Eradicating feral foxes from Aleutian island leaves auklets to the rats

July 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2003:

ANCHORAGE–Perhaps the most catastrophic consequence for
conservation yet of the U.S. federal effort to eradicate “invasive
species” from sensitive wildlife habitat is evident on Kiska Island
in the Aleutians, touted earlier as scene of a major victory.
“In 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eradicated
foxes from Kiska as part of a campaign to save Aleutian Canada geese
from extinction,” Doug O’Harra of the Anchorage Daily News recounted
on July 14. “About 49,000 beef tallow baits laced with Compound 1080
poison were dropped on the island, killing an estimated 700 foxes”
who were introduced decades earlier by fur farmers.
“Biologists visiting the island in spring 1987 found that
Norway rats had exploded in number with the foxes gone, the
Associated Press reported that spring. A federal report noted the
apparent surge in rats as evidence that the foxes had been
eliminated,” wrote O’Harra.

Where cats belong–and where they don’t

June 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2003:

KISSEEMEE, Florida–Depending on who you listen to, the
Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission either declared war
on feral cats at a May 30 meeting in Kisseemee, or clarified their
position that they have no intention of so doing.
Claiming the support of the American Bird Conservancy,
National Audubon Society, and National Wildlife Federation, Florida
Wildlife Division director Frank Montalbano talked like a man going
to war in a March interview with Orlando Sentinel outdoors writer Don
Wilson.

Hedgehog rescuers face a prickly situation off the Scottish coast

April 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

EDINBURGH–Operation Tiggywinkle was to
commence at dawn on March 27, 2003 in the
Western Isles off Scotland.
Ross Minott, campaign director for the
Scots group Advocates for Animals, was to lead a
20-member volunteer team ashore to try to rescue
an estimated 5,000 hedgehogs from the islands of
North Uist, Benbecula, and South Uist, ahead
of death squads to be sent in April by Scottish
National Heritage.
The hedgehogs were introduced to the Western
Isles in 1974 as an attempted biological control
for garden slugs and snails who annoyed the 6,000
human residents of the islands. Eventually the
hedgehogs came to be considered pests themselves.

Puddicome v.s. National Park Service

April 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.– To the National Park Service, Santa
Barbara bus driver and Channel Islands Animal Protection Association
founder Rob Puddicombe, 52, is an eco-terrorist. Puddicome is
expected to go to trial soon for allegedly illegally feeding wildlife
and interfering with the functions of a federal agency. If
convicted, he faces up to one year in prison.
Puddicome, according to the Park Service, sailed an 11-foot
inflatable boat to Anacapa Island in October 2001 with Robert
Crawford, 40, of Goleta, and distributed at least five pounds of
Vitamin K pellets as an intended antidote to the poison the Park
Service dumped from helicopters repeatedly during 2002 to kill black
rats.

Wolves may be left with nowhere to run

April 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003–

WASHINGTON D.C.–The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on March
18 began the process of downlisting grey wolves in the Lower 48
mainland states from “endangered” to “threatened” status, except for
Mexican grey wolves in Arizona and New Mexico and the reintroduced
population in and around Yellowstone National Park.
USFWS said there are now about 664 wolves in the Yellowstone
ecosystem, 2,445 wolves in Minnesota, where they were downlisted in
1978, and 600 in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Orangutans in Kalimantan coal smoke & heated dispute

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

DENVER–Underground coal fires beneath Kalimantan province,
Indonesia, could exterminate the island’s orangutans and sun bears,
Indonesian Ministry of Energy coalfield fire project chief Alfred
Whitehouse and East Georgia College professor Glenn Stracher told the
American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference
in Denver on February 15, 2003.
Of the 20,000 remaining wild orangutans, about 15,000 live
in Kalimantan, Wbitehouse and Stracher said. Already imperiled by
habitat loss due to logging and slash-and-burn agriculture,
orangutans have now lost about half of Kutain National Park due to
underground fires and lethal smoke, according to Whitehouse and
Stracher.

BOOKS: Welfare Ranching

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Welfare Ranching:
The Subsidized Destruction of the American West
edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson
Island Press, (P.O. Box 7, Covelo, CA 95428), 2002.
346 pages. $75.00 hardback, $45 paperback.

As a southerner now living in the West, I am intrigued by
the similarities between what is happening today to the Western
cattle culture and what happened more than a century ago to the old
Southern plantation culture.
Both were products of an entrepreneurial spirit that
exploited people and the environment for economic gain. Both
developed romanticized veneers that appealed to Americans trying to
formulate a national identity–but Southern genteel society attempted
to mimic European aristocracy, while the rugged individualism of
pioneering Westerners symbolized, to some degree, an escape from
Old World trappings.

Big gains for pro-animal issues, candidates may send a message to the White House and Congress

December 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Anxiety intensified on November 5 about the
future of wild animals who depend upon protected habitat, as the
Republican Party won a one-vote U.S. Senate majority to go with their
majority in the House of Representatives.
There is no longer a partisan obstacle to advancing proposals
favored by the George W. Bush administration to weaken federal
habitat protections of every kind.

Editorial: To save endangered species, don’t kill them

November 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2002:

“About 19% of native animal species and 15% of native plant
species in the U.S. are ‘imperiled’ or ‘critically imperiled,’ and
another 1% of plants and 3% of animals may already be extinct–that
is, they have not been located despite intensive searches,”
declared the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the
Environment on September 24, in a purported landmark report formally
titled The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems.
“When ‘vulnerable’ species are counted, about one third of
plant and animal species are considered to be ‘at risk,'” the report
continued.
Most U.S. newspapers gave The State of the Nation’s
Ecosystems just one paragraph.

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