Category: Australia & Pacific Islands

Kangaroo contraceptives

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
CANBERRA–The Australian Capital Territory government and
Newcastle University on August 23, 2006 announced plans to jointly
develop a species-specific oral contraceptive for eastern grey
kangaroos.
The contraceptive should be ready for field trials in two to
five years, senior Environment ACT ecologist Don Fletcher told news
media.
“In the coming weeks a research population will be set up in
the empty former kangaroo display area at Tidbinbilla,” said
municipal services John Hargreaves, referring to the scene of
“rocket science” of a very different sort. The Tidbinbilla Nature
Reserve, on the fringe of Namadgi National Park, is best known for
housing the radio telescopes operated by the Canberra Deep Space
Communication Complex, part of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

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National Legislation — U.S. & world

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The U.S. military is exempted from complying
with the Marine Mammal Protection Act under a rider to the 2004
defense construction authorization bill, signed on November 22 by
President George W. Bush. The rider enabled the U.S. Navy to try to
overturn an October 2003 legal settlement in which it agreed to
extensive restrictions on the use of low-frequency sonar, believed
to be lethal to whales.
WASHINGTON D.C.–Associated Press reported on December 8 that
U.S. President Bush is expected to sign the Captive Wildlife Safety
Act, despite the opposition of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,
which will be mandated to enforce it. The bill, requiring a federal
permit to sell exotic cats across state borders, cleared Congress on
December 7.

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Australia pays Eritrea to take sheep–and has a new live transport incident

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

PORTLAND, Australia– The Australian live sheep export trade
had just begun to regroup after the three-month Cormo Express debacle
when economic disaster hit again– induced this time by Animal
Liberation South Australia campaigner Ralph Hahneuser.
The Cormo Express sailed Fremantle with 57,937 sheep on
August 5, bound for Kuwait, where they were to be unloaded and
trucked to Saudi Arabia. Arriving on August 22, the sheep were
refused entry to Kuwait, however, because some had developed scabby
mouth disease en route.
After no other nation would accept the sheep, the Australian
government repurchased the consignment from the Saudi buyer for $4.5
million U.S., halted all further sales of livestock to Saudi Arabia,
and investigated means of slaughtering and disposing of the sheep
short of returning them all to Australia, where the sheep industry
no more wanted them than the Saudis did.

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Getting biodiversity backward

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2003:

CANBERRA,  Australia–At least 1,595 Australian native plants
and animals are at risk of extinction,  2,900 regional ecosystems are
imperiled,  and the leading threats come from land clearing,  sheep
and cattle grazing,  drought,  and fires,  says a recently published
national Terrestrial Biodiversity Assessment.  Predation and
competition with native species by introduced species ranked as a
lesser threat in most parts of Australia.
Principally authored by ecologist Paul Sattler,  the
assessment was commissioned by the national government.  It was
presented to Parliament in late April 2003.
What,  three months later,  is Australia doing about the findings?

*  The Cooperative Research Centre for Pet Control has
applied for permission to send a genetically engineered mouse herpes
virus into field trials–in effect,  to begin yet another
introduction of a non-native species.
The Cooperative Research Centre “aims to spread the virus throughout
the exotic mouse population,”  reported the Brisbane Courier-Mail,
noting that mouse plagues annually “cost the nation’s grain farmers
about $150 million.”

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Australia commits to tail-docking ban

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  June 2003:

BRISBANE,  Australia–Five of the seven Australian states are
reportedly committed to introducing a national ban on  docking dogs’
tails by June 30,  2003,  to take effect on December 1.
“New South Wales and the Northern Territory requested more
time to consider joining the ban,”  reported Larizza Dubecki of the
Melbourne Age.  “The decision [to ban tail-docking] was made at the
April 10 Primary Industries Ministerial Council in Brisbane,
supported by the Royal SPCA and the Australian Veterinary Association.
The AVA first called for a ban on tail-docking in 1998,  six
years after the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in Britain and
five years after the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association,  but
Australia is the first English-speaking nation to commit to a ban.
Rare outside English-speaking nations,  tail-docking is done
primarily to comply with breed standards established in England by
the Kennel Club during the 19th century,  later adopted by the
American Kennel Club and other kennel associations.

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Action Down Under on 20th World Farm Animals Day

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2002:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The 20th annual observance of World Farm
Animals Day was perhaps most effectively marked by Australian and
Philippine officials who probably never heard of it. The occasion
honors and mourns the 47 billion animals raised and killed for food
each year, 10 billion of them in the U.S.
Meant to be celebrated each year on Mohandas Gandhi’s
birthday, October 2, which this year fell on a Wednesday, World
Farm Animals Day was actually observed on both the preceding and
following weekend, as well as in midweek.

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Down Under bioxenophobia intensifies– Aliens in their native land

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

LEURA, New South Wales, Australia–Twenty-six years after
convening the first meeting of Animal Liberation Australia, 12 years
after venturing to India, Christine Townend has returned home. She
and her retired lawyer husband Jeremy Townend are back more-or-less
to stay–while making frequent visits to India to supervise their
ongoing humane projects.
Yet Townend admits she often feels like an alien. She senses
a meanness of spirit in Australia now that she did not
previously recognize, in her past
careers as activist, teacher, poet, short story writer, and
investigative author, whose 1985 book Pulling The Wool remains the
classic expose of the Down Under sheep trade.
Then, Townend believed, rough Australian treatment of
animals was mainly from ignorance. Behind the Aussie swagger and
bluster, she believed, were good hearts, who could be brought
around to treating all animals with kindness. She has become less
optimistic.

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Pentobarbital in food kills tiger

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand; CHARLESTON, S.C.–The New Zealand
Ministry of Agriculture in mid-May 2002 made permanent the December
2001 suspension of the Dog’s Delight Ltd. operating permit, for
allowing pentabarbitone from the carcasses of dogs and cats killed by
lethal injection to contaminate food that the company donated to the
Wellington Zoo.
In October 2002 the tainted food killed a 13-year-old tiger
named Jambi. It was the first case of which ANIMAL PEOPLE has record
of an animal who was verifiably killed by barbituate residues in a
commercial pet food.

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San Francisco murder-by-dog defendant gets new trial

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2002:

SAN FRANCISCO–San Francisco Superior Court Judge James
Warren on April 12, 2002 granted a new trial to attorney Marjorie
Knoller, who was convicted by a Los Angeles jury on March 21 of
second degree murder for the dog mauling death of her former neighbor
Diane Whipple.
Knoller, 46, was also convicted of manslaughter and keeping
a dangerous animal, as was her husband, fellow attorney Robert
Noel. Noel indicated that he would also appeal the jury verdict.

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