Cunniffs’ cut of NAVS is up since 1992-1993 scandal

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

CHICAGO––Kenneth Cunniff has a high-profile law practice. He is also an
adjunct professor of law at John Marshall University. And according to National AntiVivisection
Society filings with the IRS, Cunniff additionally was paid $66,778 for
representing the National Anti-Vivisection Society in the fiscal year ending June 30,
1994; $100,219 for representing NAVS in fiscal year 1995.
Cunniff’s wife is NAVS president Mary Margaret Cunniff, who succeeded
her father George Trapp. In fiscal 1994 Mary Margaret Cunniff was paid $105,250;
in fiscal 1995, $106,860. Between them each year, the Cunniffs collected just about
10% of the total revenues of NAVS: $1,697,612 in 1994, $2,092,467 in 1995.
Trapp, long retired, was paid $30,250 in fiscal 1994 for consulting. The
IRS then raised the threshhold for salaries that must be reported to $50,000, and Trapp
vanished from the NAVS filings.

Horse bills

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

Illinois governor Jim Edgar on
May 17 signed into law a ban on horsetripping,
a routine practice of charro-style
rodeo. The ban cleared the Illinois Senate
53-1 and the state House 94-13.
Pending in California and likely
to pass, says Sherry DeBoer of Animal
Health & Safety Associates, AB2347
“says that if you win a horse race and your
horse was drugged, the California Horse
Racing Board can allow you to keep the
purse if they decide that the drugging
probably did not affect the outcome of the
race.” DeBoer asks protest letters be faxed
to her for forwarding, at 510-743-9268.

New anti-pet theft bills introduced in House

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Two bills
to crack down further on pet theft for laboratory
supply were introduced into the House of
Representatives in early May.
The pair are among the first of an
anticipated series of proposed amendments to
the Animal Welfare Act sections pertaining to
pets and the pet trade, discussed in April during
four days of hearings that were held in St.
Louis and Kansas City.
The Family Pet Protection Act of
1996, introduced on May 6 by Representatives
John Fox (R-Pa.) and Tom Lantos (DCalif.),
was reportedly drafted by In Defense
of Animals. It would abolish all Class B animal
dealers, an Animal Welfare Act permit
category which currently includes about 1,600
pet dealers as well as about 75 suppliers of
random-source animals to laboratories.

Underfunded ESA back in force

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Unwilling to drop
a year-long moratorium on the listing of species as
either “threatened” or “endangered” under the
Endangered Species Act, but facing more presidential
vetoes of the 1996 budget if the moratorium remained
in the budget bill, Congress on April 26 allowed Bill
Clinton to exercise a waiver amounting to a line item
veto of the ESA moratorium and several other riders
Clinton deemed unacceptable.
Clinton exercised the waiver soon after the
bill cleared the House and Senate––but it wasn’t all
good news for endangered species. Of symbolic
import, a rider allowing the construction of a third
telescope site on Mount Graham, Arizona, could not
be waived despite possible risk to the endangered
Mount Graham squirrel. Less noticed but of greater
significance, the budget bill cuts the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service budget for researching endangered
species proposals 39%, cuts the total USFWS budget
by $12.5 million, and cuts U.S. funding of the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species in half, from 25% of the total (about $1.4
million) to 12% ($700,000). CITES is the major
instrument for regulating the global traffic
in exotic animals.

Coyotes

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

Representatives of
seven national and regional
animal protection
groups on May 13 picketed
the Home Savings of
America annual shareholders
meeting because
the savings-and-loan permits
fox and coyote hunting
on the Ahmanson
Ranch, which it owns,
in the West San Fernando
Valley. Explained a joint
release, “The hunts drive
coyote and other animals
off the ranch into adjacent
urban communities,”
where they are “killed or
captured by animal regulation
officers.”

Canada plans protection for bears

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

“The Ontario government intends to prohibit the commercial
sale of black bear parts, regardless of their origin, and limit each hunter
to one license for the animals each year,” the Toronto Globe and Mail
reported on April 4, two days after the Calgary Herald reported that,
“The Alberta government is considering a ban on recreational hunting of
grizzly bears because they are considered to be an ‘at risk’ species.”
Continued the Herald, “The proposal to outlaw grizzly hunting
could also be extended to wolverine trapping,” a species extirpated by
trapping from Hudson’s Bay east––not so much for pelts as because trappers
resent the wolverine habit of raiding traplines. “The hunt will proceed
this spring. I wouldn’t bet it will be there next spring,” the Herald
quoted provincial wildlife biologist John Gunson.
“We still have to deal with the spring bear hunt, the use of
dogs, and the use of baits, but we’re off to a good start,” said Barry Kent
MacKay, a director of both the Animal Alliance of Canada and Zoocheck
Canada, and program director for the Animal Protection Institute.

Wildlife serial-killing

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service has proposed
opening the Cape May National
Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey to
migratory bird hunting. Targeted
would be rails, gallinules, woodcock,
common snipe, ducks, geese,
coots, and mergansers. The rationale,
from the official impact statement:
“The demand for additional
public hunting areas increases as
more and more land is developed.
Providing the hunting public with
areas in which to hunt helps assure a
safe and quality hunting experience.”

Editorial: Politics and the unity myth

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

“United we stand; divided we fall,” Martin Luther King proclaimed in his “I had
a dream” speech to the participants in the 1964 civil rights march on Washington, D.C.
Activists have quoted King out of context ever since. Borrowing an early motto of
the 13 Colonies, King spoke of the power of voting blocks, and the influence they might
have to purge Congress of racists. He asked his audience to stand up as Americans, part of
the United States, and claim their right to vote. He most certainly did not tell the marchers
to stand united with those who either used or espoused violent tactics, which he forthrightly
opposed all his life; nor with the politically corrupt who looted the cause, even if they
espoused similar rhetoric; nor did King have any more use for black separatism than he had
for white separatism. Martin Luther King made plain where he stood, welcoming everyone
who chose to stand with him, but he didn’t welcome purported allies whose actions
tended to undermine, pollute, or dilute his message of multiracial Americanism.
King, who earned part of his early reputation by desegregating bowling alleys,
certainly knew the limited applicability of “United we stand, divided we fall” as a
metaphor. In bowling, pins near the ones struck go down too. One need only pick up a
newspaper to find examples of political figures and causes neutralized or discredited not by
their own deeds, but by those of their associates.

Ghosties, goblins, and bumping off whales in the night

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – The
June 24-28 annual meeting of the
International Whaling Commission might
appropriately open with the ancient Scots
prayer, “God keep us from ghosties and goblins
and things that go ‘bump’ in the night.”
Resurrecting the ghost of whaling
from longboats last done more than 70 years
ago, the Makah tribe of the outermost tip of
the Olympic peninsula in Washington will bid
to claim a subsistance quota on grey whales
and become the first legal whalers along the
Pacific coast of the U.S. mainland since the
whaling station at Point Richmond,
California closed more than 20 years ago.
The Makah will be supported, for reasons
pertaining to political correctness, by Greenpeace
and the U.S. government––and Japan,
whose whaling industry has cultivated a close
relationship with Makah minister of fisheries
Daniel Green.

« 1 … 223 224 225 226 227 … 321 »