Canada close to getting own ESA

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

OTTAWA––Overshadowed by the
CITES and ESA struggles, Canada staggers
toward adopting its first federal Endangered
Species Act, encumbered by resource industries
even stronger than their U.S. counterparts
and provincial governments with far more
autonomy than U.S. states. Canada has placed
276 species to date on an endangered species
list, but legally protecting those species has
been left to the often recalcitrant provinces.
As introduced last December 18,
the Canadian ESA would apply only to
species on federal land, or about 4% of the
Canadian land mass; includes only those
birds who are already covered by the
Migratory Birds Convention with the U.S.;

COURT CALENDAR

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Michigan activists Patricia Marie Dodson, 48, of
Royal Oak, Hilma Marie Ruby, 59, of Rochester, Robyn
Rachel Weiner, 25, of Farmington Hills, Gary Howard
Yourofsky, 26, of West Bloomfield Township, and Alan
Anthony Hoffman, 47, of Roseville all were charged with
breaking and entering and mischief on April 2, two days after
the Ontario Provincial Police arrested them during their alleged
second attempt to release mink from the Ebert Fur Farm in
Blenheim, Ontario. About 300 of 2,400 resident mink were let
out of their cages the first time, and 1,500 the second, of whom
1,100 were recaptured, 300 died of exposure or were roadkilled,
and 100 were unaccounted for. Yourofsky and Dodson were
reportedly regional PETA contacts. The five are represented by
civil rights and animal rights lawyer Clayton Ruby, one of the
most prominent and popular figures in Canadian law, not related
to Hilma Ruby.

NORWAY SEEKS WATSON EXTRADITION

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

AMSTERDAM––Held in a Dutch maximum security
prison since April 2 on an Interpol warrant from Norway,
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson will
go to court May 26 in hopes of avoiding extradition on threeyear-old
charges of allegedly ramming the Norwegian coast
guard vessel Andennes, sending a false distress signal, and
trespassing in Norwegian waters, in addition to the charge of
being an accessory to the dockside scuttling of the whaling ship
Nybraena in 1992 for which he was first detained.
The additional charges were laid on April 18. The
District of Haarlem Court had on April 3 ordered that Watson
be kept on the Interpol warrant for 20 days to allow Norway
time to prepare an extradition case. That warrant, however,
asked only that Watson be sent to Norway to serve a 120-day
jail sentence he and colleague Lisa Distefano received in absen –
tia in May 1994 for their purported roles in the Nybraena sink –
ing. The vessel was later refloated and is still killing whales.
“Norway now claims we personally sank the vessel,”
Distefano told ANIMAL PEOPLE from the Sea Shepherd
offices in Venice, California, “but the Lofoten court record
notes, ‘The two were not in the country and could not take
direct part.’” Watson and Distefano had offered to go to
Norway for the trial if Norway would guarantee their safety and
agree to a change of venue from the Lofoten Islands, the hub of
the Norwegian whaling industry, which Distefano described as
“the source of numerous death threats against us.”

Coyote and a California proposition

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SACRAMENTO––Varmint coyotes
may split the Coalition to Protect California
Wildlife, and the proposed 1998 California
Wildlife Ballot Initiative that the coalition
formed to present, into separate committees
and separate initiatives.
The 1998 California Wildlife Ballot
Initiative was conceived as The Big One, a
head-on confrontation with hunters, trappers,
and ranchers in the most populous state. Signed
on in hopes a California victory could build
national momentum carrying into 2000 and
beyond were the American SPCA, the Animal
Protection Institute, the Ark Trust, Friends of
Animals, the Fund for Animals, the Humane
Society of the U.S., the International Fund for
Animal Welfare, and the Mountain Lion
Foundation, which has already scored referendum
victories for pumas in three of the last four
California elections.

Trophy hunters set sights on CITES

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––With the
Atlantic Canadian offshore seal hunt reopened
and up to speed last year, and Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society founder Paul Watson in
a Dutch jail, possibly en route to stand trial in
Norway for sinking whaling ships, it’s two
down and four to go for the wise-use wiseguys
in a concerted drive to reverse the influence of
animal rights activism on wildlife use and
misuse.
Ahead: a push to reopen international
trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn at
the June triennial conference of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, to be held in confirmed
wise-use wiseguy habitat at Harare,
Zimbabwe; an effort to end the International
Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial
whaling, easier for Japan and
Norway to do in October if they succeed at
Harare in downlisting minke whales from
CITES Appendix I to Appendix II; repealing
the U.S. “dolphin-safe” tuna import standard,
with the so-called “dolphin death bill” moving
quickly through the House of Representatives;
and gutting the Endangered Species Act.

BIG FISH EAT LITTLE FISH

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The cynical might believe fisheries
negotiations are about who gets to kill the last
fish––after starving, bludgeoning, shooting,
or drowning marine mammals and sea birds to
extinction––on purpose if their remains can be
sold or they are considered competitors, by
accident if not.
Scientists repeatedly warn governments
and international rule-makers that as
former National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration science chief Sylvia Earle puts
it, “The ocean cannot sustain the massive
removal of wildlife needed to keep nations
supplied with the present levels of food taken
from the sea.”
Caught between the bedeviling verity
that cancelling fishing jobs costs elections,
and the biological fact of a depleted deep,
public officials tend to acknowledge harm
done by other nations, denying harm done by
their own. Thus the object of fish treaties,
time and again, becomes not conservation but
rather grabbing the most of what fish are left.

Humane legislation

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The North Carolina House on
April 15 unanimously approved a bill to
make dogfighting, betting on dogfighting,
or watching dogfighting a felony. “We
want to dispell the idea of North Carolina
being a center of dogfighting because of the
laxity of our penalties,” said Rep. John
Weatherly, R-Cleveland, just before the
116-0 vote. Weatherly is also pushing legislation
to address cockfighting and potential
weaknesses in current cruelty statutes.

USFWS’ albatross

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

MIDWAY––If anyone wants a courtroom Second
Battle of Midway, the short-tailed albatross could become a
mighty obstacle to tourism development. Owned by the U.S.
Navy since 1903, Midway was deeded over to the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service on April 5, which intends to open the
newly created refuge to the public soon, for the first time
since before World War II.
The problem isn’t that the uniquely all-white shorttailed
albatross is on the Endangered Species List: it’s that it
isn’t. Because it isn’t, critical habitat has not been designated.
Yet the short-tailed albatross drew protection from Japan
more than 60 years ago, when the population dipped to just
100, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has treated the
short-tailed albatross as endangered since 1969, four years
before the present Endangered Species Act was passed.

BOOKS: Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs & The Great House of Birds

April 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Prisoned Chickens Poisoned Eggs:
An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry
by Karen Davis
Book Publishing Company, Box 99, Summertown, TN 38483),
1996. 175 pages, referenced and indexed. $12.95 paperback.

The Great House of Birds:
Classic Writings About Birds
edited by John Hay
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1996.
306 pages, hardcover, $24.00.

Next time you gobble down an egg or a chicken nugget, if you
ever do, consider the birds: housed in overcrowded and dangerous “factory”
barns, their beaks cut off, their wings clipped, overfed, underexcersized,
never seeing the light of the sun, from hatching to slaughter.
While people are chastized for their misuse of antibiotics, which
apparently has encouraged the evolution of untreatable SuperBugs, very
little is said about antibiotic overdosing of chickens, and other food animals.

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