Seaquarium sea lions bark “Out, out, out!”

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

MIAMI, Florida––At deadline
USDA Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service chief Dale Schwindaman
hadn’t answered ANIMAL PEOP-
LE’s request for comment on Subpart
E, section 3.100, clauses (d) and (f) of
the Animal Welfare Act, which would
appear to stipulate that the Miami
Seaquarium has held the orca Lolita illegally
since July 30, 1987, when all variances
to keep marine mammals in undersized
tanks were to expire.
Schwindaman has claimed in
letters to the Seaquarium and Seaquarium
critics that while Lolita’s tank is technically
too small under the AWA standards,
the intent of the standards is met
because the tank is longer than required,
and therefore impounds about the same
amount of water as would be required of
a tank built to specifications. According
to Schwindaman, the Seaquarium
received a permanent variance in 1988,
allowing it to keep Lolita despite noncompliance
with the AWA.

Oceanariums

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

The city council of Vallejo, California, unanimously
agreed on October 16 to take possession of Marine
World/Africa USA, the city’s second-largest employer, and
authorized $8 million credit to keep it open through the winter.
With assets of $33 million, Marine World/Africa USA is $56
million in bond debt, and would have missed payments of $2.3
million due November 1. Attendance, hurt by rainy weekends
and failure to add new attractions, fell from 1.9 million in 1993
to a projected 1.3 million this year. Often criticized for high
gate prices and too many souvenir stands, Marine
World/Africa USA is now a nonprofit institution, but both U.S.
Mortgage Co., of Dallas, and Ogden Services Corp., of New
York, were reportedly interested in buying it and turning it into
a for-profit venture. Spokesperson Jeff Jouett told media that
there are presently no plans to close, move, or sell the animals.

Alleged seal-killing cover-up in South Dildo

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland– –
Fined $750 per count against them on
October 8, assigned up to three years of probation
apiece, and barred from sealing for
three years were Petty Harbor,
Newfoundland residents John Hearn, 39,
shown on a home video clubbing seals with a
boat hook and skinning a seal alive; James
Joseph Walsh, 46, also shown clubbing seals
with a boat hook; and Michael Joseph Hearn,
52, and William Hearn, 41, who each shot
seals with an illegal weapon.
The video recording of their deeds
was delivered to the International Fund for
Animal Welfare by a shocked viewer. But,
said IFAW seal campaign manager Arthur
Cady, “The whole sealing industry is guilty
of cruelty on a vast scale. These four sealers
are just the scapegoats for a barbaric business
that should be in the dock, found guilty, and
banned. The fisheries minister who sanctions
this hunt and the government subsidies that
pay for it should take their share of the
blame.”

Sirenians

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Swamped in extra work by the
deaths of at least 370 manatees during the
first 10 months of 1996, nearly twice the
next highest toll of the past 20 years, the
Florida Bureau of Protected Species in
October sought an emergency allocation of
$500,000 to get through the year. The Save
The Manatee Trust Fund has raised $15.6
million since 1990 by selling more than
345,000 commemorative license plates, but
expenditures for 1996 alone will total nearly
$4 million. The fund employees 17
researchers in St. Petersburg and 16 people
in Tallahassee to review land use permits for
possible impact on manatees and develop
local manatee protection plans.

PINIPEDS & SEA OTTERS

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Alaskan tour boat operators are
reportedly lobbying the Alaska Sea Otter
Commission, a native-run board set up to
supervise “subsistence” hunting exempted
from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, to
prevent repetition of an August 22 incident in
which several Anchorage residents shot as
many as 50 sea otters in front of tour vessels
in Kachemak Bay, but retrieved just 14.
Publicity over the sea otter massacre may have
helped encourage the Bristol Bay Native
Association and state and federal agencies to
divert funding from other programs to closely
supervise the October native killing of 10 walruses
at Round Island, within the Walrus
Islands State Game Sanctuary. In a fit of
pique at Friends of Animals for documenting
native walrus poaching and opposing wolfkilling
to make more moose and caribou available
to human hunters, the Alaska Legislature
axed funding of the sanctuary last spring.

Cetaceans

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

South Australia on September 25
proclaimed the Great Australian Bight Marine
National Park. The long discussed park will
bar fishing and mineral exploration during the
six months of each year when the waters are
used by about 60 rare southern right whales.
Federal judge Douglas P.
Woodlock on September 26 ruled that
Massachusetts is breaking the Endangered
Species Act and other federal law in issuing
permits to fishers who use equipment known
to kill highly endangered right whales.
Woodlock ordered the state to develop a right
whale protection plan by December 16.
Hearings on how to protect right whales from
fishing gear were already underway, but
Massachusetts attorney general Scott
Harshburger immediately appealed on behalf
of the state’s 1,686 lobster trappers, likely to
be the fishers most affected. A federal appellate
court upheld Woodlock’s verdict on
October 17. Max Strahan, of Greenworld,
who filed the suit against Massachusetts,
pledged to next pursue a similar case in Maine.

Herpetology

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

U.S. Court of International Trade
judge Thomas Aquilino ruled in early October,
responding to a motion from the Earth Island
Institute Sea Turtle Restoration Project, that the
State Department may no longer permit wildcaught
shrimp imports from nations that don’t
have a sea turtle protection program. Brazil and
China are likely to be most affected.
Louisiana Republican House members
Billy Tauzin, Jimmy Hayes, and Bob
Livingston held up a National Marine Fisheries
Service attempt to strengthen turtle excluder
device requirements by slipping a rider into the
omnibus appropriations bill signed on
September 30 by President Bill Clinton that
requires more study and consultation. The new
rule, mandating that TEDS have a rigid frame,
was to take effect December 31.

Animal health

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

Illegal use of farm pesticides on farmland
south of the Salton Sea, 120 miles east of San Diego,
brought a major fish kill in late August. Botulism from
the rotting fish soon contaminated the shallow lake,
which was created by a 1905 engineering accident during
an attempted irrigation diversion from the Colorado
River, and as of October 24 had killed more than
13,000 migratory birds––including more than 1,000
endangered brown pelicans. At that, the bird losses
were less than 10% as great as the toll in 1992, when an
estimated 150,000 grebes were poisoned by a build-up
of selenium and salt. Formerly attracting 500,000 visitors
a year, the Salton Sea now draws just half as many.

Sugarloaf fight goes on

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

MIAMI, Fla.––The troubled two-year-effort to rehabilitate
and free the former Ocean Reef Club dolphins Bogie,
Bacall, and Molly, along with the former Navy dolphins
Luther, Buck, and Jake, gained addenda in September, four
months after unknown vandals freed Bogie and Bacall from the
Welcome Home Project sea pen on the Indian River Lagoon,
while dolphin freedom advocate Ric O’Barry’s release of
Luther and Buck from the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary, in
defiance of federal permit requirements, ended with their
recapture, injured and allegedly malnourished.
On September 13, the USDA Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service assigned permanent custody of
Molly, the oldest of the dolphins, to the Dolphin Research
Center, which is also keeping Buck; Luther and Jake are back
at the U.S. Navy marine mammal center in San Diego. The
APHIS order was contested by Rick Trout of the Key Largobased
Marine Mammal Conservancy, who worked with Molly
at both the Ocean Reef Club and the Sugarloaf Dolphin
Sanctuary, and claims to have legal title to her.

« 1 … 33 34 35 36 37 … 55 »