Category: Law

Farewell to marine mammal protections

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Only par-
tially enforced since 1988, the Marine
Mammal Protection Act appears likely to be
reauthorized with markedly less clout for
whales, seals, and dolphins than it once had.
The House version of the reautho-
rization bill, HR 2760, easily cleared the
Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee on
March 16 after adoption of an amendment by
Rep. Jolene Unsoeld and Maria Cantwell
(both D-Wash.) that would allow the govern-
ment to issue permits for killing marine mam-
mals whose predation might depress the num-
bers of a potentially threatened animal.

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Horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Wild Horse Annie (right), the first
wild horse to be protected by the Bureau of
Land Management, died on January 27 at the
International Society for the Protection of
Mustangs and Burros sactuary near Scottsdale,
Arizona. Named after Velma “Wild Horse
Annie” Johnston, the Nevada secretary who
worked for more than 20 years to secure feder-
al wild horse protection (and inspired the last
film of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, The
Misfits), the horse was tattooed U.S. #1 after
she was rescued as a starving foal on
September 4, 1970, in the Pryor Mountains
––a year before the Free Ranging Wild Horses
and Burros Act took effect.

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Bangkok Six attorney kills himself

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Attorney Michael Metzger, 57, of St.
Helena, California, shot his wife Kyle in the
legs on March 3, then killed himself. He had
reportedly been depressed and drinking since
federal judge Saundra Armstrong suspended his
right to practice for six months in late 1992, after
he allegedly challenged two prosecutors to fist-
fights and asked a female prosecutor for tissue
samples “to see what species you are.”
The San Francisco Chronicle described
Metzger as “a generous, gentle man who loved
dogs and cats as well as the deer that roamed
near his home and vineyards.” As a member of
the Animal Legal Defense Fund, he defended,
on several occasions circa 1990, activists who
had been arrested while trying to stop legbreak-
ing experiments on greyhounds at Letterman
Hospital, a military facility in San Francisco.

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Wildlife and habitat

The U.S. Court of Appeals in
Washington D.C. on March 11 upset jurispru-
dence concerning endangered species protec-
tion by ruling in a case pertaining to timber rights
and spotted owl protection in the Pacific
Northwest that the government lacks authority to
protect wildlife habitat on private land. The U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service said that pending further
clarification of the ruling, perhaps by the U.S.
Supreme Court, it would make no policy changes.
The March 11 ruling directly contradicts the out-
standing precedent in such situations, established
by the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San
Francisco.

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Fur

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Canadian environment minister Sheila Copps,
whose gracelessness earned her the nickname “Leader of
the rat pack” during her years as a Parliamentary back-
bencher, disrupted a meeting of top environmental offi-
cials from the seven major Western industrialized nations
on March 12 by denouncing the European Community ban
on seal pelt imports, the pending EC ban on imports of
pelts trapped by cruel methods, and opposition to the cur-
rent Canadian seal hunt. Copps claimed an alleged popula-
tion explosion of seals is causing the collapse of the
Atlantic Canada fishing industry, despite strong biological
evidence that seals do not eat many fish of the most com-
mercially valued species.

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Hunting & Fishing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

A bill to ban pigeon shoots includ-
ing the notorious Labor Day shoot in Hegins
fell three votes short of clearing the
Pennsylvania state house on March 8––and
actually drew a majority of the votes cast, 99-
93. However, 103 votes would have been
required to pass the bill from the 202-member
house to the state senate. Though the bill
would almost certainly have failed in the sen-
ate, where 38 of the 48 members have ‘A’ rat-
ings from the National Rifle Association, the
vote was a marked advance from 1989, when
the house defeated a similar bill, 126-66.
The Colorado house finance com-
mittee on February 16 killed as contrary to the
expressed intent of the electorate a bill that
would have reauthorized spring bear hunting
and hunting bears with hounds and bait––all of
which were banned by referendum in 1992.

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Animal Control & Rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

International
Police in the East City dis-
trict of Beijing, China, beat 351 dogs
to death during the second week of
February. “Our policy is to annihilate
them,” said district deputy chief of pub-
lic security Li Wenrui. Some other dis-
trict police bureaus spared smaller pure-
breds––if their owners could find homes
for them outside the city. Still others
killed dogs by strangulation, electrocu-
tion, and dragging them behind jeeps.
Press releases said the dogs were taken
to a shelter run by the Public Security
Ministry, but Jan Wong of the Toronto
Globe and Mail’s China Bureau reported
there is no such place. The Communist
government banned dogs as a nuisance
and a waste of food when it came to
power in 1949. Dogs have been hunted
out and killed every few years since
1951. Despite the killing, stepped up
since 1986, an estimated 100,000 dogs
inhabit Beijing, where a black market
dog can cost as much as many workers’
annual income. Foreigners and others
who can get dogs licensed and vaccinat-
ed may keep them––but rabies vaccine is
so scarce that the disease has killed as
many as 60,000 Chinese since 1980,
and most license applications are denied.

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ANIMAL WELFARE ACT ENFORCEMENT

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Matthew Block and Worldwide
Primates, of Miami, Florida, were fined $16,000
on January 27 for failure to provide primates with
adequate food, water, ventilation, and sanitation.
Block is under sentence for his role in arranging a
multinational 1990 orangutan smuggling deal,
exposed by the International Primate Protection
League and known as the “Bangkok Six” case.
The USDA has filed stiffer charges
against Class B animal dealer Jerry Vance, of
Europa, Mississippi. Charged in September with
improper recordkeeping, after the TV news program
Eye to Eye with Connie Chung documented the dis-
covery of several missing pets at his facility, Vance
is now accused of improper dog identification, fail-
ing to provide veterinary care, and failing to provide
adequate shelter.

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Horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The Ochoa brothers, reputedly
the world’s leading cocaine traffickers after
the death of Pablo Escobar in a shootout with
Colombian police late last year, reputedly
launder their income through their father’s
horse breeding business. Fabio Ochoa
Restrepo’s herd of 1,200 horses is reportedly
worth $25 million. The Escobar family also
breeds horses, but the value of their stock fell
shortly before Pablo Escobar was killed,
when rivals castrated a stud worth $1 million.

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