ESA rewrite looms

September 1, 1997 Archivist 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: Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Bonobo:
The Forgotten Ape
Text by Franz de Waal.
Photos by Franz Lanting.
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley
Way, Berkeley, CA 94720), 1997.

“With this book,” wrote Meredith Small
in a prepublication blurb, “de Waal and Lanting
ask us to give bonobos their due––to be considered
alongside the better-known common chimpanzee
as close human cousins. How nice to have the
peaceable, sexy bonobo added to the path of
human evolution! Bonobos represent the silver
lining in our ape heritage.”

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

July 1, 1997 Archivist 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.

BOOKS: Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery In Nature

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery In Nature
by Harry W. Greene. Photos by Michael & Patricia Fogden.
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way,
Berkeley, CA 94720), 1997. 351 pages, hardback, $45.

Harry W. Greene, curator of
herpetology at the University of
California’s Museum of Vertebrate
Zoology, had the bad luck to be awaiting
the imminent publication of his
opus, the summation of everything
known about snake evolution, just as
Michael Caldwell of the Field Museum
in Chicago and Michael Lee of the
University of Sydney announced perhaps
the most important paleontological
find about snakes ever––”The missing
link between the snake and the lizard,”

Lynx sacrified to free trade and leghold trapping

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The Department
of Commerce and U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service have escalated efforts to avert the long
pending European Union ban on imports of pelts
which might be taken by leghold trapping––and
the U.S. population of Canadian lynx may
become the first species extirpated by the Bill
Clinton/Albert Gore administration defense of
free trade at any cost, as on May 23 the USFWS
ruled in that an endangered species listing of the
lynx is “warrented but precluded” by other priorities.
The ruling came in response to a
March 27 verdict by U.S. District Judge Gladys
Kessler that the USFWS did not properly weigh
the evidence that the lynx is endangered in
refusing to list it in 1994.
Officially, the so-called other priorities
precluding listing the lynx involve a backlog
of other species awaiting listing. Unofficially,
the USFWS top priority may be avoiding the
necessity of protecting the lynx from hunting,

PUSHING THE “DOLPHIN DEATH BILL”

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Only the threat of filibuster
by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) remained to
keep revocation of the “dolphin safe” tuna import standard
from sliding through the Senate and into law, after the House
of Representatives approved HR 408, dubbed “the dolphin
death bill” by opponents, 262-166, on May 21. Unless Boxer
succeeds in indefinitely delaying the Senate vote this year, as
last year, the revocation bill will come before the Senate for a
vote later this summer as HR 39, and is strongly favored by
the Bill Clinton/Albert Gore administration.
The revocation, to bring U.S. law into conformity
with the 1994 Panama Agreement, will allow the fleets of 11
other nations to resume selling the U.S. tuna netted “on dolphin,”
but will require that no dolphins are seen being killed.

WILD TIME FOR THE WAYSTATION

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST,
Calif.––The California Fish and Game Commission
on June 12 reportedly put off until August a decision
on a Department of Fish and Game request that
it should impose a moratorium on the acceptance of
animals by the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary until
it meets DFG requirements.
DFG director Jacqueline E. Schafer told
the commission on May 16 that the DFG has
refused to renew the Wildlife Waystation permits to
exhibit and keep “detrimental species,” which
expired on February 15, because “the Waystation
continues to possess unpermitted animals, allows
breeding, and houses animals in substandard cages.
Twenty-six unauthorized wild animal births have
taken place at the Waystation since June 1994,”
Schafer charged. She further stated that 23 cages,
mostly housing big cats or bears, have been officially
out of compliance with state regulation since
May 16, 1995.

CAMPAIGNS, ORGANIZATIONS, LEADERS

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Animal control
Dave Flagler, 44, director of animal control in
Fairfax, Virginia for just one year, quit in June to head animal
services in Salt Lake County, Utah. Flagler said he was frustrated
by tight resources in Fairfax0.3, and concerned about a
possible move toward privatization. Previously director of animal
control in Multnomah County, Oregon, Flagler in Fairfax
replaced Daniel P. Boyle, DVM, longtime animal control
chief in DuPage County, Illinois, who after moving to Fairfax
was fired for alleged maladministration just four months later.
Attacked by hunters and trappers in Illinois for pursuing a local
leghold trap ban, Boyle ran afoul of animal rights activists in
Fairfax for using a once standard animal disposition test, now
considered obsolete, in which a dog and a cat are held face to
face. Animals who respond aggressively are killed. Flagler, in
Oregon, was targeted by activists for introducing a tough antivicious
dog law. He drew flak in Fairfax when the county
Board of Supervisors asked him to reduce deer numbers.
Flagler favored hiring a sharpshooter, but the Fairfax Animal
Shelter Advisory Commisson convinced the board to say no.

Odd Bodkin II

July 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

ANCHORAGE––Responding to “substantial new information”
pertaining to the application of National Biological
Service sea otter project leader James L. Bodkin to kill up to 20
endangered sea otters, reported on page 17 of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has
announced intent to reopen the public comment period.
Documents obtained by ANIMAL PEOPLE indicate
that Bodkin, working out of the Alaska Science Center in
Anchorage, may be seeking a pretext to open sea otter hunting.
Heavily hunted for fur in the 19th century, sea otters
were believed to be extinct early this century, but remnants of two
subspecies were found off California and Alaska in the late 1930s.
Resenting competition from sea otters for lucrative and now depleted
abalone and sea urchins, fishers held a decade ago that the
otters had recovered enough to be removed from the federal endangered
species list. The campaign lost momentum when oiled sea
otters became the icon species of the clean-up effort after the 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill.

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