Marine Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Cetaceans

Captain Paul Watson honors
Captain James Waddell, commander of the
Confederate warship Shenandoah, in the
3rd/4th Quarter 1995 edition of The Sea
Shepherd Log. Waddell in 1865 sank 38 of
the 85 Yankee whalers in the North
Pacific––fighting on for seven months after
the Confederacy surrendered––without either
taking or losing a human life. His official
goal was doing economic harm to the Union,
but crewman Joshua Minor told one whaling
captain, “We have entered into a treaty
offensive and defensive with the whales. We
are up here by special agreement to disperse
their mortal enemies.” Watson credits
Waddell and crew with preventing the extinction
of bowheads and grey whales.

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Animal Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Ebola virus
The World Health Organization
on December 16 declared a two-year drive
to discover how Ebola virus is transmitted
from other primates, who often survive it, to
chimpanzees and humans, in whom it is usually
fatal. An early clue came from Colonel
Nancy Jax of the U.S. Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, in
Frederick, Maryland, who reported in the
December 22 edition of the British medical
journal The Lancet that Ebola is probably
transmitted by airborne droplets, much like
the common cold. Jax observed that two
monkeys kept in cages 10 feet from others
who had Ebola also developed Ebola and
died in 10 and 11 days, respectively, even
though they had no physical contact with the
sick monkeys. “The findings emphasize the
advisability of at-risk personnel employing
precautions to safeguard against ocular, oral,
and nasopharyngeal exposure,” Jax wrote.

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Horses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Weeks after dismantling the Bureau
of Land Management wild horse program,
House Republicans on November 7 pushed
through a bill––unanimously passed by voice
vote––ordering the National Park Service to
leave alone about 30 wild horses living in the
Ozark National Scenic Riverways. The bill
directs the Department of the Interior to arrange
for herd management with the Missouri Wild
Horse League, which would be required to
keep the herd smaller than 50. The league and
the Park Service have fought in court since 1990
over a Park Service plan to exterminate the
horses. The bill must clear the Senate to take
effect, with enough support to overcome a
potential presidential veto. Assistant Secretary
for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks George Frampton
opposes the bill, and wild horse protection generally,
consistent with the position of conservation
groups including the Wilderness Society,
which he formerly headed, the Nature Conservancy,
the National Audubon Society, and some
factions of Earth First, that introduced species
should be removed from public lands.

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Marine mammals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

A dead humpback whale discovered off
San Francisco on November 3 and two more
found floating near the Farallon Islands o n
November 9 brought an early halt to the controversial
Scripps Institution of Oceanography experiment
in using low-frequency sound to measure ocean
temperature and, thereby, global warming. The
$35 million Accoustic Tomography of Ocean
Climate experiment wasn’t to begin until November
8, amid precautions to monitor the effect on marine
life including transmitter-equipped elephant seals, a
sonar assessment of krill movements, and four
whale-spotters in aircraft. However, the Scripps
team turned on the ATOC sonic equipment 13 times
in preliminary tests between October 28 and
November 4, violating the protocol reached earlier
with wildlife protection groups who sued to stop the
project, arguing that the sound waves would deafen
whales and seals. At deadline the National Marine
Fisheries Service was still trying to determine
whether ATOC had anything to do with the whale
deaths, which could also have been caused by a
toxic algal bloom reported circa Halloween by
recreational divers. Alarmed by the whale deaths,

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Animal control & rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

Legislation
The San Mateo County (California)
pet overpopulation ordinance is “a legislative
f a i l u r e , ” according to The Animal Council, an
association of dog and cat fanciers, in a newly
published “evaluation of statistics and reports.”
But the evidence is ambiguous. Countywide
euthanasia records going back to 1970 show dog
euthanasias peaking at 20,191 in 1971, declining
steadily to 1,298 in fiscal year 1990-1991, just
before the controversial San Mateo County ordinance
was adopted in March 1992. Since then,
dog euthanasias have continued to drop at approximately
the previous rate, to 1,111 in fiscal year
1993-1994. Cat euthanasias peaked in 1970, at
21,796; bottomed out at 4,697 in 1979; were
steady between 6,988 and 7,417 from 1985-1986
through 1991-1992; and since then have fallen to
5,134. Noting that 18 cities in San Mateo County
have not ratified the county ordinance, which
applies in unamended form only to the relatively
small unincorporated part of the county, the
report notes that, “Unincorporated cat euthanasias
in 1993-1994 were 46% greater than in 1990-
1991, the year prior to implementation” of the
ordinance, “compared to a 27% decrease countywide.”

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Wildlife & people

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1995:

Waterfowl
Migrating ducks overloaded airport radar
s y s t e m s across the midwest on November 2. “It was
one of the most compressed migrations we’ve seen in
the past 25 years,” Ducks Unlimited chief biologist Jeff
Nelson told Ken Miller of the Gannett News Service.
“It was more than I’ve ever seen.” Explained Federal
Aviation Administration spokesperson Sandra
Campbell, “The primary radar system in Omaha picked
up so many targets, 29,000 to 39,000, that it shut itself
down. Ten minutes later, the same thing happened in
Des Moines. Three hours later, it occurred at Kansas
City.” This year’s total waterfowl migration is estimated
at 80 million, up from 56 million in 1990.

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ELEPHANTS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The Smithsonian Institution
and Malaysian National Parks and
Wildlife Protection Department o n
October 5 began an attempt to track rogue
elephants by satellite. The idea is to head
the rogues––believed to be just a few individuals
among a wild herd of about
2,000––away from potentially lethal conflicts
with farmers and villagers. The
Smithsonian has used the same technology
to track mountain goats in India and Tibet,
and turtles in the Philippines. The transmitter/collar
each elephant must be made
to wear costs $6,000, project coordinator
Michael Stuwe said, and the annual cost
of tracking could be as high as $10,000
per elephant.

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Trafficking

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service on September 25 intercepted 60 bear
gallbladders that were hidden among a ton
of reindeer antlers arriving from Russia at
the Anchorage International Airport.
Hong Kong customs officers on
October 4 seized 1,500 dried dog penises,
airmailed from Thailand labeled “Chinese
medicine.” To be sold as a tonic to boost
male sexual performance, the penises were
valued at 87¢ each.
British Columbia on October 17
laid 29 charges of smuggling bear gallbladders
against 11 individuals and businesses as
result of a July raid on several stores in
Vancouver’s Chinatown.

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RELIGION & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Brigitte Bardot “was the picture
of elegance,” for a September 27 audience
with Pope Jean Paul II, a day before her
61st birthday, Reuter correspondent Jude
Webber reported, “clad in a tight brown
trouser suit, low-cut pink top, wearing flowers
in her upswept long hair.” Said Bardot
after visiting the Pope, “We talked of animals,
of course. He told us he thought of
them, and they need our help.” Bardot quit
her film career in 1973 to devote herself to
animal protection.
Monsoon floods inundated the
temple at Pathum Thani, Thailand, in
early October, revealing to newspaper
photographers an elephant named
D i a m o n d whom abbot Pra Kru Udom
Pawana-pirat has kept chained to a tree for
nearly 20 years to attract worshippers. The
temple sells the visitors food to give
Diamond––but he rarely gets enough.
Diamond “is skinny, bony, and not healthy,
especially mentally,” said Friends of the
Asian Elephants Foundation representative
Leutchai Kladsri, who tried unsuccessfully to
buy him. Objected Pawana-pirat, “I never torture
him.”
Radio “sex doctor” Ruth
Westheimer read from a prayer book in
Brooklyn on October 3 while a friend swung a
live chicken over his head in a Hassidic Yom
Kippur rite called “shlug kaporos.” After the
swinging, the chickens are killed according to
kosher law and given to the poor.
Faith healers caught a male and
female crocodile on September 30 in
Yaounde, capital of Cameroon; dressed the
male in a fake beard and pants; painted the
female’s claws with red nail polish; and
burned both alive as “bewitched.”

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