Canadians hunt the last seal

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

ST. JOHN, GRISE FJORD––The Inuk of Grise Fjord, Nunavet, formerly part of the Northwest Territories of Canada, marked the New Year with a “Last Seal of the Millennium” hunting contest on the ice off Ellesmere Island.

The unrestrained viciousness of Atlantic Canadian seal massacres meanwhile may get worse, as the Supreme Court of Newfoundland ruled 2-1 on December 14, 1999 that sealing is a provincial jurisdiction and that the Canadian federal government therefore had no right to charge 101 sealers with illegally killing whitecoats and bluebacks during the 1996 hunt.

The verdict, which the Crown had 60 days to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, could leave all authority over the hunt in Newfoundland waters with provincial fisheries minister John Effords. Effords vocally favors killing at least half of the Atlantic Canadian seal population, in hopes that killing seals will bring back cod.

Blazing guns and huts as Zimbabwe ignores Kenyan lesson

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

VOI, Kenya ––The six-hour drive from Nairobi to Tsavo East National Park would be worth the bumps for Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species delegates, for the challenge the Tsavo vista pre- sents to conventional beliefs about elephants and ecology.

Hundreds of delegates and observers will soon arrive in Nairobi for workshops leading up to the April 2000 CITES triennial meeting. Whether to permit more auctions of culled elephant ivory and rhino horn will–– again––be the most contentious agenda item.

In 1997 CITES allowed Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to auction elephant ivory and hides, and to sell live elephants. These were the first cracks in the trade bans imposed by CITES in 1989 to protect elephants and rhinos from slaughter to extinction.

Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe now want to sell more elephants and elephant parts. South Africa announced on December 9 that it wants to join the market, having 30 tons of ivory stockpiled at Kruger National Park alone. South Africa will also try again to resume selling rhino horn. Previous South African efforts to sell rhino horn were narrowly defeated in 1994 and 1997.

Poachers close in on Tsavo elephants

December 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

VOI, Kenya––Alone but brave,
the half-grown bull elephant held off five
Cape buffalo all afternoon at the smaller of
two water holes below the Voi Safari Lodge.
Refusing invitations to retreat with visiting
matriarchs, the young bull left the water hole
only long enough to break up a fight among
squabbling baboons with two quick swings of
his trunk. The gesture conveyed the message.
“He acts tough now,” said Care
For The Wild managing director Chris
Jordan, “but we’ll see how tough he really is
if a pride of lions comes around tonight.”
Around nine p.m. that evening
Jordan joined soft-spoken Tsavo East
National Park warden Naphtali Kio in
responding to aggressive questioning by CNN
reporter Anthony Van Marsh. Insisting that
elephants were leaving Tsavo to find water,
running amok and killing villagers, though
all the most accessible water holes are inside
the park, Van Marsh didn’t seem to want to
hear about villagers who cut park fences as
almost a daily routine in order to graze cattle,
sheep, and goats on park land––thereby
allowing elephants to wander out at night.

Australian, Canadian, U.S. high courts open refuges to native hunters

November 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

CANBERRA, OTTAWA, WASHINGTON,
D.C.––The Supreme Court of Australia on October 7 ruled 5-2
that the 410,000 recognized members of aboriginal tribes are
exempt from hunting and fishing license laws, under the
Federal Native Title Act of 1993, and may freely hunt even
protected and endangered species for personal use.
The Australian high court struck down parts of the
earlier Queensland Fauna Conservation Act on behalf of
Gangalidda tribe activist Murrandoo Yanner, who speared two
esturine saltwater crocodiles near Doomadgee in 1994 to create
the test case. The Yanner victory is expected to mean charges
will also be dropped against aboriginals who are charged with
illegally killing an extremely rare spiny anteater and an endangered
dugong, apparently also to set up test cases, as well as
against alleged aboriginal poachers of fish and seagull eggs.

Ivory politics killing elephants

November 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

GENEVA, DUBAI––Dubai customs
officers on October 9 reportedly confiscated
41 containers holding nearly two tons of
elephant tusk ivory. Dubai airport customs
director Bouti Zafri did not disclose either the
origin or the destination of the ivory.
The seizure was believed to be the
biggest worldwide in at least 10 years. It
might have tipped opinion among the signers
of the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species in favor of reimposing the
total ban on international ivory trafficking
adopted in 1989––but the balance had already
tipped the other way.
Identified by The Namibian, of
Windhoek, as “one of Namibia’s main players
in the campaign to allow the sale of ivory
stockpiles,” Malan Lindeque in September
became CITES head of scientific coordination.

Russians halt beluga whale killing for sale to Japan

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

HOKKAIDO––Russian whalers on
September 10 reportedly delivered to Japanese
buyers 13 metric tons of whale meat from at
least 36 and perhaps as many as 50 belugas
killed a week earlier in the Okhotsk Sea,
which lies between the Kamchata Peninsula
and Sakhalin Island.
It was the first Russian commercial
whale slaughter since 1986, and its first in
northern waters since 1979.
It will not be repeated, the Russian
government decreed four days later after a
cabinet-level review of the deal in Moscow.
Said International Fund for Animal
Welfare director of commercial trade and
exploitation Karen Steuer, “Reopening the
international trade in whale meat would have
set a dangerous precedent. The Russian decision
shows that Russia sees commercial whaling
for what it i ––an outmoded practice with
no place in modern society.”

BOOKS: Nature’s Keepers

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

Nature’s Keepers: On the Front Lines
of the Fight to Save Wildlife in America
by Michael Tobias
John Wiley & Sons (605 3rd Ave., New York, NY 10158), 1999.
238 pages, hardcover, $24.95.

Poachers were the undisputed heroes
of cops-and-robbers with a wildlife motif for
at least the first 700 years they existed as a
genre. Only late in the 20th century has the
Robin Hood image of the poacher tarnished,
to the point that recent renditions of the Robin
Hood legend––like the animated version from
Walt Disney Studios and the live-action version
starring Kevin Costner––have utterly
ignored his reputation as a deerslayer, gillnetter,
and master of the snare.

BLOODLUST THWARTED

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

FLAGSTAFF, ALBANY, HEGINS,
LONDON––Acknowledging that the
public no longer tolerates thrill-killing, even
thinly disguised, the Arizona Game and Fish
Commission on September 11 voted 3-2 for a
new state regulation stating, “A person or
group shall not participate in, promote, or
solicit participation in any organized hunting
contest for killing predatory animals, fur-bearing
animals, or nongame mammals.”
The newly adopted ban on mammalkilling
contests evolved from outrage erupting
in early 1998 over a “Predator Hunt Extreme”
promoted by two hunters who wanted to knock
down populations of pumas, coyotes, foxes,
and bobcats so as to have less competition in
killing deer and pronghorn.

Greenpeacers shot at as whaling season ends

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

Deb McIntyre, 28, of Pambula, Court calendar
New South Wales, “was shot at and later
arrested by the Norwegian Coast Guard” on
June 12 after approaching a wounded whale
in Norwegian waters, Greenpeace Australia
reported. McIntyre’s inflatable powerboat
was punctured by the shot, allegedly fired
from the whaling vessel K a t o, but she was
not hurt.
Reporting either different particulars
of the same incident or describing a separate
but similar confrontation, the London
M i r r o r reported one day later that
Greenpeace activists Dave Thoenen of the
U.S. and Ulvar Anhaern, 32, of Norway
were “shot at with a semi-automatic rifle”
from a distance of about 60 feet as they tried
to prevent a Norwegian whaling vessel from
harpooning a minke whale 120 miles off the
Norwegian coast, and “jumped for their
lives as the bullet ripped a gaping hole in the
side of their inflatable.”

« 1 … 28 29 30 31 32 … 75 »