Whales for missiles: SANCTUARY CREATED––BUT WHALING GETS THE GO-AHEAD TOO

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico, and WASH-

INGTON D.C.––As whale defenders cheered the May 26 cre-

ation of the Southern Whale Sanctuary around Antarctica, the

International Whaling Commission on May 27 unanimously

approved a U.S. motion to provisionally accept the Revised

Management Plan, a formula for setting renewed commercial

whaling quotas. Mexico, Ireland, and India voiced reserva-

tions but did not formally oppose the consensus.

The Southern Whale Sanctuary starts at the 40th par-

allel south latitude, dipping to the 55th parallel around the

lower tip of South America. It connects with the extant Indian

Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Although the IWC has no policing

power, the sanctuary designation means that whaling is per-

manently illegal in approximately half of the world’s waters,

protecting––on paper––about 80% of the surviving baleen

whales, an estimated 80% of the time.

COURT CALENDAR

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Activism

The U.S. Supreme Court on

June 13 upheld federal court and Court

of Appeals rulings that communities

cannot consititutionally ban the display

of political signs on citizens’ own prop-

erty. Issued on behalf of anti-Persian Gulf

War protester Margaret Gilleo, of Ladue,

Missouri, who is now a Congressional

candidate, the ruling applies as well to

people who have been ordered to cease

displaying signs on behalf of animals.

Friends of Animals in early

June won a judgement against the State

of Alaska for attorney’s fees incurred in

defending itself against governor Walter

Hickel’s failed attempt to sue FoA for libel.

The Hickel suit was filed in June 1993 in

an apparent attempt to prevent FoA from

further publicizing the Alaskan plan to kill

wolves in order to make more moose and

caribou available to hunters.

Wildlife

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Media accounts widely misrepresented

an alleged disparity between $21,000 donated to

help the orphaned cub of the mountain lion who

killed California runner Barbara Schoener in May,

and the $9,000 donated to help Schoener’s children.

In fact, $15,000 of the amount “given” to the cub

came from the Folsom County Zoo’s dedicated

building fund for creating a mountain lion exhibit,

which the cub will occupy. An attempt by hunters to

use the fatal attack as pretext to reverse a hunting

moratorium imposed in 1971 and made permanent

by the passage of the 1990 Mountain Lion Initiative

was rebuffed June 14 by committees of both the

California state senate and assembly. In Montana,

meanwhile, the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks

Commission delayed until August a decision on

whether to deliberately cause a mountain lion popu-

lation crash by raising the kill quota from 436 to 479,

of whom at least 328 would have to be females.

What “humane trap” standards share with military intelligence

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The International Standards

Organization technical panel appointed to

define the “humane” trapping standards that

must be met by nations exporting furs into the

European Community met in Ottawa in mid-

February to ratify proposals that World

Society for the Protection of Animals cam-

paigns director Wim de Kok fears “will possi-

bly circumvent the hardfought regulation that

prohibits the use of the leghold trap in the EC

and the import of fur from countries that do

not have such a ban. Under the new General

Agreement on Trade and Tariffs,” de Kok

continued, “the ISO is the regulating body on

standardization. Many countries may be

forced to accept low animal welfare standards

or to allow the import of fur from countries

that do not ban leghold traps. Under the ISO

standards, traps which drown their victims

would be considered humane,” although no

major veterinary organization or humane

group considers drowning a humane method

of either euthanizing or slaughtering animals.

Jogger’s death starts puma panic

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

COOL, California––Trail runner Barbara

Schoener, 40, a Placerville mother of two, on April 23

became the first human to be killed by a puma in

California since 1909, when Morgan Hill school teacher

Isola Kennedy, 38, and pupil Earl Wilson, 8, were

mauled by a rabid mountain lion. They survived their

wounds, but died of the rabies some weeks later.

Schoener, running alone in the Auburn State

Recreation Area, apparently unwittingly approached the

puma’s den. Wildlife officials killed the puma on May 1,

after several days of tracking, discovered she was a lac-

tating female, and rescued a male cub on May 4, who

will be donated to a zoo or wildlife park.

Killing wildlife for fun & profit

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Austrian scientist Dr. Martin

Balluch, now at Cambridge University,

reportedly may be deported from Britain

because he opposes fox hunting. Letters of

protest may be sent to the Right Honorable

Michael Howard, Home Secretary, Home

Office, 50 Queen Anne’s Gate, London

SW1H 9AT, United Kingdom.

The winter of 1993-1994 was

among the harshest on record, forcing deer

to yard up sooner and stay yarded longer––but

early field reports indicate that few deer

starved despite hunters’ claims of deer over-

population. Wild turkeys were hard-hit, how-

eve––and may decline, warns National Wild

Turkey Federation representative Tom Baptie

of Castleton, Vermont, because undigested

grain from cow manure is a staple of their

winter diet, but anti-pollution laws now

restrict where and when manure can be spread.

Birds

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Hard-pressed sturgeon, sharks, and

rays got a break courtesy of the birds in May when

the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge

closed a popular fishing road to protect the nests of

threatened snowy plovers. Killed mainly for kicks,

not eating, the sturgeon, sharks, and rays are less

protected than the plovers but perhaps in greater

jeopardy of extinction because of their rapid deple-

tion and slow reproductive rate.

Oregon State University professor

Morrie Craig has received an award from the

American Racing Pigeon Union for developing a

way to test guano to detect the use of performance-

altering drugs. Doping has lately become a prob-

lem in pigeon racing, as the top prizes in interna-

tional competition have soared above $200,000.

Wildlife

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Hope rose for the endangered

Florida panther in late May when volunteers

from the Coryi Foundation discovered a car-

cass, a single pawprint, and clumps of fur on

the grill of a car that struck an unknown animal

in the St. Johns and Kissimmee River water-

sheds––far outside the Big Cypress Swamp

area of Lake Okeechobee, which was previ-

ously the panther’s only known habitat.

A coalition of U.S. environmental

groups has petitioned the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service to add koalas to the endan-

gered species list. The koala population of

eastern Australia has fallen lately due to habi-

tat loss, caused by the combination of devel-

opment, logging, wildfires, and drought.

RWANDAN GORILLAS LIVE–– LAKE VICTORIA MIGHT NOT

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

VOLCANO NATIONAL PARK, Rwanda–– As of May

14, the mountain gorillas made famous by the late Dian Fossey were

unharmed by Rwandan civil strife, said Jose Kalpers, coordinator of

the International Gorilla Conservation Program.

The IGCP is sponsored by the African Wildlife

Foundation, the Fauna & Flora Preservation Society, and the World

Wildlife Fund.

Kalpers and the rest of the staff at Karasoke, Fossey’s for-

mer headquarters, were evacuated to Kenya shortly after the

Rwandan fighting broke out on April 6. Uganda closed Mgahinga

National Park on May 2, fearing fighting would spill over from the

Volcano National Park area of Rwanda––but it didn’t. By mid-May,

Kalpers said, he was able to visit Zaire, closer to Karasoke than his

temporary headquarters in Nairobi. From Zaire, Kalpers funded

resumed patrols by Rwandan and Zairean park wardens.

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