A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
WASHINGTON D.C.– –
House speaker Newt Gingrich on
March 21 signaled imminent motion
toward passing a long-delayed
Endangered Species Act reauthorization
bill, appointing California representative
Richard Pombo and New
York representative Sherwood
Boelert to co-chair a new
Republican task force on the environment.
Pombo is among the most
aggressive foes of the ESA; Boelert
is among the most prominent proESA
Republicans.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
It isn’t easy being a Canadian. We don’t get a hell
of a lot of respect. To most of the world, especially the U.S.,
we’re a quiet people with an unremarkable history, occupying
a considerable amount of frozen geography.
They’ve heard of maple syrup, Canadian
Club––and that we host the largest single slaughter of a
wildlife species anywhere on Earth.
Our annual massacre of harp and hooded seals is
infamous internationally both for scale and for gruesome cruelty.
The seal club is better known than the rye whisky kind.
Not that it makes economic sense. It doesn’t make
money and hasn’t for decades. The sealers are glorified welfare
bums, living high on subsidies and being paid more for
who they are than what they do.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
As expected, U.S. President Bill
Clinton announced February 9 that the U.S.
would “vigorously pursue high-level efforts to
persuade Japan to reduce the number of whales
killed in its research program,” but stopped
short of imposing trade sanctions, as he is
authorized to do in response to a Commerce
Department advisory issued in December that
Japan is violating the intent of the International
Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial
whaling by setting “research” quotas for
minke whales so high––now more than
400––that the “research” amounts to commercial
whaling.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
Running for the Green Party,
seeking a senate seat in Victoria, Australia,
Animal Liberation author Peter Singer won 3%
of the vote on March 2.
Antonio Shaw has replaced former
American SPCA executive vice president
John Foran, who left after a November clash
with law enforcement chief Robert O’Neill.
O’Neill reportedly departed on March 4.
Longtime ASPCA Animal Watch editor Cindy
Adams meanwhile resigned in January to
attend nursing school.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
Last Chance for Animals has
pledged to “take advantage of the tens of
thousands of supporters” it expects to attend
the June “March for the Animals” in
Washington D.C. to “blockade the USDA”
if it fails to announce pending regulatory
amendments to change the Class B dealer
system before then. Currently, the “B”
dealer classification covers anyone who
buys or sells animals across interstate
lines––including more than a thousand pet
dealers along with from 50 to 75 sellers of
random-source dogs and cats to laboratories,
many of whom have been accused of trafficking
in stolen pets. USDA spokesperson
Stephen Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE
almost a year ago that the agency wants to
split th” ‘B” category into nine subcategories,
to enable closer tracking of activity.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
TORONTO––A Divisional Court ruling by Justice
Edward Saunders is expected soon as to whether the Toronto
Humane Society must release to the public copies of the
pound contract it holds with the City of Toronto.
Claiming a need to protect the security of animals
and staff, THS has appealed a December 29, 1995 order
from Tom Mitchinson, assistant commissioner of the
Information and Privacy Commission of Ontario, to release
both the current contract, signed in 1995, and the contract
that preceded it, signed in 1985, with an automatic annual
renewal clause that will expire on July 31.
The Toronto City Council on March 5 authorized
the negotiation of another one-year renewal, over the objection
of Councillor Pamela McConnell, who held the THS
board seat reserved for the City Council from November 30,
1994 to February 7 of this year.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
“Four new trends will greatly affect the course of environmental politics in the
1990s,” writes Competitive Enterprise Institute director of environmental studies Jonathan
Adler in his recently published opus, Environmentalism at the Crossroads. “They are: the
growing influence of deep ecology and its radical preservationist policy prescriptions; the
environmental ‘backlash,’ as represented by the property rights and wise use movements;
the emergence of the environmental justice movement and the tensions it has created within
organized environmentalism (as members of racial and ethnic minorities demand representation);
[and] the challenge to conventional environmental policies by free market environ –
mentalism.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:
Pork barrel politics came into the American lexicon
through the political campaigns of North Carolina-born lawyer and
war hero Andrew Jackson, U.S. President 1829-1837, who helped
Tennessee break off from North Carolina and then built a political
empire by allegedly passing out salt pork at the polls.
Off the pig! popped up in the 1960s. In inner city slang,
it meant “kill the police,” but when ANIMAL PEOPLE asked
activists at the recent Midwest Animal Liberation Conference if
they recognized it, none under age 35 did. They guessed, instead,
that it had something to do with living downwind or downstream of
a hog farm.
In the old days, before antibiotics, almost every farm
kept a hog or two, who ate slops––a mixture of kitchen wastes and
barnyard offal––and wallowed at will in a mucky outdoor pen.
Hardly anyone imagined that hybrid corn, motor vehicles, and
penicillin might make possible the use of standardized methods in
rearing the creatures who inspired the expression, “Independent as
a hog on ice.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:
ISTANBUL––As a game of capture-theflag
among youths on the rocky islands between
Greece and Turkey escalated from taunts to trouble in
late January, Turkish Mediterranean monk seal expert
Bayram Ozturk of the Istanbul University faculty of
fisheries apparently tried to pour oil on the troubled
waters, but only stoked the conflagration, which was
eventually stopped only through the personal intercession
of U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Said Ozturk on January 31 via the MARMAM
online bulletin board, “The Mediterranean
monk seal population in Turkey is no longer stable,”
something of an understatement. “The most recent
census, made last year, found 47 individuals. On
the Bodram Peninsula, only six individuals including
pups are living in the small islands called Cavus,
Iremit, and Kardak. Since 1991, the Monk Seal
Protection Project has been conducted in these islets
on behalf of the Turkish Ministry of the Environment
by Istanbul University. Unfortunately,” Ozturk continued,
“Kardak got occupied by Greek soldiers.