refinement
of safeguards supposed to prevent the sale
from providing cover to ivory poachers.
The sale, involving about a third of
the ivory stockpiled by the three southern
African nations, is the first legal crack in the
ban, imposed by CITES in 1989. The ban
braked the collapse of the African elephant population
from 1.3 million circa 1980 to just
600,000 a decade later.

World Week demonstrations go ape

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

Rowdy World Week for Laboratory Animals protests made headlines
in four nations––but only the April 25 sledgehammering of a steel
baboon cage at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa seemed
to draw broad public sympathy. Isaac Mavundla, 16, struck the first blow
after spending 17 days inside the cage to publicize cruel experiments.
The London Daily Telegraph and London Times headlines on April
21 read, respectively, “Pro-animal activists smash family home” and
“Mother and two children cower as house is stormed,” after brick-and-bottlehurling
hooded demonstrators the previous day broke just about everything
that could be broken and extensively vandalized the family car at the residence
of Consort Kennels manager Adam Little, 30, his wife Alison, 28,
four-year-old son Lawrence, and seven-month-old daughter Amber. Consort
Kennels breeds beagles for laboratory use. Adam Little was at the kennels at
the time, beseiged by about 250 demonstrators who managed to take one
puppy, later recovered, before police cleared the scene with tear gas. One
officer was knocked unconscious, several others were injured, and 24
demonstrators were arrested.

OUT OF TREES

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

Zimbabwe, in addition to claiming
an overpopulation of elephants and the
fastest-growing timber industry in Africa,
also argues that it also has too many
baboons. “The industry is currently losing
millions due to the big baboon population,”
Forestry Commission general manager
Edward Mutsvairo recently told Agence
France Presse. “We are currently looking at
ways to keep them from destroying the trees.
Maybe we will settle for the use of birth control
injections.”

NORWAY OFFERS DEAL TO AFRICA: “You kill elephants, we’ll kill whales.”

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

HARARE, Zimbabwe––Hosting the
10th triennial conference of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species,
June 9-23, Zimbabwe intends to press the
home advantage, seeking to lift the 1989
CITES moratorium on international ivory sales.
With Namibia and Botswana, and with South
African endorsement in principle, Zimbabwe
hopes to move the southern African elephant
population from CITES Appendix I, the list of
endangered species barred from trade, to
Appendix II, meaning a species warrants monitoring
but may be traded.
South Africa, as in 1994, wants to
resume selling white rhino horn––but if CITES
agrees to such sales in principle, will settle for
a temporary “zero quota,” giving demand a
chance to rise in anticipation, even as the political
flak settles.

CITES experts have a leak on Zimbabwean elephant ivory strategy

January 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

The possibility of resumed ivory trading has meanwhile
demonstrably stimulated poaching, say Clark and David
Barritt, African director of the International Fund for Animal
Welfare. Barritt recently visited the scene of the September
massacre of 250 elephants near the Congolese border with
Gabon. “The poachers told the local inhabitants, whom they
hired, that it was all right to kill the elephants,” Barritt
explained to Inigo Gimore of the London Times, “because next
year the trade in ivory is going to be resumed legally.”
Indeed, the trade never stopped. “The preliminary
report of the CITES Panel of Experts,” FoA president Priscilla
Feral wrote on December 6 to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
chief of management authority Kenneth Stansell, “claims that
there is evidence that Zimbabwe has been engaged in large volume
commercial export of raw, worked, and semi-worked
ivory to eight countries, including the United States. Other
countries identified as having imported commercial volumes of
elephant ivory from Zimbabwe are Japan, China, Thailand,
Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Africa.
FoA is alarmed,” Feral said, “especially in light of significant
U.S. assistance to Zimbabwe’s elephant conservation programs,
as well as in light of persistent Zimbabwean claims of being
able to exercise vigorous control over the ivory trade.”

Herps & alleged perps

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Third World cruelty prosecutions are almost
unheard of, and prosecutions for cruelty to reptiles are rare
everywhere, but Zimbabwe SPCA manager Merryl Harrison
vowed September 18 to bring Harare Snake Park crocodile
keeper Smart Bester to justice and save the 79-year-old male
croc who finally bit his arm off, six years after the SPCA
began receiving complaints about Bester jabbing the croc
with a stick to make him snap his jaws and lash his tail.
A three-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
probe of imports of endangered snakes and tortoises from
Madagascar on August 22 brought 16-count indictments
against alleged traffickers Frank Lehmeyer, Wolfgang Kloe,
Olaf Strohmann, and Roland Werner, all of Germany; Rick
Truant, of Canada; and Simon Harris, of South Africa.

Africa

August 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Nairobi University ecology lecturer Warui Karanja blames a recent steep drop in the legendary pink flamingo population of Lake Nakaru National Park, featured in the film Out of Africa, on the construction of a sewage treatment plant that stopped the flow of effluent into the lake, which in turn fed blue-green algae, the flamingos’ main food. The 18-squaremile wetlands formerly supported more than a million flamingos, but now has just 10,000, according to Karanja. Other investigators blame well-drilling, which has lowered the Lake Nakaru water table, exacerbating the effects of periodic drought.

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