Trafficking

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service on September 25 intercepted 60 bear
gallbladders that were hidden among a ton
of reindeer antlers arriving from Russia at
the Anchorage International Airport.
Hong Kong customs officers on
October 4 seized 1,500 dried dog penises,
airmailed from Thailand labeled “Chinese
medicine.” To be sold as a tonic to boost
male sexual performance, the penises were
valued at 87¢ each.
British Columbia on October 17
laid 29 charges of smuggling bear gallbladders
against 11 individuals and businesses as
result of a July raid on several stores in
Vancouver’s Chinatown.

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WHALE-WATCHING AND SWIM-WITH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The Australian Nature Conservation
Agency on September 18 recommended
restricting whale-watching in breeding areas,
accrediting tour operators, and forming a
code of ethics for whale-based tourism. The
Australian whale-watching industry grew
13% from 1991 to 1994, as more than
500,000 people spent up to $70 million a year
to see whales. Protecting whales from whalewatchers
became a public issue on June 2,
1994, when Andrew Curven of New South
Wales was photographed standing on the back
of a right whale. On September 1, Curven
was fined $500 (Australian currency). He
faced a maximum penalty of two years in jail
and a fine of $100,000 for allegedly violating
the 1974 National Parks and Wildlife Act––
aimed at industrial polluters, not individuals.

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Marine life

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Sea turtles
The Senate Appropriations
C o m m i t t e e, at urging of Senator J. Bennett
Johnson (D-La.) on September 14 approved
$500,000 to monitor changes in the sea turtle
population––and $750,000 to research ways to
protect sea turtles without forcing shrimpers to
use turtle exclusion devices (TEDS), which
they blame for declining catches. Thus pressured,
NMFS announced September 18 that it
would consider a shrimp industry proposal to
set aside sea turtle management areas in the
Gulf of Mexico, where turtles would be protected,
in exchange for elimination of the TED
requirement. Catching flak from both directions,
NMFS also faces a lawsuit over alleged
failure to enforce TED use, filed July 8 by
Earth Island Institute, Help Endangered
Animals––Ridley Turtles, and HSUS.

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Fish stories

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

The House on October 18 approved a tougher
reauthorized edition of the Magnuson Fishery
Management and Conservation Act, 388-37. The new
version dropped a clause exempting Gulf of Mexico
shrimpers from having to immediately reduce bycatch and
sea turtle deaths. The Gulf bycatch averages four pounds of
wasted finfish for every pound of shrimp retrieved.
After three years of negotiation sponsored by
the United Nations, 99 countries agreed in August to a
treaty regulating commercial fishing in all waters, including
sovereign waters. The treaty will take effect when and if it
is ratified by at least 30 nations.

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Salmon at risk?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service
jointly proposed on September 28 that Atlantic salmon
should be listed as threatened in Maine, but not in the rest
of its historic range, as requested by Protect the North
Woods, because south of Maine the salmon are already lost
as a distinct species through overfishing, habitat loss, and
hybridization with introduced strains.
Maine governor Angus King charged that the proposed
listing would cause undue economic hardship.
Earlier, NMFS proposed listing the Coho salmon
as endangered from Monterey Bay, California, to the
Columbia River in Washington, sparking furor in the west.

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Animal control & rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Neutering
Animal Aid of Tulsa made 362 follow-up
calls to animal adopters from January 1
to July 23 to check neutering compliance. Ten
percent couldn’t be located, but 80% had
neutered their adopted pets, nearly twice the
rate of compliance that other shelters found in
studies done in the 1970s and 1980s.
John Schultz, animal warden for
Medina County, Ohio, passed out 111 certificates
good for a $20 discount on neutering
adopted dogs between July 1 and September
11, but only 10% were used by September 21.
The Fund for Animals mobile neutering
clinic was to visit the Zuni and Navajo
Indian Nations in New Mexico, Arizona, and
Utah from October 14- 29, expecting to fix
300 to 400 dogs and cats with sponsorship
from the American Humane Association, the
Houston Rockets basketball team, Solvay
Animal Health, and Holiday Inn. In addition
to the mobile unit and a fixed-site neutering
clinic in Houston, the Fund plans to open a
low-cost “super clinic” in New York City next
year, said spokesperson Sean Hawkins.

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Glimmer of hope for ESA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The Endangered Species
Act is still in trouble in both the Republican-dominated
Congress and the White House, where President Bill Clinton
has repeatedly shown willingness to compromise species protection
for conservative support––but some backing for a
strong ESA is emerging among eastern Republicans.
Countering a Senate bill introduced by Slade
Gorton (R-Washington) last spring and a similar House bill
introduced in late summer by Don Young (R-Alaska) and
Richard Pombo (R-California), which would effectively
rescind the ESA, Maryland Republican Representatives
Wayne Gilcrest and Connie Morella at the end of September
brought forth a bill to reauthorize the key provisions of the
current ESA, adopted in 1973.
Co-sponsors of the Gilcrest/Morella bill include
Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), Michael Castle (R-Delaware),
Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut), and Jim Greenwood and
Curt Weldon, both Republicans from Pennsylvania.
“An important facet of this bill is what it doesn’t
do,” said Gilcrest. “It doesn’t abandon species recovery as
the primary focus of the ESA. It doesn’t create an expensive,
bureaucratic compensation entitlement. It doesn’t walk away
from the protection of critical habitat, and it doesn’t relax the
prohibition on international trafficking in endangered
species,” all of which would result from passage of the
Gorton and Young/Pombo bills.
As anticipated, the House Resource Committee,
headed by Young, on October 13 rejected the
Gilcrest/Morella bill, 17-28, but approved the
Young/Pombo bill, 27-17, after allowing an amendment
offered by Representative John Shadegg (R-Arizona) to
weaken endangered species protection still further by requiring
that all federal lands be managed for their “primary mission,”
such as logging, grazing, recreation, or mining,
rather than for multiple use as they are managed now, which
gives conservation equal priority. Both votes split largely
along party lines.
As they stand, Clinton would veto the Gorton and
Young/Pombo bills, says Assistant Interior Secretary George
Frampton Jr.
Confirmed George Miller (D-California), the ranking
Democrat on the House Resources Committee, “The
Young/Pombo bill’s provisions on compensation, gutting the
habitat protection requirements, and redefining species
assures a presidential veto––assuming this travesty could ever
make it to the White House.”
As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, Senator
Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho) was expected to introduce yet
another bill to undo the ESA, modeled on the Gorton bill.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, reportedly
favors an ESA reauthorization bill offered by Jim Saxton
(R-New Jersey). In Georgia on October 12 to receive an
award from Zoo Atlanta, of which he is a longtime major
patron, Gingrich indicated that whatever ESA bill eventually
clears the House will have to go through his newly formed
Republican Environmental Task Force first––which gives him
rather than Young the most authority over what shape it takes.
Amid the signs of pro-ESA sentiment, proto-wise
use wiseguy Chuck “Rent-A-Riot” Cushman added a new
organization, Repeal ESA Now, to the string he began in
1979 with the National Inholders Association. According to
Roger Featherstone of ESA Action, Repeal ESA Now “is a
typical wise-use stealth tactic to redefine the radical fringe.
The wise-use crowd will use this new ‘group’ to make supporters
of the Young/Pombo bill appear to be moderate.”
Like most of Cushman’s quasi-grassroots groups,
Repeal ESA Now appears to consist of a mailing list, fax and
telephone trees, and a post office box––this one in Coventry,
Rhode Island. The president is Brian Bishop of the rightwing
Alliance for America.
Wildlife budget battle
As important as the structure of the ESA itself may
be the structure of funding and spending for wildlife programs.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on October 18 held a
hearing on a bill parallel to one already passed by the House
which would require the government to pay property owners
for any loss of land value of one third or more resulting from
federal rules, including endangered species and wetlands protection.
Introduced by Senate majority leader Bob Dole (RKansas),
the bill would cost federal agencies $30 million to
$40 million a year to administer, and would pay out a lesser
amount in claims, according to a Congressional Budget
Office estimate. However, the White House Office of
Management and Budget––whose own budget the Republican
House hopes to eliminate––argues that the actual tab would
be close to $4 billion a year.
Earlier, on September 21, a Senate/House conference
committee on the Interior Department budget voted to
open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern
Alaska to oil and gas exploration, a longtime goal of Young
and Murkowski; voted to continue a moratorium on listing
new endangered and threatened species, cutting off related
funding; voted to merge the National Biological Service
formed by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt into the U.S.
Geological Service; voted to increase logging in the Tongass
National Forest by about a third while barring the establishment
of new habitat conservation areas within the Tongass,
at the urging of Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who chairs
the Interior Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations
Committee; and voted to kill $2 million in funding for
National Park Service administration of the newly created
East Mojave preserve, and instead allocate $600,000 for continued
administration by the Bureau of Land Management.
The resolution on the East Mojave was authored by California
Representative Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), who owns land
within the preserve and wants to keep it open to mining,
ranching, hunting, off-road vehicle use, and economic
development.
Faced with the likelihood of a White House veto,
House Budget Committee chair John Kasish is reportedly
ready to introduce a substitute budget bill which would eliminate
the provision for oil and gas drilling in ANWR. “There
is a growing feeling in the Republican Party,” Kasish told the
Journal of Commerce, “that just like we have to save our
financial future for our kids, we have to save the environment
for our kids, too.” Thirty moderate Republicans have
asked Gingrich to endorse such a bill on behalf of ANWR.
Non-game funding
Reluctant to allocate general revenues toward
species protection, but hearing increasing clamor on behalf
of endangered species, Congress may look toward alternatives,
in particular one long advocated by the International
Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. IAFWA, chiefly
representing state fish and game departments, wants
Congress to impose a tax on camping equipment, cameras
and film, field guides, binoculars, bird feeders and birdhouses,
and recreational vehicles, as a funding source for
nongame conservation programs, including endangered
species protection. Modeled on the Pittman-Robertson levy
of 11% on hunting and fishing equipment, which has
financed game programs since 1937, the proposed tax is
energetically backed by hunting fronts including the National
Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society, Ducks
Unlimited, Society for Conservation Biology, World
Wildlife Fund, and Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s
Clubs. Hunters argue that the use of any Pittman-Robertson
or hunting license revenues for nongame programs is an
unfair diversion––even though very little money actually is so
diverted. A 1992 IAFWA study found that about 250 game
species and high-profile endangered species are beneficiaries
of more than 95% of the money spent by public agencies on
U.S. wildlife, leaving 1,800 other mammals, birds, reptiles,
and amphibians to share just 5%.
Spreading the funding basis of wildlife programs to
non-consumptive users could break the hunting/fishing stranglehold
on wildlife management. A wildlife agency not
dependent upon hunting and fishing for revenue would have
much more freedom to close seasons and enforce conservation
and property protection laws unpopular with hunters.
Seeking enforcement
The Biodiversity Legal Foundation, the Fund for
Animals, and grassroots groups meanwhile continue to seek
court mandates for ESA enforcement despite the will of
Congress and the concessions of the Clinton administration.
On October 17, BLF filed notice of intent to sue the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service for issuing the July 19 directive that
implemented the moratorium on listing endangered and
threatened species by erasing the C-2 list of nearly 4,000 proposed
candidate species.
BLF also served notice of intent to sue USFWS for
failure to add the blacktailed prairie dog to the C-2 list. “A C2
designation would not provide any legal protection for the
prairie dog,” a BLF release stated, “but would encourage
conservation measures and allow for maximum flexibility in
land management. It is clearly a reasonable course of action
for this grassland keystone species, but it was rejected by
USFWS due to political pressure. Improved protection of the
prairie dog ecosystem would help to conserve a fascinating
diversity of native wildlife on the Great Plains, including the
blackfooted ferret, swift fox, ferruginous hawk, burrowing
owl, and many other species now in decline. The eventual
listing of a number of these species under the ESA could be
avoided if state and federal agencies were to adequately protect
and restore the prairie dog ecosystem.”
On October 4, the Fund, BLF, and Swan View
Coalition won a round when U.S. District Judge Paul
Friedman ruled that USFWS acted in an “arbitrary and capricious”
manner in issuing a recovery plan for grizzly bears in
1993 that “fails to establish objective, measureable criteria
which when met would result in a determination, in accor
dance with the provisions of the ESA, that the grizzly bear be
removed from the threatened species list.”
Said Fund attorney Eric Glitzenstein, “This is the
first time a species recovery plan has been successfully challenged
in court. Our victory sets a precedent that USFWS is
required by law to base recovery plans on scientific data and
objective evidence of real recovery––not on the desires of
those who wish to hasten delisting for their own purposes,”
namely the game agencies of Montana and Wyoming.
Montana permitted grizzly bear hunting until forced to stop by
a Fund lawsuit in 1991, while the Wyoming administration
also has indicated interest in starting a grizzly season when
and if the bears are delisted.
Two days later, on October 6, the Fund and
Australians for Animals served notice of intent to sue if
USFWS fails to act on a May 1994 petition to list the koala as
endangered. “By law,” explained spokesperson Mike
Markarian, “USFWS must publish a finding on the petition
one year after receiving it.”

HSUS ISN’T TALKING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

WASHINGTON D.C.––At deadline the
Humane Society of the U.S. had neither confirmed nor
denied a report reaching ANIMAL PEOPLE from an
HSUS source that the board of directors, responding
to a petition signed by 41 staffers, agreed over the
Columbus Day weekend, October 7-9, to prosecute
David Wills, 48, for allegedly embezzling at least
$16,000 from an expense account purportedly used to
pay informants in cruelty cases––and to negotiate the
termination of both HSUS president Paul Irwin and
Humane Society International president John Hoyt.
According to the unconfirmed report, Hoyt,
the top HSUS/HSI officer since 1970, is to retire soon
with a “golden parachute” severance. Irwin, hired in
1975, is to depart after the appointment of a successor.
Three members of the HSUS staff would seem to be
candidates: Dennis White, former head of the
American Humane Association’s Animal Protection
Division, who recently left AHA after 19 years; John
Kullberg, head of the American SPCA for 14 years,
1977-1991; and David Ganz, head of the North Shore
Animal League for six-plus years, 1986-1993.

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Is ASPCA ducking foie gras?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

NEW YORK– – Anti-foie gras crusader Joel
Freedman, 48, is obsessed, handwriting long letters to anyone
who might read them. He’s been at it three years now.
He believes the American SPCA should prosecute Hudson
Valley Farm, of Mongaup Valley, New York, for forcefeeding
ducks to make foie gras, under a phrase of Section
353 of the New York agriculture and marketing act, which
expands more precise definitions of outlawed cruelty to
include “any act of cruelty to any animal, or any act tending
to produce such cruelty.”
Handwritten letters, in the age of word processing,
are often the hallmark of a crank. Yet Freedman is a crank of
accomplishment. A social worker by profession, he was
fired in 1985 by the Veterans’ Administration hospital in
Canadaigua, New York, for insisting that the hard, largediameter
tubes then used to feed brain-damaged patients
were inhumane. He won reinstatement via court order a year
later, and won vindication when hospitals everywhere,
including the one where he still works, began switching to
softer, smaller, but more expensive feeding tubes.
Freedman’s crusade on behalf of brain-damaged
but still suffering humans and his crusade on behalf of ducks
are in many respects extensions of one another.
Foie gras is French for “fat liver.” As New York
avian veterinarian and licensed wildlife rehabilitator Tatty
Hodge explains, “Ducks and geese raised for foie gras are
force-fed with a hard metal or plastic pipe inserted the length
of the esophagus. Food is pumped through this pipe until the
birds are so full that some regurgitate. Some producers put a
band around the esophagus to prevent this.” Force-feeding
the birds six to seven pounds of grain per day causes their
livers to grow eight to twelve times their normal size in the
four weeks before slaughter. Citing “tremendous irritation
and trauma to the esophagus,” as well as liver disease
induced to produce foie gras of the preferred texture, Hodge
believes that, “Any practice which has as its goal the production
of a diseased and suffering animal is inhumane and is
in violation of the New York anti-cruelty law.”
Hudson Valley, formerly known as Commonwealth
Enterprises, is one of just three foie gras producers in
the United States. The others are AGY Corporation and
Specialty Game Birds, also in Sullivan County, New York,
and also owned by Izzy Yanay.
Broken promise
Commonwealth a.k.a. Hudson Farms and the other
foie gras producers became established in the U.S. on the
promise that unlike their European rivals, they would not
force-feed. But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
documented force-feeding at Commonwealth in a 1991
undercover probe. The investigators reported that only male
ducks and geese are force-fed; females are sorted out at
hatching, and like male chickens, killed. PETA claimed the
killing method was a combination of crushing and scalding.
PETA also indicated that about one force-fed bird in ten dies
prematurely of bursting internal organs or infected lesions
caused by the insertion of the feeding pipe.
“The ASPCA is opposed to the production of foie
gras,” ASPCA president Roger Caras affirms in a form letter
to those who write to demand a prosecution. “However,
current New York state law does not empower us to act.”
Caras blames PETA for that situation. “In April
1992,” he states, “for reasons of their own, PETA took
undercover photographs to the district attorney in the area;
he subsequently refused to prosecute. The endeavor was
badly executed. The pictures should have gone to the state
attorney general as well, and had PETA chosen to coordinate
their actions with us, we would have had ASPCA officers
with badges and reports standing there, not just impassioned
animal lovers. An attorney general is well within his powers
to turn away protesters from down state or out of state to protect
‘industry’ in an area [but] he cannot afford to ignore a
law enforcement agency.”
But there was a reason why the PETA operation
couldn’t have been coordinated with the ASPCA. As Caras
explains, “Because we are a law enforcement agency, we
cannot enter someone’s property without a search warrant,”
as PETA did, having staffers take temporary jobs at
Commonwealth to gain access. “We can only obtain a
search warrant if there is probable cause,” Caras continued.
“In other words, evidence is needed before we could present
a case in court and argue that cruelty is occurring. Then we
could protest that although the substance is legal, the means
of obtaining it are not.”
The warrantless PETA photography would have
been illegal if the ASPCA had done it or authorized it.
“After failing with the local district attorney,”
Caras concludes, “PETA became very quiet and held the
evidence for two and a half years––after which time it was
no longer of any interest to a judge. Since the material was
taken from what they saw at the Commonwealth enterprise,
and because that business and property had been sold to new
owners, there is not a shred of evidence that we could use as
probable cause to obtain a warrant and investigate the property.
This is frustrating to us, but if we took one step on
Commonwealth property, we would have lawyers after us
and an angry district attorney who would argue, ‘I saw this
two and a half years ago. I threw it out then and I am going
to throw it out now.’ With the waters muddied as they are
now, our hands are temporarily tied.”
And Caras claims the ASPCA is seeking legislation
to ban foie gras production by force-feeding.
That especially ires Freedman. No such legislation
was introduced in the 1995 New York legislative session.
Such a bill was introduced in 1994, but ASPCA assistant
general counsel Lisa Weisberg didn’t mention it in her legislative
alerts to membership, she told him, because of her
“understanding that the bill will not be moving.”
PETA senior researcher David Cantor disputes
Caras’ summary of the 1992 case on almost every point.
“The assistant D.A. assigned to the case considered the evidence
overwhelming, the case strong, and accordingly
arranged for the New York State Police to raid Commonwealth
and to file cruelty charges,” Cantor wrote to Caras
last July 31. “After arraignment, under pressure from
agribusiness, the D.A. appointed a foie gras producer and
other agribusiness representatives to evaluate the case,”
among them Kristen Park, a Cornell Cooperative Extension
Service poultry expert who had already denounced the
Commonwealth raid as “terrorism.”
Continued Cantor, “The panel did not interview
our undercover investigators, the veterinarians who accompanied
police and signed affidavits,” including Hodge, “or
the New York wildlife pathologist,” Mark Lerman, DVM,
“who examined the ducks from Commonwealth and wrote
that foie gras production is totally inhumane. Using the
panel’s self-serving, biased recommendation, the D.A.
dropped the charges.” However, “Because no judgement
has been handed down, such a case can be tried again. At
the D.A.’s request, the judge ordered the case file sealed, so
the public has been denied many of the deplorable facts. We
provided the attorney general with evidence against
Commonwealth and asked the A.G. to prosecute. While
acknowledging that legally it can reinstitute the cruelty
charges, the A.G.’s office declined to do so, saying its policy
is to leave such cases to local district attorneys.”
Farce?
The matter escalated on January 26, 1995, when
ASPCA veterinarian Michael Krinsley visited Hudson
Valley. His appointment was made far in advance. “I found
the farm to be clean and well run,” he reported to ASPCA
chief of law enforcement Robert O’Neil. “All of the birds
seen were apparently in good condition. The single bird that
we brought back to the ASPCA hospital appeared to be in
good condition on physical exam,” albeit dead. “On autopsy,
it lacked any signs of disease or physical injury associated
with inhumane treatment.”
But Freedman sent a copy of Krinsley’s pathology
report to Lerman, who wrote on June 19 that Krinsley’s
data actually “depicts an animal in extremis. His esophagus
is so thickened, inflamed and infected from the forced feeding
that he could never eat on his own. Infection has apparently
spread to other parts of his body, resulting in an overwhelming
toxic reaction that either killed him or resulted in
his euthanasia. If these lesions were caused by a child
repeatedly thrusting a stick down the throat of this duck, no
one would deny that this child was guilty of torture.”
Hedged Krinsley, “I want to emphatically state
that by no means does [my] finding suggest my endorsement
of the practice of rearing birds for foie gras.”
In one of the more famous Monty Python’s Flying
Circus skits, sleazy pet shop clerk Michael Palin insists a
parrot is not dead, but only depressed: “He’s a Norwegian
blue. He’s pining for the fjords.”
“Pining for the fjords?!” screams John Cleese,
rapping the corpse in rigor mortis on the counter for emphasis.
“This parrot is dead, deceased, shuffled off this mortal
coil and gone to meet his maker. He is no more. He has
ceased to exist. He is a dead parrot.”
“Now you’ve stunned him,” accuses Palin.
The difference between the skit and the ASPCA
vs. PETA would seem to be that live, suffering birds are
involved in the latter.
Joel Freedman isn’t about to let anyone forget that.

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