Canada close to getting own ESA

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

OTTAWA––Overshadowed by the
CITES and ESA struggles, Canada staggers
toward adopting its first federal Endangered
Species Act, encumbered by resource industries
even stronger than their U.S. counterparts
and provincial governments with far more
autonomy than U.S. states. Canada has placed
276 species to date on an endangered species
list, but legally protecting those species has
been left to the often recalcitrant provinces.
As introduced last December 18,
the Canadian ESA would apply only to
species on federal land, or about 4% of the
Canadian land mass; includes only those
birds who are already covered by the
Migratory Birds Convention with the U.S.;

BUDGET AX HITS B.C. WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT HOOK-AND-BULLET CULTURE

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

VICTORIA, B.C.––Possibly adding by subtraction,
British Columbian prime minister Glen Clark of the left-leaning
New Democratic Party has axed eight senior fish and wildlife
managers since November 1996––and has put the provincial
wildlife department under five-year director of law enforcement
Nancy Bircher, apparently the first woman to head any
Canadian wildlife department.
Clark touts the exodus as downsizing to reduce the
provincial debt. Opponents term it “proof the government is
pursuing a brown agenda,” as Mark Hume of the Vancouver
Sun put it. Altogether, about 1,500 employees of environmental
departments have been laid off or ushered into early retirement,
even as the Clark regime has allowed logging in the
Stoltman Wilderness, near Squamish, and has resisted federal
pressure to reduce the B.C. commercial salmon fleet.

NORWAY SEEKS WATSON EXTRADITION

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

AMSTERDAM––Held in a Dutch maximum security
prison since April 2 on an Interpol warrant from Norway,
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson will
go to court May 26 in hopes of avoiding extradition on threeyear-old
charges of allegedly ramming the Norwegian coast
guard vessel Andennes, sending a false distress signal, and
trespassing in Norwegian waters, in addition to the charge of
being an accessory to the dockside scuttling of the whaling ship
Nybraena in 1992 for which he was first detained.
The additional charges were laid on April 18. The
District of Haarlem Court had on April 3 ordered that Watson
be kept on the Interpol warrant for 20 days to allow Norway
time to prepare an extradition case. That warrant, however,
asked only that Watson be sent to Norway to serve a 120-day
jail sentence he and colleague Lisa Distefano received in absen –
tia in May 1994 for their purported roles in the Nybraena sink –
ing. The vessel was later refloated and is still killing whales.
“Norway now claims we personally sank the vessel,”
Distefano told ANIMAL PEOPLE from the Sea Shepherd
offices in Venice, California, “but the Lofoten court record
notes, ‘The two were not in the country and could not take
direct part.’” Watson and Distefano had offered to go to
Norway for the trial if Norway would guarantee their safety and
agree to a change of venue from the Lofoten Islands, the hub of
the Norwegian whaling industry, which Distefano described as
“the source of numerous death threats against us.”

Former flyer saved sea turtles

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND,
Texas––Ila Loetscher, 92, has announced
her retirement after 35 years of patrolling
beaches in Texas and Mexico, machete in
hand, to roust sea turtle egg poachers, rehabilitating
sick and injured sea turtles, and
dressing as a turtle to lecture school children
at twice-weekly “Turtle Talks.”
Sea Turtle Inc., the nonprofit organization
Loetscher founded in 1977, continues,
planning to relocate from her beachfront
home to a state-of-the-art conservation center
as soon as funds can be raised to build it.
Loetscher with Amelia Earhart and
others in 1929 cofounded the Ninety-Nines,
an all-female flying club whose members
achieved countless records and firsts, another
of which eluded Earhart when she vanished
over the Pacific in her 1937 attempt to
become the first woman to fly around the
globe. Loetscher found her more enduring
avocation, preventing the ocean disappearance
of some of the earth’s most ancient large
species, after moving to the Texas coast in
1958 and finding a hurt turtle on the beach.

Coyote and a California proposition

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SACRAMENTO––Varmint coyotes
may split the Coalition to Protect California
Wildlife, and the proposed 1998 California
Wildlife Ballot Initiative that the coalition
formed to present, into separate committees
and separate initiatives.
The 1998 California Wildlife Ballot
Initiative was conceived as The Big One, a
head-on confrontation with hunters, trappers,
and ranchers in the most populous state. Signed
on in hopes a California victory could build
national momentum carrying into 2000 and
beyond were the American SPCA, the Animal
Protection Institute, the Ark Trust, Friends of
Animals, the Fund for Animals, the Humane
Society of the U.S., the International Fund for
Animal Welfare, and the Mountain Lion
Foundation, which has already scored referendum
victories for pumas in three of the last four
California elections.

Trophy hunters set sights on CITES

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––With the
Atlantic Canadian offshore seal hunt reopened
and up to speed last year, and Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society founder Paul Watson in
a Dutch jail, possibly en route to stand trial in
Norway for sinking whaling ships, it’s two
down and four to go for the wise-use wiseguys
in a concerted drive to reverse the influence of
animal rights activism on wildlife use and
misuse.
Ahead: a push to reopen international
trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn at
the June triennial conference of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, to be held in confirmed
wise-use wiseguy habitat at Harare,
Zimbabwe; an effort to end the International
Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial
whaling, easier for Japan and
Norway to do in October if they succeed at
Harare in downlisting minke whales from
CITES Appendix I to Appendix II; repealing
the U.S. “dolphin-safe” tuna import standard,
with the so-called “dolphin death bill” moving
quickly through the House of Representatives;
and gutting the Endangered Species Act.

BOOKS: How It Was With Dooms

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

How It Was With Dooms
by Carol Cawthra Hopcraft
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
(1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1997.
64 pages, hardcover, $19.95.

If James Ramos Austin, age 2, of Dallas,
could review a book, he could tell us exactly what’s
wrong with How It Was With Dooms. Austin lost his
right index finger, his right heel, and suffered a severe
facial wound on April 2, in a mauling by a bobcat that
one Carl Pool kept illegally in his home.
“Most parents would not allow their three-yearold
child to sleep curled up next to a full-grown wild
cheetah,” admits Simon & Schuster associate publicist
Rebecca Grosee, then informs us without a hint of criticism
or qualification that former magazine cover model

Saving right whales and lobsters too

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Infuriating New England lobster fishers with recent
court victories that restrict their methods on behalf of endangered
northern right whales, Richard “Mad Max” Strahan
may save the lobsters too.
A vegetarian Buddhist tai chi practitioner, Strahan
has “no permanent address or telephone,” according to
Portland Press Herald staff writer Edie Lau, but does have
an e-mail address and self-taught expertise in marine biology
and law. As “a confrontational street person,” again in
Lau’s words, Straham last September forced the National
Marine Fisheries Service to produce rules published April 4
that as outlined in a NMFS summary, “restrict the federal
portion of Cape Cod Bay right whale critical habitat to certain
lobster gear types” from April 1 until May 15, and
“close the entire Great South Channel right whale critical
habitat to lobster pot fishing from April 1 to June 30.”

Headsplitting problem on the ice

May 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland––Atlantic Canadian fishers
clubbed and/or shot their way toward a quota of 285,000 harp
seals and hooded seals this spring, the most in 15 years, because
they wrongly blame seals––who don’t eat much cod––for wiping
out overfished cod stocks. When the International Fund for
Animal Welfare produced videotape of illegally killed newborn
whitecoats on ice off Iles de la Madeleine, Quebec, the perpetrators
were quickly excused by DFO area manager Roger Simon.
“They’re technically white-looking seals,” Simon said.
“When the moulting process starts, the white fur is still there as
the new grey fur coming out is underneath. It’s no longer a whitecoat,
but it may appear white.”
The Canadian government used similar logic to reauthorize
the offshore seal hunt itself in late 1995, after a decade-long
suspension due to international protest. Throughout the 1980s,
governments both Liberal and Progressive Conservative traded
generous cod quotas for votes against scientific advice, until as
predicted the cod stock crashed. Forced to halt cod fishing indefinitely
in 1992, the Progressive Conservatives lost the next election––but
Liberal fisheries minister Brian Tobin turned the crisis
to his advantage by scapegoating seals. As he did, again contrary
to most scientific advice, he left the federal government to run
successfully for premier of Newfoundland.

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