COURT CALENDAR

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Humane enforcement

Superior Court judge William Patrick on May 3

sent poodle breeder Charlotte Spiegel, 56, of Oroville,

California, to Chowchilla state prison for a 90-day pre-sentenc-

ing evaluation. A jury on March 15 convicted Spiegel of abus-

ing 350 dogs seized in two 1993 raids and later forfeited to the

Northwest SPCA. Patrick also ordered Spiegel to forfeit 57

dogs seized in later raids, and made her liable for up to

$260,000 in restitution to the SPCA for holding the dogs.

The Ottawa Shores Humane Society is in reported

financial distress after the scheduled May 16 trial of accused

animal collectors Earl Postema, 65, and his daughter Karen

Zalsman, 38, was postponed to mid-July because they fired

their attorney. OSHS volunteers in late March removed 72

goats, eight horses, and eight rabbits from their farm in Nunica,

Michigan. Four dead goats were found in a manure-choked

barn, and a dead colt was found in a field. Postema was reput-

edly involved with the Michigan militia, a private paramilitary

force whose events Oklahoma City bombing suspect Tim

McVeigh at times attended.

Children & Animals

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Iqbal Masih, 12, of Murdike, Pakistan, was

shot dead on Easter Sunday by a man he and his relatives

Liaqat Masih and Faryab Masih caught allegedly raping a

donkey, police say. As the circumstances were not imme-

diately disclosed, media linked the murder to carpet mag-

nates whose child labor practices Iqbal Masih disclosed to

an international conference in Sweden last November. A

member of Pakistan’s Christian minority, Masih was sold

by his parents to a carpet factory at age four, where he

worked until age 10, often shackled to a loom. Foreign

carpet orders reportedly plummeted by $10 million in the

three weeks after Masih’s murder. “The $10 million is

only an immediate loss,” said Imran Malik, vice chair of

the Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters

Association. “Irreparable damage is done when Western

consumers think Pakistani carpets stand for a child’s blood

and slavery.” Despite the outcry, also affecting carpet

exports from India and Bangladesh, Indian commerce min-

ister P. Chidambaram expressed satisfaction on May 8 that

the newly created World Trade Organization is unlikely to

address either child labor or environmental issues.

Birds

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Psychologist Shigeru Watanabe of

Keio University in Tokyo reported in the

May edition of New Scientist that pigeons can

tell paintings by Pablo Picasso’s cubist period

from those of impressionist Claude Monet,

but cannot distinguish the works of Cezanne

from those of Renoir––which is to say they

have about the same ability to discern style as

the average art appreciation student.

The last male crested ibis in

Japan died suddenly on May 1 while carrying

grass to the nest occupied by his mate, bor-

rowed from China, and their cluster of five

eggs. The egg were to hatch circa May 10.

The dead ibis, age 21, was the next to last of

five who were taken from the wild for

attempted captive breeding in 1981. None so

far have bred successfully. The sole survivor

of Japan’s once plentiful crested ibises is a 28-

year-old female. China still has 28 of the big

birds, all in zoos and/other sanctuaries.

RELIGION & ANIMALS

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Islamic fundamentalists on April

19 capped two weeks of railing against the

appearance of scantily clad performers b y

torching the stage and tents of the New Opera

Circus, killing a boy and a bear, as it per-

formed outside the Cox’s Bazar resort near

Eidgaon village in Bangladesh. The mob also

stabbed a tiger, an elephant, and various other

animals before police arrived, arresting three

assailants. Officials of Cox’s Bazar said they

had been unable to persuade the circus, from

the Brahmanbaria district of Bangladesh, to

pack up and leave.

WILDLIFE

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

The National Parks Board of South

Africa announced May 10 that, “To maintain

for as long as possible the option of translocat-

ing family groups of elephants,” only 300 will

be killed this year instead of 600 as biologists rec-

ommended. “The breeding herds will mainly be

culled in areas where the greatest damage has been

done to trees,” the NPB added. “Of special con-

cern is the declining baobob population,” in

Kruger National Park, which has about 8,000 ele-

phants in an area the size of Israel. The elephants,

including 70 bulls, are to be shot from helicopters.

Tranquilizer darts will no longer be used before-

hand because this appears to increase rather than

decrease the stress to the elephants, who afterward

are immobile but fully conscious.

WILDLIFE

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Wolves

Mandated by the state legislature to implement

predator control before cutting either the length of the moose and

caribou season or the bag limits, the Alaska Board of Game during

the week of March 27 ordered the Alaska Department of Fish and

Game to prepare wolf control plans for much of the inhabited part

of the state by October. It also extended the bear season in two

regions by four weeks, while upping the bag limit from one bear

per four years to one bear every year. “It’s impossible to say what

the ADF&G will present,” said Sandra Arnold of the Alaska

Wildlife Alliance. “We also don’t know if the Board approves a

wolf control plan in October, if that means control will begin

immediately or in October 1996. The bear control measures are

proving controversial. ADF&G refuses to comment, but are clear-

ly concerned because all their reports indicate that bears are

already being killed above sustainable levels, especially in Unit

13,” which is the heavily hunted Nelchina Basin.

MARINE MAMMALS

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Seal hunt

Canada on April 11 denied an allegation by the

International Fund for Animal Welfare that the Shanghai

Fisheries Corporation and a sealing industry delegation from

the Magdalen Islands of Quebec met the day before in Hong

Kong to sign a deal to increase the export of seal penises to

China. “Because it’s penises, people laugh,” said IFAW

spokesperson Marion Jenkins, “but the Chinese medicine

market has been responsible for the near extinction of the

tiger and the rhino.” Despite the lack of other apparent

viable markets, the seal slaughter shifted from the

Magdalens to Newfoundland in mid-April, encouraged by a

quota of 186,000 and a federal bounty of 20¢ per pound on

seal carcasses landed. Newfoundland fisheries minister Bud

Hulan claims the Atlantic Canada seal population is circa

eight million, and that the seals are contributing to the

decline of cod, recently pronounced “commercially extinct.”

However, current research by Thomas Woodley and David

Lavigne, of the International Marine Mammal Association,

indicates there are no more than 3.5 million harp seals, prob-

ably fewer; 400,000 hooded seals; and 142,000 grey seals,

the only species whose numbers are increasing. Cod make

up only about 1% of the seals’ diet.

Agriculture

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Academy Award-winning actress

Whoopi Goldberg has agreed to appear in a

Friends of Animals ad campaign publicizing

horse slaughter. In 1994 U.S. slaughterhouses

killed 348,000 horses; another 28,612 U.S.-

born horses were killed in Canada. Most were

young “surplus” from speculative breeding.

A South African Airways flight

from London to Johannesburg with more

than 300 people and 72 prize breeding pigs

aboard returned to England for an emergency

landing on April 6 when, as a spokesperson

put it, “The collective heat and methane that

the pigs gave off in the cargo hold caused the

alarms to activate.” Fifteen pigs suffocated

when automatic fire extinguishers filled the

hold with halon gas.

Zoos

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Yan Yan, a female giant panda on a

five-year loan from the Beijing Zoo, on April 14

joined Bao Bao, the Berlin zoo’s solitary male,

whose former partner Tien Tien died of a viral

infection in 1984. Yan Yan was taken from the

wild at age three months in 1985. The World

Wildlife Fund ripped the Berlin loan and the loan

of two pandas to the San Diego Zoo as “a danger-

ous precedent,” which could “lead to further

depletion of an already fragile wild panda popula-

tion,” via further removals from the wild. WWF

has asked the secretariat of the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species to

restrict panda loans to captive-bred animals. The

Dept. of the Interior on March 30 proposed such a

rule to govern future panda loans to the U.S.

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