FEW CHEER SPECIES COMEBACKS

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Surprisingly little acclaim attends the rediscovery of
species believed to be recently extinct or extirpated––and less
political popularity. Rediscoveries are unpopular with proponents
of trade and development because they raise the threat of
new protective regulation, but are not much better liked by
advocates of stricter conservation laws, since they lend weight
to claims that the purportedly high current rate of extinction is
more an artifact of incomplete research than a scientific verity.
Rediscoveries are also sometimes even scientifically
suspect: some species haven’t been seen in decades perhaps
mainly because no one was looking.
Advances in genetic research have narrowed the likelihood
of anyone fooling the scientific community with a faked
rediscovery, but attempted fakery has occurred, especially in
cases where species still found in one habitat apparently turn up
again in another, without any sign as to how they persisted
without observation, or recolonized an area with no record of
having crossed intervening territory.

What to do with 1,000-plus surplus lab primates?

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Rattie, a seven-inch albino rat
belonging to Judy Reavis, M.D., of
Benecia, California, earns her living
pulling computer wiring through woodwork
for Hermes Systems Management, exercising
skills developed originally by running
mazes in a psychological research lab to
claim rewards of cat food and candy.
If laboratory primates had comparable
abilities and work habits, labs now
downsizing would have little trouble finding
homes for them all––but primates have been
used mainly to suffer from disease and
breed more primates. As disease research
moves away from animal models, the cost
of keeping chimpanzee and rhesus macaque
colonies has the governments of both the
U.S. and Canada looking at phase-out
options. Chimp maintenance alone costs
U.S. federal agencies a combined total of
$7.3 million a year. The estimated cost of
maintaining each chimp over an average 25-
year lifespan is circa $300,000.

Licensed to kill

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––You probably
think the Endangered Species Act, Marine
Mammal Protection Act, and Migratory Bird
Treaty Act protect wildlife.
What they actually do is require special
permission to kill or harass wildlife––and
spot-checking recent requests for permits and
exemptions, ANIMAL PEOPLE and Friends
of Animals’ special investigator Carroll Cox
quickly confirmed that the permitting and
exempting procedures are easily and often
manipulated.
“Permitting and exemptions are the
Achilles heel of wildlife law enforcement,”
says Cox, a former special investigator for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and game warden
for the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “With the right permit or an exemption,
you can do anything.”

ESA rewrite looms

September 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Seven
years of political battling over Endangered
Species Act reauthorization appear headed
toward quick resolution.
The White House in late July signaled
eagerness to lower the profile of ESA
issues before the 1998 presidential campaign,
when both vice president Albert Gore and
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt may seek to
succeed Bill Clinton by building a similar
coalition of moderate conservative and traditional
Democratic support.
As presiding officer over the Senate,
negotiating ratification of international treaties,
Gore has pleased conservatives by favoring
trade over strict species protection under the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, the International
Whaling Convention, and the Declaration of
Panama, recently implemented by repeal of
the “dolphin-safe” tuna import standard (see
page 2). Babbitt has curried conservative
favor, meanwhile, by rapidly increasing the
number of National Wildlife Refuges open to
hunting and fishing: half when he took office,
nearly two-thirds now.

BOOKS: Bird Brains: the intelligence of crows, ravens, magpies, and jays

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Bird Brains: the intelligence of crows, ravens, magpies, and jays by Candace Savage
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1997. 114 pages, paperback, $18.00.

“The corvids are the top of the line
in avian evolution,” Candace Savage writes,
“among the most recent and successful of
modern birds. From some unknown pinpoint
beginning, they have diversified and expanded
to occupy most of the globe. Whether you go
to the Sahara or the Amazon rain forest,” or
for that matter the Arctic, “you will likely be
met by some kind of crow or crow cousin,”
such as a jay, “who will eye you boldly and
shout if you come too close.”
According to Native American legend,
says Savage, it was a crow cousin,
Raven, who attached visible genitals to male
mammals as a practical joke.

Scientists say Canada falsified data

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

NEWFOUNDLAND– – Memorial
University biologist Edward Miller, host of a
February 1997 workshop on how harp seals
affect the Atlantic Canada cod fisheries,
charged on June 24 that one of the four participants
from the Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans had privately disclosed
data indicating that as many as 500,000 seals
were killed in the 1996 offshore hunt, nearly
double the official count of 262,402.
Twenty-nine scientists from seven nations
took part in the workshop.
“DFO personnel found several
sealing vessels carrying the same number of
male seal genitals as pelts,” Charles Enman
of the Ottawa Citizen reported. “But the
number of pelts should have been roughly
double the number of male genitals, since
male and female seals are impossible to distinguish
before they are shot. This suggested
that sealers were collecting genitals and pelts
from the males, but discarding entire female
carcasses, pelts and all,” as there is little
market for pelts and reporting kills of females
would just deplete the sealing quota faster.

Sexually exploiting horses for fun, profit, and advancement of science

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WAUPACA, EL CAJON––
The rare sentencing of two serial
sexual assailants of mares in less
than six weeks leaves horse people
less relieved than fearful.
Found not guilty by reason of
insanity or mental defect of sexually
assaulting a pregnant mare on June
1, 1996, Sterling Rachwal, 33, of
Weyauwega County, Wisconsin,
was on May 13 sent to a state mental
institution for up to 18 and a half
years––two thirds of the 28-year
maximum for conviction.

ODD BODKIN––HE SEEKS TO KILL SEA OTTERS

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

ANCHORAGE––An “odd bodkin,” used in witchcraft
trials, was a telescoping needle used to prick the accused
without drawing blood, thereby assuring a guilty verdict.
Friends of Animals special investigator Carroll Cox,
formerly of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, thinks the oddest
bodkin he’s seen lately was the application seeking to kill
sea otters that National Biological Service sea otter research
project leader James L. Bodkin of the Alaska Science Center in
Anchorage submitted to the USFWS on March 17. Bodkin
applied to shoot up to 20 endangered sea otters to recover surgically
implanted time depth recorders (TDRs) and VHF transmitters,
just 31 days after getting USFWS permission to capture
and implant the devices in up to 100 sea otters on the proviso
that none would be intentionally killed or lastingly injured.

The meat mob muscles in

June 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

Poorly educated women, often of ethnic minorities,
many of them immigrants, do the hardest, dirtiest, most dangerous
work––until their bodies fail them.
Pushers on almost every busy street corner stoke the
addictions that already kill more Americans than any other
cause, and have created the world’s deadliest drug problem.
Their suppliers rank among the global leaders in
dumping toxic waste.
Kingpins of this mob, some already convicted of
political corruption reaching clear to the White House, are now
muscling into position to siphon off the hard-won economic
gains of the developing world.

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