Doctor fined up to $70,000 for buying Cuban dolphins

September 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

MIAMI–Graham Simpson, M.D., 53, in late August 2004 told
Miami Herald correspondent Charles D. Sherman that he is “negotiating
a fine of up to $70,000″ for violating the U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba by purchasing six wild-caught dolphins from Cuba to stock the
Dolphin Fantaseas swim-with-dolphins facilities that he and his wife
formerly owned in Antigua and Anguilla.
Originally from South Africa but now a naturalized U.S.
citizen, Simpson said several years ago that he traveled to Cuba
under a British passport, and paid $45,000 each for the six dolphins.
Simpson and his wife recently sold Dolphin Fantaseas to Dolphin
Discovery, of Cancun, Mexico.
Owned by U.S. citizens, Dolphin Discovery has purchased “at
least 33, maybe 70″ Cuban dolphins over the years, Dolphin Project
founder Ric O’Barry told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Having brought the Dolphin Fantaseas dolphin acquisition from
Cuba to light, O’Barry and Gwen McKenna of Toronto are now targeting
Dolphin Discovery.
“If they got even a $1 million fine, it would not put a dent
in that operation,” said O’Barry.
The Dolphin Project, now sponsored by the French group One
Voice, is currently “campaigning in the Cayman Islands trying to
keep Dolphin Discovery from expanding into that country,” said
O’Barry, who has been trying to end dolphin captivity since 1970.

Animal Balance in the Galapagos

June 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

SAN FRANCISCO–Violent confrontations between fishers
hellbent on exploiting the marine life of Galapagos National Park and
Marine Reserve reignited repeatedly in the first half of 2004–except
when Animal Balance was there.
For six weeks, from mid-April to late May, Animal Balance
sterilized, vaccinated, and gave parasite treatment to dogs and
cats, both pets and ferals, on Isabela Island, the largest and
most populated of the Galapagos chain.
The work seemed to bring the warring factions together. The
trouble stopped just as Animal Balance arrived, and again erupted
almost as soon as the Animal Balance volunteers went home.
Former San Francisco SPCA feral cat program coordinator Emma
Clifford conceived and directed the Animal Balance project, with
veterinary help led by Operation Catnip founder Julie Levy of the
University of Florida at Gainesville.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society provided transportation
to the remote islands. Patrolling the Galapagos Marine Reserve since
2001 at invitation of the Galapagos National Park Service, the Sea
Shepherds have often been between the embattled Galapagos National
Park Service conservation staff and the irate fishers–and at odds
with the Ecuadoran Navy, whose senior officers tend to see their
mission as defending the fishing industry, not marine life.

Cock & bull stories

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Oklahoma cockfighting ban upheld

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on March 30, 2004 upheld the
constitutionality of the initiative ban on cockfighting that was
approved by state voters in 2002. Chief Justice Joseph M. Watt and
six other justices ratified the verdict, while two abstained.
The ban passed by a margin of 125,000 votes, but local
judges in 27 counties then ruled that the initiative was
“unconstitutionally vague” and “unjustly deprived cockfighters of
their property.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected both
contentions.
“Next it will be hunting, fishing and rodeos,” complained
state senator Frank Shurden. Shurden for the past two years has
pushed a bill to reduce the penalties for cockfighting from felonies
to misdemeanors.

Bullfight protesters beaten by cops

Members of Corporacion RAYA, also known as Red de Ayuda los
Animales, of Medallin, Colombia, were on February 28 beaten by
police during a protest against bullfighting for the second time in a
month.
“As happened on February 7, the anti-riot squad took
advantage of their jobs and hit the marchers,” an activist calling
herself “Girl From Mars” e-mailed to
<www.hsi-animalia@lists.hsus.org>, an electronic bulletin board
maintained by the Humane Society of the U.S.
“A 15-year-old boy was seriously injured in his eye and was
kept prisoner for about five hours, and so was a 17-year-old girl,”
the report added.

Bullfighting arena built in Beijing

South China Morning Post correspondent David Fang on March 13
reported that “A 3,000-seat bull ring, Asia’s biggest, is nearing
completion in the Daxing district of Beijing, next to the Beijing
Wildlife Park.”
Jiao Shenhai of the Daxing tourist bureau told Fang that the
ring was to host both Spanish-style bullfights and U.S.-style rodeo,
but outbreaks of mad cow disease in Spain had blocked the import of
Spanish fighting bulls.
“Communist China is quick to adopt any vice from any
culture,” commented Chinese animal advocate Peter Li, now teaching
at the Universiy of Houston.
Disagreed Peking University School of Journal-ism &
Communication professor Guan Sijie, “Chinese see the bull as
industrious, honest, and good friends. I don’t think Chinese
people will accept bullfighting.”

Sterilizing dogs and cats in rural Argentina

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

PARANA, Argentina–A caption on page 6 of the December 2003
edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE misattributed to the Buenos Aires-based
Asociacion para la Defensa de los Derechos del Animal a photo showing
a volunteer using a wheelbarrow to return a spayed dog to her home.
The photo was actually sent by Grupo Platero, of Parana,
300 miles northwest.
Formally founded in 1730, about 200 years after Spanish
explorers first encountered indigenous settlements in the region,
and named after the piranha fish for whom the Rio Parana was also
named, Parana served as the first capitol of the independent nation
of Argentina from 1852 until 1862. Parana is still the capital of
Entre Rios province, but had no municipal animal shelter until the
city health department started one in 1965.
Like most city shelters, the Parana shelter killed most
impounded animals until 1994.
Sisters Lucrecia and Veronica Mors, and a deceased friend,
formed Grupo Platero in 1978. In 1985 the Parana shelter began a pet
sterilization program. From 1993 through 1998 Group Platero
augmented the city program by hiring a veterinarian to visit the
barrios, sterilizing homeless animals and the pets of the poor
without charge. This enabled the Parana shelter to cease killing
strays. The Grupo Platero program ended when the sisters could no
longer afford to pay for surgeries.

Dolphin captures in the Solomons

September 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

CANCUN, Mexico; HONORIA, Solomon Islands–One of as many
as 200 dolphins who were captured in the Solomon Islands during a
lawless interim before the July 21 arrival of Australian peacekeeping
troops reportedly died on July 28, a week after 28 of the dolphins
were flown to the Parque Nizuc swim-with complex in Cancun, Mexico.
Twenty-eight dolphins arrived, anyhow. Greenpeace claimed
33 dolphins were actually loaded for the flight.
The chartered Brazilian-owned DC-10 carrying the dolphins
took off only hours ahead of the arrival of the 2,000 Australian
soldiers, who quickly ended 18 months of civil strife. Guadalcanal
island warlord Harold Keke surrendered to the Australian forces on
August 13. Keke led a coup attempt in 2000 that led to the deaths of
about 50 people and the destruction of 15 villages along the Weather
Coast of Guadalcanal, the largest island in the Solomons archipelago.
How many dolphins will die as an indirect consequence of
Keke’s insurrection is still anyone’s guess.

“Well-meaning” wildlife traffic? CITES weighs Taiping gorilla case

December 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

TAIPING, Malaysia; SANTIAGO, Chile–Few points on earth
are farther apart, with more open sea and sky between them, than
Taiping, Malaysia, home of the struggling Taiping Zoo, and
Santiago, Chile, the host city for the 12th Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species Conference of the Parties,
called CITES-COP 2002 for short.
Yet the Taiping Zoo and CITES-COP 2002 had an awkward issue
to deal with in mid-November, having to do with the zoo illegally
buying baby gorillas in the name of conservation. The facts were
less in dispute than the intentions behind the January 2002
transaction–and the closest resemblance to common ground between the
positions of Taiping and the CITES Secretariat, across 6,000 miles
of Pacific Ocean, might have been the rolling deck of a Japanese
whaling ship.

BOOKS: Vista Nieve

December 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

Vista Nieve by Melbourne R. Carriker
Blue Mantle Press (36901 Marshall Hutts Rd., Rio Hondo-Arroyo City,
TX 78583), 2001. 312 pages, paperback. $18.95.

On July 28, 2002, Colombian ornithologists Jorge Velasquez
and Alonso Quevado photographed 14 examples of Fuertes’s parrot among
tall trees in an alpine forest near the summit of a volcano in the
northern Andes. The brightly colored indigo-and-yellow parrot was
previously documented only in 1911, when specimens were among the
5,355 birds of 513 species and subspecies whom Melbourne A. Carriker
Jr. shotgunned out of the foliage of that region and into the
scientific literature.

Suarez Circus polar bears saved at last

December 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

YABUCOA, Puerto Rico–Fifteen months after the Suarez
Brothers Circus of Guadalajara, Mexico, brought seven polar bears
to Puerto Rico, and eight months after confiscating one bear named
Alaska, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on
November 4 took the remaining six bears into custody, charged the
circus with five violations of the Animal Welfare Act, and initiated
seizure proceedings.

Baja Animal Sanctuary is blown away by storm

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

ROSARITO, Mexico–“The Baja Animal Sanctuary [as described
in the June 1999 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE] is virtually gone, gone,
gone,” founder Sunny Benedict told volunteers and donors in a
February 11 letter distributed by volunteer Maureen Quinn.
“The same horrible Santa Ana winds that created the canyon
fires in the vicinity of Fallbrook, California,” causing
evacuations of people and animals, “came through Rosarito,”
Benedict explained. “All of the fencing, tarpaulins for shade,
dog houses, aluminum roofing, and even the roof on the house are
gone. And there was nothing we could do but watch.

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