Category: Hunting & Fishing

Pigeons not animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

HEGINS, Pennsylvania––The Fund for
Animals is urging activists to send copies of the
dictionary definition of “animal” to Pennsylvania
State Police Commissioner Glenn Walp, for refus-
ing to charge participants and staff at the Hegins
pigeon shoot with animal abuse. Walp said his
legal advisors are uncertain if pigeons are “ani-
mals” and therefore protected by state law.
The Hegins shoot, held each Labor Day
since 1934, went on as scheduled this year after the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court on September 2
rejected an appeal of a lower court’s refusal to issue
an injunction to stop it. The shoot organizers
refused an offer of $70,000 to call it off, delivered
by Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic director Gary
Francione on behalf of an anonymous donor. The
shoot raises about $20,000 a year for the Hegins
recreation department, but costs almost as much to
run––and far more when the cost of the state troop-
ers who provide security is factored in. The offer
was controversial in animal protection circles
because the shoot organizers might have demanded
similar amounts to call off future shoots.

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Hunting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

Hunter harassment
WASHINGTON D.C.––A federal hunter
harassment statute became law with the August 26
passage of the Crime Bill of 1994. Added to the
Senate version of the Crime Bill by Senator Conrad
Burns (R-Montana), it cleared the Senate without
debate and was kept in the final version by a
House/Senate conference committee as a concession
to the National Rifle Association, which was irate
over the ban of 19 assault rifles named in the bill.
The statute may be considered the first fed-
eral lawmaking achievement of Humane Society of
the U.S. vice president for governmental relations
Wayne Pacelle––who can claim indirect credit for
getting more state legislation passed than any other
animal defender. Pacelle assumed his current post
after staging dozens of high-profile hunter harass-
ment actions from late 1988 into early 1994 in his
former position with the Fund for Animals. Only
four states had hunter harassment laws in 1986,
when Pacelle rose to prominence as a Yale under-
graduate with a successful constitutional challenge of
the Connecticut statute, which was thrown out in
1988 but was amended and restored by the state leg-
islature. There are now hunter harassment laws in 48
of the 50 states––and the NRA, recruiting around the
issue, now boasts a record high membership.

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Wildlife briefs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

Three related California bills to
decriminalize accidental killings of protect-

ed species, improve scientific review of
species proposed for protection, and allow
some killing of endangered species in eco-
nomic activities providing compensation was
made died September 2 when a coalition of
business interests and environmentalists split
over the definition of the word “conserve.”
The business groups objected that the word
might commit them to species recovery work,
not just to paying for habitat or individuals
lost. The bills were touted as potential mod-
els for reforming the federal Endangered
Species Act, reauthorization of which is more
than two years overdue.

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Gorillas are still in the mist

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

KARISTOKE, Rwanda– – Only
two of the 60 gorillas who had been kept
under daily observation at the Karistoke
research center in Rwanda were unaccounted
for, anthropologist Dieter Steklis and team
found upon returning to the site made famous
by the late Dian Fossey in late August––after a
false start on August 25 when about 50 Hutus
attacked the first group of trackers to return,
also Hutus, and chased them back to Zaire.
Of the missing gorillas, a six-year-
old male was presumed dead; an adult female
apparently joined another group, also of about
60, in a nearby area. Steklis said that group
hadn’t yet been couunted, but seemed to be
well. The two gorilla bands account for about
20% of all the mountain gorillas left in the
wild. The Karistoke research staff fled the
Rwandan fighting in April, the anti-poaching
staff left in June, and about 30 Tourism and
National Parks wardens followed in early July.

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MARINE LIFE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

Earth Island Institute and
Public Citizen on September 14 sued
the Commerce Department, alleging
non-enforcement of the requirement
that Gulf of Mexico shrimpers use tur-
tle excluders to keep endangered sea
turtles from getting caught in their
nets. The Commerce Dept. says the
excluders cut shrimp catches by 5%;
the Texas Shrimp Association says it’s
more like 20%. Irate shrimpers are
blamed for killing more than 270 tur-
tles whose mutilated remains have
been found since March. The National
Marine Fisheries Service has posted a
$10,000 reward for information bring-
ing the arrest of the culprits.

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Kenya denies supplying Saudi canned hunts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

NAIROBI, Kenya––The Kenya Wildlife Service
on September 9 denied a report that it had sold endangered
giraffes and zebras to canned hunts in Saudi Arabia. KWS
director David Western said Kenya did recently donate ani-
mals to the national zoos of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,
however, including giraffes, zebras, ostriches, Thompson
gazelles, mongooses, porcupines, dikdiks, and exotic
birds. He said none of the animals are endangered in
Kenya. Western succeeded Richard Leakey as head of
KWS earlier this year. The service is often at odds with
political factions who wish to reintroduce trophy hunting,
now banned, to Kenya.

Russia objects; MAY IGNORE WHALE SANCTUARY WITH IMPUNITY

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

MOSCOW, Russia– – Already
holding a formal objection to the global whal-
ing moratorium decreed by the International
Whaling Commission in 1986, Russia on
September 13 filed an objection to the May
creation of the Southern Ocean Whale
Sanctuary as well––meaning that under IWC
rules, Russia not only may kill whales com-
mercially without fear of trade sanctions, but
also may kill whales below the 40th parallel,
where about 80% of the world’s surviving
baleen whales spend up to 80% of their time.
Intended to protect whales in
Antarctic waters, the sanctuary was in effect
won by the U.S. delegation at cost of conced-
ing the passage of a Revised Management
Plan for setting commercial whaling quotas.

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A tale of two species: Wolves, coyotes killed as lookalikes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE, N.Y.– –
Long hated and persecuted for resembling wolves, coyotes
again figure to pay the price for their bigger cousins as
wolves, their own image rehabilitated, are reintroduced to
fragments of their former habitat. The strongest argument
wolf defenders have for reintroduction, they’ve found, is not
that North American wolves have never verifiably attacked a
human being, nor that they’re the lovable creatures whose
family life Farley Mowat recorded in Never Cry Wolf!
Rather, it’s that, “A wolf will kill a coyote if he sees
it,” as Michael Kellett of RESTORE the North Woods
explains at every opportunity.
“Wolves have larger territorial needs than coyotes,”
elaborates Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife
biologist Tom Schaeffer. “They live in well-established
groups,” including many adults of both sexes plus cubs, “who
require a larger area, sometimes as much as 200 square miles.
Thus you would be dealing with a smaller number of wolves
in an area than coyotes,” who live in family units typically
structured around a monogamous pair. A coyote family usual-
ly occupies about 24 square miles, though territories of up to
100 square miles are not unheard of.

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EASY TARGETS: Did HSUS expose zoo links to canned hunts or just play to the grandstand?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Announcing that a three-year probe “has impli-
cated the nation’s best-known zoos as suppliers of exotic animals to hunting ranches,” the
Humane Society of the U.S. has made recent headlines across the country––but the facts fall
short of the sensational charges.
HSUS alleged that 24 zoos had sold animals to so-called canned hunts. Of the 24,
however, seven had already terminated links to canned hunts that were disclosed years ago
by other investigators. The allegations against another 10 zoos remain unsubstantiated more
than two months after they were named by the periodical HSUS Reports, despite HSUS
nvestigator Richard Farinato’s August 24
promise to ANIMAL PEOPLE that details
would be forthcoming. Several of the zoos
deny making such sales; one of them, the
Knoxville Zoo, had cancelled such a sale
before it was completed.

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