A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2002:
SANTIAGO, BONN–The ivory and whaling industries will go
into the 12th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species on November 3 as
determined as ever to reopen legal global commerce in the body parts
of elephants and whales.
The ivory merchants and whalers are not considered likely to
get what they want.
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.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2002:
BOSTON–The Fund for Animals, Humane Society of the U.S.,
Massachusetts SPCA, and individual Cape Cod residents on September
20 filed suit against the National Park Service for collaborating
with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife to release
hundreds of captive-bred pheasants each year for hunters to shoot at
the ecologically fragile Cape Cod National Seashore.
“The National Park Service is exterminating black rats on
Anacapa Island, California, and evicting wild burros from the
Mojave desert because they are not native,” pointed out Fund for
Animals executive vice president president Mike Markarian, whose
organization has also contested those actions, “but is purposely
introducing exotic species for use as targets,”
Markarian was promoted to the presidency of The Fund on
September 24. Marian Probst, assistant to Fund founder Cleveland
Amory from the 1967 start of the organization until Amory died in
1998, and president since then, became chairperson, continuing as
chief financial officer and administrator.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:
The Ghosts of Tsavo
by Philip Caputo
Adventure Press (c/o National Geographic Society,
1145 17th St. NW, Washington, DC 20036), 2002. 275 pages,
hardcover. $27.00.
The South & South East Asian Ivory Markets
by Esmond Martin & Daniel Stiles
Save the Elephants (c/o Ambrose Appelbe, 7 New Square, Lincoln’s
Inn, London WC2A 3RA, U.K.)
88 pages, paperback. No listed price.
Wild Orphans
by Gerry Ellis
Welcome Books (588 Broadway, New York, NY 10012), 2002. 136
pages, illust., hardcover. $24.95.
Travels With Tarra
by Carol Buckley
Tilbury House Publishers (2 Mechanic Street #3, Gardiner, ME 04345), 2002.
40 pages, illustrated, hardcover. $16.95.
Save The Elephants ivory trade investigators Esmond Martin
and Daniel Stiles, circus elephant trainer turned sanctuarian Carol
Buckley, and Daphne Sheldrick, whose elephant orphanage in Nairobi
National Park, Kenya, is subject of photojournalist Gerry Ellis’
Wild Orphans, each grasp and have devoted much of their lives to
addressing different parts of the mystique of elephants–and the
dilemma of how best to save them from extinction and abuse.
Ellis recently joined them by forming the Foundation for
Global Biodiversity Education for Children, Globio for short.
Globio assists six animal orphanages on five continents, including
the Sheldrick orphanage.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:
SEATTLE, SHIMONSEKI– Decisions announced on May 24, 2002
by the National Marine Fisheries Service in Washington D.C. and the
International Whaling Commission in Shimonseki, Japan, hint that
the next big battles over both whale captivity and whale-hunting
might be fought on Puget Sound, Washington state.
But again, maybe not, as the issues of captivity and
“cultural subsistence” whaling that sparked high-profile protest in
the mid-1990s have all but dropped from public view.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:
LONDON–Outweighed by the World Wildlife Fund in two British
trademark court decisions, the World Wrestling Federation on May 7
reintroduced itself as World Wrestling Entertainment, leaving the
other WWF to wrestle with itself, after WWF-Japan representative
Shigeki Komori reportedly told news media on the eve of the
International Whaling Commission meeting (see page one) that if
various conditions were met, “we can no longer deny the logic that
regulated commercial whaling can resume.”
“WWF does not support commercial whaling in any
circumstances. We will sort out our office in Japan if they are
saying anything different,” said WWF endangered species program
director Susan Lieberman.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:
OTTAWA–Canadian Alliance leader John Reynolds gloated on
April 30 that the third attempt of the Liberal government to pass a
national endangered species act appeared to be dead. The current
Parliament is to adjourn on June 21. Liberal house leader Ralphe
Goodale–insisting that the currently introduced Species-at-Risk Act
will “get to the finish line by mid-June”–had by May 28 made no new
move to push it. The Liberals are strongest in Quebec and Atlantic
Canada; the Canadian Alliance dominates the west.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:
SASKATOON, Saslatchewan–Started on April 1, the Ken Turcot
Memorial Gopher Derby was touted by Saskatoon Wildlife Federation
business manager Len Jabush as perhaps the biggest killing contest in
Canadian history.
Jabush told Karen Morrison of The Western Producer that he
distributed 10,000 entry forms, expecting 2,000 contestants to pay
$20 each to have their “gopher” tails counted, and was “scrambling”
to print more. He did not say, “April fool!”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:
ANNAPOLIS, DENVER, HARRISBURG, MADISON, WASHINGTON
D.C.–Maryland Governor Parris Glendening on May 15 vetoed a bill
which would have increased the state deer hunting season from 13 days
to at least 21 days, including the first Sunday of the season.
Vetoing a bill overwhelmingly favored by the hunting lobby
was political suicide not long ago, especially in a southern state,
and even in the name of keeping the sanctity of the Sabbath.