ESA protection lifted, wolf killing accelerates

June 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:

WASHINGTON D.C.–“Interior Announces Next Steps in
Protection, Recovery, and Scientific Management of Wolves,” Kendra
Barkoff of the U.S. Department of the Interior and Chris Tollefson of
the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service headlined a May 17, 2011 joint
press release.
What “protection, recovery, and scientific management”
meant was that wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains, western Great
Lakes region, and Oregon may now be shot, trapped, poisoned, and
strafed from aircraft as state governments see fit, so long as they
do not actually reduce wolf populations to the verge of regional
extinction.

Indian judge rules that wild birds held by vendor must be set free

June 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:

AHMEDABAD, India–Gujarat High Court Justice M.R. Shah on
May 12, 2011 ordered the release to freedom of 494 parrots, doves,
pigeons, lovebirds, dogs, and rabbits who were seized by Surat
police on May 30, 2010 from vendor Abdul Jalal Kadar Sheikh.
The animals have been held at an animal hospital for almost a
year at Sheikh’s expense while he pursued a series of appeals,
expected to continue. “The manner in which the birds are kept in the
small cages, with their wings and tails cut, wings taped together,
and rings put on their feet–nothing can be more heinous,” Shah
said. “It is the fundamental right of a bird to live freely in the
open sky. The only order which can be passed in such circumstances,”
Shah ruled, “would be to set the birds free.”

BOOKS: In Bear Country

June 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:

In Bear Country by Jake McDonald
(Originally published as Grizzlyville: Adventures In Bear Country,
HarperCollins Canada, 2009.)
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2010.
272 pages, paperback. $19.99.

Winnipeg journalist Jake McDonald shines in his eighth book,
In Bear Country.
His story begins on the night of August 13, 1967. Grizzly
bears, in two separate and apparently unrelated attacks, miles
apart, killed Glacier National Park employees Julie Helgeson and
Michele Koons as they camped with friends.

BOOKS: Snowball’s Antarctic Adventures

June 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2011:

Snowball’s Antarctic Adventures
by Tim Ostermeyer
Ostermeyer Photography (1813 Country Brook Lane,
Allen, TX 75002), 2011. 48 pages, hardcover. $18.95.

Snowball’s Antarctic Adventures, a new children’s book from
photographer Tim Ostermeyer, is about penguins. Odd-shaped birds,
penguins do not lift off and fly like the swallows and swifts who are
among their closest relatives. Instead they alternate between
swimming astonishing distances at astonishing speeds and waddling
around the ice flapping their stubby wings. Sometimes they lie on
their bellies and slide on the ice.

Russians waive indigenous hunting quota on polar bears

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
MOSCOW–Russian hunters will not kill polar bears in 2011,
The Polar Bear Program announced in mid-April 2011 via Russian prime
minister Vladimir Putin’s personal web site. Founded under Putin’s
patronage, The Polar Bear Program added that “Measures taken by
Russia will ensure that the U.S. will kill at least 70 fewer polar
bears than before, which, according to Russian specialists, will
help to sustain and boost the population of this beautiful Arctic
animal.”

GoDaddy CEO is told where to go for killing elephant

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
Purporting to be practicing elephant conservation by shooting
an elephant in Zimbabwe on March 8, 2011, posting video of the
shooting to a web site a week later, GoDaddy.com web domain
registration baron Bob Parsons did help to raise some funds to help
elephants. NameCheap, a GoDaddy rival, offered to donate $1.00
from the $4.99 price of arranging a web name transfer to Save The
Elephants, of Nairobi, Kenya. The promotion raised $20,433.

Hunters seek to exempt lead ammunition & tackle from environmental safety regulation

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus co-chairs
Senators Jon Tester and John Thune and Representatives Jeff Miller
and Mike Ross, along with 40 co-sponsors, in mid-April 2011
introduced legislation to exempt lead-based ammunition and fishing
tackle from regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The bills were presented only days after two new studies by
researchers at the University of California in Davis confirmed the
detrimental effects of ingested lead shot on wildlife. Associate
professor of veterinary medicine Christine Johnson and epidemiology
doctoral student Terra Kelly, DVM, found that lead levels increase
in the blood of scavenging turkey vultures during deer hunts and in
areas where wild pigs are hunted. Johnson and Kelly also found that
a 2008 ban on lead ammunition ban within the range of endangered
California condors reduced blood lead levels in golden eagles and
turkey vultures within just one year.

Tsunami damage to Pacific atolls seen as harbinger of climate change

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
AIR STATION BARBERS POINT, Hawaii –“This is a problem that
we expect to have again, not because we’re expecting another tsunami
but because of changing climate,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
biologist Elizabeth Flint told Audrey McAvoy of Associated Press.
The March 11, 2011 tsunami that devasted northeastern Japan
did relatively little damage to U.S. territory, but “offered a
preview of what could happen to low-lying atolls,” McAvoy explained,
“as global warming lifts sea levels and causes storms to develop more
frequently. Flint said she expects the high water events such as
these to eat away at seabird habitats.”
The 60-year-old albatross Wisdom survived and returned to her
nesting area on Midway Atoll, Hawaiian & Pacific Islands National
Wildlife Refuge Complex project leader Barry Stieglitz reported.

Throwing ships aground, tsunami left Japanese coastal whaling high & dry

May 1, 2011 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
AYUKAWAHAMA–“There was Sea Shepherd, and now this,”
retired whaler Shinobu Ankai told Martin Fackler and Makiko Inoue of
The New York Times. “Whaling is finished,” Ankai assessed.
“This could be the final blow to whaling here,” agreed
fellow retired whaler Makoto Takeda.
‘”Whaling is impossible. Reviving it may take 20 to 30
years,” former whaling vessel stoker Yoshiya Endo told Japan Times
earlier.

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