Marine Mammal Bills

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

WASHINGTON D.C. ––
Rep. Michael Bilirakis (R-Fla.) and 19
co-sponsors have introduced a bill to
restrict dolphin exports, institute an
identification and tracking system,
limit lethal research on marine mam-
mals, and impose a moratorium on cap-
tures pending a review and revision of
care standards. If the bill, H.R. 656,
wins sufficient Congressional support,
language from it may be incorporated
into the Marine Mammal Protection
Act, which is up for renewal this year.

HUNTING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

The Federation of Ontario
Naturalists reports that 95% of spring bear
hunters in the province are Americans, from
states that ban spring bear hunting. In 1991,
Ontario spring bear hunters killed 6,760 bears,
9% of the estimated provincial population. A
third of the bears were females. Only 30% of
cubs who lose their mothers live to age one.
“All too many Alaska hunters are
lazy, ill-mannered, beer-guzzling, belly-
scratching fat boys, or girls,” Anchorage
Daily News outdoors editor Craig Medred
opined recently, “who want nothing more
than to ride around on their favorite piece of
high-powered machinery until they find some-
thing to shoot full of holes with their high-
powered rifle.” Medred also attacked the

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Zoos & Aquariums

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

The World Society for the Protection of Animals recently liberated Flipper, the
last captive dolphin in Brazil, near where he was captured in 1982. Before the release,
Flipper was reaquainted with life in the ocean under the supervision of Ric O’Barry of the
Dolphin Project––who also trained his namesake, the star of the Flipper TV program. Brazil
banned keeping marine mammals in captivity in 1991. The Brazilian Flipper spent the past
two years in solitude at an abandoned amusement park near Sao Paulo, and was kept alive
by the local fire department, who used their pumper truck to change his water after the filtra-
tion system in his tank deteriorated beyond repair.
Colorado’s Ocean Journey, the proposed aquarium to be built in Denver,
recently tried to head off protest by claiming it would include “only third generation captive-
born dolphins.” Pointed out David Brower, president of Earth Island Institute, “There are
no third-generation captive-born dolphins anywhere.” The Coors Brewing Company recent-
ly retreated from the dolphin controversy. According to a prepared statement issued
February 15, “Contrary to rumors and recent advertisements, Coors does not ‘want to bring
dolphins to Denver.’ Our support of this project is not focused on, nor dependent on,
cetaceans.”

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ANIMAL HEALTH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

Ohio Veterinary Medical Board member George Wenning, DVM, resigned March 11 under pressure
for having called filing horses’ teeth “nigger work” during a board meeting. The governor’s office ordered another
member, Tom Liggett, DVM, to take a one-day course on cultural diversity at his own expense––and made the
annual course mandatory for all 400 members of state boards and commissions. Liggett reportedly routinely
inquired as to whether applicants for veterinary licenses were “Americans.” The situation came to light when for-
mer board president Linda Randall, DVM, an Afro-American, told media that her private complaints to Governor
George Voinovich had gone unanswered for six months.

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Diet & Health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Responding to public panic over
tainted meat, President Bill Clinton on
February 11 ordered the USDA to hire 160
more meat inspectors, while Agriculture
Secretary Mike Espy promised a complete
overhaul of the meat inspection
system––which the Ronald Reagan and
George Bush presidential administrations
had streamlined by reducing the number of
inspectors. The panic began in December
when a six-year-old girl in San Diego
County, California, died after eating a
tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, and
escalated January 22, when a two-year-old
boy died in Seattle, Washington, from the
same cause. More than 400 people who ate
Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers developed E.

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A fish named Alice by Margaret Hehman-Smith

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

I have an unusual animal I’d like to tell
you about: a fish named Alice who does tricks.
You don’t believe it? Everyone says that until they
see my fish for real. Then they admit they have
never seen a fish do that before; and then they
don’t know what to say or do. On the one hand
here is a koi fish who performs learned behaviors
on cue, and on the other, there is the suggestion
that we should regard fish as intelligent, sentient
beings, who don’t belong grilled on a plate.
My Japanese Imperial koi fish is sleekly
beautiful, pearl-white, 24 years old, about the
size of a small dog. She lives in a 100-gallon tank
in my den. She has been taught to ring a bell, go
through a hoop, react to hand signals, push a ball,

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Books In Brief

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Care of Reptiles and Amphibians in
Captivity, by Chris Mattison. 1992. 317 pages,
paperback. $17.95 ($23.95 Canadian). Blandford, distrib
uted by Sterling Publishing Co., 387 Park Ave. South, New
York, NY 10016-8810. If you run an animal shelter,
inspect pet stores, rehabilitate wildlife, or answer nuisance
animal complaints, you’re going to need this reference. You
may never pick it up until you find an unidentified lizard in
your overnight dropoff box, or get a call about a python in
a chimney. Then it’ll be a lifesaver, for you and the reptile.

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BOOKS: Animal Rights & Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Animal Rights Human Rights: Ecology,
Economy and Ideology in the Canadian
Arctic, by George Wenzel. 1991. 206 pages,
paperback. University of Toronto Press.
Animal Rights Human Rights author George
Wenzel, says the back cover, “is an anthropologist and geo-
grapher,” who has been working among the Inuit (Eskimos)
of Baffin Island since 1972. His book “is both a careful aca-
demic study and a disturbing comment on how environmen-
tal activity may oppress a whole society.” To wit, Wenzel
supposedly shows how anti-seal hunt protesters’ “own cul-
tural prejudices and questionable ecological imperatives
brought hardship, distress, and instability to an ecologically
balanced traditional culture.”

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Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill contin-
ues to kill Alaskan wildlife, researchers revealed
February 5 at a symposium hosted by the
University of Alaska and the American Fisheries
Society. Among the victims are 14 orcas, who dis-
appeared and are presumed dead; 300,000 murres,
a bird species that hasn’t nested successfully since
the spill; and sea otters and ducks, who are still
being poisoned by mussels who in turn have been
poisoned by oil.
Zimbabwe is trying to raise $2 million
to spend on culling 5,000 elephants from a nation-
al herd officially estimated at 80,000.

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