Birds

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

The Clinton administration on

February 23 unveiled a management plan

for 24 million acres of public land in the

Pacific Northwest that cuts the rate of log-

ging to 20% of the pace in the 1980s. Most

of the 5.3 million acres of old growth on the

public lands will be off limits, to protect

spotted owls and more than 1,000 other old

growth-dependent species. Although the

plan will make permanent the layoffs of

about 9,500 forest products workers, it is

expected to be what The New York Times

called “the final blueprint” for settling the

spotted owl crisis. Studies of the impact of

logging on spotted owls go on; critics of owl

protection may enjoy the March 13 disclo-

sure that the Seattle Center for Wildlife

Conservation is getting $107,000 from the

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to check spot-

ted owl guano from logging areas for hor-

monal signs of stress.

FROGS & TOADS

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Speakers at the American

Association for the Advancement of

Science annual meeting in San

Francisco in late February argued that

endangered species protection should

focus on species with few living rela-

tives and therefore a unique genetic

heritage. Amphibian expert David

Wake of the University of California

at Berkeley pointed out that the spot-

ted owl has many close relatives,

while a primitive tailed toad who

inhabits the same forest apparently

diverged from other frogs and toads in

the Jurassic era, 150 million years

ago. The value of spotted owl protec-

tion, he argued, lies mainly in the

spinoff value of protecting habitat for

more unique species along with the

owl habitat.

AGRICULTURE

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

MAJOR RATITE BANKRUPTCY IN FLORIDA

The collapse of the ratite speculation boom pre-

dicted in the January/February ANIMAL PEOPLE cover fea-

ture may have begun with the mid-January bankruptcy of U.S.

Ostrich and Junction Financial Corporation, of Hallandale,

Florida. The related firms claimed assets of $933,000, includ-

ing ostriches bought for $381,000, while owing $3.9 million to

1,350 investors in 47 states, Canada, and Jamaica. One

investor reportedly lost $274,000. The Securities Exchange

Corporation responded by suing U.S. Ostrich and Junction

Financial principals Marcia Josowitz and Stephen Tashman for

allegedly selling more than $3 million in unregistered securities

in the form of investment contracts, billed as general partner-

ships. The SEC also charged Josowitz and Tashman with

draining corporate funds to make loans to themselves and pay

themselves inflated salaries. Josowitz and Tashman apparently

got into ostriches after promoting a 900 telephone number ser-

vice, office supplies, vacation travel, and water purifiers.

Birds

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The January/February edition of World Watch, the journal of the

Worldwatch Institute, postulated that wild birds are the “canaries in the coal mine”

whose decline warns of forthcoming ecodisaster. The article cited studies finding that

1,000 of the 9,600 known bird species are endangered or threatened; 70% of known

species are decining in numbers; and 2,600 species are involved in international trade.

Under pressure to provide targets for hunters and faced with crashing

populations of most migratory waterfowl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is consid-

ering lifting a ban on goose hunting along the Pacific Flyway. The ban was imposed to

protect the cackling Canada goose and the Pacific white-fronted goose, whose num-

bers dropped from 300,000 to 28,500 and from 500,000 to 93,900 during the 1980s,

but are now back up to 164,300 and 275,100, respectively.

Animals lose friends in D.C.

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Bureau of Land Management chief

James Baca resigned February 3 rather than be kicked upstairs by Interior

Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who had offered to make him his deputy assis-

tant. Baca was unpopular with ranchers and miners due to his demand for

tougher environmental controls on use of the 270 million acres of BLM

land, and for reform of leasing agreements to gain market value returns

from grazing leases and mining claims. Ranchers also recall that Baca

threw the USDA’s Animal Damage Control agency out of New Mexico in

1992 for failing to inspect traps at least once every 24 hours, to reduce

animal suffering and harm to endangered speces.

Babbitt said he remained “deeply committed to getting grazing

rules worked out and also to getting reforms of the mining law of 1872

enacted,” but ousted Baca because they have “different approaches to

management style and consensus building.”

Birds

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The November issue of ANIMAL

PEOPLE summarized reports that several

endangered songbirds in California are in

trouble because immigrant cowbirds lay

their eggs in the songbirds’ nests. The fast-

hatching cowbirds destroy the unhatched

songbird eggs. That theory was sunk, how-

ever, at a recent conference on cowbird

ecology held in Austin, Texas. Wrote Bob

Holmes in Science magazine: “Cowbirds

feed in open grassy areas but dump many of

their eggs in songbird nests in woodlands.

Wildlife

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Maine wildlife officials have

confirmed that wounds on the carcass of a

bobcat who was killed in a fight with a much

larger cat may have been made by an eastern

cougar. The fight was witnessed by hunter

Anthony Fuscaldo. Officially extinct in

Maine since 1938, and in the rest of New

England and eastern Canada much earlier,

the eastern cougar was restored to the list of

living species last year when tracks and scat

were found in New Brunswick, shortly after

a farmer shot one in western Quebec.

Sightings continued throughout the decades

of supposed extinction, but most turned out

to involve bobcats, lynxes, the occasional

extra-large housecat, and some tame exotic

cats who were released by their keepers after

growing too big to handle safely.

Wise Use Wiseguys

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

New England and New York wise-

users met November 30 in Concord, New

Hampshire, at a summit held by the North

East Property Rights Alliance––and then

staged a five-day call-in to the White House,

trying to get Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt

fired for advancing a national biological sur-

vey. The wise-users say the survey, intended

to identify potential conflicts between endan-

gered species and land use before they happen,

would be prelude to “government land grabs.”

The NEPRA helped defeat a proposed Wild

and Scenic designation for 26 miles of the

Pemigewasset River last spring, and now

opposes the Merrimack Wild and Scenic

Rivers Study, the Shoreline Protection Act,

and the Northern Forests Lands Study, as well

as pushing a New Hampshire bill to give prop-

erty rights precedence over species protection.

WAR

December 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:

While other bloodbaths have

diverted concern from Saddam

Hussein’s purge of Shiites from

Southern Iraq, an effect of the killing

may soon be evident throughout

Europe, Asia, and

northern Africa, when waterfowl

numbers crash as result of the

drainage of about half the 6,000

square miles of wetland between the

Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The

wetland is perhaps the most impor-

tant feeding, resting, and breeding

area for migratory birds in the

Middle East. Saddam ordered the

the rivers diverted in August 1992,

ostensibly for irrigation but more

plausibly to drive the Shiites, who

oppose his regime, into Shiite-con-

trolled Iran. The wetlands are the

traditional Shiite stronghold.

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