Hunters seek to exempt lead ammunition & tackle from environmental safety regulation

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus co-chairs
Senators Jon Tester and John Thune and Representatives Jeff Miller
and Mike Ross, along with 40 co-sponsors, in mid-April 2011
introduced legislation to exempt lead-based ammunition and fishing
tackle from regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The bills were presented only days after two new studies by
researchers at the University of California in Davis confirmed the
detrimental effects of ingested lead shot on wildlife. Associate
professor of veterinary medicine Christine Johnson and epidemiology
doctoral student Terra Kelly, DVM, found that lead levels increase
in the blood of scavenging turkey vultures during deer hunts and in
areas where wild pigs are hunted. Johnson and Kelly also found that
a 2008 ban on lead ammunition ban within the range of endangered
California condors reduced blood lead levels in golden eagles and
turkey vultures within just one year.

Ohio keeps deal on veal, but backs off on exotic pets

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
COLUMBUS–The Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board on April 5,
2011 voted 11-0 in favor of a standard requiring that veal calves be
kept in pens in which they have room to turn around. The vote
reversed a 6-5 vote on March 2, 2011 which would have allowed veal
crating to continue–and would have broken a June 2010 agreement
brokered by former Ohio governor Ted Strickland that kept off the
November 2010 ballot a proposal advanced by the Humane Society of the
U.S. to ban veal crates, sow gestation crates, and battery cages
for laying hens.

Wolves, wild horses, bison & budget cuts

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
WASHINGTON D.C.–Removed from Endangered Species Act
protection by a policy rider, wolves in Montana and Idaho are among
the most prominent animal casualties of the Fiscal Year 2011
Continuing Resolution signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama
on April 15, 2011.
Wolves in Michigan and Wisconsin are beneficiaries of
Congressional budget-cutting, at least pending further legislation,
because the short-term funding act that preceded the FY 2011
Continuing Resolution axed the federal budget for killing “problem”
wolves in those states.

Anti-animal legislation in Iowa, Florida, Virginia

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
DES MOINES, TALLAHASSEE,
RICHMOND–Stealth bills to rescind or handicap
animal protection flew through the Iowa and
Virginia legislatures in early 2011 and appeared
to be close to passage in Florida too as the
April 2011 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press.
Iowa governor Terry Branstad on March 24,
2011 signed into law a bill rescinding the state
prohibition on hunting mourning doves, which had
stood since 1918. Branstad had sought to open an
Iowa mourning dove hunting season since 1973,
during his first term in the Iowa legislature.

Ohio reneges on veal calf deal

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
COLUMBUS–Can the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board keep a promise?
Only 11 members of the 13-member board on
March 2, 2011 voted on a proposed regulatory
standard for raising veal calves, but six of the
11 approved of a standard which violates a June
2010 agreement brokered by former Ohio governor
Ted Strickland that kept off the November 2010
ballat a proposal to ban veal crates, sow
gestation crates, and battery cages for laying
hens.

Bison get grazing space in Montana but settlement puts wolves in the crosshairs

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

MISSOULA, Montana–Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer on
March 17, 2011 authorized bison wandering out of Yellowstone
National Park to graze within the Gardiner Basin, flanking the
Yellowstone River on either side for about 13 miles north of
Yellowstone. Bison who wander farther, into the Paradise Valley
south of Livingston, will be shot, said Montana gubernatorial
natural resources advisor Mike Volesky.
The March 17 order was Schweitzer’s second attempt in 2010 to
resolve the annual winter conflict between the instinct of bison to
migrate out of Yellowstone to lower elevations in search of forage,
and the hostility of ranchers to the presence of bison from fear that
they may transmit brucellosis to domestic cattle–which has in fact
never happened.

High-profile cases not criminally prosecuted

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

BROOKLYN, N.Y.; SAN ANDREAS, Calif. ;
WARMINISTER, Pa.–Prosecutors around the U.S.
have warned in recent months that steep budget
cuts would result in more cases being dropped
instead of testing evidentiary issues by going to
trial.
Three controversial dispositions of
politically sensitive animal-related cases in
mid-March 2011 officially had nothing to do with
budget, but may be illustrative of how cases can
be shunted aside.

Thoroughly troubled Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
Saratoga Springs, N.Y.–The Thoroughbred
Retirement Foundation “has been so slow or
delinquent in paying for the upkeep of the more
than 1,000 horses under its care that scores have
wound up starved and neglected, some fatally,”
charged New York Times horse racing writer Joe
Drape on March 18 2011.

NJ Horse Angels agrees to disband & repay misused funds

April 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

NEWARK–The New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs on March
24, 2011 announced that an entity called NJ Horse Angels and
founders Sharon Catalano-Crumb, 54, and Frank Wikoff, 55, both of
Phillipsburg, New Jersey, “will repay $57,129 in misused donations
to the Division of Consumer Affairs. The Division in turn will donate
the funds to registered non-profit horse rescue organizations.”
The amount to be repaid was found by the Charities
Registration & Investigation Section of the Division of Consumer
Affairs to have been “misappropriated by Catalano-Crumb and used by
her for trips to Atlantic City casinos, personal shopping, meals,
pre-paid phone cards [and] also diverted in the form of cash
withdrawals. Some donations were used for horse rescue,” the
Division acknowledged.

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