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.

ANIMAL HEALTH

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Zoonosis

Tests by the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit have

concluded that the only sure way to prevent allergic reactions

to cats is “to remove the cat from the home,” Dr. Charles

Klucka recently told the American Academy of Allergy and

Immunology. “The next best thing is keeping the cat out of

the bedroom,” while the cat owner takes allergy drugs or

shots. Bathing cats in distilled water, applying a topical

spray 60 times per week, and giving them low-dose tranquil-

izers, all touted as antiallergen treatments, did not reduce the

dander of the 24 cats included in the Ford Hospital study.

Ten thousand volunteers in Connecticut, New

Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin are field-

testing a Lyme disease vaccine developed by Connaught

Laboratories, following up on a 1992-1993 test that included

300 people. Preliminary data published in the June 8 edition

of the Journal of the American Medical Association showed

that levels of Lyme antibodies increased fourfold in 23 of 24

volunteers who participated in a limited test in Albuquerque,

none of whom suffered serious side effects. A rival firm,

SmithKline Beecham PLC, is reportedly also close to testing

a vaccine for Lyme disease, which afflicts about 10,000

Americans a year, and has been found in 44 of the 50 states.

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.

COURT CALENDAR

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Crimes Against Humans

Odd jobs man Joseph Bales,

33, and Helene LeMay, 31, a mail-

order vegetarian diet consultant, were

charged April 19 with illegally disposing

of their 10-week-old infant’s remains in

the woods near Eastman, Quebec, a

short drive from their St. Romain home,

and then filing a false kidnapping report

in New York City to cover up for the

baby’s death. Their story fell apart within

hours. An autopsy seemed to confirm

their story that the baby died of natural

causes, as there were no evident signs of

abuse or malnutrition. They did not

report the death, they said, because they

feared they would be charged with abuse,

after having been accused last year of

abusing a mentally retarded foster child.

Gorilla case was frame-up ––McGreal

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

MIAMI, Florida––Victor Bernal, 57,

director of zoos and parks for Mexico state,

Mexico, was convicted on May 18 of trying to

bootleg a gorilla from Florida who was actually a

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent in disguise.

Bernal paid $97,500 for the “gorilla,” in one of

two stings set up by convicted primate trafficker

Matthew Block of Worldwide Primates as part of

an attempted plea bargain. The other sting

nabbed alleged bird’s egg smuggler Clement

Solano.

Bernal is to be sentenced on July 18. In

the most recent similar case, a Texas exotic bird

dealer who was convicted of smuggling parrots

was on April 28 fined $10,000 and sentenced to

five years in prison.

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.

Laboratories

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Residents of Cranberry and

Hampton Township, Pennsylvania, got a

close-up view of the realities of vivisection on

May 7 when the tailgate of a truck taking 2.5

tons of dead rats from Zivic-Miller Laboratories

to a landfill broke twice, littering two streets

with rat remains. Zivic-Miller, of Zelienople, a

Pittsburgh suburb, sells rats to research institu-

tions. The dead rats were unsold surplus, owner

Bill Zivic told Associated Press.

1990 University of Minnesota animal

intake records obtained by the Animal Rights

Coalition under the Minnesota Data Practices

Act indicate that the university purchased for

research use at least 139 of 248 dogs who were

individually identified in a 1992 USDA com-

plaint filed against Class B animal dealers Julian

and Anita Toney, of Lamoni, Iowa, for failing

to keep records on animal acquisitions. The

USDA charges, now four years old, are still

pending, while the Toneys remain the primary

suppliers of dogs to the university––which has

been suspected of using stolen dogs ever since

the late Lucille Moses traced dog thefts through

local suppliers to UM in the early 1960s.

Save the whales! DID CLINTON SELL OUT WHALES TO SELL MISSILES?

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico––The world will

know by the time you read this whether U.S. president Bill

Clinton sold out whales to sell $625 million worth of missiles to

Norway. As ANIMAL PEOPLEwent to press, Greenpeace and

the World Wildlife Fund, goaded by Friends of Animals, were

applying last-minute leverage to head off the apparent

sellout––including joint protest on May 17 in front of the White

House, a WWF first, while Clinton and vice president Albert

Gore met with Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland inside.

The proposed creation of an Antarctic whale refuge and

the resumption of commercial whaling head the agenda for the

46th annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission

(IWC), commencing on May 23. As every year since 1982,

when the IWC decreed the moratorium on commercial whaling in

effect since 1986, Japan and Norway will push to break the

moratorium. As last year, Japan and Norway will also fight the

creation of the sanctuary, seeking the help of Antigua-and-

Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent-and-

the-Grenadines, four tiny Caribbean nations heavily dependent

upon Japanese foreign aid, whose votes were decisive in 1993.

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