Category: Politics

ALASKAN WAR ON WILDLIFE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

JUNEAU––Alaska governor
Tony Knowles has pledged to veto a bill
setting a bounty on wolves, passed by
the legislature––but that’s about the only
good news for wolves in Alaska.
On May 3, wildlife biologist
Gordon Haber, monitoring Alaskan wolf
populations for Friends of Animals,
found the last of the Headwaters pack
dead in snares––”nearly three weeks after

he end of trapping season,” wrote
Alaskan freelance journalist Tim Moffatt.
“Along with the body of a pregnant
female,” Moffat said, “were four pups,
two of them skinned; a coyote snared by
its back legs; a yearling moose; the
remains of another moose; and a cari-
bou,” possibly killed as bait. Haber docu-
mented the site and called the Alaska
State Troopers, Moffatt added.

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ESA update

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:
WASHINGTON D.C. ––Senators
Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), with co-sponsors
Bennett Johnston (D-La.), and Richard Shelby
(R-Ala.), on May 9 introduced the first of three
expected Republican drafts of a revised
Endangered Species Act. Largely authored by
timber industry lobbyists, the Gorton bill would
end the federal obligation to try to save all
endangered species. Instead the Secretary of the
Interior would be allowed to rule that a species
should go extinct. The bill would also lump
together captive and wild animals in counting
populations, meaning for instance that hatchery-
bred salmon, with little ability to survive in the
ocean, would count toward meeting the conser-
vation goals of endangered runs. In addition, the
bill would virtually preclude the designation of
protected critical habitat, and require taxpayers
to cover costs of routine corporate compliance.

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Hunting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Johnie Young, treasurer of a group trying to repeal the
ban on bear and cougar hunting with dogs approved by Oregon
voters last November, pleaded no contest in November 1990, along
with his wife Diana, to poaching bears and trafficking in bear paws
and gall bladders. State police records indicate Young killed 32 black
bears, including cubs, between April 1987 and June 1989––along
with three cougars and a bobcat. A police undercover video showed
Young leading several hunting parties who used dogs to tree bears,
shot the bears out of the trees, and allowed the dogs to maul the bears
after they fell.

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CAN FEDS MAKE A CASE? Bombing compounds enforcement crisis

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Bracing for attack from budget-slashers and deregulators
in Congress, federal animal protection law enforcement took a deadly hit of a different kind
on April 19. Seven of the 167 people killed by the truck bomb that devasted the Alfred P.
Murrah building in Oklahoma City were USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
staffers, including Richard Cummins, 56, senior investigator assigned to the Midwest Stolen
Dog Task Force and a 30-year veteran of the department, who left behind a wife, two daugh-
ters, and a son. Three more APHIS staffers were seriously hurt. Two escaped with only
minor injuries, after being marooned on the seventh floor of the shaky ruins for most of the
day. Three staffers were out of the office when the bomb went off.
Having only 75 inspectors to cover more than 8,000 federally licensed facilities,
APHIS in a split second lost 10% of its staff––and also suffered extensive loss of case files.
As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, 26 days after the blast, APHIS officials in
Washington D.C. were still trying to piece together and reasign the Oklahoma City work-
load––and were still putting together strategy, as well, for the upcoming battle over the 1995

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Birds

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“The only good great horned owl is a dead
one,” says Minnesota state senator Charles Berg, who has
introduced a bill to allow free range turkey farmers to catch
the owls with padded leghold traps––which can easily
crush an owl’s foot––as well as a bill to allow mourning
dove hunting. Letters asking that either bill be vetoed if
passed may be sent to Governor Arne Carlson, 130
Capitol, St. Paul, MN 55155.
“Small nature preserves, which work fine for
preserving plants, don’t work for migratory birds,”
Illinois Natural History Survey scientist Scott Robinson
says, after an extensive study of the relationship between
vanishing songbirds and cowbirds, who lay their faster-
hatching eggs ino other birds’ nests. While cowbirds are a
short-term cause of species decline, the longterm cause is
shrinking habitat, as deep forests where the songbirds are
safe give way to the edge habitat that cowbirds prefer.

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ESA ROUNDUP

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Senator Slade Gorton (R-Washington)
on April 12 promised a gathering of timber indus-
try executives in Stevenson, Washington, that he
would soon introduce a bill to replace the present
Endangered Species Act mandate to save all
species with a process by which by a political
appointee––probably the Secretary of the
Interior––would decide whether and how a species
should be saved. The bill was drafted by the
National Endangered Species Reform Coalition,
representing 185 corporations and so-called wise-
use groups, who gave Gorton’s re-election cam-
paign $34,000 last fall.

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Animal control & rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Trouble
The Chicago Animal Rights
Coalition on April 13 resumed a campaign
against the use of a captive bolt gun to dis-
patch dogs and cats and the practice of killing
them in front of others at the Animal Control
Department shelter in Rock Falls, Illinois.
Neither the American Veterinary Medical
Association nor any national humane organiza-
tion recommends the use of captive bolts for
euthanizing small animals; all oppose killing
animals within sight or sound of others. Rock
Falls promised to change euthanasia proce-
dures a year ago, but broke the promise,
according to CHARC founder Steve Hindi.
Letters on shelter letterhead urging compliance
with accepted humane standards may be sent
to Rock Falls mayor Glen Kuhlemier at 603
W. 10th St., Rock Falls, IL 61071.

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POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

The Sierra Club, National Audubon
Society, and Natural Resources Defense
Council on April 4 unveiled a $1.3 million TV
campaign and a $500,000 radio blitz to inform the
public about how regulatory rollbacks under the
Republican “Contract with America” will affect
“the food they eat, the water they drink, and the
air they breathe,” and about the links between
“those who pollute and those who write the laws
on pollution.” Sierra Club director Carl Pope
called it the largest such effort “ever launched by
the environmental community.” The announce-
ment came five days after Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich accused “left-wing environmental-
ists” of using environmental protection laws as a
vehicle to “oppose free enterprise, jobs, and eco-
nomic activity.” They look for the “hysteria of
the year,” Gingrich charged, “whether it’s going
to be nuclear winter or global warming or whatev-
er this year’s particular hysteria is.”

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