African elephants

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Three years after “sustainable use” advocate
David Western replaced Richard Leakey as
head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the service is
plagued by resignations, short funding, and poor
morale, Louise Tunbridge of the London Daily
Telegraph reported in early December––and elephants
in Tsavo National Park are under fire, while
Western’s own salary has tripled in two years.
“Glossy KWS brochures state that only 11 elephants
were killed by ivory poachers last year,” Tunbridge
wrote, “but security sources say the true figure is at
least 67.” At urging of elephant expert Daphne
Sheldrick, Tunbridge continued, the David
Sheldrick Wildlife Trust “paid for a tanker of petrol
to keep the Kenya Wildlife Service anti-poaching
teams going” until the new year, and “the British
charity Care for the Wild is paying to patch up the
park’s roads, which are in very poor repair.”

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SEALERS TO KILL 275,000

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland– –
Canadian fisheries minister David Anderson on
December 30 set the 1998 Atlantic Canada sealing
quota at 275,000, the same as in 1997, but
increased the number who may be hooded seals to
10,000, 2,000 more than last year.
The Seal Industry Advisory Council
requested a 1998 quota of 300,000 seals, but
Anderson said the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans would do a harp seal census this year
before making any further quota changes.
Anticipating continued high quotas,
Caboto Seafoods Ltd. of Newfoundland earlier in
December advanced plans to remodel a fish processing
plant into a sealing plant, to extract oil
from carcasses and tan pelts.
DFO scientists have leaked data publicized
by the International Fund for Animal
Welfare indicating that sealers actually kill two
seals for each carcass landed, keeping just males
because penises are by far the most lucrative part.

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Whales & dolphins

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society on December 24 named
Stein Erik Bastesen, son of whaling and
sealing magnate Steinar Bastesen, “honorary
crew member of 1997,” for “admitting
that he ‘accidentally’ scuttled his
father’s notorious outlaw whaling vessel
Morild. We suggest, however, that the
insurers underwriting the Morild should
take a good look at the facts,” the
announcement continued. “We have
received confirmation that the Morild was
sunk by the Norwegian anti-whaling group
Agenda 21 on November 11, 1997, in
response to Norway walking out of the
International Whaling Commission
meeting in Monaco a few weeks before.
Stein Erik Bastesen originally denied that
he was responsible. Steinar Bastesen originally
claimed sabotage as the cause.

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Money, influence, and wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Nation newspaper, of Bangkok,
Thailand, on December 18 reported that
Pavillon Massage Parlor manager Somchai
Rojjanaburapha contributed $111 of the
$222 price of a 14-month-old sun bear to save
him from sale to a Korean restaurant,
and––though the Thai economy is in freefall
collapse, the massage business with it––forty
masseuses chipped in the rest. The bear was
sent to the Khao Khieow Open Zoo, 50
miles southeast of Bangkok.

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GREAT SPORTSMEN AND THEIR DEEDS OF THE 1997 SEASON

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Chris Cochrane and six hunting buddies thought
they’d killed a deer on December 27, near Turner’s Bay,
New Zealand. Then, thinking he’d seen the deer move, one
man fired another shot, reportedly causing “serious injuries” to
Cochrane’s pelvis and buttocks. Airlifted to medical help,
Cochrane achieved an unusual daily double when he was also
charged with poaching, along with all six pals.
Reports reaching ANIMAL PEOPLE indicate that
no U.S. hunter was involved in both the shooting of a human
and in poaching in which charges were filed in the same incident
during the fall/winter 1997 hunting season––but no shortage
of hunters were involved in one or the other.

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HINDI HEADS TOWARD HIGH NOON IN LAS VEGAS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

WOODSTOCK, Illinois––Facing up
to five months in jail for alleged contempt of
court in connection with 1996 protests that eventually
closed the Woodstock Hunt Club, Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition cofounder Steve Hindi
on November 14 won a continuance of his appeal
until December 19––and that means he’ll have
plenty of time during the second week of
December to haunt the Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association finals in Las Vegas.
“We have extensive footage of not only
PRCA rodeos, but also International Professional
Rodeo Association and independent rodeos actually
shocking animals in the chutes to make them
perform,” Hindi told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“While we have sent a couple of these videos to
the PRCA, no one has contacted us to let us
know what, if anything, will be done about these
clear violations of the PRCA code of ethics,”
which explicitly forbids using electroshock to
provoke bucking.

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Hunting and serial murder

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

CADIZ, Ohio––Hunting season is
when perversely slain bodies are found, and
not just the bodies of animals.
Danny H. Jenkins, 51, of East
Akron, was charged on October 8 with shotgunning
two of his bowhunting buddies,
brothers Duane and William Lockard, 60 and
61, of Suffield.
Jenkins’ alleged motive, the
Harrison County Sheriff’s Department told
media, was robbery. Both Lockards were
known to carry large sums of cash.
Drifting between Ohio and Florida
for many years, Jenkins was within days of his
arrest also questioned in connection with the
November 19, 1993 buckshot murder/robberies
of Florida deer hunters Don Hill, 63,
and Gregory Allen Wood, 35, in the Osceola
National Forest.
All four victims were shot at close
range from behind.
A search of local newspaper archives
for background on Jenkins discovered that in
November 1994 he claimed to have been
among the hunters who discovered the skeletal
remains of a still unidentified teenaged girl
beside the Berlin Reservoir in Deerfield
Township––but Portage County prosecutor
Victor Vigluicci said Jenkins was not among
the hunters who reported the find.

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Sea Shepherds announce Norwegian whaler sinkings

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

OSLO, Norway––The International
Whaling Commission on October 23 gave the
Makah tribe of Washington state the okay to
kill gray whales––or at any rate the Makah and
U.S. government claim it did. Seal penis prices
in Asia, boosted by Norwegian and Canadian
governmental marketing, are reportedly at
record highs. Steinar Bastesen, the most notorious
whaler and sealer of all, in October won a
seat in the Norwegian parliament.
Marine mammal defenders took grim
comfort and inspiration, however, from the
apparent sabotage sinking of one of Bastesen’s
ships, the 45-foot Morild. The Morild sank at
dockside on November 11 in Bronnoysund,
430 miles north of Oslo, just 12 days after
intruders purportedly dressed in Halloween
pirate costumes scuttled another Norwegian
whaling vessel, the Elin Toril, at Mortsun in
the Lofoten Islands, six months after a third
Norwegian whaling vessel, the Senet, was
allegedly firebombed while in drydock.

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OTHER WILDLIFE/HUMAN CONFLICTS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

Pledging to pay $150,000 for
spring-and-fall air drops of raccoon
rabies vaccination pellets over northern
Vermont to keep the disease out of
Quebec, the Quebec government came
through last spring, but at deadline was
reportedly struggling to find the money
to follow through with the fall drop.
U.S. federal funding was also uncertain.
Two vaccination pellet drops proceeded
as scheduled in Ohio, however,
to contain the westward spread of the
disease. Begun in 1976 by hunters who
translocated rabid raccoons from
Florida to West Virginia, the midAtlantic
raccoon rabies pandemic has
now spread to 16 states, but appears to
have been halted in mid-Ohio by a May
1997 application of vaccination pellets
along a 10-mile-wide, 695-square-mile
barrier, running from Mosquito Lake
to Wellsville. The September drops
reinforced the earlier drop, covering
1,200 square miles from Lake Erie to
the Ohio River.

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