Eleven easy ways to get killed in the woods

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

• An unidentified 12-year-old shotgunned
bowhunter Joseph P. Bordelon on October 5 in the Bogue
Chitto National Wildlife Refuge, near Slidell, Louisiana
––mistaking Bordelon, who survived, for a wild pig.
• On October 8, Todd Mercer, 24, of Lewiston,
Maine, tried to eject a shell from his duck gun and instead
killed hunting buddy Kevin MacDonald, 22, of Bath.
• Portland-area residents Kevin Lynn Gregory, 18,
David Allen Cook, 19, and Cory Alan Lewis, 18, were
arrested in early October and charged with two counts each of
aggravated murder. They are accused of taking fellow hunters
Ronald Cary Dunwoody, 36, and James William Boyles,
48, of Portland, to a Larch Mountain target shooting area and
using them for the targets.

Legal pitfalls & political traps

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

ST. LOUIS––Legal otter trapping
for pelts commenced in Missouri
for the first time since 1937 on
November 20, 11 days after Judge
Robert H. Dierker of the 22nd Circuit
Court rejected the argument of state residents
Cecily Westerman, Ed Leonard,
Stan Slaughter, and the Animal Legal
Defense Fund that the otter season was
improperly authorized.
Dierker agreed that as
Missouri taxpayers, the three named
plaintiffs had standing to challenge the
regulation that established an otter season.
He also rejected Missouri
Conservation Commission arguments
that trapping is required to control the
otter population and prevent property
damage. “The record seems clear,”
Dierker wrote, “that the Commission
concluded in 1995 that there were
enough otters to accommodate commercial
trapping interests, and other reasons
to have a trapping season were at
best ancillary factors.”

101 sealers hit for killing pups

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––Canadian Sealers
Association president Mark Small, of Wild Cove, Newfoundland,
was among 101 individuals indicted on November 21 for
allegedly illegally killing and selling the remains of hooded seal
pups, called bluecoats, during the heavily subsidized resumption
last spring of the annual offshore hunt that was an early
focus of the animal rights movement.
Small was charged with selling 152 bluecoats to the
Carino Co. Ltd. in three batches last March.
Apparently beginning on April 4, several weeks
before the killing ended, the Canadian Department of Fisheries
and Oceans repeatedly raided the Carino seal carcass processing
plant in South Dildo, Newfoundland, seizing more than 25,000
pelts––nearly 10% of the official kill quota of 250,000 harp
seals and 8,000 hooded seals. The slaughter was briefly interrupted
when the DFO discovered that the sealers had actually
killed more than 16,000 hooded seals, but resumed with the goahead
to kill another 60,000 harp seals.

No safety in shells or Southern Oceans

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

MOSCOW, OSLO, TOKYO,
WASHINGTON D.C.––Emboldened by
the re-election of U.S. President Bill Clinton
and Vice President Albert Gore, who
showed little inclination to defend whales
and sea turtles during their first term, and
by the re-enfranchisement of wise-use
Republicans in control of key Congressional
committees, turtle-killers and whalers are
whetting their weapons.
Most brazenly, with the election
results barely two weeks old, Louisiana
Republicans Bob Livingston, Billy Tauzin,
and John Breaux on November 21 forced the
National Marine Fisheries Service to withdraw
turtle excluder device regulations
intended to protect endangered sea turtles,
just three days after they were ostensibly
sent to the Federal Register for publication.

How animals won in five states

December 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Captive-duck shooter Bill
Clinton and trophy hunting advocate Albert Gore remain in the
White House, but Congressional script on animal issues may be
quite a bit different in the 105th Congress, not only because
foes of the Endangered Species Act took a beating on November
5, but also because the results of five state initiative campaigns
show animal protection voting clout, just beginning to be organized,
ignored by the Democrats, reviled by wise-use
Republicans, but acknowledged by Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich.
• Massachusetts voted 64% to 36% to ban leghold or
body-gripping traps and snares, ban hunting bears and bobcats
with dogs, and restructure the state Fisheries and Wildlife
Board, ending a requirement that a majority of members be
licensed hunters, fishers, or trappers.

BOOKS: The Great Antler Auction

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

The Great Antler Auction
by Susan E. Goodman, with photos by
Michael J. Doolittle.
Atheneum Books (1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 1996.
40 pages, $16.00, hardcover.

Apparently aimed at the school library market, containing
more facts and figures than story line, The Great
Antler Auction describes how the Boy Scouts of Jackson’s
Hole, Wyoming, have since 1968 maintained a monopoly on
collecting the antlers shed each year by the 7,500 elk within
the 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge. The Scouts sell the
antlers at auction, then use the proceeds to feed the elk over
the winter. The herd has predictably grown well beyond the
winter carrying capacity of the refuge. The conclusion asks
whether the Scouts should let elk starve, or encourage more

Steve Hindi’s rap sheet

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

CHICAGO––Charged on September 8
with three counts of hunter harassment and one
count of harassing wildlife, for using his paraglider
to turn a flock of wild geese away from the
Woodstock Hunt Club in Harvard, Illinois, and
jailed for refusing to pay $400 bond, Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi was
released on his own recognisance after a four-day
hunger strike, got the paraglider back by judicial
order on September 27, and was busted again for
leading a ground-based protest outside the hunt club
on October 14.
Hindi claimed he had obeyed to the letter
a temporary restraining order to stay away from the
club, issued by Judge James Franz on October 12,
after the club sued Hindi and CHARC seeking
$100,000 in damages and $300,000 in penalties for
disrupting business.

Alleged seal-killing cover-up in South Dildo

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland– –
Fined $750 per count against them on
October 8, assigned up to three years of probation
apiece, and barred from sealing for
three years were Petty Harbor,
Newfoundland residents John Hearn, 39,
shown on a home video clubbing seals with a
boat hook and skinning a seal alive; James
Joseph Walsh, 46, also shown clubbing seals
with a boat hook; and Michael Joseph Hearn,
52, and William Hearn, 41, who each shot
seals with an illegal weapon.
The video recording of their deeds
was delivered to the International Fund for
Animal Welfare by a shocked viewer. But,
said IFAW seal campaign manager Arthur
Cady, “The whole sealing industry is guilty
of cruelty on a vast scale. These four sealers
are just the scapegoats for a barbaric business
that should be in the dock, found guilty, and
banned. The fisheries minister who sanctions
this hunt and the government subsidies that
pay for it should take their share of the
blame.”

PINIPEDS & SEA OTTERS

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Alaskan tour boat operators are
reportedly lobbying the Alaska Sea Otter
Commission, a native-run board set up to
supervise “subsistence” hunting exempted
from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, to
prevent repetition of an August 22 incident in
which several Anchorage residents shot as
many as 50 sea otters in front of tour vessels
in Kachemak Bay, but retrieved just 14.
Publicity over the sea otter massacre may have
helped encourage the Bristol Bay Native
Association and state and federal agencies to
divert funding from other programs to closely
supervise the October native killing of 10 walruses
at Round Island, within the Walrus
Islands State Game Sanctuary. In a fit of
pique at Friends of Animals for documenting
native walrus poaching and opposing wolfkilling
to make more moose and caribou available
to human hunters, the Alaska Legislature
axed funding of the sanctuary last spring.

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