NO MONKEY-HUNTING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1995:

DILLEY, Texas––On condition of
anonymity, a prominent Texas attorney has
agreed to guarantee the payment of $75,000
due in October to secure the new home of the
South Texas Primate Observatory, a 183-acre
tract near the town of Millet. The Texas
Parks and Wildlife Department meanwhile
denies reports that it authorized hunters to
shoot any snow monkeys who might escape
from the old site at Dilley.
STPO houses a unique free-roaming
troop of snow monkeys whose families have
been studied since 1954. The colony began at
the long-defunct Arashiyama Sanctuary in the
monkeys’ native habitat outside Kyoto,
Japan. But young male snow monkeys tend
to escape from virtually any enclosure to seek
females each spring, and by 1972, residents
of Kyoto were fed up. Slated to be killed,
about 150 of the monkeys were instead airlifted
through an international rescue effort to
their present 58-acre enclosure within the
sprawling Burns Ranch, 60 miles south of
San Antonio.

Read more

Michigan stats confirm hunting, child abuse link

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1995:

LANSING––Michigan children are nearly three times as likely to be neglected and
are twice as likely to be physically abused or sexually assaulted if they live in a county with
either an above average or above median rate of hunting participation.
Michigan sells two times more hunting licenses per capita as upstate New York, a
closely comparable region, but has seven times the rate of successfully prosecuted child
abuse, and twice as high a rate of sexual assault on children.
Michigan and New York, exclusive of New York City, have similar per capita
income ($20,453 for Michigan, $20,124 for upstate New York), unemployment rates (7.0%
for Michigan, 7.7% for upstate New York), and population density (164 people per square
mile for Michigan, 228 people per square mile for upstate New York).

Read more

Chase pens spread rabies

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

ATLANTA––Hunters illegally translocating coyotes from Texas could cause rabies out-
breaks “the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s,” warns
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rabies section chief Dr. Charles Rupprecht.
“This is a hot bug for dogs,” Rupprecht explained on August 10. “Dogs are the biggest
indicator of this outbreak, and we do not want it to get out of south Texas.”
Transmission occurs when coyotes or foxes in the latent phase of rabies––when they are
often easiest to catch––are trapped for use in chase pens, where hunters “train” hounds by setting
them on the captive animals, a growing pastime in much of the country. The coyotes or foxes may
either bite the hounds or escape from the pens to spread rabies elsewhere. At one Florida chase pen,
eight dogs were infected late last year, obliging 26 people to get post-rabies exposure shots, while
a 20-square-mile area was put under quarantine.

Read more

Hunting & trapping

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Results of a major public
opinion survey commissioned by
the Colorado Division of Wildlife
“indicate that a substantial major-
ity of Coloradans would vote to
ban wildlife trapping,” human
dimensions coordinator Linda
Sikorowski advised the brass on
July 13. “A substantial proportion
of Colorado residents are positively
oriented toward wildlife rights and
wildlife welfare values,” she contin-
ued. “Trapping solely for the pur-
pose of recreation or for economic
gain is not adequate justification for
trapping to the Colorado public.”
The survey found that trapping
could best be sold as a means of
rabies prevention and wildlife popu-
lation control––but this might not be
for long, as the advent of oral rabies
vaccination of wildlife reinforces the
22-year-old position of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
that trapping is neither effective
against rabies nor in lastingly
depressing wildlife populations.

Read more

Sealing their doom: Whale sanctuary may be last safe harbor

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,
QUEBEC––The Canadian government got
the word about cod stocks on June 29, and it
wasn’t good. Having allowed northern cod to
be fished to commercial extinction before cut-
ting quotas and cracking down on foreign
dragnetters, Canada may have lost the greater
portion of its Atlantic fishery until at least a
decade into the 21st century, if not forever.
Scrambing to shift the blame, and
hoping to revive the global market for seal
pelts by way of tossing a bone to frustrated
fishers, Canadian fisheries minister Brian
Tobin claimed that evening on the CBC
Prime Time News that, “Whatever the role
seals have played in the collapse of ground-
fish stocks, seals are playing a far more
important and significant role in preventing,
in slowing down, a recovery.”

Read more

YELLOWSTONE: The steam isn’t all from geysers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––Filmed in Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, the 1952 western classic Shane depicted stubborn men who thought them-selves reasonable in a tragic clash over limited range. Alan Ladd, in the title role, won the big showdown, then rode away pledging there would be no more guns in the valley.

But more than a century after the Shane era, the Yellowstone range wars not only smoulder on, but have heated up. To the north, in rural Montana, at least three times this year armed wise-users have holed up for months, standing off bored cordons of sheriff’s deputies, who wait beyond bullet range to arrest them for not paying taxes and taking the law into their own hands.

One of the besieged, Gordon Sellner, 57, was wounded in an alleged shootout and arrested on July 19 near Condon. Sellner, who said he hadn’t filed a tax return in 20 years, was wanted for attempted murder, having allegedly shot a sheriff’s deputy in 1992. A similar siege goes on at Roundup, where Rodney Skurdahl and four others are wanted for allegedly issuing a “citizen’s declaration of war” against the state and federal governments and posting boun-ties on public officials. At Darby, near the Bitterroot National Forest, elk rancher Calvin Greenup threatens to shoot anyone who tries to arrest him for allegedly plotting to “arrest,” “try,” and hang local authorities. Greenup is Montana coordinator of the North American Volunteer Militia.

Read more

Japan still killing whales, but moratorium holds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

SEOUL––Japan is still killing minke, sei,
Bryde’s and sperm whales in the name of research,
and will kill humpbacks this year as well, with a total
self-set “scientific” quota for the year of 935.
Norway continues killing minke whales in
coastal waters, and Iceland has resumed whaling, but
all still without world approval, as the 57th annual
meeting of the International Whaling Commission ended
in Ulsan, South Korea on June 24 with no major suc-
cesses for the pro-whaling faction.
“We entered the week with a strong fear that
the balance of power within the IWC would shift to a
pro-whaling majority,” summarized Whalewatch
Coalition leader Philip Lymbery. His delegation repre-
sented the Royal SPCA, Earth Island Institute, Whale
& Dolphin Conservation Society, Whale Watch, and
Humane Society International.
“Six new pro-whaling nations joined the IWC
this year,” Lymbery continued, “countered by just
three new anti-whalers. Anti-whalers held the majority
largely due to tactical lobbying and absentees,” and
India caught up on back dues and sent a delegation just
in time for the most critical ballots.

Read more

Most wanted poachers busted in India & Nepal

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

DELHI, KASARA– The
two most notorious living poachers on
the Asian subcontinent were arrested on
June 30 and July 20, respectively, as
result of separate investigations.
The Indian Central Bureau of
Investigation apprehended Sansar
Chand, 47, after tracing him to his
Delhi home by identifying his newspa-
per reading habits: a native of
Rajasthan, Chand read Rajasthani
papers in a neighborhood where few oth-
ers did.
First arrested for poaching and
wildlife trafficking at age 16, in 1974,
when he was found in possession of 676
animal pelts including those of tigers
and leopards, Chand worked with at
least five close relatives. He was report-
edly convicted 15 times without serving
any significant sentence, even after he
was caught with 28,486 contraband pelts
in 1988. Fifty-seven cases are pending
against him in nine Indian states, wrote
London Independent Delhi correspon-
dent Justin Huggler.

Read more

BOMB SUSPECT MCVEIGH WAS A HUNTER

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

OKLAHOMA CITY––Tim McVeigh, charged
with the April 19 Oklahoma City truck bombing that killed 168
people, was a hunter––and his alleged accomplice, Steven
Garrett Colbern, arrested on May 12 in Oatman, Arizona,
was reputedly a hunter, a reptile breeder, and may have been
involved in animal-based biomedical research.
McVeigh defended hunting in a letter published on
March 10, 1992 in the Lockport (N.Y.) Union-Sun & Journal.
Contrasting hunting with slaughtering, McVeigh wrote that
he’d seen cattle killed with chainsaws and machetes, without
prestunning, methods not legal in U.S. slaughterhouses within
his lifetime but perhaps practiced by survivalist associates.

Read more

1 53 54 55 56 57 75