Arizona, New Jersey, and Alaska governors & wildlife

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

TUCSON, TRENTON, FAIRBANKS–Arizona Governor Jane
Napo-litano asked the Arizona Game & Fish Department to stop hunting
four pumas in Sabino Canyon, near Tucson, even after the department
agreed to live-trap instead of kill them, refused to authorize use
of a National Guard helicopter to help in the hunt, and told media
that she might ask the legislature to authorize her to hire and fire
the Game & Fish Department head, to make the agency more
accountable. Currently the head answers only to the five-member Game
& Fish Commission. Naming one member per year, newly elected
Arizona governors are in the last year of their first term before
they have named the majority.
Two weeks after closing Sabino Canyon on March 9, 2004
because the pumas purportedly posed a threat to hikers, the Game &
Fish Department had yet to bag a puma, but nabbed convicted Animal
Liberation Front arsonist Rod Coronado and Esquire writer John H.
Richardson for allegedly trespassing in the canyon while the hunt was
underway.
New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey, via environmental
commissioner Bradley M. Campbell, meanwhile asked the New Jersey
Fish & Game Council to refrain from authorizing another bear hunt,
after 328 bears were killed in the first New Jersey bear hunt since
1970. Wildlife officials had estimated that there were 3,200 bears
in New Jersey. Further study found that there are fewer than 1,500.

Why You Should Vote in November

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Why You Should Vote in November
by Julie E. Lewin
President, National Institute for Animal Advocacy
President and Lobbyist, Animal Advocacy Connecticut

How painful the presidential campaign is! Again our noses
are publicly rubbed in our political irrelevance. John Kerry, now
the Democratic nominee, found time in his frantic primary campaign
schedule to “hunt,” for all of five minutes, posturing to win votes
from hunters.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Chief Supreme Court Justice
Antony Scalia soon afterward participated in a bird-killing spree.
News media questioned not their thrill-killing, but rather the
impropriety of such ex parte contact between a judge and a litigant
in a pending case.
As in other election years, some animal advocates angrily
contemplate sitting out the presidential election as a mute form of
protest. That would be self-indulgent. Of course we should vote.

Pro-animal India pols shift alliances for election

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

NEW DELHI–Former Indian minister for animal welfare Maneka
Gandhi, serving in Parliament as an independent since 1996, on
February 16 joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, with her son
Varun.
Varun Gandhi was reportedly expected to join Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the campaign trail preliminary to the April
national election. The Hindu quoted “a party leader” as anticipating
that Varun Gandhi would make his debut as a political candidate in
the next election, after gaining behind-the-scenes experience and
making some public speaking appearances on behalf of other candidates
this year.
Joining the BJP was rumored to be a precondition for Mrs.
Gandhi possibly being reappointed to head the animal welfare
ministry, which Mrs. Gandhi directed from 1998 until mid-2002. The
ministry has reportedly been troubled ever since by indifferent
leadership, but Mrs. Gandhi told ANIMAL PEOPLE that she was not
hopeful.
“I don’t think they will ever give me that ministry [again],”
Mrs. Gandhi said. “But we have two months before the April
elections. Let’s see.”

How Republicans use hunting as a “wedge issue”

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C. –With U.S. federal elections
constitutionally mandated to be held on the first Tuesday of
November, it is a verity that the stretch drive of any campaign will
coincide with hunting season, and that close races for seats in
Congress and state legislatures may be decided by whether or not
hunters descend from tree stands to cast ballots.
Already the incumbent Republican majorities in the U.S.
Senate, House of Representatives, and the greater number of
statehouses are scrambling to lure hunter votes. Lacking the chance
to pass legislation, their fall challengers, mostly Democrats,
must rely upon image-building and promises.
Few candidates are likely to actively seek support from opponents of
hunting, even though the number of active hunters in the U.S. has
declined to just 13 million, representing just 4.6% of the U.S.
population. Approximately 10% of the U.S. population hunted a
generation ago.
The Fund for Animals on January 22 distributed a list of the
10 states in which hunting participation fell fastest from 1991 to
2001. Included were Rhode Island, down 59%; Massachusetts, down
39%; California, down 39%; Delaware, down 39%; Illinois, down
31%; Iowa, down 26%; North Carolina, down 26%; Connecticut,
down 21%; Ohio, down 20%; and New Mexico, down 19%.
Eight of the 10 states favored Democratic presidential
nominee Al Gore in 2000, and are expected to favor the Democratic
nominee in 2004. Ohio and North Carolina are considered “swing
states” that could go either way.

15-year-old puts bill to ban circuses on the ballot in a longtime Ringling stronghold

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

DENVER–Denver voters on August 10 will
be asked to approve an initiative to ban circus
performances, placed on the ballot through
petitioning by Heather Herman, 15, and Youth
Opposed to Animal Acts, a group she founded.
Herman is challenging Feld Entertainment,
owners of the Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey
Circus, in a Ringling stronghold.
“The Ringling circus has performed in
Denver since 1919,” noted Cindy Brovsky of
Associated Press, “The city’s Barnum
neighborhood is named after circus founder P.T.
Barnum, who bought 760 acres in 1882 as a winter
respite for his showŠCity officials estimate the
circus’ annual two-week stint pumps $8 million
into the local economy.”
Herman will be working against ruthless
as well as influential and affluent opposition.
PETA in a lawsuit filed in May 2001 and refilled
after amendments in 2002 alleged that Ringling
and Feld Entertainment hired the private security
firm Richlin Consultants to infiltrate and
disrupt PETA from 1989 until 1992.

Hunting for votes, Bush, Cheney, and Demo rivals Kerry and Clark shoot birds

January 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

WASHINGTON D.C.; DES MOINES, Iowa–Hunting chiefly for
votes, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry shot two cage-reared
pheasants in under five minutes at a Halloween photo-op near Colo,
Iowa.
The bloody ritual paid off on January 19, as Kerry polled
38% at the Iowa caucuses, the first showdown with rivals in quest of
the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina polled 32% support,
according to CNN, with former Vermont Governor Howard Dean third at
18%. Representative Richard Gephardt, fourth with 11%, withdrew
from the race.
Assured of the Republican nomination, both U.S President
George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney prominently shot birds
during December 2004.
Among their prospective Democratic opponents, Kerry has
previously hunted mourning doves. Retired U.S. Army General Wesley
Clark, not entered in the Iowa caucuses, is well-known as a duck
hunter, whose campaign began with support from wealthy Arkansas
hunting companions.

Study confirms: corruption kills wildlife

November 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

NAIROBI–Corruption kills wild-life, confirms data published
in the November 6, 2003 edition of the British scientific journal
Nature.
The findings were based on a comparison of elephant and rhino
populations with the national “Corruption Perception Indexes”
produced by the watchdog group Transparency International during the
years 1987-1994.
The findings support the arguments of Youth for Conservation,
the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and the Nairobi office of
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in their continuing
effort to maintain the 1977 Kenyan national ban on sport hunting.
Yet study authors Robert J. Smith, R.D.J. Muir, M.J.
Walpole, Andrew Balmford and Nigel Leader-Williams paradoxically
concluded with an implied endorsement of “sustainable use,” such as
hunting, to fund conservation. This was probably because the study
made no effort to trace the relationship between legal hunting and
corruption.
Wildlife policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–backed by much of the same money–threaten to replace the
principle of protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by being hunted or
captured for sale.

Bush policy & bushmeat

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

WASHINGTON D.C., NAIROBI– Wildlife
policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–and backed by much of the same
money–threaten to replace the principle of
protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by
being hunted or captured alive for sale.
The proposed amendments represent such an
extreme interpretation of the “sustainable use”
philosophy advanced since 1936 by the National
Wildlife Federation and since 1961 by the World
Wildlife Fund that even WWF endangered species
program director Susan Lieberman was quick to
denounced the U.S. versions.
“Money doesn’t always mean conservation,”
Lieberman told Washington Post staff writer
Shankar Vedantam. “To me, the theme is allowing
industry to write the rules.”

The apartheid legacy in wildlife conservation

October 2, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

The apartheid legacy in wildlife conservation
by Chris Mercer, co-director, Kalahari Raptor Centre

Twelve years after Nelson Mandela walked to freedom, South
Africa is still struggling to overcome the crippling legacy of
apartheid in environmental affairs.
Affirmative action appointments are intended to transform and
democratize nature conservation, but the awaited transformation is
slow in coming–and one of the most unfortunate aspects of the delay
is that some of our most ruthless people are meanwhile exporting the
canned hunting industry, which is a legacy of apartheid, throughout
Africa.
Desperately poor nations are too often seduced by the promise
of the money to be made from hunting, demonstrated by some of the
same South African entrepreneurs whose involvement in gun-running and
ivory and rhino horn poaching helped to uphold the apartheid regime
by destabilizing much of the black-ruled portion of the continent.
The apartheid regime instituted three goals for wildlife
management, each directly contributing to the growth and
profitability of the hunting industry, to the detriment of almost
everyone else. These goals were:

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