Clinton not expected to stand up to Japanese whalers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––At the ANIMAL PEOPLE deadline, President Bill Clinton
was imminently expected to send a message to Congress about Japanese whaling, responding to
a December advisory from the Department of Commerce that Japan was vulnerable to trade sanctions
because of its decision to kill minke whales within the Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary.
But Clinton was not expected to impose sanctions.
Argued Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in a February 7 letter to Clinton, “At this point,
any efforts short of sanctions would signal a lack of commitment to whale conservation by the
United States.” Japan officially moved into compliance with the 1986 global moratorium on
commercial whaling in 1988, but has continued to conduct gradually escalating hunts of minke
whales for “scientific research.”

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Marine mammals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Nets and dolphins

EDINBOROUGH––The Royal
SPCA and World Wide Fund for Nature
head a nine-group coalition protesting a proposal
by Scots Office Minister Raymond
Robertson to make Scots fishers more competitive
by lifting a ban on the use of
monofilament gil nets which might drown
harbor porpoises. Such nets are used in the
waters of other European nations.
Eleven dolphins apparently
drowned in fishing nets washed up in
Cornwall between January 4 and January 11,
prompting Cornwall Wildlife Trust chair
Nick Tregenza to apply to the European
Commission for funds with which to develop
an alarm to warn dolphins away from
nets. The EC is already funding a similar
project called CETASEL, formed under the
1994 Agreement on the Conservation of
Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North
Seas, a.k.a. ASCOBANS. “The project
started in the beginning of 1995, and the
first sea trials were carried out in March
1995,” said CETASEL coordinator Dick de
Haan. “The first enclosure trial, on a
stranded harbor porpoise, showed the animals’
sensitivity to ‘chirp and sweep’
sounds. In 1996 two sea trials are planned
off the southwestern coast of Ireland.”
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The Great Ape Project and the bush meat trade by Karl Ammann

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

I have investigated aspects of the
bush meat trade in Africa for the last six
years. I no longer have any doubt that the
increasing commercialisation of this trade is
today the biggest threat to the survival of
many species in West and Central Africa.
The great apes are no exception. Many parts
of their range are being logged. The construction
of logging roads has allowed the
bush meat trade to go commercial. In consequence,
entire gorilla and chimp populations
are eaten into extinction, at a rate of thousands
of animals a year.
Why, at this stage, are the scientific
and conservation communities concentrating
on rather theoretical issues, while the
very existence of the subjects under discussion
is under serious threat?

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BOOKS: The Flight of the Osprey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

The Flight of the Osprey, by Ewan Clarkson. St. Martin’s Press (175 5th
Ave., New York, NY 10010), 1995. 192 pages. $19.95, hardcover.

Nicola Fray is widowed at age 37.
Her late husband, a botanist, taught respect
for all creatures. But when fishery owner
Martin Collier beds and subsequently weds
her, after much dithery coyness on her part,
she not only learns to live happily with his
fishing, but has her eyes “opened” to the
“scientific” virtues of hunting.

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Animals in entertainment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

On the screen
PETA on December 5 asked the USDA to
investigate alleged Animal Welfare Act violations by
Tiger’s Eye Productions, of Orlando, Florida, which
trains animals for use in TV commercials and rock
videos. “Our investigator witnessed facility owner
David McMillan beating tigers in the face, ramming
ax handles down their throats, and depriving them of
food and water as punishment,” charged PETA
researcher Jennifer Allen. “Animals have also been
left outside without shade in searing heat, or without
shelter from raging thunderstorms, and have been
denied necessary medical attention when sick.”
Finding venues for his diving mule act
scarce, Tim Rivers has turned to Hollywood, training
many of the animals used in Ace Ventura: When
Nature Calls, the second of a comedy film series starring
Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura, pet detective and animal
rights militant. Because Rivers’ role was entirely
off-set, his involvement eluded American Humane
Association observers, whose contractual role in
supervising the use of animals in films is limited to on
set action. As the November 28 edition of T h e
National Enquirer put it, Rivers’ diving mule act “is
so hideous that Rivers has been arrested on cruelty
charges in Alabama, his act is banned in Illinois, and
he was thrown out of Atlantic City by Donald Trump.”

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Marine Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Cetaceans

Captain Paul Watson honors
Captain James Waddell, commander of the
Confederate warship Shenandoah, in the
3rd/4th Quarter 1995 edition of The Sea
Shepherd Log. Waddell in 1865 sank 38 of
the 85 Yankee whalers in the North
Pacific––fighting on for seven months after
the Confederacy surrendered––without either
taking or losing a human life. His official
goal was doing economic harm to the Union,
but crewman Joshua Minor told one whaling
captain, “We have entered into a treaty
offensive and defensive with the whales. We
are up here by special agreement to disperse
their mortal enemies.” Watson credits
Waddell and crew with preventing the extinction
of bowheads and grey whales.

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Dolphin-safe may be on borrowed time

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Motion to implement
the October 4 Declaration of Panama, rolling back U.S.
dolphin-safe tuna standards, commenced with the
November 29 introduction of S 1420, the International
Dolphin Conservation Program Act, by Senators Ted
Stevens and Frank Murkowski (both R-Alaska) and John
Breaux (D-Louisiana).
Favored by the Clinton administration, S 1420
would replace the U.S. ban on imports of tuna netted on
dolphin with a rule allowing the import of tuna caught on
dolphin if no dolphin deaths were seen during the operation,
and would allow the incidental deaths of 5,000 dolphins
a year. The Declaration was signed by all the major
Pacific tuna-fishing nations, and was endorsed by the
Center for Marine Conservation, Environmental Defense
Fund, Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, and
the World Wildlife Fund, all of which favor “sustainable
use” wildlife management.

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So-called sportsmen

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

Hunting writer and safety
instructor Roger Vanderlogt, 43, of
Manitowoc, Wisconsin, drew 15 years in
prison on December 9 plus 15 years on probation,
for producing sexually explicit photographs
and videos of very young girls.
William Douglas Hinson, 71, of
Myrtle, Mississippi, pleaded guilty on
November 28 to conspiring with his granddaughter,
Teresa Jean Hutcheson, 30, to
murder her husband Jimmy Dean Hutcheson
for life insurance proceeds in a staged “hunting
accidenct.” Each drew five years in
prison. Hinson has two great-grandchildren
by his granddaughter, with whom court officials
said he has had sex since she was 11.

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The Wright stuff

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1996:

REND LAKE, Illinois– – Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition president Steve
Hindi, a licensed pilot, on December 16 startled
the Illinois Department of Natural
Resources, hunters culling deer at the Renn
Lake Wildlife Refuge, and fellow protesters
by soaring up in a paraglider to videotape the
action from above––as deer fled from the
sound of the aircraft, away from the hunters.
“This is going to change everything,”
Hindi told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Air
power revolutionized warfare, and it’s going
to revolutionize protest. No longer can the
DNR and the hunters hide anything from us.”

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