Animal Collecting

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Camille Hankins, 41, of Chester, South Carolina, was

fined $200 on March 22 for ill-treatment of animals at her Animal Save

no-kill shelter, closed last June through the intervention of PETA and

K. Jones, editor of the Charlotte-based animal newspaper T h e

Animality. Eighty animals were taken from Hankins’ trailer home and

yard, of whom about a dozen were euthanized due to illness. Hankins,

a former PETA volunteer, told ANIMAL PEOPLE she was framed

because of PETA’s opposition to no-kill shelters, after she made the

mistake of asking PETA to help her with adoptions. Responded Jones,

“I testified to the conditions I saw several months before the arrest. I

also testified that I tried to get Hankins to give me some of the animals

so that I could get them to a vet, care for them, and adopt them out. I at

one time offered to take them all. She invited PETA down a few weeks

later. I think the town of Chester gave her a fair and just trial, and had

no problem proving her guilt.”

Birds

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“The only good great horned owl is a dead

one,” says Minnesota state senator Charles Berg, who has

introduced a bill to allow free range turkey farmers to catch

the owls with padded leghold traps––which can easily

crush an owl’s foot––as well as a bill to allow mourning

dove hunting. Letters asking that either bill be vetoed if

passed may be sent to Governor Arne Carlson, 130

Capitol, St. Paul, MN 55155.

“Small nature preserves, which work fine for

preserving plants, don’t work for migratory birds,”

Illinois Natural History Survey scientist Scott Robinson

says, after an extensive study of the relationship between

vanishing songbirds and cowbirds, who lay their faster-

hatching eggs ino other birds’ nests. While cowbirds are a

short-term cause of species decline, the longterm cause is

shrinking habitat, as deep forests where the songbirds are

safe give way to the edge habitat that cowbirds prefer.

ESA ROUNDUP

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Senator Slade Gorton (R-Washington)

on April 12 promised a gathering of timber indus-

try executives in Stevenson, Washington, that he

would soon introduce a bill to replace the present

Endangered Species Act mandate to save all

species with a process by which by a political

appointee––probably the Secretary of the

Interior––would decide whether and how a species

should be saved. The bill was drafted by the

National Endangered Species Reform Coalition,

representing 185 corporations and so-called wise-

use groups, who gave Gorton’s re-election cam-

paign $34,000 last fall.

WILDLIFE

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Wolves

Mandated by the state legislature to implement

predator control before cutting either the length of the moose and

caribou season or the bag limits, the Alaska Board of Game during

the week of March 27 ordered the Alaska Department of Fish and

Game to prepare wolf control plans for much of the inhabited part

of the state by October. It also extended the bear season in two

regions by four weeks, while upping the bag limit from one bear

per four years to one bear every year. “It’s impossible to say what

the ADF&G will present,” said Sandra Arnold of the Alaska

Wildlife Alliance. “We also don’t know if the Board approves a

wolf control plan in October, if that means control will begin

immediately or in October 1996. The bear control measures are

proving controversial. ADF&G refuses to comment, but are clear-

ly concerned because all their reports indicate that bears are

already being killed above sustainable levels, especially in Unit

13,” which is the heavily hunted Nelchina Basin.

California predators under fire

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

LOS ANGELES––A bill to reinstate

recreational puma hunting in California, due for a

mid-April vote in the state assembly, got a series of

media boosts when a single puma killed both a

German shepherd and an 80-pound Akita within six

days near La Crescenta in mid-March; mountain

biker Scott Fike, 27, fought off another puma on

March 20 after being attacked on a trail outside

Altadena; and a third puma killed 37 sheep the night

of March 31, in an attack without known parallel.

Most pumas kill what they’re going to eat, eat it,

and then, like other cats, go to sleep.

All three pumas were tracked and killed by

state wardens. Only nine humans have even been

attacked by pumas within California, but three of

the attacks came in the past two years, and the two

before the attack on Fike were fatal. Recreational

puma hunting was banned by referendum in 1990.

The Los Angeles City Council meanwhile

ended a moratorium on coyote trapping within city

limits, voting 12-0 on March 15 to authorize the

Department of Animal Regulation to hire five ani-

mal control officers to help homeowners deal with

alleged coyote problems. The homeowners may

have traps set for coyotes for a $200 fee. “Our hope

is that if we hire these people, we won’t have to set

traps and will educate people,” said councillor

Jackie Goldberg.

ALLEGED SPORTSMEN

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Clay Peterson, age 11, wrote a

letter to the Nashville Tennesean criticizing

poachers, published on April 6. “He was

thrilled,” his mother Debra wrote to the

paper a week later. “I was immediately wor-

ried when I noticed that his address was also

printed. My fears were justified,” by a bar-

rage of hate mail, including one missive that

warned Clay, “armed force is necessary to

eliminate those who would force the issue.”

The Tennessean then published the Peterson

family address again. Tell the Petersons they

have friends c/o 1667 Highfield Lane,

Brentwood, TN 37027.

MARINE MAMMALS

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Seal hunt

Canada on April 11 denied an allegation by the

International Fund for Animal Welfare that the Shanghai

Fisheries Corporation and a sealing industry delegation from

the Magdalen Islands of Quebec met the day before in Hong

Kong to sign a deal to increase the export of seal penises to

China. “Because it’s penises, people laugh,” said IFAW

spokesperson Marion Jenkins, “but the Chinese medicine

market has been responsible for the near extinction of the

tiger and the rhino.” Despite the lack of other apparent

viable markets, the seal slaughter shifted from the

Magdalens to Newfoundland in mid-April, encouraged by a

quota of 186,000 and a federal bounty of 20¢ per pound on

seal carcasses landed. Newfoundland fisheries minister Bud

Hulan claims the Atlantic Canada seal population is circa

eight million, and that the seals are contributing to the

decline of cod, recently pronounced “commercially extinct.”

However, current research by Thomas Woodley and David

Lavigne, of the International Marine Mammal Association,

indicates there are no more than 3.5 million harp seals, prob-

ably fewer; 400,000 hooded seals; and 142,000 grey seals,

the only species whose numbers are increasing. Cod make

up only about 1% of the seals’ diet.

POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

The Sierra Club, National Audubon

Society, and Natural Resources Defense

Council on April 4 unveiled a $1.3 million TV

campaign and a $500,000 radio blitz to inform the

public about how regulatory rollbacks under the

Republican “Contract with America” will affect

“the food they eat, the water they drink, and the

air they breathe,” and about the links between

“those who pollute and those who write the laws

on pollution.” Sierra Club director Carl Pope

called it the largest such effort “ever launched by

the environmental community.” The announce-

ment came five days after Speaker of the House

Newt Gingrich accused “left-wing environmental-

ists” of using environmental protection laws as a

vehicle to “oppose free enterprise, jobs, and eco-

nomic activity.” They look for the “hysteria of

the year,” Gingrich charged, “whether it’s going

to be nuclear winter or global warming or whatev-

er this year’s particular hysteria is.”

Deep in the heart of Texas

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

AUSTIN – -Anti-animal bills

crowded state legislative calendars in

many states this spring, as newly elect-

ed wise-use wiseguys joined entrenched

good old boys in the effort to make the

world safe for hunters––but those intro-

duced in Texas were uniquely flamboy-

ant. Major items, with apparent status

at deadline:

SB-97, a long-awaited bill to

restrict canned hunting, has been

amended to apparently prohibit only the

point-blank dispatch of animals other

than pumas and “nuisance” species who

are held in small cages. (Active.)

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