Sealing their doom: Whale sanctuary may be last safe harbor

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,

QUEBEC––The Canadian government got

the word about cod stocks on June 29, and it

wasn’t good. Having allowed northern cod to

be fished to commercial extinction before cut-

ting quotas and cracking down on foreign

dragnetters, Canada may have lost the greater

portion of its Atlantic fishery until at least a

decade into the 21st century, if not forever.

Scrambing to shift the blame, and

hoping to revive the global market for seal

pelts by way of tossing a bone to frustrated

fishers, Canadian fisheries minister Brian

Tobin claimed that evening on the CBC

Prime Time News that, “Whatever the role

seals have played in the collapse of ground-

fish stocks, seals are playing a far more

important and significant role in preventing,

in slowing down, a recovery.”

Study confirms chicken cognition

July 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

SILSOE, U.K.––Hens pecking

buttons to earn food rewards may have a

better awareness of passing time and be bet-

ter able to assess the prospects of future

gain than human slot machine gamblers, a

new British study suggests.

Silsoe Research Institute Bio-

physics Group animal welfare scientist

Siobhan Abeyesinghe varied the “payout”

for pecking so that her hens would get only

a small amount of food if they pecked

quickly, but would receive a large amount

if they delayed their pecks for 22 seconds,

long enough to demonstrate the ability to

mentally clock their own behavior and show

deliberate self-restraint.

Korean animal researcher clones human stem cells

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

SEOUL––“I never destroy any life 

during my process,” Seoul National University 

stem cell research laboratory director Woo Suk 

Hwang recently told New York Times corre-

spondent James Brooke. 

Woo Suk Hwang on May 20, 2005 

announced that he had become the first scientist 

to successfully clone human stem cells––“a 

major leap,” wrote Brooke, “toward the dream 

of growing replacement tissues for conditions 

like spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes, and 

congenital immune deficiencies.” 

Said Woo Suk Hwang, “We use only 

a vacant [unfertilized] egg, with no genetic 

materials” from which to form an embryo. 

Trained as a veterinarian, Woo Suk 

Hwang, 52, was raised by a widowed mother 

who supported six children as a dairy hand. 

“I could communicate with cows eye 

to eye,” Woo Suk Hwang told Brooke. 

Woo Suk Hwang is a devout practic-

ing Buddhist, wrote Apoorva Mandavilli in a 

profile for the journal Nature Medicine. 

But in conversing with Brooke, Woo 

Suk Hwang appeared to refer only to never 

destroying any human life. His past achieve-

ments have included producing the first cow 

conceived in South Korea through in vitro fer-

BOOKS: The Animal Research Controversy

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

The Animal Research Controversy

Protest, Process and Public Policy. An Analysis of Strategic Issues,

by Andrew N. Rowan and Franklin M. Loew, with Joan C. Weer.

Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy (200 Westboro Road,

North Grafton, MA 01536), 1995. 210 pages, quality paperback, $30.00.

A decade after publishing the most

reliable resume of the vivisection issue to that

point, Of Mice, Models, & Men ( 1 9 8 4 ) ,

Andrew Rowan et al have done it again. The

Animal Research Controversy presents and

evaluates every significant fact and factual

claim made by either side––and like Of Mice,

Models, & Men, won’t please any of the

noisier partisans, as Rowan once more

demolishes popular fallacy.

Birds

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Psychologist Shigeru Watanabe of

Keio University in Tokyo reported in the

May edition of New Scientist that pigeons can

tell paintings by Pablo Picasso’s cubist period

from those of impressionist Claude Monet,

but cannot distinguish the works of Cezanne

from those of Renoir––which is to say they

have about the same ability to discern style as

the average art appreciation student.

The last male crested ibis in

Japan died suddenly on May 1 while carrying

grass to the nest occupied by his mate, bor-

rowed from China, and their cluster of five

eggs. The egg were to hatch circa May 10.

The dead ibis, age 21, was the next to last of

five who were taken from the wild for

attempted captive breeding in 1981. None so

far have bred successfully. The sole survivor

of Japan’s once plentiful crested ibises is a 28-

year-old female. China still has 28 of the big

birds, all in zoos and/other sanctuaries.

LAB SHORTS

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Using pigs to grow spare parts

for humans came closer to reality with

the late April announcements that a team

at the Lahey Hitchcock Clinic in

Burlington, Massachusetts, had trans-

planted pig tissue into the brain of a 59-

year-old man in hopes of reversing

Parkinson’s disease, while a team at Duke

University created genetically engineered

pigs whose bodies include two human pro-

teins that prevent hyperacute tissue rejec-

tion. “In societies where animals are

killed in the tens of millions for food,”

wrote Dr. John Favre of the London

University Institute of Child Health, in a

Nature Medicine editorial accompanying

publication of the Duke data, “it would be

difficult to argue on ethical grounds for a

proscription on the killing of a tiny num-

ber of pigs to save the lives and restore the

health of sick and dying patients.”

Agriculture

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Twelve activists were arrested and

two hurt at Brightlingsea, England, on

April 18, as they failed to halt the export of

1,200 sheep to Belgium, following an April 12

ruling by the High Court that local authorities

had no right to ban live animal exports. The

ruling undid export bans won through a winter

of protest at all major British cattle ports.

Australia’s effort to resume sheep

sales to Saudi Arabia after a four-year hiatus

hit a snag on May 8 when Saudi inspectors

diverted the first cargo of 75,000 sheep to

Jordan because they didn’t think the sheep

were healthy enough to be unloaded at Jeddah.

A second ship carrying 30,000 sheep changed

destinations voluntarily. Australia sold up to

3.5 million sheep a year to Saudi Arabia before

1991, when the frequent arrival of diseased

sheep caused the Saudis to cut off the trade.

Birds

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Fishing industry fights over bones

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“This meeting was called to fight over

the meat,” reads the caption below a popular

office calendar cartoon showing wild-eyed and

desperate Neanderthals. “There is no meat. It is

moved that we fight over the bones.”

The cartoon could describe the col-

lapse of oceanic ecosystems. Recent editions of

the journals Science and Nature warned of

crashing zooplankton and algae populations, as

result of pollution, global warming, and over-

fishing, which is taking biomass out of the

oceans faster than it can be restored. But instead

of making oceanic habitat restoration a global

priority, both fishing fleets and the political rep-

resentatives of fishing nations fight with increas-

ing fury for whatever fish remain, with ominous

implications for world peace as well as for

aquatic animals.

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