Grisly crimes spotlight control, keeping, and the missing link

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

TRENTON, N.J.––The May 30
conviction of Jesse Timmendequas in Trenton,
New Jersey, for the July 1994 molestation
murder of Megan Kanka, 7, brought new
attention to the association of animal abuse
with child abuse. Defense lawyers testified
that Timmendequas, 36, twice before convicted
of sexually assaulting children, grew up
watching his father torture pets. His mother
broke his arm, they claimed, and his father
sodomized him.
Timmendequas’ father, Edward
James Howard, of Smoketree Valley,
California, denied the allegations in an exclusive
interview with Evelyn Nieves of The New
York Times, pointing to his present 11 dogs,
five cats, 12 chickens, two guinea hens, and
two cockatiels, along with elaborate graves
for two deceased dogs.

PUSHING THE “DOLPHIN DEATH BILL”

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Only the threat of filibuster
by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) remained to
keep revocation of the “dolphin safe” tuna import standard
from sliding through the Senate and into law, after the House
of Representatives approved HR 408, dubbed “the dolphin
death bill” by opponents, 262-166, on May 21. Unless Boxer
succeeds in indefinitely delaying the Senate vote this year, as
last year, the revocation bill will come before the Senate for a
vote later this summer as HR 39, and is strongly favored by
the Bill Clinton/Albert Gore administration.
The revocation, to bring U.S. law into conformity
with the 1994 Panama Agreement, will allow the fleets of 11
other nations to resume selling the U.S. tuna netted “on dolphin,”
but will require that no dolphins are seen being killed.

Odd Bodkin II

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

ANCHORAGE––Responding to “substantial new information”
pertaining to the application of National Biological
Service sea otter project leader James L. Bodkin to kill up to 20
endangered sea otters, reported on page 17 of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has
announced intent to reopen the public comment period.
Documents obtained by ANIMAL PEOPLE indicate
that Bodkin, working out of the Alaska Science Center in
Anchorage, may be seeking a pretext to open sea otter hunting.
Heavily hunted for fur in the 19th century, sea otters
were believed to be extinct early this century, but remnants of two
subspecies were found off California and Alaska in the late 1930s.
Resenting competition from sea otters for lucrative and now depleted
abalone and sea urchins, fishers held a decade ago that the
otters had recovered enough to be removed from the federal endangered
species list. The campaign lost momentum when oiled sea
otters became the icon species of the clean-up effort after the 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Indonesian net isn’t drifting

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

As Indonesia prepared a successful
bid to host the 1999 meeting of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, Bill Rossiter of
Cetacean Society International forwarded
reports from scuba diver Steve Morris and
marine mammologist Peter Rudolph,
indicating “military and governmental
authorities” had allowed Taiwanese fishers
to suspend two huge nylon nets from
pylons in the Lembeh Strait, just offshore
from the Tangkoko Nature Reserve.
Paraphrasing Morris, Rossiter
said the nets went up in March 1996, and
in their first year caught 1,424 manta rays,
18 whale sharks, 312 other sharks, four
minke whales, 326 dolphins, 577 pilot
whales, 789 marlin, 84 sea turtles, and
nine dugong.

NO SURPRISES––ESA FIGHT RESUMES

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––With CITES over, the
endangered species spotlight shifts back to the ongoing battle
over reauthorizing the Endangered Species Act.
An indicative early round had a promising outcome
on May 7, when the House of Representatives killed a measure
to give flood control projects precedence over protecting endangered
species. Since most endangered species occupy wetlands
or water, this might have effectively dismantled the ESA. The
final vote count showed 172 Democrats, 54 Republicans, and
one independent among the 227 opposing votes, of 423 cast.
House wise-users next tried to amend the Disaster
Relief Bill with a rider to expand right-of-way claims in roadless
areas. That too was defeated.
The Bill Clinton/Albert Gore administration might
have helped tip the balance on April 22, announcing a $125-
million-a-year scheme to both protect fish and wildlife and promote
the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. The timber
industry praised the deal, but 37 environmental groups
demanded changes. “There is a heavy reliance on logging to
fix problems that logging caused,” objected Rick Taylor of the
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

Scientists say Canada falsified data

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

NEWFOUNDLAND– – Memorial
University biologist Edward Miller, host of a
February 1997 workshop on how harp seals
affect the Atlantic Canada cod fisheries,
charged on June 24 that one of the four participants
from the Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans had privately disclosed
data indicating that as many as 500,000 seals
were killed in the 1996 offshore hunt, nearly
double the official count of 262,402.
Twenty-nine scientists from seven nations
took part in the workshop.
“DFO personnel found several
sealing vessels carrying the same number of
male seal genitals as pelts,” Charles Enman
of the Ottawa Citizen reported. “But the
number of pelts should have been roughly
double the number of male genitals, since
male and female seals are impossible to distinguish
before they are shot. This suggested
that sealers were collecting genitals and pelts
from the males, but discarding entire female
carcasses, pelts and all,” as there is little
market for pelts and reporting kills of females
would just deplete the sealing quota faster.

CITES BEATING LEAVES ANIMAL PROTECTION GROUPS TO REGROUP

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

HARARE––The 10-year global ivory
trafficking ban fell on June 19, as Zimbabwe,
Botswana, and Namibia won approval from the
1997 Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species triennial in Harare,
Zimbabwe, to sell 59 tons of elephant ivory to
Japan in early 1999, after 18 months of refinement
of safeguards supposed to prevent the sale
from providing cover to ivory poachers.
The sale, involving about a third of
the ivory stockpiled by the three southern
African nations, is the first legal crack in the
ban, imposed by CITES in 1989. The ban
braked the collapse of the African elephant population
from 1.3 million circa 1980 to just
600,000 a decade later.

Watson awaits verdict on Norwegian extradition attempt

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

AMSTERDAM––Judge Van der Pijl of the
Haarlem District Court in the Netherlands on May 26 rejected
Norway’s April 18 request to extradite Captain Paul
Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,
to face charges of alleged “reckless navigation” and “illegal
entry into Norwegian waters” during a July 1994 clash with
the Norwegian patrol ship Andennes during which the
Andennes rammed Watson’s vessel, the Whales Forever.
Watson remained at the Lelystad prison pending a
ruling on a further charge of allegedly sending a false distress
signal. A ruling is due by June 10.
“Even if he’s found guilty of that charge,” Sea
Shepherd international director of operations Lisa Distefano
said, “the public will be reminded that Norwegian commandos
dropped four depth charges, fired on our boat with cannon,
and sheared the bow off our ship by ramming us.”

Sealing doesn’t pacify Canadian fishers

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––The final
toll isn’t in yet from the 1997 Atlantic Canada seal
hunt, believed to be near the quota of 275,000, but the
only evident protest as it ended came from unemployed
fishers, whose militancy escalated with a May 12 occupation
of Canadian fisheries minister Fred Mifflin’s
office, seeking longer payments for loss of fishing privileges,
suspended since 1993 due to depleted stocks.
Moving to quell unrest on the eve of a federal
election, Mifflin on May 18 opened an experimental
commercial cod season in Placentia Bay and the northern
Gulf of St. Lawrence, against the advice of fisheries
biologists. The move was unlikely to win him as
much favor as his predecessor Brian Tobin curried by
reopening the seal hunt in 1995, just before resigning
to successfully run for premier of Newfoundland: more
than 5,000 fishers exhausted the 16,000-metric-ton limit
within four days.

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