Farewell to marine mammal protections

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Horses

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Bangkok Six attorney kills himself

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

COURT CALENDAR

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Fur

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Hunting & Fishing

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Animal Control & Rescue

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

ANIMAL WELFARE ACT ENFORCEMENT

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Horses

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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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