Biologists in “missing lynx” uproar didn’t think they saw a puddy tat

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

OLYMPIA, Washington–A two-month national furor about
alleged falsification of evidence by seven field biologists studying
lynx range apparently started because several of the biologists did
not believe a feral domestic cat could survive in the Gifford Pinchot
and Wenatchie National Forests.
Almost any experienced feral cat rescuer could have told them
that feral domestic cats thrive wherever they find small mammals or
birds to hunt and adequate cover, from the equator to inside the
Arctic and Antarctic Circles.

Supreme Court of Canada rules for seals

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

OTTAWA–The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 on February 22
that the authority of the federal government “to preserve the
economic viability of not only the seal fishery, but the Canadian
fisheries in general” gives Ottawa the constitutional right to ban
the sale of whitecoated harp seal and bluebacked hooded seal pup
pelts–as has been done since the 1995 resumption of offshore
commercial sealing, to protect the public image of the hunt. The
verdict allows Ottawa to resume prosecuting 101 sealers for allegedly
killing seal pups in 1996. About 25,000 pelts were seized from them.
Funded by the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ Union, sealer Ford
Ward, of La Scie, Newfoundland, challenged the federal right to
pursue the case.
The current sealing quotas are 275,000 for adult harp seals
and 10,000 for adult hooded seals–but only 91,000 seals were killed
in 2001, as pelt prices collapsed years ago and Viagra cut into
Asian demand for seal penises.

Will the end of Spring bring change to the Humane Society of Indianapolis?

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

INDIANAPOLIS–Marsha Spring, 59, executive director of the
Humane Society of Indianapolis since 1988, resigned on February 21,
four days after Indianapolis Star reporters Bill Theobald and Bonnie
Harris revealed that Spring had used credit cards and checks issued
by the humane society to pay for “purchases from high-end women’s
clothing stores, gas stations, a spa, and animal product
suppliers, among others, including items bought during personal
vacations on Florida’s Sanibel Island.”
Spring even used a humane society check to pay for
reupholstering her dining room chairs in November 1996, Theobald and
Harris reported.

Dog & cat licensing compliance, costs, and effects

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

Regulations of any kind seldom succeed unless a large
majority of the people or institutions to be regulated are already
voluntarily in compliance or willing to become compliant with
relatively little nudging at the time that the regulations start to
be enforced. If more than a small percentage object to a regulation
enough to become scofflaws, the enforcement burden becomes
overwhelming, and the regulation eventually tends to be ignored or
repealed.

Sentenced

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Bush & the beasts

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2002:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Cultivating an image as an animal-lover,
U.S. President George W. Bush on February 12 signed into law the
Congressional reauthorization of the Asian Elephant Conservation Act.
Five weeks earlier, on January 8, Bush signed
reauthorizations of the African Elephant Conservation Act and the
Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act.
The devil was in the details.

Funding the War on Roadkills

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

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

March 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Tribes gun for more whales–and polar bears

January 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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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