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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Down in Monterey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

MONTEREY, California––Alarmed by
the decline of sea life within the Monterey Bay
National Marine Sanctuary, stretching from the
Golden Gate area off San Francisco to the vicinity of
Hearst’s Castle at San Simeon, diver Ed Cooper of
Pacific Grove and underwater photographer Kevin
McDonnell of Seaside have proposed strengthening
the existing federal protections by creating an undersea
park straddling the Hopkins Marine Refuge at
Point Cabrillo, just west of the Monterey Bay
Aquarium. The park would ban all fishing and marine
life collection within an area extending 200 to 300
yards offshore, to a depth of 60 feet.

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Tapirs in trouble

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

“The insatiable human appetite for meat and
animal products is devouring the mountain tapir’s pre-
cious Andean home,” writes wildlife ecologist Craig
Downer, “even within Sangay National Park,
Ecuador, a UNESCO World Heritage area. In my six
years there, my study area has gone from lightly to
grievously invaded by cattle. Fires set by vaqueros
have substantially reduced the cloud forests, the
tapirs’ most essential habitat. Hunters have killed at
least 50 tapirs within the park, including four of the
seven I have radio-collared. As a member of the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature

Species survival commission, I am presently prepar-
ing an action plan for the rescue of this species.”

Hog slurry isn’t the only stench in North Carolina

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

RALEIGH, N.C.––”Boss Hog,” a
two-section expose of the political influence
and environmental consequences of the pork
industry, published on March 19 by the
Raleigh News & Observer, became a hot item
after a manure storage lagoon broke on June 21
at Oceanview Farms in Onslow, North
Carolina, spilling more than 25 million gallons
of slurry into nearby fields and streams.
By contrast, Henry Spira of the
Coalition for Nonviolent Food pointed out, the
Exxon Valdez spill involved “only” 11 million
gallons of crude oil.
The same day, a similar spill
occurred in Sampson, N.C., and less than two
weeks later, a lagoon in Duplin County, N.C.,
dumped 8.6 million gallons of poultry slurry
into tributaries of the Cape Fear River.

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Humane education with Jane Goodall by Carol A. Connare

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

In moments, she went from sipping
coffee with patrolmen to getting a surprise
audience with the top 100 captains of the Los
Angeles Police Department. Adrenaline
pumping, Dr. Jane Goodall thought fast. “I
said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get their attention,
or they won’t hear a thing I say.’” Deputy
Chief Kroeker introduced Goodall to the men.
She stood up and said, “If I were a female
chimpanzee and I walked into a room of
high-ranking male chimpanzees, it would be
foolish if I didn’t greet them with a submis-
sive pant-grunt,” which she proceeded to do.
All eyes looked up, the men lis-
tened intently to her ten-minute talk, and
Chief Willie Williams agreed to endorse her
educational program––Roots and Shoots––
and help introduce it to inner city kids.
As humans, we take superiority for
granted. But Goodall feels strongly, based
on years in the bush, doing zoological
research, that we are not as different from
other animals as many of us think.

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Sealing their doom: Whale sanctuary may be last safe harbor

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,
QUEBEC––The Canadian government got
the word about cod stocks on June 29, and it
wasn’t good. Having allowed northern cod to
be fished to commercial extinction before cut-
ting quotas and cracking down on foreign
dragnetters, Canada may have lost the greater
portion of its Atlantic fishery until at least a
decade into the 21st century, if not forever.
Scrambing to shift the blame, and
hoping to revive the global market for seal
pelts by way of tossing a bone to frustrated
fishers, Canadian fisheries minister Brian
Tobin claimed that evening on the CBC
Prime Time News that, “Whatever the role
seals have played in the collapse of ground-
fish stocks, seals are playing a far more
important and significant role in preventing,
in slowing down, a recovery.”

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SHOWDOWN AT THE DOLPHIN PEN

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

SUGARLOAF KEY, Florida––The first anniversary of the arrival of the dolphins
Molly, Bogie, and Bacall at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary came and went with no resolu-
tion in sight of the impasse between Sugarloaf director of rehabilitation Ric O’Barry and oth-
ers involved in the rehab-and-release effort. Brought from the former Ocean Reef Club in
Key Largo on August 10, 1994, all three dolphins remain at Sugarloaf, for the time being,
along with three former U.S. Navy dolphins whom O’Barry is preparing for release in a sepa-
rate deal arranged by the Humane Society of the U.S.

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YELLOWSTONE: The steam isn’t all from geysers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––Filmed in Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, the 1952 western classic Shane depicted stubborn men who thought them-selves reasonable in a tragic clash over limited range. Alan Ladd, in the title role, won the big showdown, then rode away pledging there would be no more guns in the valley.

But more than a century after the Shane era, the Yellowstone range wars not only smoulder on, but have heated up. To the north, in rural Montana, at least three times this year armed wise-users have holed up for months, standing off bored cordons of sheriff’s deputies, who wait beyond bullet range to arrest them for not paying taxes and taking the law into their own hands.

One of the besieged, Gordon Sellner, 57, was wounded in an alleged shootout and arrested on July 19 near Condon. Sellner, who said he hadn’t filed a tax return in 20 years, was wanted for attempted murder, having allegedly shot a sheriff’s deputy in 1992. A similar siege goes on at Roundup, where Rodney Skurdahl and four others are wanted for allegedly issuing a “citizen’s declaration of war” against the state and federal governments and posting boun-ties on public officials. At Darby, near the Bitterroot National Forest, elk rancher Calvin Greenup threatens to shoot anyone who tries to arrest him for allegedly plotting to “arrest,” “try,” and hang local authorities. Greenup is Montana coordinator of the North American Volunteer Militia.

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BOOKS: Little Brother Moose & The Tree in the Ancient Forest

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Little Brother Moose, by James Kasperson, illustrated by Karlyn Holman.
The Tree in the Ancient Forest,
by Carol Reed Jones, illustrated by Christopher Canyon.
Each $6.95/paper or $14.95/cloth, from Dawn Publications
(14618 Tyler Foote Road, Nevada City, CA 95959), 1995.
Attractively and imaginatively
illustrated, Little Brother Moose is modeled
on the Native American tradition of the
Vision Quest, a solo journey in search of
self-understanding that marks the passage
into adulthood––this time made by a moose.
It also resembles the story of an early settler
on the future site of Boston, who moved
west when it got too crowded. Invited back
for a visit by the civic authorities, decades
later, he rode in on a bull, trotted disgusted-
ly through the busy streets, and galloped
west again without even stopping for a drink.

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