Kenya denies supplying Saudi canned hunts

October 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

NAIROBI, Kenya––The Kenya Wildlife Service

on September 9 denied a report that it had sold endangered

giraffes and zebras to canned hunts in Saudi Arabia. KWS

director David Western said Kenya did recently donate ani-

mals to the national zoos of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,

however, including giraffes, zebras, ostriches, Thompson

gazelles, mongooses, porcupines, dikdiks, and exotic

birds. He said none of the animals are endangered in

Kenya. Western succeeded Richard Leakey as head of

KWS earlier this year. The service is often at odds with

political factions who wish to reintroduce trophy hunting,

now banned, to Kenya.

Killing for the hell of it

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

A federal anti-hunter harassment statute

tucked into the Crime Bill is likely to stay there––and

pass––as the Clinton administration strives to get

around National Rifle Association opposition to the

Crime Bill as a whole, which would ban 19 types of

assault rifle. The NRA on August 10 claimed credit

for temporarily defeating the Crime Bill on a proce-

dural vote in the House of Representatives.

The Senate version of the California

Desert Protection Act, passed in April, would cre-

ate an East Mojave National Park between the Joshua

Tree and Death Valley National Monuments, which

are to be upgraded to National Park status––meaning

a ban on hunting. However, in a move of symbolic

import to the NRA, the House version passed on July

27 downgrades East Mojave to the status of a

National Preserve, to allow hunting. National Park

Service director Roger Kennedy pointed out that

because preserves require more staff than parks, the

House version will cost $500,000 more per year to

run. Since hunters kill an average of only 26 deer and

five bighorn sheep per year in East Mojave, Kennedy

said, this amounts to “a subsidy of $20,000 per deer.”

A House/Senate conference committee must reconcile

the conflicting versions before the bill goes back to

both the Senate and House for final passage.

MARINE LIFE

September 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

Canada is secretly among the

nations trying to overturn the U.S. ban on

imports of tuna netted “on dolphin” as a

violation of the General Agreement on Trade

and Tariffs, according to a Canadian govern-

ment document disclosed by Michael

O’Sullivan of the Humane Society of Canada.

Canada has only a small tuna fleet, but seeks a

precedent toward overturning the pending

European Community ban on imports of fur

caught with leghold traps. Intended to take

effect in January, that ban has reportedly been

put off for another year, and is already subject

of a protest to the GATT tribunal by the U.S.-

based National Trappers Association.

Diet & Health

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

A 10-month study published in the

June issue of Cancer Causes and Control, the

journal of the Harvard School of Public Health,

found that children who eat more than 12 hot dogs

a month whose fathers have a history of similar

consumption have nine times the normal risk of

leukemia. The study compared 232 leukemia

patients under age 10 with a similar group of

leukemia-free children. Wrote Dr. John Peters,

who led the University of Southern California

study team, “These findings, if correct, suggest

that reduced consumption of hot dogs could

reduce leukemia risks, especially in those con-

suming the most. Until further studies are com-

pleted and this issue becomes clearer, it may be

prudent for parents to consider reducing consump-

tion of hot dogs for themselves and their children

where consumption frequencies are high.” About

2,600 children a year get leukemia; 72% survive.

COURT CALENDAR

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Activism

The U.S. Supreme Court on

June 13 upheld federal court and Court

of Appeals rulings that communities

cannot consititutionally ban the display

of political signs on citizens’ own prop-

erty. Issued on behalf of anti-Persian Gulf

War protester Margaret Gilleo, of Ladue,

Missouri, who is now a Congressional

candidate, the ruling applies as well to

people who have been ordered to cease

displaying signs on behalf of animals.

Friends of Animals in early

June won a judgement against the State

of Alaska for attorney’s fees incurred in

defending itself against governor Walter

Hickel’s failed attempt to sue FoA for libel.

The Hickel suit was filed in June 1993 in

an apparent attempt to prevent FoA from

further publicizing the Alaskan plan to kill

wolves in order to make more moose and

caribou available to hunters.

ANIMAL HEALTH

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Zoonosis

Tests by the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit have

concluded that the only sure way to prevent allergic reactions

to cats is “to remove the cat from the home,” Dr. Charles

Klucka recently told the American Academy of Allergy and

Immunology. “The next best thing is keeping the cat out of

the bedroom,” while the cat owner takes allergy drugs or

shots. Bathing cats in distilled water, applying a topical

spray 60 times per week, and giving them low-dose tranquil-

izers, all touted as antiallergen treatments, did not reduce the

dander of the 24 cats included in the Ford Hospital study.

Ten thousand volunteers in Connecticut, New

Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin are field-

testing a Lyme disease vaccine developed by Connaught

Laboratories, following up on a 1992-1993 test that included

300 people. Preliminary data published in the June 8 edition

of the Journal of the American Medical Association showed

that levels of Lyme antibodies increased fourfold in 23 of 24

volunteers who participated in a limited test in Albuquerque,

none of whom suffered serious side effects. A rival firm,

SmithKline Beecham PLC, is reportedly also close to testing

a vaccine for Lyme disease, which afflicts about 10,000

Americans a year, and has been found in 44 of the 50 states.

Agricultural veterinary medicine

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

The trade journal Beef Today and the

Colorado Cattlemen’s Association have urged the beef

industry to join animal protection groups in urging the

USDA to abolish face-branding cattle imported from

Mexico. The cattle are painfully face-branded––and cows

are spayed without anesthesia––as part of an anti-bovine

tuberculosis program. Of 438 cases of bovine TB found in

1993, 427 were in cattle of Mexican origin. Exposed in an

ongoing series of newspaper ads by the Coalition for Non-

Violent Food, face-branding was also discussed recently by

the Animal Welfare Committee of the AVMA. AVMA

policy presently supports face-branding, but related pro-

posed policy amendments are up for review by the AVMA

executive board.

RWANDAN GORILLAS LIVE–– LAKE VICTORIA MIGHT NOT

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

VOLCANO NATIONAL PARK, Rwanda–– As of May

14, the mountain gorillas made famous by the late Dian Fossey were

unharmed by Rwandan civil strife, said Jose Kalpers, coordinator of

the International Gorilla Conservation Program.

The IGCP is sponsored by the African Wildlife

Foundation, the Fauna & Flora Preservation Society, and the World

Wildlife Fund.

Kalpers and the rest of the staff at Karasoke, Fossey’s for-

mer headquarters, were evacuated to Kenya shortly after the

Rwandan fighting broke out on April 6. Uganda closed Mgahinga

National Park on May 2, fearing fighting would spill over from the

Volcano National Park area of Rwanda––but it didn’t. By mid-May,

Kalpers said, he was able to visit Zaire, closer to Karasoke than his

temporary headquarters in Nairobi. From Zaire, Kalpers funded

resumed patrols by Rwandan and Zairean park wardens.

WILDLIFE

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Fourteen years after being

declared an endangered species and 11

years after being pronounced extinct, the

Palos Verdes blue butterfly has been resdi-

covered. University of California geography

professor Rudi Mattoni, believed to be the

last person to see the butterfly before it pur-

portedly vanished, recognized it again on a

mid-March insect collecting visit to the U.S.

Navy’s Defense Fuel Supply Point in San

Pedro. The site is protected as critical habi-

tat for the also endangered California gnat-

catcher, a small songbird.

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