Birds

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Hard-pressed sturgeon, sharks, and

rays got a break courtesy of the birds in May when

the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge

closed a popular fishing road to protect the nests of

threatened snowy plovers. Killed mainly for kicks,

not eating, the sturgeon, sharks, and rays are less

protected than the plovers but perhaps in greater

jeopardy of extinction because of their rapid deple-

tion and slow reproductive rate.

Oregon State University professor

Morrie Craig has received an award from the

American Racing Pigeon Union for developing a

way to test guano to detect the use of performance-

altering drugs. Doping has lately become a prob-

lem in pigeon racing, as the top prizes in interna-

tional competition have soared above $200,000.

AGRICULTURE

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

The USDA on April 26 announced yet another pro-

posal to raise grazing fees on federal land. This version would

boost the base fee to $3.96 per head-month by 1997, but would

provide incentive discounts for ranchers who undertake various

forms of conservation and/or rangeland improvement.

Comments will be reviewed until July 28. An Environmental

Protection Agency impact study published May 18 estimated that

current management practices would bring a 3% decline over the

next 20 years in stream quality in the affected habitat, while the

proposed changes would bring a 27% improvement.

A National Agricultural Statistics Service survey of

the 10 largest corn-producing states, which raise 80% of the total

U.S. corn crop, reports that less than 1% is lost to wildlife. The

average loss per acre is 0.66 bushels. Of the 35.4 million bushels

eaten by wild animals, deer eat 13.9 million, while birds eat 9.6

million. The 1993 crop came to 5.14 billion bushels in all.

MARINE MAMMAL NOTES

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

The Marine Mammal Protection Act was

reauthorized on schedule on April 29, including loop-

holes to let hunters to import polar bear trophies and to

allow the killing of seals and sea lions who eat threat-

ened fish runs at locks and fish ladders. Other provi-

sions include a total ban on intentionally shooting

marine mammals who interfere with fishing, and a pro-

gram to cut accidental kills during fishing to near zero

over the next seven years.

The Liberal Party of Canada convention on

May 15 overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling

for the resumption of offshore seal hunting, halted in

1983 after two decades of international protest. The

Liberals form the Parliamentary majority. Claiming

“the concerns of animal rights lobby groups should not

be put before the concerns of the people of

Newfoundland and Labrador,” the resolution claims

sealing is needed to create jobs because the fishing

industry has collapsed––making no mention that the col-

lapse was caused by overfishing condoned in the name

of job creation by a succession of both Liberal and

Progressive-Conservative governments.

BRIAN DAVIES FOUNDATION INVESTED IN VIVISECTION

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

LONDON, England––At deadline ANIMAL

PEOPLE was still awaiting International Fund for Animal

Welfare founder Brian Davies’ response to allegations by the

British Broadcasting Corporation expose series Public Eye

that as much as 39% of the Brian Davies Foundation stock

portfolio may be invested with firms that either do vivisection

or are under boycott by other major animal and habitat pro-

tection groups. ANIMAL PEOPLE had, however, received

IFAW’s apparently accidental fax transmission of our request

for comment with four handwritten notes scrawled across it

by at least three different people, discussing how to respond.

The Brian Davies Foundation is a holding corpora-

tion affiliated with IFAW, the sole purpose of which appears

to be managing investments.

IFAW, now under fire for announcing it would not

oppose a plan that could lead to the resumption of commer-

cial whaling (see page one), was just two months ago riding

the crest of outrage over the Canadian sale of 50,000 seal

penises to the Asian aphrodisiac trade––which full-page ads

placed by IFAW in leading Canadian newspapers accurately

linked to child prostitution in Southeast Asia. The issue was

and may still be the hottest for Davies and IFAW since 1983,

when Canada suspended the offshore slaughter of infant harp

seals (though the land-based phase of the killing continues).

Zoo notes

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

A deal to move Ivan the gorilla to the 17-member

colony at Zoo Atlanta has collapsed. Ivan has been kept in a

cage at a now-bankrupt shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington,

for nearly 30 years. Bankruptcy trustee Bianca Harrison claims

the obstacle was that Zoo Atlanta wouldn’t let his keepers to stay

with him during quarantine, wouldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t

be moved again, and wouldn’t promise that he wouldn’t be elec-

troejaculated. Zoo Atlanta says the real issue is that the creditors

think they can get more money for Ivan abroad than the $30,000

the Progressive Animal Welfare Society offered to send him to

Atlanta.

Four gorillas have died at the Columbus Zoo in the

past year––Oscar of a heart attack, Molly and her baby as result

of a premature birth, and Colbi, age six, of apparent severe coli-

tis on May 3. Antibiotic treatments failed.

Save the whales! DID CLINTON SELL OUT WHALES TO SELL MISSILES?

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico––The world will

know by the time you read this whether U.S. president Bill

Clinton sold out whales to sell $625 million worth of missiles to

Norway. As ANIMAL PEOPLEwent to press, Greenpeace and

the World Wildlife Fund, goaded by Friends of Animals, were

applying last-minute leverage to head off the apparent

sellout––including joint protest on May 17 in front of the White

House, a WWF first, while Clinton and vice president Albert

Gore met with Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland inside.

The proposed creation of an Antarctic whale refuge and

the resumption of commercial whaling head the agenda for the

46th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission

(IWC), commencing on May 23. As every year since 1982,

when the IWC decreed the moratorium on commercial whaling in

effect since 1986, Japan and Norway will push to break the

moratorium. As last year, Japan and Norway will also fight the

creation of the sanctuary, seeking the help of Antigua-and-

Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent-and-

the-Grenadines, four tiny Caribbean nations heavily dependent

upon Japanese foreign aid, whose votes were decisive in 1993.

Saving marine mammals and tigers: The balance of nature vs. the balance of terror

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The poli-

tics of wildlife protection are at the fore this

month as Congress rushes toward renewing

the Marine Mammal Protection Act on the eve

of the annual push by whaling nations to gut

the whaling ban enacted in 1986 by the

International Whaling Commission––and

everyone has something to trade but the

cetaceans and pinapeds whose fate depends on

the outcome. Simultaneously the fate of wild

tigers and rhinoceroses worldwide would

seem to depend more upon the success of

negotiations over inspection access to North

Korean nuclear power plants than upon either

economics or ecology.

A foreshadowing of the probable

compromises ahead over marine mammals

came on April 11, as President Bill Clinton

barred U.S. imports of wildlife products from

Taiwan effective in mid-May. Said Clinton,

“The world’s tiger and rhinoceros populations

remain gravely endangered and will likely be

extinct within the next two to five years if the

trade in their parts and products, fueled by

market demand in consuming countries, is

not eliminated.”

Birds

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

Virtually insuring the mass destruction of spar-

rows, who provide much of China’s insect control, Beijing

Weekend magazine on April 1 published the assertion of profes-

sor Chen Wenbo of the Beijing Drum Tower Hospital of

Traditional Chinese Medicine that eating six sparrows and 15

grams of Chinese wolfberries per day for three months can cure

male sterility. The professor, 57, claimed to have cured

30,000 patients with a diet of sparrows over the past 13 years:

86% of their wives became pregnant. Since 1991 the price of

sparrows at the bird market outside the hospital has reportedly

doubled from three U.S. cents apiece to six.

Siberian cranes failed to arrive this winter at

Keolado National Park, near Bharatpur, India, for the first

time in 30 years. Only six were seen in Iran, and none in

Pakistan, marking the virtual extinction of the western flock,

which numbered 200 about 30 years ago. About 2,900 Siberian

cranes survive in the eastern flock, wintering in eastern China.

Fur

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The Animal Welfare Institute, the World Society

for the Protection of Animals, and the Nordic Animal

Welfare Council won an upset victory on February 11 at the

International Standards Organization Technical Committee 191

meeting held in Ottawa when the committee voted to delete the

word “humane” from the description of the standards the com-

mittee is developing for submission to the European

Community. If the word “humane” had been used, the effect

might have been to circumvent the EC ban on the import of furs

trapped by inhumane methods, including the leghold trap. The

committee also agreed to admit representatives from the

American SPCA and Humane Society of the U.S.; AWI had

been the only animal protection group included in the trapper-

dominated U.S. delegation. ANIMAL PEOPLE regrets that

this information was inexplicably received nearly two months

after our March issue went to press.

« 1 … 58 59 60 61 62 … 69 »