A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
OSTERDALEN, Norway–Twenty-three hunters sent by the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management to kill nearly half the wolves in Norway were expected to seek a court order, as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press on February 21, 2001, to close the Osterdalen Valley to all people not associated with the killing.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001.
On February 2, Groundhog Day, groundhogs across North America declared–by remaining fast asleep in hibernation–that winter would continue. In a much hotter climate, Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe forced Zimbabwean Supreme Court chief judge Anthony Gubbay to resign, warning Gubbay that his personal safety could no longer be guaranteed.
Gubbay and the other Zimbabwean Supreme Court judges outraged Mugabe by finding in December 2000 that his manipulations of election results were unconstitutional. Also illegal, the court found, are expropriations of habitat from private owners to redistribute among so-called “war veterans”–many of them not nearly old enough to have helped in overthrowing the apartheid regime of the former Rhodesia. This followed a November ruling that the ongoing occupations of private wildlife reserves by the “war veterans” are illegal, and an October ruling that Mugabe lacked the authority to pardon the “war veterans” for crimes linked to the occupations.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
VICTORIA, B.C.–British Columbia premier Ujjal Dosanjh on February 8 announced a three-year moratorium on hunting grizzly bears within the province, as sought by Environmental Investigation Agency campaigner Martin Powell in an open letter published in the January/February 2001 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE. In the interim, Dosanjh asked scientists to resolve conflicting estimates which put the B.C. grizzly population at anywhere from 4,000 to 13,000.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
African wildlife conservation
Hunting for power
Forty thousand hunters from all parts of Mali and the nearby West African nations of Burkina Fasa, Guinea, Niger, and Senecal attended a mid-February festival hosted by Mali president Alpha Oumar Konare in Bamako, Mali. Konare’s motives in bringing the hunters, mostly animists, to largely Islamic Mali, were questioned. “It’s not good, this hunter thing,” one source told Joan Baxter of BBC News. “We fear the president wants to use all the hunters’ powers to extend his mandate.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
The Shark Almanac, by Thomas B. Allen
The Lyons Press (123 West 18th St., New York, NY 10011), 2000.
274 pages, hardcover; illust. $35.00.
Our review copy of The Shark Almanac was read en route to Hong Kong, and was donated to the Hong Kong SPCA humane education department. One is assailed throughout the Kowloon hotel and restaurant district by the sight and smell of Hong Kong residents and Pacific Rim visitors eating the shark genus toward extinction. Slow to mature and reproduce, mostly living at the apex of the marine food chain, sharks have not evolved to withstand the present pace of predation.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
Varmints and Killing Coyote
Produced & directed by Doug Hawes-Davis, High Plains Films
(P.O. Box 906, Missoula, MT 59807; telephone 406-543-6726; fax 406-728-9432;
e-mail <dhd@wildrockies.org>; <www.wildrockies.org>),
1998, 2000. 83 and 81 minutes; $35 each.
Targeted by the U.S. government in 1930 for total extermination, as scapegoats for the Dustbowl and collapsing wool prices, prairie dogs and coyotes might have taught underground and nocturnal survival tactics to the Viet Cong. Certainly the concept of “body count” as measure of military success seems to have evolved from the scorekeeping of prairie dog shoots and coyote killing contests. Before the U.S. took on prairie dogs and coyotes, with their uncanny ability to occupy land while remaining hidden, wars were measured in terms of territory held.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2001:
ALBANY, JUNEAU– Sixteen juveniles have used hunting weapons, primarily, to kill 27 people and wound 50 in 14 school shooting incidents since 1995, but state legislatures from New York to Alaska are still trying to put more guns in children’s hands.
Twelve-year-olds have been allowed to hunt “small game” with light-caliber weapons in New York since 1992, but first-time hunting license sales have since fallen by 29%. Governor George Pataki is therefore backing two budget bills, A-2000 and S-1148, which would cut the minimum age for deer and bear hunting from 16 to 14. Deer and bear hunters typically use rifles and ammunition which can kill at a range of up to two miles.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:
“I am appalled,” Metro Humane Shelter founder Harrison Lloyd wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE from Birmingham, Alabama, soon after the U.S. Supreme Court made George W. Bush the next U.S. President, “that you took a strong stand for the election of the Albert Gore/Joseph Lieberman ticket while slamming George W. Bush. You made a big issue of the fact that Bush killed one little bird in error, for which he paid a fine, but Gore and Lieberman are strong believers in murdering unborn human babies.”
Gore partisans accused us of Republicanism when from 1994 on we repeatedly pointed out his positions favoring Japanese, Norwegian, and Makah whalers. Gore backers were also ired when in 1999 we explained how many lab animals were to be killed as part of his High Production Volume chemical safety testing initiative. The HPV testing protocols were later amended, due to public protest, to use far fewer animals.
ANIMAL PEOPLE covers animal protection, as our title indicates. Abortion has never been within our scope, although we do not dismiss it as a moral issue.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:
NAIROBI, Kenya–ANIMAL PEOPLE in January/February 2000 reported from Kenya about snare removal sweeps by Youth For Conservation in the Kenyan National Parks, anti-poaching projects funded by the British charity Care For The Wild, and the elephant-and-rhino orphanage at Nairobi National Park run by Daphne Sheldrick of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. All three are again in the news.
Youth For Conservation may be driving bushmeat poachers out of the parks, as a recent three-week sweep of the Mara Triangle found just 27 snares, far fewer than previous sweeps. YFC has removed 2,354 snares altogether, founder/director Josphat Ngonyo told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
The sweeps will continue, as bushmeat snaring is on the rise elsewhere in Africa, and it may be only the frequent presence of YFC volunteers along National Park perimeters that is suppressing it in Kenya.
Ngonyo, who started YFC as a Sheldrick Trust staffer, now works fulltime for YFC. The International Fund for Animal Welfare underwrote the YFC budget for 2000, but YFC now must become self-sustaining.
While YFC fights meat poaching, done mostly by Kenyans, Care For The Wild has long helped the Kenya Wildlife Service to fight ivory and rhino horn poachers, who are often associated with Somali private militias.
“Care For The Wild has built a new headquarters for KWS at Ithumba in the north of Tsavo East National Park,” CFW operations director Chris Jordan told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Ithumba is only 250 miles from the Somali border, and the poachers had a free hand during the recent rains and flooding. We built housing for 30 rangers, an armory, a radio room with photovoltaic cells for power, a workshop for vehicle maintenance, and an aircraft hanger. The project is the
largest that we have ever attempted. We built it in just five months, with no outside help.”
Daphne Sheldrick, widow of Tsavo National Park founding warden David Sheldrick, and herself founder of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, meanwhile clashed with longtime supporter William Jordan, DVM, over her occasional use of electric prods to discipline young elephants. Raising orphaned elephants and returning them to the wild for more than 40 years, as the first person to do so successfully, Sheldrick currently has 18 in her care.
Jordan, founder of Care For The Wild, and father of Chris Jordan, has helped Sheldrick with fundraising since the beginnings of both the Sheldrick Trust and CFW. But Jordan is also a director of the Captive Animals Preservation Society, which won a European Union ban on the use of electric prods in zoos, and recently exposed electroshocking at the Blackpool Zoo in England by guest elephant handler Scott Riddle, of Riddle’s Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary in Greenbriar, Arkansas.
Sheldrick in a letter to CAPS described using mild electric shocks to condition baby elephants who “tend to knock people down.” She believes the training reduces the risk that the elephants will be shot for menacing humans after release. Sheldrick said she did not shock angry elephants, which she said would be “a recipe for disaster.” William Jordan remained adamant in opposition to any use of electroshock. Sheldrick Trust spokesperson Diane Westwood said she would urge Sheldrick to stop using it.
Youth For Conservation may be reached c/o P.O. Box 27689, Nairobi, Kenya; phone 254-733-617286 or 254-2-606478; fax 254-2-606479; e-mail <y4c@alphanet.co.ke>.
Care For The Wild operates from 1 Ashfolds, Horsham Rd., Rusper, West Sussex, RH12 4QX, United Kingdom; telephone 44-1293-871-596; 44-1293-871-022.
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust may be contacted c/o P.O. Box 15555, Nairobi, Kenya; telephone 254-2-891996; fax
254-2-890053.