Bangkok Six attorney kills himself

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Attorney Michael Metzger, 57, of St.

Helena, California, shot his wife Kyle in the

legs on March 3, then killed himself. He had

reportedly been depressed and drinking since

federal judge Saundra Armstrong suspended his

right to practice for six months in late 1992, after

he allegedly challenged two prosecutors to fist-

fights and asked a female prosecutor for tissue

samples “to see what species you are.”

The San Francisco Chronicle described

Metzger as “a generous, gentle man who loved

dogs and cats as well as the deer that roamed

near his home and vineyards.” As a member of

the Animal Legal Defense Fund, he defended,

on several occasions circa 1990, activists who

had been arrested while trying to stop legbreak-

ing experiments on greyhounds at Letterman

Hospital, a military facility in San Francisco.

COURT CALENDAR

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Wildlife and habitat

The U.S. Court of Appeals in

Washington D.C. on March 11 upset jurispru-

dence concerning endangered species protec-

tion by ruling in a case pertaining to timber rights

and spotted owl protection in the Pacific

Northwest that the government lacks authority to

protect wildlife habitat on private land. The U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service said that pending further

clarification of the ruling, perhaps by the U.S.

Supreme Court, it would make no policy changes.

The March 11 ruling directly contradicts the out-

standing precedent in such situations, established

by the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San

Francisco.

Birds

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

The Clinton administration on

February 23 unveiled a management plan

for 24 million acres of public land in the

Pacific Northwest that cuts the rate of log-

ging to 20% of the pace in the 1980s. Most

of the 5.3 million acres of old growth on the

public lands will be off limits, to protect

spotted owls and more than 1,000 other old

growth-dependent species. Although the

plan will make permanent the layoffs of

about 9,500 forest products workers, it is

expected to be what The New York Times

called “the final blueprint” for settling the

spotted owl crisis. Studies of the impact of

logging on spotted owls go on; critics of owl

protection may enjoy the March 13 disclo-

sure that the Seattle Center for Wildlife

Conservation is getting $107,000 from the

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to check spot-

ted owl guano from logging areas for hor-

monal signs of stress.

Fur

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Canadian environment minister Sheila Copps,

whose gracelessness earned her the nickname “Leader of

the rat pack” during her years as a Parliamentary back-

bencher, disrupted a meeting of top environmental offi-

cials from the seven major Western industrialized nations

on March 12 by denouncing the European Community ban

on seal pelt imports, the pending EC ban on imports of

pelts trapped by cruel methods, and opposition to the cur-

rent Canadian seal hunt. Copps claimed an alleged popula-

tion explosion of seals is causing the collapse of the

Atlantic Canada fishing industry, despite strong biological

evidence that seals do not eat many fish of the most com-

mercially valued species.

Will Clinton earn stripes on tiger boycott?

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

GENEVA, Switzerland– – The

Standing Committee of the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species

met March 21-25 to decide whether to call a

global boycott of exports from Taiwan and

China to protest their role in wildlife poach-

ing and smuggling. Chinese and Taiwanese

demand for aphrodisiacs and other traditional

wildlife-based medicines is the source of

much and perhaps most of the money in the

illegal wildlife traffic.

Splatt back

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

DERRY, New Hampshire––Dr.

Splatt’s Roadkill Monitoring Project is under-

way for the second year. Sixty secondary

schoolrooms are keeping an online log of

roadkills for nine weeks, starting March 14.

Thirty classes last spring compiled

the biggest data base on roadkills to date,

finding apparent peak times of vulnerability

for grey squirrels, raccoons, birds, beavers,

skunks, and rats, which may coincide with

when young leave their parents, the growth

of favored food plants, moon phases,

and––for scavengers––peaks in roadkills of

other species.

Alaskans slaughter caribou “protected” from wolves

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska––While

Alaska sponsored the slaughter of at least 92

wolves to make caribou more plentiful in the

Delta area southeast of Fairbanks, officially

known as Game Management Unit 20-A, the

caribou wandered into a free fire zone on

March 5––as they may have done for years.

Independent wildlife expert Dr.

Gordon Haber discovered while doing an aer-

ial survey on March 5 for Friends of Animals

that up to 1,500 caribou––30% of the Delta

herd––had moved out of 20-A into an area

east of Cantwell where intense roadhunting

and hunting from snowmobiles has been

underway since early January. Hunters in the

vicinity claimed a 90% success rate.

Hunting & Fishing

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

A bill to ban pigeon shoots includ-

ing the notorious Labor Day shoot in Hegins

fell three votes short of clearing the

Pennsylvania state house on March 8––and

actually drew a majority of the votes cast, 99-

93. However, 103 votes would have been

required to pass the bill from the 202-member

house to the state senate. Though the bill

would almost certainly have failed in the sen-

ate, where 38 of the 48 members have ‘A’ rat-

ings from the National Rifle Association, the

vote was a marked advance from 1989, when

the house defeated a similar bill, 126-66.

The Colorado house finance com-

mittee on February 16 killed as contrary to the

expressed intent of the electorate a bill that

would have reauthorized spring bear hunting

and hunting bears with hounds and bait––all of

which were banned by referendum in 1992.

ANIMAL HEALTH

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

Epidemiology

New York and Rhode Island

health officials said February 24 that a mys-

terious hantavirus caused the January 20

death of Rhode Island School of Design stu-

dent David Rosenberg, 22, who may have

become infected via rodent droppings while

sweeping out a warehouse in Queens. The

case is among the first known human cases in

the U.S. that apparently does not involve deer

mice. Four days earlier, the Centers for

Disease Control confirmed that the hantavirus

afflicts Florida cotton rats, and announced

the death of three Kansans from suspected

hantavirus infections. Of the 60 known U.S.

human victims, 27 have died; 23 have

recovered after suffering debilitating illness.

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