King salmon close to ESA listing

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SEATTLE––National Marine Fisheries Service biologists
reported on April 10 that the coveted chinook or king
salmon could qualify for Endangered Species Act
protection––four months after Canadian fisheries minister Fred
Mifflin pronounced chinook well enough recovered to reopen
sport fishing of the species off the west coast of Vancouver
Island, with a year-long limit of two per day.
The Puget Sound chinook count is down to 71,000,
NMFS said, from an estimated 690,000 in 1911. Wild-run chinook
account for under 25% of the current population. The rest
come from hatcheries.
Similar declines were reported in Oregon and northern
California rivers. But the Oregon and California coastal
populations were said to be still healthy.

CAN FISH SURVIVE IN A PORK BARREL?

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

RALEIGH, N.C.––Forced to choose between fish
and pigs, North Carolina wants both––and got state fisheries
director Bruce Freeman’s resignation on February 13 as a
slightly early Valentine to himself. For $83,000 a year, he
decided, the job wasn’t worth the pfiesteria headache.
Freeman, a North Carolina native who previously
served as New Jersey fisheries director, was North Carolina’s
sixth fisheries director in 15 years, only one of whom stayed
longer than two years. He took office just four months before
the June 1995 destruction of the Neuse River by 20 million gallons
of hog slurry from a ruptured farm lagoon. That alone
killed as many as 40 million fish––and that spill was followed
by more than 100 others, both on the Neuse and other rivers.
There were hints that similar smaller spills had occurred for
years, to little notice, as the North Carolina hog industry rapidly
expanded over the past decade with strong government influence
at both the state and federal levels.

Cod’s walloped

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Like the North Sea nations and Canada, New
England is combatting a cod crisis. Since 1982, the New
England cod, yellowtail, and haddock catches, combined,
are down from 86,000 tons to 17,600 tons. After the New
England fleet killed 17% more cod from May through August
last year than the New England Fishery Management Council
set as the regional quota for the year, scientific advisors recommended
a 41% cut in the cod take to protect adequate
spawning stock. Initially proposing to cut the number of
allowable fishing days per vessel from an already restricted
88 to just 14, the council eventually settled on weight limits
for catches prorated by size of vessel. Earlier limits on fishing
days and an outright prohibition of fishing in certain areas
meanwhile won a February 5 court challenge from the
Associated Fisheries of Maine.

Clear NMFS of buyers and sellers

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

by Carroll Cox, special investigator, Friends of Animals

Entrusted with the duty of protecting marine life in
U.S. waters, the National Marine Fisheries Service is at the
same time a division of the Department of Commerce, mandated
to promote trade. This builds into NMFS a conflict of interest
similar to that within the USDA between the mandate to
promote agriculture, the first function of the agency, and the
duty to safeguard public health and animal welfare.
The much better known conflict of interest within the
USDA was subject of a 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose
series by the Kansas City Star, and of an expose by Marian
Burros, food editor of The New York Times, as recently as
April 9 of this year. Between exposes, at least 45,500
Americans died of food-borne diseases, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the clout of
the meat, egg, and milk industries within the USDA,
Congress, and the White House is such that nothing has been
done to separate the functions of promotion and inspection.

A GRAVE SITUATION FOR CHS

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The Connecticut Humane Society in
late March announced it will replace the 50-
year-old animal health clinic at its Newington
headquarters with a new $1 million facility to be
built on the site of the CHS pet cemetery, also
about 50 years old, not used in 10 years according
to CHS president Richard Johnston, and
occupying the only buildable space left on the
CHS grounds. About 3,000 pet graves will be
moved to two new plots. Remains of animals
whose owners can’t be located––at least a third
of the total, Johnston indicated––may be placed
in a mass grave. The CHS filing of IRS Form
990 for fiscal year 1995 reportedly showed
assets of $20.7 million, income of $3.2 million,
program costs of $2 million, management costs
of $534,346, and two salaries over $50,000:
Johnston, at $87,834, and executive director
Gus Helberg, $56,276.

Humane legislation

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The North Carolina House on
April 15 unanimously approved a bill to
make dogfighting, betting on dogfighting,
or watching dogfighting a felony. “We
want to dispell the idea of North Carolina
being a center of dogfighting because of the
laxity of our penalties,” said Rep. John
Weatherly, R-Cleveland, just before the
116-0 vote. Weatherly is also pushing legislation
to address cockfighting and potential
weaknesses in current cruelty statutes.

Ed Sayres leaves the American Humane Association

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.––Ed Sayres, director of the American
Humane Association’s animal protection division since August 1995,
“resigned his position to seek new opportunities,” AHA executive director
Robert F.X. Hart announced in an April 16 prepared statement.
Personally serving as interim director of the animal protection division,
Hart got an immediate baptism by flood, coordinating the AHA relief
effort in the vicinity of Grand Forks, North Dakota.
ANIMAL PEOPLE reported in April that Sayres was a leading candidate
for the top job at the New York Center for Animal Care and Control,
vacated on January 21 by the resignation under fire of founding director Marty
Kurtz. Sayres confirmed on April 20 that he was interviewed for the CACC
job two days earlier, but said he had not yet been told if he would be hired.

The Summit and the top of the heap

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SACRAMENTO––Belton Mouras, founder of both
the Animal Protection Institute and United Animal Nations,
resigned the UAN presidency on March 26 in a seeming replay
of his exit from API almost exactly ten years before.
Mouras founded API in 1968, after about six years as
California representative for the Humane Society of the U.S.,
and went on to found UAN later in 1987.
Former UAN staffer Jeane Westin now chairs the
UAN board, while former vice president Deanna Soares has
become executive director. Mouras almost immediately
accepted a job as development officer for the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, while former UAN program director
Vernon Weir resigned separately to take a similar post with the
Association of Sanctuaries (TAOS).
Mouras told ANIMAL PEOPLE that push came to
shove after UAN received two major bequests and enjoyed an
unusually successful direct mail appeal on behalf of the UANsponsored
Emergency Animal Rescue Service. By fluke, the
appeal reached recipients just as the late January flooding in
California put EARS in the news.

USFWS’ albatross

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

MIDWAY––If anyone wants a courtroom Second
Battle of Midway, the short-tailed albatross could become a
mighty obstacle to tourism development. Owned by the U.S.
Navy since 1903, Midway was deeded over to the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service on April 5, which intends to open the
newly created refuge to the public soon, for the first time
since before World War II.
The problem isn’t that the uniquely all-white shorttailed
albatross is on the Endangered Species List: it’s that it
isn’t. Because it isn’t, critical habitat has not been designated.
Yet the short-tailed albatross drew protection from Japan
more than 60 years ago, when the population dipped to just
100, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has treated the
short-tailed albatross as endangered since 1969, four years
before the present Endangered Species Act was passed.

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