Whitetails and pronghorns

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

PORTLAND, Oregon––Just two
weeks after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
told ANIMAL PEOPLE in response to a
Freedom of Information Act request that it had
not held settlement talks with Friends of
Animals and the Predator Defense Institute re
their lawsuit against coyote-killing at the Julia
Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge in
southern Washington, the USFWS, FoA, and
PDI on November 17, 1997 jointly announced
an out-of-court settlement under which the
USFWS agreed to halt killing coyotes until at
least spring 1998, while writing “a supplemental
environmental impact assessment that
will analyze nonlethal alternatives for controlling
coyotes.”
However, the original USFWS plan
called for killing coyotes only in spring and
early summer.

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GREAT SPORTSMEN AND THEIR DEEDS OF THE 1997 SEASON

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Chris Cochrane and six hunting buddies thought
they’d killed a deer on December 27, near Turner’s Bay,
New Zealand. Then, thinking he’d seen the deer move, one
man fired another shot, reportedly causing “serious injuries” to
Cochrane’s pelvis and buttocks. Airlifted to medical help,
Cochrane achieved an unusual daily double when he was also
charged with poaching, along with all six pals.
Reports reaching ANIMAL PEOPLE indicate that
no U.S. hunter was involved in both the shooting of a human
and in poaching in which charges were filed in the same incident
during the fall/winter 1997 hunting season––but no shortage
of hunters were involved in one or the other.

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Ha ha ha––rabies wipe out!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

AUSTIN, Tex.––Aircraft
on January 6 began dropping 1.5
million oral rabies vaccine pellets
over 42,00 square miles in 66
Texas counties, the anticipated last
salvo in a three-year drive to eradicate
the only major rabies outbreak
among coyotes ever reported.
Canine rabies in all
species is down 98% in south
Texas since the vaccine drops
began, at cost of about $4 million a
year––a fraction of the $63 million
estimated cost of human health care
alone if the job hadn’t been done.
“We started with the
hope of containing the virus,”
Texas Department of Health Oral
Rabies Vaccination Project director
Gayne Fearneyhough told Anna M.
Tinsley of the Corpus Christi
Caller-Times, “but it soon became
obvious that we could contain and
eliminate this rabies strain from
very large geographic areas.”

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Judge orders wolves to go

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL
PARK––Defenders of Wildlife and the
National Wildlife Federation on December 31
asked the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
to reverse a December 12 ruling by U.S.
District Judge William Downes of Wyoming
that either wolves introduced into
Yellowstone National Park and northern
Idaho during the past two years should be
removed, or all wolves in the greater
Yellowstone ecosystem should be fully protected
under the Endangered Species Act.
As part of a compromise worked
out in 1994 to get around political opposition
to the reintroduction of wolves to the
Yellowstone environs, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service termed the reintroduced
wolves and their offspring an “experimental,
nonessential” population, not completely
covered as an endangered species. This
enables wildlife officials and ranchers to kill
wolves who are caught allegedly preying on
livestock.

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Children

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

The Royal SPCA and
British Customs are struggling to
intercept imports of “squish”
videos , in which models typically
wearing spike heels crush animals.
“It is of particular concern,”
RSPCA inspector Martin Daly told
Cassandra Brown of the Sunday
Telegraph, “that many videos
apprehended by Customs have
belonged to people who were [also] found to have tapes containing child
pornography.” Jeff Vilencia of
Calfiornia-based Squish Productions
told Brown, “I tell the models they
can squish anything in the pet shop
as long as it is part of the food chain
of another animal.” Vilencia said
he had about 600 customers, 38 of
them British. Similar material is
sold via the World Wide Web.

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HINDI HEADS TOWARD HIGH NOON IN LAS VEGAS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

WOODSTOCK, Illinois––Facing up
to five months in jail for alleged contempt of
court in connection with 1996 protests that eventually
closed the Woodstock Hunt Club, Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition cofounder Steve Hindi
on November 14 won a continuance of his appeal
until December 19––and that means he’ll have
plenty of time during the second week of
December to haunt the Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association finals in Las Vegas.
“We have extensive footage of not only
PRCA rodeos, but also International Professional
Rodeo Association and independent rodeos actually
shocking animals in the chutes to make them
perform,” Hindi told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“While we have sent a couple of these videos to
the PRCA, no one has contacted us to let us
know what, if anything, will be done about these
clear violations of the PRCA code of ethics,”
which explicitly forbids using electroshock to
provoke bucking.

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Hunting and serial murder

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

CADIZ, Ohio––Hunting season is
when perversely slain bodies are found, and
not just the bodies of animals.
Danny H. Jenkins, 51, of East
Akron, was charged on October 8 with shotgunning
two of his bowhunting buddies,
brothers Duane and William Lockard, 60 and
61, of Suffield.
Jenkins’ alleged motive, the
Harrison County Sheriff’s Department told
media, was robbery. Both Lockards were
known to carry large sums of cash.
Drifting between Ohio and Florida
for many years, Jenkins was within days of his
arrest also questioned in connection with the
November 19, 1993 buckshot murder/robberies
of Florida deer hunters Don Hill, 63,
and Gregory Allen Wood, 35, in the Osceola
National Forest.
All four victims were shot at close
range from behind.
A search of local newspaper archives
for background on Jenkins discovered that in
November 1994 he claimed to have been
among the hunters who discovered the skeletal
remains of a still unidentified teenaged girl
beside the Berlin Reservoir in Deerfield
Township––but Portage County prosecutor
Victor Vigluicci said Jenkins was not among
the hunters who reported the find.

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Activism

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

The U.S. Supreme Court o n
November 3 affirmed a 1994 Federal Court
of Appeals ruling on behalf of the Animal
Legal Defense Fund that proceedings of the
National Academy of the Sciences are subject
to the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee
Act. This means meetings of Academy committees
must be open to the public, makes
documents accessible under the Freedom of
Information Act, and means committee meetings
must be attended by a federal government
representative. Observed New York Times science
reporter Nicholas Wade, “Officials of
the Academy say that subjecting it to the law
would undermine its independence from the
government and the credibility of its reports.

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Sending out the dove

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

LOS ANGELES––Thirty circling
vultures are excellent news for the often
embattled Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego
Wild Animal Park. That’s because the vultures––California
condors, to be exact––are
now using their 10-foot wingspan to soar on
mountain air currents over southern California,
northern Arizona, and southern Utah.
Just 27 California condors remained
alive in 1987, when the last wild member of
the species was lured into captivity despite
militant protest from Earth First! and lawsuits
from the Sierra Club and National Audubon
Society––and the 1987 count was up slightly
from the low of 22, recorded in 1982. By
1985, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
decided to capture the whole population for
protected breeding, just nine wild condors
remained, along with 14 in captivity. There
are now 134 of the giant birds, some of whom
are fanning out more than 200 miles from
release sites, reclaiming habitat they haven’t
occupied in thousands of years.

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