Krill killing

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

The last paragraph of the
official summary of the 1997
International Whaling Commission
meeting in Monaco noted that the
IWC is funding two research cruises.
“One,” the summary said, “is
aimed at providing information on
blue whales and the other at providing
information on minke, blue,
and other whales in the Southern
Ocean Sanctuary. Japan is generously
providing the vessels.”
That paragraph worries
the Sea Shepherds as much as any
other development of the meeting,
as it suggests an opening for Japan
to reassert a frequent claim that the
blue whale population is not recovering
due to competition for krill,
the microscopic shrimp that are
their staple food, from the more
abundant minke whales that Japan
wants to commercially hunt.
Krill have declined precipitously
in recent years, coinciding
wih increased ultraviolet radiation
hitting the ocean through holes
in the Antarctic ozone layer––and
with escalated Japanese use of krill
as pig feed and fertilizer.

It’s not tar that North Carolina factory farm heels are tracking

December 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

HENDERSONVILLE,
N.C.––Dumping manure into Mud
Creek for more than seven years and
ignoring a September 1996 clean-up
order, dairy farmers James Sexton
Jr. and Charles E. Sexton on
November 11 drew 30 days in jail
each for contempt.
Superior Court Judge
James Downs said they would be
released as soon as a new manurehandling
system is in place and certified
by the North Carolina Soil and
Water Conservation District.
That meant the Sextons
would actually serve about two
weeks, James Sexton said, alleging
unfair treatment. Just before their
sentencing, the Sextons had temporarily
removed their cattle from
the property, dug a two-acre cess
lagoon, and ordered $32,000 worth
of sewage separation equipment.

Ranchers want taxpayers to keep them in clover

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt has asked President
Bill Clinton to veto a “grazing reform” bill that
House Agriculture Committee chair Bob Smith
(R-Oregon) sent to the House on September
24––if it clears Congress.
Wilderness Society lobbyist Fran
Hunt said the Smith bill “would lock in a new
subsidized grazing fee for livestock operators
on public lands, “ at about a third the federal
cost of land maintenance; “enact new hurdles
that would make it even more difficult for the
Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management
to protect and restore public rangeland”;
“limit public participation in federal decisionmaking”;
“hamper the ability of concerned
groups and individuals to appeal unsound federal
grazing decisions”; and “undercut the
multiple use management and conservation of
the National Grasslands by removing them
from the National Forest system.”

Fishy business whirling

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

High-profile U.S. and Canadian efforts to restore endangered western
salmon runs have their counterpart in a restoration of native trout to
Yellowstone, announced in January 1997 by Yellowstone National Park
superintendent Mike Finley.
Like the salmon restoration, the trout restoration is driven by concern
for declining biodiversity––but unlike the salmon projects, is not associated
with actual scarcity of fish. The problem gripping the Pacific Northwest
is that the combination of heavy fishing, dam-building, and silted spawning
streams caused by logging not only annihilated salmon runs, but also built
industries whose very existence conflicts with the recovery of salmon, even as
fishing also depends upon having abundant salmon of the more coveted subspecies
[the less coveted pink salmon seem to be thriving by the absence of
their bigger kin].

Orangs in the smoke

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

JAKARTA, Indonesia– – Unidenti-
fied creatures and species long believed extinct
are among the beasts fleeing forest fires that
have ravaged an estimated 4.2 million acres of
Sumatra, Borneo, and Java since mid-July.
Scientific enthusiasm over possible
discoveries and rediscoveries of species is
sobered by the certainty that much and perhaps
all of the rare animals’ habitat may be lost.
“Burning fields and forests is an
annual occurence in Indonesia,” Pat Bell of the
Ottawa Citizen reported on October 8. “But
this year plantations and forestry firms
increased the number of fires in an apparent
attempt to clear as much as they could before
the government was able to enforce a ban,”
which was imposed after fires in 1982-1983 and
1994 destroyed 15.8 million acres of forest.
Environmental law enforcement is
traditionally lax in Indonesia, recently rated the
most corrupt nation among 46 assessed by the
public interest group Transparency International.
In 1994, for instance, after the Forest
Ministry fined two timber firms a combined
total of more than $2 million, and denied
extensions of 43 logging leases, President
Suharto ordered the ministry to make an interest-free
loan of $185 million to the aircraft
maker Industri Pesawat Terbang Negara. The
money was diverted from a reforestation fund.

Barbarians rev up at the gates of Yellowstone

November 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––As the
first and most popular National Park, Yellowstone could be
seen as the capitol of a wilderness empire as far-reaching as
Imperial Rome.
The 150 snowmobiling wise-use wiseguys who
rallied October 11 in West Yellowstone against limited park
road closures might be seen as the vanguard of the Huns,
hellbent on sacking what they don’t understand.
Looking at a map of North America, one can easily
imagine parks, forests, and national monuments linked
into a continuous set of wildlife corridors from the Yukon to
the Gulf of California. Much of the Mexican terminus is
already protected within a United Nations-recognized
Biosphere Reserve––but another part, the San Ignacio
Lagoon, is both an important gray whale calving area and
potentially jeopardized by salt extraction facilities in joint
development by Mitsubishi and the Mexican government.

REFUGE OR NO-MAN’S LAND?

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

BURMA––”About 300 Karen
civilians fled into the Mae Sarieng district” of
Thailand, the Global Response environmental
and human rights electronic mail network
alerted 6,500 members on August 21, “after
Burmese soldiers torched six villages in
Burma’s Doi Kor province,” torturing relatives
and friends of the refugees who were
captured, according to interviews with the
escapees and relief workers published by the
Burma News Network and Bangkok Post.
The refugees, like many other
Karen fleeing the dictatorship of Burma over
the past several years, were interned at a
Thai government camp for displaced persons.
Especially problematic for human
rights advocates was that the incident came in
association with the establishment of the
Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve.

Marine life feels the heat

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Global warming and krill fishing by Russia, Japan,
and the Ukraine have tipped the biomass balance of the
Antarctic to favor salp, another microscopic creature of little
food value to marine mammals, Antarctic Marine Living
Resources program researchers reported in June.
Generating red tides, salp blooms kill as well as
compete with krill. The rise of salp and decline of krill reportedly
coincides with a 35% drop in the krill-dependent King
George Island population of Adele penguins.
The decline of Antarctic krill is not why record numbers
of blue whales and other baleen whales gathered this summer
off the Farallon Islands, experts said, since North Pacific
baleen whales migrate no farther south than the equator, but
warm water currents called El Nino, also tentatively linked to
global warming, have depleted the cetacean food supply in
parts of the North Pacific.
The depletion hit sea birds too, especially common
murres, who failed to nest this year along the Oregon coast.
Northern currents have reportedly warmed so much that southeast
Alaska salmon netters recently hauled in a one-ton Mola
mola––an oceanic sunfish usually found off Mexico. Pacific
mackerel have followed the warm currents to hit newly
released chinook salmon hard off Vancouver Island.

Salton Sea crisis breaks rehabbers

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

IRVINE––The 12-year-old
Pacific Wildlife Project avian rehabilitation
center in Irvine, California, is reportedly
near collapse after spending $80,000
to treat about 1,000 birds who were sickened
by botulism last summer at the
Salton Sea.
About 14,000 birds died near the
inland sea, and another 5,000, of at least
40 species, have died so far this year.
Director Linda Evans billed the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service for the funds, coincidental
with the construction by volunteers
of a $90,000 emergency treatment facility
near the Salton Sea National Wildlife
Refuge, but refuge manager Clark Bloom
said the refuge had no money to send her.

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