Category: Law

EUROPEAN UNION RESCINDS TRAPPED FUR IMPORT BAN

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

BRUSSELS––The European Union General
Affairs Council on July 22 approved agreements with
Canada and Russia on “humane” trapping standards
which as Associated Press put it, “will insure use of the
cruel leghold trap for an indefinite period of time.”
The EU council also asked the European
Commission to strike a similar deal with the U.S., which
holds that it cannot federally supersede state trapping regulations,
and that any international regulation of trapping
violates the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs.
The July 22 deal allows Canada and Russia to
continue the use of steel-jawed leghold traps for another
two to four years, and allows the use of padded leghold
traps for either eight more years or indefinitely, if they
meet as yet unformalized international standards.
For Canada and Russia, the deal nullifies an
EU ban on the import of fur from animals usually caught
by leghold trapping, initially approved in 1991 to take
effect in 1995, but repeatedly postponed by all member
nations but The Netherlands.
Letters opposing further EU concessions to
reach agreement with the U.S. may be sent to the
European Commission, 200 Rue de la Loi, B1049,
Brussels, Belgium; fax 011-322-299-4686.

Licensed to kill

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––You probably
think the Endangered Species Act, Marine
Mammal Protection Act, and Migratory Bird
Treaty Act protect wildlife.
What they actually do is require special
permission to kill or harass wildlife––and
spot-checking recent requests for permits and
exemptions, ANIMAL PEOPLE and Friends
of Animals’ special investigator Carroll Cox
quickly confirmed that the permitting and
exempting procedures are easily and often
manipulated.
“Permitting and exemptions are the
Achilles heel of wildlife law enforcement,”
says Cox, a former special investigator for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and game warden
for the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “With the right permit or an exemption,
you can do anything.”

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ESA rewrite looms

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Seven
years of political battling over Endangered
Species Act reauthorization appear headed
toward quick resolution.
The White House in late July signaled
eagerness to lower the profile of ESA
issues before the 1998 presidential campaign,
when both vice president Albert Gore and
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt may seek to
succeed Bill Clinton by building a similar
coalition of moderate conservative and traditional
Democratic support.
As presiding officer over the Senate,
negotiating ratification of international treaties,
Gore has pleased conservatives by favoring
trade over strict species protection under the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, the International
Whaling Convention, and the Declaration of
Panama, recently implemented by repeal of
the “dolphin-safe” tuna import standard (see
page 2). Babbitt has curried conservative
favor, meanwhile, by rapidly increasing the
number of National Wildlife Refuges open to
hunting and fishing: half when he took office,
nearly two-thirds now.

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BOMBING BUSTS FOLLOW BOTCHED MINK FARM RAID

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

VANCOUVER, B.C., SALT
LAKE CITY, Utah––A turning point in
the evolution of animal rights-related direct
action may have come when within days of
the airing of graphic media coverage of the
May 31 botched release of up to 9,600 mink
from a fur farm at Mount Angel, Oregon,
authorities in Vancouver and Salt Lake City
identified suspects in two apparently unrelated
strings of purportedly animal rightsrelated
violence.
Released were as many as 1,600
adult females and 6,000-8,000 kits. An estimated
400 adults and 2,000 kits either died
of exposure, killed each other in fierce territorial
fighting, were apparently trampled
underfoot by the raiders, or were missing
with little chance of survival in habitat
unlikely to sustain their metabolic needs.

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Lynx sacrified to free trade and leghold trapping

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The Department
of Commerce and U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service have escalated efforts to avert the long
pending European Union ban on imports of pelts
which might be taken by leghold trapping––and
the U.S. population of Canadian lynx may
become the first species extirpated by the Bill
Clinton/Albert Gore administration defense of
free trade at any cost, as on May 23 the USFWS
ruled in that an endangered species listing of the
lynx is “warrented but precluded” by other priorities.
The ruling came in response to a
March 27 verdict by U.S. District Judge Gladys
Kessler that the USFWS did not properly weigh
the evidence that the lynx is endangered in
refusing to list it in 1994.
Officially, the so-called other priorities
precluding listing the lynx involve a backlog
of other species awaiting listing. Unofficially,
the USFWS top priority may be avoiding the
necessity of protecting the lynx from hunting,

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Grisly crimes spotlight control, keeping, and the missing link

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

TRENTON, N.J.––The May 30
conviction of Jesse Timmendequas in Trenton,
New Jersey, for the July 1994 molestation
murder of Megan Kanka, 7, brought new
attention to the association of animal abuse
with child abuse. Defense lawyers testified
that Timmendequas, 36, twice before convicted
of sexually assaulting children, grew up
watching his father torture pets. His mother
broke his arm, they claimed, and his father
sodomized him.
Timmendequas’ father, Edward
James Howard, of Smoketree Valley,
California, denied the allegations in an exclusive
interview with Evelyn Nieves of The New
York Times, pointing to his present 11 dogs,
five cats, 12 chickens, two guinea hens, and
two cockatiels, along with elaborate graves
for two deceased dogs.

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PETA, Procter & Gamble, and the Rokke Horror Picture Show

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

CINCINNATI––A Procter & Gamble probe of
alleged animal abuse at Huntingdon Life Sciences in East
Millstone, New Jersey, supports charges leveled on June 4 by
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
P&G that day suspended testing work contracted out
to Huntingdon, after three P&G public relations staffers
attended a PETA press conference featuring a nine-minute
covert video made by PETA undercover investigator Michelle
Rokke, a three-year staffer who obtained employment with
Huntingdon as a laboratory animal care technician.
PETA the same day introduced the Rokke video as
evidence in support of a 37-page complaint to the USDA accusing
Huntingdon of multiple Animal Welfare Act violations.
“We’re citing inadequate veterinary care, improper
training, and violation of AWA caging requirements,” said
PETA director of investigations Mary Beth Sweetland.
Reported Jeff Harrington of the Cincinnati Enquirer,
“PETA’s video shows technicians dangling monkeys, yelling
at them, throwing some of them into cages and threading tubes
down their noses. At one point a monkey displays movement
and a quickened heartbeat when a technician cuts into his chest.

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PUSHING THE “DOLPHIN DEATH BILL”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Only the threat of filibuster
by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) remained to
keep revocation of the “dolphin safe” tuna import standard
from sliding through the Senate and into law, after the House
of Representatives approved HR 408, dubbed “the dolphin
death bill” by opponents, 262-166, on May 21. Unless Boxer
succeeds in indefinitely delaying the Senate vote this year, as
last year, the revocation bill will come before the Senate for a
vote later this summer as HR 39, and is strongly favored by
the Bill Clinton/Albert Gore administration.
The revocation, to bring U.S. law into conformity
with the 1994 Panama Agreement, will allow the fleets of 11
other nations to resume selling the U.S. tuna netted “on dolphin,”
but will require that no dolphins are seen being killed.

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WILD TIME FOR THE WAYSTATION

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST,
Calif.––The California Fish and Game Commission
on June 12 reportedly put off until August a decision
on a Department of Fish and Game request that
it should impose a moratorium on the acceptance of
animals by the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary until
it meets DFG requirements.
DFG director Jacqueline E. Schafer told
the commission on May 16 that the DFG has
refused to renew the Wildlife Waystation permits to
exhibit and keep “detrimental species,” which
expired on February 15, because “the Waystation
continues to possess unpermitted animals, allows
breeding, and houses animals in substandard cages.
Twenty-six unauthorized wild animal births have
taken place at the Waystation since June 1994,”
Schafer charged. She further stated that 23 cages,
mostly housing big cats or bears, have been officially
out of compliance with state regulation since
May 16, 1995.

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