Makah don’t get quota: SEA SHEPHERDS FIND REPUBLICAN FRIENDS

August 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – Striking
another surprise blow for whales, this time
through Congressional politics, the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society on June 26
sunk Japanese and Norwegian hopes for
expanded legal whaling––at least for this year.
Eighteen years after Captain Paul
Watson established the Sea Shepherds’ reputation
as what he calls “good pirates” by ramming
the outlaw Portuguese whaler Sierra, 14
years after the International Whaling
Commission declared a global moratorium on
commercial whaling, the ban held at the 48th
annual meeting of the IWC, as under pressure
from the House Resources Committee the U.S.
delegation on June 26 withdrew an application
to allow members of the Makah tribe, of Neah
Bay, Washington, to kill five grey whales.

Crimes against wildlife

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

June 12, 1996 was a day to
remember in the international fight against
wildlife traffickers:
• In Chicago, bird smuggler
Tony Silva, 36, was jailed pending sentencing,
after prosecutors Sergio Acosta a n d
Jay Tharp argued that he was likely to jump
bail. Silva, who ran a wild-caught bird
smuggling ring while posing as an outspoken
foe of the wild-caught bird traffic, in January
pleaded guilty to reduced charges of conspiracy
and tax evasion, but on May 17 sought
unsuccessfully to withdraw the plea, after
former Playboy Mansion animal keeper
Theodora Swanson, 36, in April drew a
lighter sentence for conviction on contested
charges than her confederates got after copping
pleas.

Religion & animals

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The first deed of the shortlived Hindu fundamentalist
government of India, inaugurated May 24 only to
resign five days later, was to introduce a bill to ban cow
slaughter. Killing cows is against the Hindu religion, practiced
by 750 million Indians, but 110 million Moslem citizens
eat beef. Paradoxically, though Moslems are only 14%
of the total Indian population of 930 million, 10% of all the
Moslems in the world live in India; only Pakistan has more.
The Shaolin Temple, in central Henan province,
C h i n a, on June 6 won a lawsuit against the Luohe Canned
Food Factory, which had used actors depicting the Buddhist
monks of Shaolin in a TV plug for ham. Devout vegetarians,
the Shaolin monks devised and still teach the martial art of
kung-fu to avoid using lethal weapons in self-defense.

Meeting to beat bush meat

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

BERTOUA, Cameroon–– In
March ANIMAL PEOPLE shocked the
animal protection community with
Kenyan wildlife photographer Karl
Amman’s expose essay “The Great Ape
Project and the bush meat trade,”
describing the “overwhelming evidence
that the bush meat trade is one of the
biggest, if not the biggest, primate conservation
issues facing Africa today.”
Amman frustratedly described
how major conservation and animal protection
groups ignored his findings
through six years of field research. A
two-year association with the World
Society for the Protection of Animals
brought some exposure, but no substantive
action from other players.
“Is there any time left for theoretical
debates on great ape rights?”
Amman concluded. “Would the chimpanzees,
bonobos, and gorillas of Africa
not benefit more if the combined talent,
energy, and influence of the scientific
community now engaged in the Great
Ape Project took some time to devise a
strategy on how to keep these animals
out of the cooking pot?”

International wildlife news

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Africa
Rangers at Garamba
National Park in Zaire on March
28 reported the poaching kill of a
10-year-old pregnant female northern
white rhino, one of under 30 in
existence and the second to be
poached in 12 days. “This is a tragic
loss,” said World Wildlife Fund
director-general Claude Martin from
Geneva. As of February 14, when
WWF announced the vulnerability
of the rhinos to media, no endangered
animals of any kind had been
poached at Garamba since 1984,
despite heavy poaching of elephants
and hooved stock, blamed on
Sudanese rebels and refugees,
whose camps flank the park.

International wildlife news

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Africa
Members of 840 Masai
families during the second week in
March opened Kimana Tikondo
Group Ranch, a 15-square-mile forprofit
wildlife sanctuary in southern
Kenya, under the shadow of Mount
Kilimanjaro. Just 17 visitors paid
the $10 entrance fee the first week,
most of them members of a delegation
from the Wildlife Conservation
Society, formerly the New York
Zoological Society. Start-up funding
came from the U.S. Agency for
International Development. Kenya
Wildlife Services director David
Western hopes Kimana Tikando and
similar parks can make enough
money to persuade the Masai that
keeping wildlife is more profitable
than killing it to graze more cattle.

The hunting lobby at work

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

British Field Sports Society deputy chair Lord
Mancroft and the Duchess of Devonshire in early March
asked the reputed 80,000 BFSS members to join the 28,000-
member Royal SPCA so as to influence policy away from
opposition to fox hunting and other blood sports. The RSPCA
has formally opposed hunting since 1976. New members had
to join the RSPCA by March 22 to be eligible to vote at the
organization’s June annual meeting––and as many as 1,500
hunters reportedly did, as RSPCA board members and staff
scrambled to find a way to legally bar them.
“The biennial conference of the parties to the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
is due to be held in Zimbabwe in 1997,” reminds Shirley
McGreal of the International Primate Protection League.
“Problems are developing, as the government of Zimbabwe
wants to hold the meeting in Victoria Falls. Hotel rooms for
government officials are available in the town, which has a
total of 900 beds, but usually 1,500 or more people attend
CITES conferences. Because of the room shortage, representatives
of non-governmental organizations would be lodged far
away, in Zambia and Botswana, out of the action.” This
would give Zimbabwe more opportunity to lobby officials in
favor of abolishing the international ban on ivory trafficking.

The Great Ape Project and the bush meat trade by Karl Ammann

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

I have investigated aspects of the
bush meat trade in Africa for the last six
years. I no longer have any doubt that the
increasing commercialisation of this trade is
today the biggest threat to the survival of
many species in West and Central Africa.
The great apes are no exception. Many parts
of their range are being logged. The construction
of logging roads has allowed the
bush meat trade to go commercial. In consequence,
entire gorilla and chimp populations
are eaten into extinction, at a rate of thousands
of animals a year.
Why, at this stage, are the scientific
and conservation communities concentrating
on rather theoretical issues, while the
very existence of the subjects under discussion
is under serious threat?

Animals in entertainment

January 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

On the screen
PETA on December 5 asked the USDA to
investigate alleged Animal Welfare Act violations by
Tiger’s Eye Productions, of Orlando, Florida, which
trains animals for use in TV commercials and rock
videos. “Our investigator witnessed facility owner
David McMillan beating tigers in the face, ramming
ax handles down their throats, and depriving them of
food and water as punishment,” charged PETA
researcher Jennifer Allen. “Animals have also been
left outside without shade in searing heat, or without
shelter from raging thunderstorms, and have been
denied necessary medical attention when sick.”
Finding venues for his diving mule act
scarce, Tim Rivers has turned to Hollywood, training
many of the animals used in Ace Ventura: When
Nature Calls, the second of a comedy film series starring
Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura, pet detective and animal
rights militant. Because Rivers’ role was entirely
off-set, his involvement eluded American Humane
Association observers, whose contractual role in
supervising the use of animals in films is limited to on
set action. As the November 28 edition of T h e
National Enquirer put it, Rivers’ diving mule act “is
so hideous that Rivers has been arrested on cruelty
charges in Alabama, his act is banned in Illinois, and
he was thrown out of Atlantic City by Donald Trump.”

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