NSW copies U.S.-style wildlife mismanagement

January 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

SYDNEY, Australia–In the name of regulating hunting and
eradicating introduced species, the Labor government of New South
Wales, Australia, is positioned to pass a new Game Bill in
February 2002 which would repeal the suspension of duck hunting won
in 1995 by Green Party legislator Richard Jones, put hunters in
charge of implementing hunting policy, and exempt hunting from
humane laws.
Introduced in November 2001, the Game Bill appears to be
opposed by most and perhaps all humane groups in Australia, but is
eagerly sought by hunters and the NSW Farmers’ Association.
Modeled after typical U.S. state hunting statutes, “The Game
Bill will legalise hunting with bows and arrows, clubs, knives,
dogs, wire snares, or any other means except poison,” Animal
Liberation representative for introduced species Frankie Seymour
charged in an internationally distributed series of alerts.

Nine-year-old is victim of first deadly dingo attack in 21 years

May 1, 2001 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2001:

FRASER ISLAND, Queensland, Australia–Out for an early morning stroll near where their family had camped overnight on Fraser Island, off the Queensland coast, brothers Dylan and Clinton Gage, 7 and 9, along with an unidentified seven-year-old friend, found themselves being stalked by a male and female dingo. First they tried to walk back to the Waddy Point campsite, about half a kilometre away. As the dingos became bolder, they ran for their lives. Clinton fell and was fatally mauled, in the first lethal dingo attack on a human since the death of nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain at Ayer’s Rock in August 1980.

ANTI-CRUELTY ENFORCEMENT, REHOMING, AND RESCUE

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

“For the first time, in a country
where human rights are routinely violated,
someone has been convicted of cruelty to
an animal,” London Observer Service correspondent
Martin Dayani recently reported
from Bogota, Colombia. District Judge
Elsa Lucia Romero, of Suba, a northern
Bogota suburb, jailed two men for three
months and fined them each the value of 35
grams of gold for allegedly setting a street
dog named L u c a s on fire with a blowtorch
and then leaving him to suffer for 24 hours
with the burns that eventually killed him.
“Legally this was a watershed,” Romero told
Dayani. “What was important in this case
was that people had reported the incident. I
considered that the death of the dog caused
upset among the local residents,” who
demanded justice even though the 10-year-old
Colombian cruelty law was so obscure that
Romero had difficulty finding a copy of it.
Continued Romero, “This case appears to
have given publicity to the wide-scale abuse
of animals in our society, which is important,
as ignorance surrounding the legal rights of
animals encourages impunity.” Added animal
advocate Emiliano Castro, “Colombians will
never achieve a peaceful society based on
human dignity and respect for one another if
we can’t first learn to respect the rights of our
brothers in the animal kingdom.”

The right whale stuff

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

While Japan was killing whales,
Brazilian president Fernando Henrique
Cardoso on September 19 designated an
offshore sanctuary for southern Atlantic
right whales in their “nursery” along the
lower coast of Santa Catarina state.
The decree rewarded 20 years of
work by Southern Right Whale Project
founder Jose Truda Palazzo Jr., who at
age 18 rediscovered the whales after they
were believed to have been hunted to extinction.

Sea change in Hawaii

July 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

HONOLULU––Federal District Judge David Ezra on June 23 effectively closed the Hawaiian longline fishery if the National Marine Fisheries Service cannot achieve “100% coverage” of the fleet with onboard observers within 30 days to insure protection of endangered species.

If the ruling is not amended or overturned on appeal, 115 vessels with 600 crew will be idled.

Fourteen NMFS observers monitored 3% to 5% of longliner sailings from 1995 through April 2000. On May 9, however, 12 of the 14 observers were laid off.

Whaling or sanctuary?

July 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

ADELAIDE, Australia– – Japan
was to introduce a plan to expand its “scientific
whaling” program to kill 10 sperm whales
and 50 Bryde’s whales next year as well as
more than 500 minkes at the 52nd annual
meeting of the International Whaling
Commission, to be held July 3-6 in Adelaide.
The Japanese fleet killed 439 whales
out of a self-allocated quota of 440 this year.
Against intense Japanese opposition,
including direct mailings to Adelaide residents,
Australia and New Zealand were to
seek designation of a South Pacific Whale
Sanctuary.
The new sanctuary would extend the
protection zone for southern hemisphere
baleen whales to encompass their breeding
areas, as well as the feeding locations already
protected within the existing Southern Ocean
and Indian Ocean sanctuaries.

Endangered “invasives” killed

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

CAPE TOWN, MELBOURNE––With rare Himalayan tahrs and grey-headed flying fox bats already under fire at Table Mountain and being trapped and killed in Fern Gully of the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Domestic Animal Rescue Association of Cape Town, South Africa, and the Victorian Scientific Advisory Committee in Melbourne, Australia, were seeking last-ditch means of pursuing injunctions to stop the killing as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press.

Each massacre raised the issue of an endangered species in native habitat being seen as invasive elsewhere, despite showing no hint of expanding beyond a narrow range.

Descended from two escaped zoo specimens, the tahrs thrived on Table Mountain after native klipspringers were poached out. They proved so much better at evading human hunters that though the herd, once up to 600, has been reduced to between 70 and 100, they have eluded extermination by Cape Nature Conservation since 1976. CNC believes it must kill all the tahrs before it can successfully reintroduce klipspringers–– who reportedly have already been reintroduced unsuccessfully several times.

NZ DOC vs. rainbow lorikeets

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

AUCKLAND, N.Z.; SAN FRANCISCO; MIAMI––The New Zealand Department of Conservation has budgeted $245,000 toward all-out eradication of feral rainbow lorikeets, including $18,000 for the use of alpha chlorolase poison, but the brightly colored Australian birds have an influential defender in Rex Gilliland, 61.

A life member of the Royal Society of New Zealand and a leading member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, Gilliland is no reflexive friend of ferals. His curriculum vitae states that he “previously assisted the DoC by eradicating the Norway rat from Saddle Island in the Hauraki Gulf at his own expense.”

Also to assist the survival of indigenous New Zealand birds, Gilliland has for many years sponsored kaka exhibition and research at the Auckland Zoo, and planted more than 400 trees to help the birds and other wildlife of Tiri Tiri Island.

Down Under

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Royal SPCA of Australia president Hugh Wirth in February 2000 outraged both vegetarians and hunters with near-simultaneous announcements that the RSPCA will help market gourmet pork, to encourage farmers to rear pigs in less cruel conditions, and that the RSPCA will also seek to extend the present partial bans on duck hunting which are in effect on public land in Western Australia and New South Wales and throughout the Australian Central Territories.

Animal Liberation spokesperson Mark Pearson reportedly accused Wirth of “getting into bed with industry,” while Sporting Shooters Association vice president Ted Drane told Manika Naidoo of the Melbourne Age that he “will ask the tax office to investigate how money donated to a charity can be spent on a political campaign.”

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