Category: Law

Sentenced

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

Religious conservative Mark Warren Sands, 50, of Phoenix,
Arizona, drew an 18-year prison sentence on February 11 for burning
seven luxury homes under construction between April 2000 and January
2001. Sands claimed credit for the ELF-like arsons in communiques
from environmental advocacy activist cells that existed only in his
own imagination. A former publicist for University Hospital in Salt
Lake City and a Phoenix-area health care organization, Sands more
nearly fit the profile of an agent provocateur than that of a radical
activist, having no public history of the open space advocacy that
he said was his motive. But Sands also acknowledged committing the
arsons to obtain a sense of adventure, and no evidence emerged to
link him to any kind of conspiracy.

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Funding the War on Roadkills

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

BOZEMAN, Montana–The $59.6 billion U.S. Department of
Transportation appropriation signed by President George W. Bush in
December 2001 included $500,000 for an anti-roadkill project under
study by the Western Transportation Institute, a program of the
College of Engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman.
That aspect of the bill appears to have been reported only by
Bob Anez, of Associated Press, who promptly interviewed WTI
research engineer Pat McGowan.

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From drunk hunters to a Republican who wants to ban elephants: State Legislative roundup, 2002

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

Hunting
Frustrated that North Carolina law forbids hunting on state
land while under the influence of alcohol, but not on private
property, the Orange County commissioners sent a message to the
statehouse on January 15 by passing their own anti-drunk hunting
ordinance, and asked the three biggest cities within the
county–Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough–to do the same.
Neighboring Caswell County passed a similar ordinance in 2001.
Hunters typically get whatever they want from state
legislatures, however, due to the disproportionate influence of
rural representatives with long tenures as committee chairs, and
2002 started out the usual way, when the Maine legislature on
January 6 ratified a plan by the Department of Inland Fisheries and
Wildlife to expand coyote snaring in order to increase the deer herd.
Maine legislators solicited the plan in late 2001 after
hunters in several areas complained that coyotes were killing more
deer than the hunters were–although many of the deer coyotes kill
have previously been wounded by hunters who failed to dispatch them,
have been hit by cars, or are debilitated by starvation after an
over-abundant herd consumes all the accessible browse too early in
the winter.

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Tribes gun for more whales–and polar bears

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

NEAH BAY, Washington–The Makah Tribal Council has asked the
U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service for a high-speed Coast
Guard-grade cutter similar to the whale-catchers used by Japan and
Norway– and has hinted that the Makah, like Japan, may engage in
so-called “research whaling.”
Claiming a right to kill gray whales since 1995, under the
1855 treaty that brought the Makah into the U.S., the Makah Tribal
Council said at first that it expected to sell whale meat to Japan.

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Pet theft cases plummeted in 2001

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

ALLENTOWN, Pa.–Allegedly smashing a stolen van through the
door of a local pet shop at 5 a.m., grabbing two Chihuahuas and two
exotic birds, and attempting escape with police in hot pursuit,
Luis Antonio Bracero, 24, and Ramon Alberto Maldonado-Cruz, 20,
of Allentown, Pennsyl-vania, on January 12, 2002 apparently
exemplified most of the current trends in pet theft: they took both
birds and dogs, took only animals of high resale value, and got
caught.

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NSW copies U.S.-style wildlife mismanagement

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:
 
SYDNEY, Australia–In the name of regulating hunting and
eradicating introduced species, the Labor government of New South
Wales, Australia, is positioned to pass a new Game Bill in
February 2002 which would repeal the suspension of duck hunting won
in 1995 by Green Party legislator Richard Jones, put hunters in
charge of implementing hunting policy, and exempt hunting from
humane laws.
Introduced in November 2001, the Game Bill appears to be
opposed by most and perhaps all humane groups in Australia, but is
eagerly sought by hunters and the NSW Farmers’ Association.
Modeled after typical U.S. state hunting statutes, “The Game
Bill will legalise hunting with bows and arrows, clubs, knives,
dogs, wire snares, or any other means except poison,” Animal
Liberation representative for introduced species Frankie Seymour
charged in an internationally distributed series of alerts.

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India shuts cruel horse serum plants

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

CHENNAI, India–“We are now, with the help of e Supreme
Court of India, closing down the wretched serum institutes,” Indian
minister of state for animal protection Maneka Gandhi e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE on January 16, a year and six weeks after ANIMAL
PEOPLE visited and photographed one of the oldest, the King
Institute, at Guindy, Chennai.
A maker of snakebite antivenin, the King Institute injects
snake venom into a resident herd of 140 to 150 retired Indian Army
horses and mules, waits until the horses form antibodies to the
venom, and then draws blood serum from which the antivenin will be
extracted.

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Heart-jab killing illegal in Calif.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:
 
SACRAMENTO–California attorney general Bill Lockyer and
deputy attorney general Gregory L. Gonot on January 2, 2002 wrote in
a joint opinion solicited by California senate president pro tempore
John Burton that, “It is a violation of the state’s animal cruelty
laws for an animal control officer or humane society officer to use
intercardiac administration of euthanasia on a conscious animal in an
animal shelter or humane society facility, if the animal may first
be rendered unconscious in a humane manner, or if, in light of all
the circumstances, the procedure is unjustifiable.”

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“Dolphin-safe” tuna labeling law may go to top U.S. courts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2002:

NEW YORK, N.Y.–The “dolphin-safe” tuna labeling issue may
be headed to the U.S. Court of Appeals and perhaps the U.S. Supreme
Court, after Court of International Trade judge Judith Barzilay on
December 7, 2001 ruled again–as she did in April 2000–that the
revised “dolphin-safe” tuna standard imposed by the 1997
International Dolphin Conservation Program Act has been correctly
followed by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The Barzilay verdicts conflict with an April 2000 ruling by
Thelton E. Henderson, chief judge of the Federal District Court in
San Francisco. Despite the April 2000 Henderson verdict, which came
shortly after Barzilay’s first ruling, the relaxed “dolphin-safe”
standard took effect one day later.

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