Sea Shepherd sinks another pirate whaler: ACTED TO ENFORCE INTERNATIONAL LAW, WATSON SAYS

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

GRESSVIK, Norway––Responding to the slaughter of 296 minke whales last

summer, in contravention of international agreement, the Sea Shepherd Conservation

Society sunk the pirate whaler Senet during the predawn hours of January 24.

The S e n e t was one of 28 vessels that took part in Norway’s first commercial

whale hunt since the International Whaling Commission declared a moratorium on com-

mercial whaling in 1986. The Senet crew killed five of the 160 whales massacred under

Norway’s unilaterally declared commercial quota, while 12 other vessels killed an addi-

tional 136 whales in the name of scientific research. Mostly sold to Japan, the whale meat

brought the whalers about $12.5 million. The Norwegian government reputedly spent near-

NEW YORK STATE STATISTICS SHOW LINK: Hunters and molesters

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

ALBANY, New York–-As a team of 165 volun-

teers shoved snow from the frozen forest floor near

Raquette Lake, where hunter Lewis Lent Jr. said he’d killed

and buried 12-year-old Sara Anne Wood last summer,

ANIMAL PEOPLEconfirmed through a county-by-county

comparative analysis of 1992 New York state hunting, trap-

ping, and crime statistics that children in upstate New York

counties with more than the average number of hunters per

capita are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted

than children in the notoriously crime-ridden Bronx district

of New York City. (Statistics begin on page 6.)

Lent, 43, of North Adams, Massachusetts, was

arrested January 7 after attempting to kidnap 12-year-old

Rebecca Savarese as she walked to school in nearby

Pittsfield. Within hours Lent became the primary suspect in

a string of at least eight kidnap/rape/murders of children in

Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and in an

attempted kidnapping in Bennington, Vermont, only days

before his capture.

Sea life

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Foiled when a crew from the Shedd Aquarium in

Chicago caught three Pacific whitesided dolphins on

November 27, protesters who hoped to disrupt the capture

effort instead spent the next month keeping the dolphins’ hold-

ing pen at the Kettenburg Marine wharf in San Diego under

around-the-clock surveillance. Steve Hindi of the Chicago

Animal Rights Coalition took video that he claimed shows dol-

phins swimming “in a bathtub ring of their own excrement,”

which a Shedd spokesperson claimed was salt added to the

water to simulate the chemistry of the ocean. The video also

showed “frenzied Shedd officials erecting a barrier to obscure

the traumatized dolphins from view,” Hindi said, and enabled

members of the Whale Rescue Team to identify “a steady

stream of visitors,” including Tim Hauser, who reputedly cap-

tures marine mammals for many aquariums, and a number of

Navy personnel, whose presence was unexplained. The Navy

has applied, however, to do underwater weapons testing in one

area where the dolphins might have been caught, the Outer-Sea

Test Range. Designated in 1946, the range lies seaward of the

Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The proposed test-

ing will involve “incidental” deaths and injuries to any marine

mammals who happen to be near test explosions, and is

opposed by many of the same groups that opposed the dolphin

captures, as well as the usually conservative National Audubon

Society. As Christmas approached, the Shedd team was hold-

ing daily “desensitizing drills,” preparing the dolphins for trans-

port by raising and lowering them in a cargo sling.

Hunting

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Among the 1993 hunting victims

werePansy Gordon, 55, of Alexander, West

Virginia, shot by her husband Jule on

November 27 as she drove a deer toward him;

Brandon Smith, age six, who was killed in

the family kitchen November 28 when his 12-

year-old brother shot him point-blank while

practicing quickly loading and aiming his sin-

gle-shot rifle, using Brandon as a target;

Travis Philips, 16, of Metairie, Louisiana,

who was hunting squirrels from a flatboat in

the Bogue Chitto National Wildlife Refuge on

November 29 when Daniel Thompson, 23, of

Bogalusa mistook him for a black hog; an

unidentified 39-year-old woman in Fayette

County, Pennsylvania, on November 29; an

11-year-old girl in Walton County, Georgia,

Anti-hunter runs for Sierra Club board

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

Margaret Hays Young, an outspoken critic of the Sierra Club’s

neutral stance on hunting, leads a slate of four dissidents who are seeking

seats on the Sierra Club board of directors in this spring’s membership

election. Young, long a leader of the Sierra Club’s 40,000-member

Atlantic Chapter, believes the group should ardently oppose hunting, log-

ging, and other exploitive use of national parks and wildlife refuges. She

is also a leading foe of the annual seagull massacres at New York’s

Kennedy International Airport. In 1990 she led the Atlantic Chapter and

other affiliates in Illinois, Indiana, and Montana in support of a plan to

curtail logging in the Northern Rockies. The Sierra Club board threatened

to oust Young and suspend operation of the Atlantic Chapter, but two

years later did adopt a stronger policy of opposition to old-growth logging.

The logging issue will be central to the spring election, heating

up after William Arthur, chief Sierra Club forest lobbyist in the Pacific

Northwest, sold 10 acres of his own trees to loggers. Sierra Club mem-

bership is down from 627,000 people to 550,000 since 1991, while

income is down from $52 million to $40 million.

Christmas poll

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

A nationwide Los

Angeles Times poll of 1,612

adults, taken December 4-7 and

published Christmas Day, found

that 54% of Americans oppose

sport hunting, including 65% of

women, 41% of men, and 60%

of people ages 18-29; 50%

object to wearing fur, including

58% of women, 40% of men,

and 57% of people ages 18-29;

and 47% agreed with the state-

ment that, “Animals are just

like humans in all important

ways,” including 52% of women

and 61% of people ages 18-29.

Alaska and the Yukon: The silence of the wolves

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, and WHITEHORSE, the Yukon––At least 63 of the

wolves the world sought to save in Alaskan wildlife management unit 20-A, south of

Fairbanks, have been killed by airborne state trappers––and that may be almost all the

wolves who lived there, a fraction of the number state officials claim have ravaged moose

and caribou to the extent that sport hunting in the area has been suspended since 1991.

A comparable massacre has resumed in the Yukon Territory, Canada, where

officials last winter killed only 61 of a quota of 150 wolves in the beginning of a five-year

push to cut the estimated wolf population of the Kluane-Aishihik region near the Kluane

National Park and World Heritage Site by 85%. As in Alaska, the Yukon killing is pur-

portedly part of a “caribou enhancement” program, and also as in Alaska, independent

experts believe the official quota is several times higher than the actual wolf population of

the sector. The Kluane-Aishihik caribou herd has crashed and other Yukon herds have lev-

COURT CALENDAR

December 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:

Crimes against wildlife

Hong Kong authorities confiscat-

ed $20,000 worth of rhinoceros horn in a

series of late October raids on apothecaries,

following leads provided by the London-based

Environmental Investigation Agency. But the

raids may have come too late to save rhinos in

the wild, as fewer than six remain in protect-

ed areas of Zimbabwe, according to wildlife

veterinarian Dr. Michael Kock, who could

find only two in a two-week aerial search.

There were 3,000 when Zimbabwe achieved

native sovereignty in 1980. Kock sawed the

horns off about 300 rhinos a year ago, trying

to make them worthless to poachers, but dis-

covered that even the nub left behind after

dehorning will fetch $2,400 U.S. Kock says

he has evidence that the Asian poaching car-

tels are actively trying to “kill every rhino,”

because, “If they eliminate the rhino, the value

of the horn will skyrocket. They can sit on a

stockpile for 10 years; they know there is

always going to be a market.”

ANIMAL HEALTH

December 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:

A mystery hantavirus that killed 26 peopleear-

lier this year could spread across the U.S., the November 5

issue of Science warned. The Pulmonary Syndrome

Hantavirus, as it is now called, PSH for short, was traced

to deer mice after killing 19 people near the junction of

Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado––and deer

mice range over most of North America. Cases have now

been confirmed as far north as Montana and the Dakotas,

as far west as coastal California, and as far east as

Louisiana. The southwestern outbreak may have occurred

as result of heavy rains in early 1992 that produced a

bumper crop of pinon nuts and grasshoppers, both staple

foods for deer mice, whose population exploded. The

Centers for Disease Control suspects the outbreak was

detected only because so many cases appeared at once.

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