Category: North America

RABIES UPDATE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

A rabid raccoon bit Samantha
Sorochinski, age 2, on May 5 in West Milford,
New York, prompting New York, New Jersey,
and Connecticut authorities to remind the public that
the mid-Atlantic raccoon rabies pandemic, which
crested three to four years ago, has not gone away.
Peruvian Health Ministry staff on May
8 began a 40-day drive to poison an estimated
90,000 stray dogs in Lima, the national capitol, to
reduce the risk of rabies.

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Animal control & rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Flooding
Mid-May flooding stranded and
killed livestock and pets in rural areas of
Louisiana and Missisippi, but populated
areas, protected by levees and drainage sys-
tems, were only lightly hit, Jeff Dorson of
the New Orleans activist group Legislation
In Support of Animals told ANIMAL PEO-
P L E. LISA and the Louisiana SPCA did
some pet rescue in Jefferson Parish, while
Mary Hoffman and Doll Stanley-Branscum
of In Defense of Animals organized a rescue
effort around Grenada, Mississippi. “Even if
the waters recede rapidly, injured and home-
less wildlife and domestic animals will need
assistance,” Stanley-Branscum predicted.

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ALASKAN WAR ON WILDLIFE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

JUNEAU––Alaska governor
Tony Knowles has pledged to veto a bill
setting a bounty on wolves, passed by
the legislature––but that’s about the only
good news for wolves in Alaska.
On May 3, wildlife biologist
Gordon Haber, monitoring Alaskan wolf
populations for Friends of Animals,
found the last of the Headwaters pack
dead in snares––”nearly three weeks after

he end of trapping season,” wrote
Alaskan freelance journalist Tim Moffatt.
“Along with the body of a pregnant
female,” Moffat said, “were four pups,
two of them skinned; a coyote snared by
its back legs; a yearling moose; the
remains of another moose; and a cari-
bou,” possibly killed as bait. Haber docu-
mented the site and called the Alaska
State Troopers, Moffatt added.

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WILDLIFE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

The National Parks Board of South
Africa announced May 10 that, “To maintain
for as long as possible the option of translocat-
ing family groups of elephants,” only 300 will
be killed this year instead of 600 as biologists rec-
ommended. “The breeding herds will mainly be
culled in areas where the greatest damage has been
done to trees,” the NPB added. “Of special con-
cern is the declining baobob population,” in
Kruger National Park, which has about 8,000 ele-
phants in an area the size of Israel. The elephants,
including 70 bulls, are to be shot from helicopters.
Tranquilizer darts will no longer be used before-
hand because this appears to increase rather than
decrease the stress to the elephants, who afterward
are immobile but fully conscious.

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ESA update

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:
WASHINGTON D.C. ––Senators
Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), with co-sponsors
Bennett Johnston (D-La.), and Richard Shelby
(R-Ala.), on May 9 introduced the first of three
expected Republican drafts of a revised
Endangered Species Act. Largely authored by
timber industry lobbyists, the Gorton bill would
end the federal obligation to try to save all
endangered species. Instead the Secretary of the
Interior would be allowed to rule that a species
should go extinct. The bill would also lump
together captive and wild animals in counting
populations, meaning for instance that hatchery-
bred salmon, with little ability to survive in the
ocean, would count toward meeting the conser-
vation goals of endangered runs. In addition, the
bill would virtually preclude the designation of
protected critical habitat, and require taxpayers
to cover costs of routine corporate compliance.

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PETA, Romero court updates

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

The Nevada Supreme Court has
withdrawn their January 27, 1994 reversal
of the $4.2 million libel verdict won by
orangutan trainer Bobby Berosini in August
1990 against PETA, PETA director of inves-
tigations Jeanne Rouch, the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, PAWS executive
director Pat Derby, and dancer Ottavio
Gesmundo. An FBI probe of alleged conflicts
of interest in other Nevada cases found that
8th Judicial District Judge Jack Lehman is an
advisor to the Animal Foundation of Nevada,
a Las Vegas low-cost neutering organization.
Lehman was appointed by Governor Bob
Miller to serve on the three-judge panel that
heard the PETA appeal of the Berosini ver-
dict, after Chief Justice Robert Rose with-
drew and two other justices were occupied

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GROWLS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Wilderness Society president Jon
Roush, who makes $125,000 a year, in
February and March sold $140,000 worth
of old growth timber from an 80-acre tract on
his 763-acre Montana ranch, bordering the
Bitteroot National Forest. “The area he cut,”
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
reported in The Nation of April 24, “is less
than two miles from a national wilderness area
and well within the boundaries of the
Salmon/Selway Ecosystem ––the largest com-
plex of wild land in the Lower 48 and home to
elk, black bears, mountain lions, and grey
wolves.” Roush in 1983 successfully sued the
U.S. Forest Service, contending that logging
and roadbuilding would irrevocably harm the
watershed. The roads built then were used to
remove the logs from his own land.

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People

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Esther Mechler, founder of the
low-cost neutering referral service Spay/USA
and the Focus on Animals video library, has
won the first annual Geraldine R. Dodge
Humane Ethics in Action Award, a prize of
$10,000 to be used as the winner sees fit.
Begun in 1990, Spay/USA made circa 1,500
referrals a year through 1993; taken over by
the North Shore Animal League in mid-1993
and now run as part of the NSAL-affiliated
Pet Savers Foundation, it made 8,640 refer-
rals, resulting in 14,002 neutering opera-
tions, during the first three months of 1995.
Dennis White, former head of the
American Humane Association animal pro-
tection division, has left, after 19 years, for
undisclosed personal reasons.

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Hunting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Johnie Young, treasurer of a group trying to repeal the
ban on bear and cougar hunting with dogs approved by Oregon
voters last November, pleaded no contest in November 1990, along
with his wife Diana, to poaching bears and trafficking in bear paws
and gall bladders. State police records indicate Young killed 32 black
bears, including cubs, between April 1987 and June 1989––along
with three cougars and a bobcat. A police undercover video showed
Young leading several hunting parties who used dogs to tree bears,
shot the bears out of the trees, and allowed the dogs to maul the bears
after they fell.

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