How to save sea turtles–and why the species conservation approach is failing

June 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

VISAKHAPATNAM–The Malaysian cargo ship MV Genius Star-VI,
carrying 17 crew members and a load of timber, on April 13, 2004
sank in rough seas 180 miles southeast of Haldia, West Bengal.
Chinese crew members Gao Fuling, Wuxun Yuan, and Zhu Yuan
went overboard together, Gao and Wuxun with life jackets while Zhu
clutched a plank, wrote Jatindra Dash of Indo-Asian News Services.
For the next 34 hours they swam for their lives.
“Gao and Zhu described how two turtles met with them and
tried to help them,” Indian Coast Guard Commander P.K. Mishra told
Dash.
Soon after the sinking, the first turtle tried to help Gao
lift a floating box that he thought might be used to wave in the air
as a signal to aircraft or other vessels.
“When the turtle failed, he pushed me up to the box so that
I could latch on to it,” Mishra said Gao told him. Later, when Zhu
lost his plank, “Zhu said a turtle swam with him for hours and
brought the wood plank back to him,” Mishra added.
All three men were eventually rescued by Mishra’s vessel.
Twelve other men were picked up by other merchant ships. Two were
never found.

Haiti says no to dolphin captivity

June 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

PORT AU PRINCE–Six dolphins caught for exhibition in mid-May
by a Haitian firm with Spanish backing swam free on June 3 through
the intercession of Haitian environment minister Yves Andre
Wainwright and agriculture minister Philippe Mathieu.
Wainwright and Mathieu intervened at request of Dolphin
Project founder Ric O’Barry, whose 35-year-old effort to liberate
captive dolphins has operated since the beginning of 2004 under the
auspices of the French organization One Voice.
With a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat maintaining security,
O’Barry and Guillermo Lopez, DVM, of the Dominican Republic Academy
of the Sciences dismantled the sea pen holding the dolphins.
Wife Helene O’Barry and Jane Regan of Associated Press snapped
digital photos from the beach.
The liberation marked the rejection of dolphin capturing as a
commercial enterprise in one of the poorest nations in the world,
even as entrepreneurs from other island nations rush to cash in on
the boom in marketing swim-with-dolphins tourist attractions.
The liberation also demonstrated the resolve of the present
Haitian government to start enforcing conservation laws that long
went ignored by their predecessors, as a succession of shaky regimes
have struggled to uphold any law and order at all.

Canadian sealers kill at record speed

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

MONTREAL–Authorized by Ottawa to kill 350,000 harp seals in
2004, Atlantic Canadian offshore sealers killed so aggressively that
the Department of Fisheries & Oceans on April 14 closed the
large-vessel hunt only 48 hours after it started, suspecting that
the large-vessel quota of 246,900 had already been reached.
Again this year, as in each of the past five years,
International Fund for Animal Welfare observers led by Newfoundland
native Rebecca Aldworth obtained extensive video of sealers skinning
seal pups who were still thrashing and dragging live seals on hooks.
Again this year DFO denied that the writhing seals were still alive.
Sealers and DFO spokespersons boasted of rising global demand
for seal pelts, reportedly wholesaling at about $50 Canadian apiece.
But the evidence was ambiguous–and $50 in Canadian money has only
about half the buying power today that it had more than 20 years ago,
when seal pelt prices last were in that range.
“The landed value of last year’s seal hunt accounted for less
than one tenth of 1% of Newfoundland economy, nowhere near the
figures claimed by the sealing industry,” IFAW president Fred
O’Regan wrote to The New York Times. “Lasting solutions to the
economic challenges facing Atlantic Canada require more than
subsidizing the slaughter of nearly a million seals in the next three
years.”

Baby seals & bull calves bear the cruel weight of idolatry

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

The 350,000 baby harp seals who were clubbed or shot and
often skinned alive on the ice floes off eastern Canada this spring
had more in common with the thousands of bull calves who were
abandoned at temples in India during the same weeks than just being
days-old mammals subjected to unconscionable mistreatment.
Unlike the much smaller numbers of seals who were killed off
Russia, Norway, and Finland, and unlike the somewhat smaller
numbers of bull calves who were shoved into veal crates here in the
U.S., Canadian harp seal pups and Indian surplus bull calves are
victims not only of human economic exploitation, but also of their
roles as icons and idols.
The words “icon” and “idol” have a common origin in the
ancient Greek word that means “image.” Yet they mean such different
things–and have for so long–that two of the Judaic Ten
Commandments, about setting no other God before the One God and not
worshipping graven images, sternly address the difference.
An icon is a physical image representative of a holy concept,
usually but not always depicting a person who is believed to have
exemplified the concept in the conduct of his or her life. Icons may
also depict animals, abstract symbols, supernatural beings, or
deities. A icon may be venerated for being symbolic of the holy
concept, but to venerate it for its own sake is considered idolatry,
and therefore wrong in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths,
as well as in some branches of other major religions.

Canadian seal hunt underway

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island–“The Inter-national
Fund for Animal Welfare is out on the ice to monitor sealing and
document hunting violations,” IFAW communications coordinator Kerry
Branon e-mailed on March 24, the first day of the 2004 Atlantic
Canada offshore seal hunt.
The sealing season opened on November 15, 2003, but the
killing does not start in earnest each year until a new generation of
seal pups become accessible on the Gulf of St. Lawrence ice floes.
“The hunt, which is heavily subsidized by the Canadian
government, is expected to take as many as 350,000 seals over the
next few weeks,” Branon continued. “Seals may be killed once they
begin to moult their fluffy white coats–as young as 12 days old.
Ninety-five percent of the seals killed in the hunt are under three
months of age.
“In the last five years,” Branon charged, “IFAW has
submitted video evidence of more than 660 probable violations of law
to the Department of Fisheries & Oceans. Not one has been
investigated. These abuses include skinning live seals, dragging
live seals across the ice with hooks, and shooting seals and leaving
them to suffer.

National Legislation — U.S. & world

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The U.S. military is exempted from complying
with the Marine Mammal Protection Act under a rider to the 2004
defense construction authorization bill, signed on November 22 by
President George W. Bush. The rider enabled the U.S. Navy to try to
overturn an October 2003 legal settlement in which it agreed to
extensive restrictions on the use of low-frequency sonar, believed
to be lethal to whales.
WASHINGTON D.C.–Associated Press reported on December 8 that
U.S. President Bush is expected to sign the Captive Wildlife Safety
Act, despite the opposition of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,
which will be mandated to enforce it. The bill, requiring a federal
permit to sell exotic cats across state borders, cleared Congress on
December 7.

Death of Keiko may coincide with rise of anti-whaling movement in Norway, Japan

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

TAKNES FJORD, Norway; TAIJI, Japan–Keiko, 27, the orca
star of the Free Willy! film trilogy, died suddenly on December 12,
2003 from apparent acute pneumonia.
His death concluded perhaps the most Quixotic, costly, and
popular episode in 138 years of documented efforts by some humans to
save whales from exploitation by others, beginning with the
post-U.S. Civil War anti-whaling crusade waged in the North Pacific
by Captain James Waddell and the crew of the ex-Confederate cruiser
Shenandoah. Waddell and his few dozen men destroyed 38 whaling ships
and took more than a thousand prisoners without killing anyone before
they were apprehended.
Their mission, recounted by Murray Morgan in Dixie Raider
(1948) inspired Paul Watson to found the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society in 1977.

Verdict against Makah whaling upheld; new rulings on Native hunting rights

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

SEATTLE–The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on
December 1, 2003 upheld a December 2002 ruling by a three-judge
panel from the same court that the National Marine Fisheries Service
failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act in
permitting the Makah Tribal Council of Neah Bay, Washington, to
exercise a claimed treaty right to hunt gray whales.
“The plaintiffs in the case–the Fund for Animals, the
Humane Society of the U.S., and other groups and individuals–argued
that the government failed to adequately study the ways in which the
Makah whale hunt could set a dangerous precedent and adversely affect
the environment,” explained Fund for Animals spokesperson Tracy
McIntire.

BOOKS: The World of Whales, Dolphins, & Porpoises

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

The World of Whales, Dolphins, & Porpoises:
Natural History & Conservation
by Tony Martin
Voyageur Press (123 N. 2nd St., Stillwater, MN 55082), 2003.
96 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

If you have other books describing most of the known whale,
dolphin, and porpoise species, along with the basics of how they
live and where they are found, this one may be redundant–although
it is almost up-to-date about recent changes in species
identification, which have recognized differences among many animals
who superificially look much alike. Tony Martin missed only new
identifications announced this year.
If you do not already have a good general reference on
whales, dolphins, and porpoises, this may be the one you want. It
is too large to take whalewatching, and is not presented as a field
guide, but is authoritative if you need information in connection
with doing whale education or writing to news media and public
officials.

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