Court Calendar

December 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

Initiative victories upheld

The U.S. Supreme Court on November 15 rejected without
comment a petition seeking to overturn the initiative ban on
cockfighting approved by Oklahoma voters in 2002. Spokespersons for
the United Gamefowl Breeders Association indicated that since the ban
has withstood all appeals, they will lobby to reduce the penalties.
Louisiana and New Mexico are the last states to allow cockfighting.

A three-judge panel of the Washington state Court of Appeals
in Tacoma on December 7 upheld initiative laws I-655, which in 1996
banned baiting bears and restricted hunting bears, pumas, and
bobcats with dogs, and I-713, which in 2000 banned body-gripping
traps and use of Compound 1080 and sodium cyanide to poison wildlife.
The pro-hunting and trapping front Citizens for Responsible Wildlife
Management contended that both measures illegally violated the public
trust by transferring control of wildlife management away from the
state government.

Stealth riders attack wild mustangs and migratory birds

December 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Stealth riders attached to the “Consolidated
Appropriations Act, 2005″ on November 18, 2004 crippled two of the
oldest U.S. federal animal protection statutes.
The 3,600-page, $388 billion appropriations act, HR 4818,
was ratified in final form and sent to U.S. President George W. Bush
for his signature on December 6.
Buried deep within it, Section 142 in effect repealed the
1971 Wild and Free Ranging Horse and Burro Protection Act, virtually
mandating that wild horses and burros must be sold to slaughter.
Section 143 excised 94 bird species from the 1918 Migratory
Bird Treaty Act.
The HR 4818 riders followed four years after similar tactics
permanently excluded rats, mice, and birds from the definition of
“animals” protected by the 1971 Animal Welfare Act.
The effect of the three repeals is that even before the Bush
administration moves to roll back the “critical habitat” provisions
of the Endangered Species Act, as demanded in late November by the
Western Governors Association, animals have less federal protection
now than in 1974, when the ESA was adopted.

Frogs, chemicals, & talk of confused gender identity shake up bureaucrats

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

ST. PAUL–An apparent attempt to muzzle University of
California at Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes instead enabled him to
tell the world in October 2004 that frogs, toads, and salamanders
appear to be abruptly disappearing due to the effects of atrazine.
Atrazine, an endocrine-disrupting herbicide, is used on
two-thirds of the cornfields in the U.S. and 90% of the sugar cane
plantations. Popular with farmers for 45 years, it may be the
most-used farm chemical worldwide. Residues can persist in soil for
more than a year and in groundwater for longer, but by comparison to
paraquat, a leading rival herbicide, atrazine breaks down
relatively quickly, and is safer for applicators and field workers
who may have accidental exposure.
Unfortunately, Hayes testified at an October 26 Minnesota
Senate hearing, even low levels of atrazine “chemically castrate and
feminize” male frogs, fish, and some other wildlife.
Atrazine may also trigger prostate cancer in male humans,
Hayes said, citing studies of men who work in proximity to it and
the results of laboratory testing on various mammal species.
“Hayes was invited to speak to the Minnesota Senate
Environment and Natural Resources Committee after Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency commissioner Sheryl Corrigan withdrew an earlier offer
for him to make the keynote speech at an agency-sponsored
conference,” explained Dennis Lien of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Appellate verdicts: 1st Amendment, trapping, pigs

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Confining anti-circus and rodeo
protesters to “free expression zones” far from
the entrance to the state-owned Cow Palace arena
in San Francisco violates their First Amend-ment
rights to freedom of speech and assembly, a
three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled on October 20, 2004.
“Cordoning protesters off in a zone the size of a
parking space, located over 200 feet from the
entrance, far from encouraging interaction with
them, is more likely to give the impression to
passers-by that these are people to be avoided,”
wrote Judge Martha Berzon.

The National Trappers Association does
not have legal standing to try to overturn the
1998 California ballot Proposition 4 ban on
leghold traps and the poisons sodium cyanide and
Compound 1080, ruled U.S. District Judge Thelton
Hender-son during the third week of October 2004.

Shooting geese kills Kerry, Voting machines steal greyhound victory in Florida

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CLEVELAND–Democratic Party presidential
nominee John Kerry either forgot or took for
granted the 40% of Ohio voters who supported a
failed 1998 ballot initiative that sought to
reinstate a ban on dove hunting. The initiative
was heavily supported by young voters and women.
On October 21, 2004, Kerry in the words
of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd “cooked
his own goose.”
Wrote Dowd, “In yet another attempt to
prove to George W. Bush that he is man enough to
run this country, John Kerry made an animal
sacrifice to the political gods in a cornfield in
eastern OhioŠTromping about in a camouflage
costume and toting a 12-gauge double-barreled
shotgun that shrieked ‘I am not a merlot-loving,
brie-eating, chatelaine-marrying dilettante,’
the Democratic nominee emerged from his shooting
spree with three fellow hunters proclaiming,
‘Everybody got one,’ showing off a hand stained
with goose blood.”

Iditarod, Yukon Quest racers charged with neglect

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

WASILA, Alaska–Animal control officers from Mat-Su Borough,
Alaska, on October 16 removed 28 allegedly starving dogs from the
property of three-time Iditarod musher David Straub near Willow and
charged him with 17 counts of cruelty.
Competing in the 2000, 2001, and 2002 runnings of the
Iditarod, Straub in 2002 recorded the fastest time ever for a
last-place finisher.
The Straub dogs were seized three weeks after former Yukon
Quest contender Sigmund Stormo was charged with neglecting 15 dogs on
Kodiak Island. Stormo turned the dogs over to former Iditarod musher
Tim Osmar for care, pending resolution of the case. The same dogs
were impounded on June 11 by the Alaska SPCA, after they were found
without food at Stormo’s home near Soldotna. State police reportedly
found more than 50 marijuana plants, but did not find Stormo, who
was in Kodiak. The Alaska SPCA returned the dogs to Stormo and did
not charge him, after he averred that the dogs were neglected by
someone else who was to look after them in his absence.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate that no prominent musher has
ever been convicted of neglect while in good standing with racing
associations.

Chinese live markets feed the fur trade

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

NEW YORK CITY–“Real Fur Is Fun Again,”
headlined the October 11 edition of Newsweek.
“It’s less expensive and more popular than ever.
But as young people snuggle up, where are the
protesters?”
Fur appeared on 36 of the 270 pages in
the “Women’s Fashion Fall 2004” edition of The
New York Times Style Magazine: as many pages as
in all editions from 2001 through 2003 combined.
Fur is more visible now than at any time
in the past 20 years. Furriers are buying more
ad space in The New York Times and other
periodicals known to reach affluent younger
women, anticipating a profitable winter–if the
economy holds up.
But furriers have often misread market
demand. Expecting a boom in the winters of
1993/1994 and 1997/1998, chiefly through
believing their own propaganda, furriers drove
fur pelt prices up at auction with panic buying
to increase inventory, stepped up their
advertising, and experienced busts instead.

Barker gives $1 million for AR law institute

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

LOS ANGELES–Bob Barker, 81, host of The Price Is Right TV
game show since 1972, on November 4 donated $1 million to create the
Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law at the
University of California, Los Angeles campus. The fund will be
directed by UCLA professor Taimie Bryant, who currently teaches a
course in animal law, Associated Press reported.

North America

ANIMAL PEOPLE arranges rare show-and-tell–Procter & Gamble meets Best Friends

November 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

CINCINNATI–Fifteen founders and senior
staff of the Best Friends Animal Society on
October 22 talked shop with three Procter &
Gamble senior scientists and two senior
representatives of pet food maker Iams Inc., a
P&G subsidiary.
Convened by ANIMAL PEOPLE, preceding the
October 22-24 “No More Homeless Pets” conference
in Cincinnati, the meeting introduced key
personnel from one of the fastest-growing and
most increasingly influential animal charities in
the world to counterparts at one of the most
controversial companies engaged in animal
research.
Procter & Gamble since 1984 has invested
more than $190 million in developing alternatives
to animal testing, including $152 million since
1994. Yet P&G has also been continuously under
boycott by PETA and allied animal rights groups.

« 1 … 97 98 99 100 101 … 321 »