Hunting & Fishing

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

A bill to ban pigeon shoots includ-

ing the notorious Labor Day shoot in Hegins

fell three votes short of clearing the

Pennsylvania state house on March 8––and

actually drew a majority of the votes cast, 99-

93. However, 103 votes would have been

required to pass the bill from the 202-member

house to the state senate. Though the bill

would almost certainly have failed in the sen-

ate, where 38 of the 48 members have ‘A’ rat-

ings from the National Rifle Association, the

vote was a marked advance from 1989, when

the house defeated a similar bill, 126-66.

The Colorado house finance com-

mittee on February 16 killed as contrary to the

expressed intent of the electorate a bill that

would have reauthorized spring bear hunting

and hunting bears with hounds and bait––all of

which were banned by referendum in 1992.

Audubon muzzled criticism of hunting

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

SAN FRANCISCO, California––Desperately Seeking Sanctuary, an

hour-long National Audubon Society expose of abuses to the U.S. National

Wildlife Refuge system, aired March 6 on the Turner Broadcasting

Network––but only after senior Audubon officials cut criticism of hunting, trap-

ping, and fishing, investigative freelance Mark Dowie revealed the same day in

the San Francisco Examiner. Dowie is remembered for his 1977 revelation that

the Ford Motor Company had ruled against spending an extra $11 per car to keep

Pintos from exploding in rear-end collisions.

“In the original script and early rough cuts,” Dowie charged, “hunting,

trapping, and fishing were given equal time and treated with as much indignation

as drilling, logging, and military bombing runs. The script had special appeal

for (narrator) Mariel Hemingway, who spent much of her youth tearfully plead-

ing with her father not to hunt big game.” Her father, Gregory Hemingway, a

trophy hunter, pigeon-shooting champion, and convicted transvestite, was son

of author Ernest Hemingway––who became obsessed with hunting after his

mother forced him to wear dresses until he started school.

AGRICULTURE

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

MAJOR RATITE BANKRUPTCY IN FLORIDA

The collapse of the ratite speculation boom pre-

dicted in the January/February ANIMAL PEOPLE cover fea-

ture may have begun with the mid-January bankruptcy of U.S.

Ostrich and Junction Financial Corporation, of Hallandale,

Florida. The related firms claimed assets of $933,000, includ-

ing ostriches bought for $381,000, while owing $3.9 million to

1,350 investors in 47 states, Canada, and Jamaica. One

investor reportedly lost $274,000. The Securities Exchange

Corporation responded by suing U.S. Ostrich and Junction

Financial principals Marcia Josowitz and Stephen Tashman for

allegedly selling more than $3 million in unregistered securities

in the form of investment contracts, billed as general partner-

ships. The SEC also charged Josowitz and Tashman with

draining corporate funds to make loans to themselves and pay

themselves inflated salaries. Josowitz and Tashman apparently

got into ostriches after promoting a 900 telephone number ser-

vice, office supplies, vacation travel, and water purifiers.

Poachers

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

California wardens on

January 28 broke up the Ace

Hunting Club, a bear poaching ring

allegedly run by William Jim Taek

Lee, 35. Trophy hunters paid Lee

$1,500 apiece to be guided to bears;

Lee then sold bear parts both local-

ly and to Korea. The operation

reportedly killed 30 bears and net-

ted $600,000 In a parallel but

apparently unrelated case, t h e

Pennsylvania Game Commission

five days later charged Tae-Ukand

Elaine S. Kang of Coatesville,

Pennsylvania, with illegally traf-

ficking in bear galls.

Birds

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The January/February edition of World Watch, the journal of the

Worldwatch Institute, postulated that wild birds are the “canaries in the coal mine”

whose decline warns of forthcoming ecodisaster. The article cited studies finding that

1,000 of the 9,600 known bird species are endangered or threatened; 70% of known

species are decining in numbers; and 2,600 species are involved in international trade.

Under pressure to provide targets for hunters and faced with crashing

populations of most migratory waterfowl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is consid-

ering lifting a ban on goose hunting along the Pacific Flyway. The ban was imposed to

protect the cackling Canada goose and the Pacific white-fronted goose, whose num-

bers dropped from 300,000 to 28,500 and from 500,000 to 93,900 during the 1980s,

but are now back up to 164,300 and 275,100, respectively.

Coyote-killing “like calling a girl”

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

GILLETTE, Wyoming––Coyote, fox,

and rabbit-killing contests and bounty programs

popped up around the west in midwinter––in

response, organizers said, to a year-old moratori-

um on coyote-killing by the federal Animal

Damage Control Program, won through a lawsuit

filed by the Humane Society of the U.S. Ranchers

argued that nonlethal coyote control hasn’t worked,

citing an American Sheep Industry Association

report that coyotes in Wyoming and Colorado have

learned to run sheep dogs to exhaustion, attack

them in packs, and split up so that some can divert

the dogs while others kill sheep. They claimed huge

livestock losses to an alleged overpopulation of coy-

otes and foxes, although killing contest participants

averaged only two dead coyotes and one dead fox

per 18 days of hunting. ASIA and other ranch lob-

bies are trying to lift the ADC moratorium––along

with a ban on the use of spring-fired traps called M-

44s that shoot poison into coyotes’ mouths. The

traps are banned to protect eagles, who likewise

may snatch the bait with fatal consequences.

ALASKAN WOLF MASSACRE: SIERRA CLUB BREAKS BOYCOTT

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska––Alaska’s “ground-based” wolf-killing campaign in

Game Management Unit 20A, south of Fairbanks, was more than $50,000 over bud-

get in early February, with only 84 wolves killed out of a quota of 150––tending to

affirm the view of wolf expert Gordon Haber, Friends of Animals, and the Alaska

Wildlife Alliance that the state greatly overestimated the wolf population of the area

to begin with. Only $100,000 was to be spent on the wolf-killing, including $30,000

for personnel and $15,000 for helicopter rentals, but by mid-January personnel costs

were already over $60,000 and helicopter rentals were at $23,000, the AWA reported.

Finding the federal Airborne Hunting Act impossible to enforce when state

law allows “trappers” to spot wolves from the air, land, walk 300 feet, and shoot

them, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on December 22 proposed a ban on killing

any free-ranging wolves or wolverines on Alaskan National Wildlife Refuges the

same day a hunter is airborne. Killing trapped wolves would still be permitted.

Fur

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

While the ISO moved to accept

padded leghold traps as “humane,” a

Massachusetts judge ruled they are not on

December 27, 1993, overturning a 1989 rul-

ing by the state Division of Fisheries and

Wildlife that padded traps were not banned by

the state law that banned steel-jawed leghold

traps in 1974. “It is apparent from the opera-

tion of the Woodstream ‘soft-catch’ trap,”

Suffolk Superior Court judge Patrick King

wrote, “that it will cause injury to many ani-

mals.”

ANIMAL HEALTH

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Rabies update

New Hampshire state veterinarian

Clifford McGinniss warned January

15––after a rabid kitten was found in a

Merrimack College dormitory––that feral cats

must be exterminated to protect Hampton

Beach visitors. Disagreeing, Hampton Beach

is pursung a $24,000 cat control plan combin-

ing catch-and-kill with selective neuter/

release. The plan is also opposed by New

Hampshire SPCA executive director Bonnie

Roberts, who told the Boston Globe that the

feral cats “are going to tangle with rabid ani-

mals and spread the disease.” In fact, rabies

vaccination is a prerequisite of the Hampton

Beach plan, and of all properly managed

neuter/release programs. There are no reports

on record of any cat in any recognized

neuter/release program anywhere ever con-

tracting rabies, while several neuter/release

programs including one coordinated in 1991-

1992 by ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim

Bartlett have been credited by public safety

officials with creating an immunized barrier

between rabid wildlife and family pets.

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