Category: Wild Animals

No fish, no rain, no bees

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Reform of the Magnuson Act, governing U.S. fisheries
management, is stalled in the Senate after passage by the House due to conflict between
Republicans Slade Gorton of Washington and Ted Stevens of Alaska over whether fishing
quotas should be bought and sold like private property. Stevens and the House majority
oppose individual transferable quotas. Gorton favors them.
While the Senators dispute over whether what’s good for the fishing industry in
their own states will be good for the nation, fish are in desperate trouble the world over
––and so are the other animals and people who depend upon them for food.
Even scarier, the fish crisis looms as just one of a triad of disasters bringing global
famine closer than at any time since the Dust Bowl ravaged the midwest 60-odd years ago
while millions starved during Soviet forced collectivization.

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Candidates hunt the hook-and-bullet vote

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Secret Service agents on July 11
questioned James Carl Brown, 21, of Camarillo, California, on suspicion
that he may have been gunning for President Bill Clinton. Port
Hueneme police arrested Brown earlier in the day for allegedly shooting
three ducks with a crossbow. They found a target scrawled on a
newspaper photo of Clinton, about 20 automatic rifles and handguns,
and “militia-type paraphernalia and propaganda” in a search of his
apartment, according to police sergeant Jerry Beck.
Fellow hunters may wonder about Brown. While Clinton
and vice president Albert Gore avidly court their votes, the National
Rifle Association is figuratively gunning for opponent Robert Dole,
the former Senator from Kansas, who told CBS News on July 12 that
he would veto a Congressional attempt––supported by most of the
House Republican majority––to repeal the ban on assault weapons
signed by Clinton in 1994.

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Wishing for an end to bear hunting

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

In Silver City, New Mexico, Juliette Harris, age 7, on
May 13 voluntarily began receiving a $1,500 series of painful postexposure
rabies shots, to spare the life of the eight-pound bear cub
she found on May 5. The mother might have abandoned the cub due
to a drought that made food scarce, or might have been killed by a
poacher. Whatever the case, Harris lugged him home despite having
been bitten on the finger, and saw to it that he was delivered to
Western New Mexico University biology professor Dennis Miller, a
member of Gila Wildlife Rescue.
“I just didn’t want that cute baby bear to die,” Harris said.
“He’s so small.
In Howie-In-The-Hills, Florida, Stuart McMillan, 14, on
May 15 climbed a 32-foot extension ladder, hoping to retrieve his
beloved cat from the top of a 36-foot power pole. He touched a
7,600-volt wire and either was electrocuted or killed on impact when
he fell headfirst to the ground.

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BOOKS: American Nature Writing 1996 & The Soul of Nature

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

American Nature Writing 1996
selected by John A. Murray.
Sierra Club Books (730 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109), 1996.
300 pages. $15.00 paperback.

The Soul of Nature: Celebrating the Spirit of the Earth
edited by Michael Tobias and Georgianne Cowan.
Penguin Books (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 1996.
298 pages. $11.95 paperback.

A collection of 29 short features,
including a few poems, American Nature
Writing celebrates “the best American nature
writing” of the year. Contributors to this edition
include Jimmy Carter, E.O. Wilson,
Jennifer Ackerman, Frank Stewart, and Barry
Lopez, but the reputations of the authors
exceed the quality of the content. More sentimental
than either passionate or insightful,
American Nature Writing reads rather like a
Reader’s Digest anthology—condensed,
somewhat chirpy, a little bland.

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Crimes against wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

June 12, 1996 was a day to
remember in the international fight against
wildlife traffickers:
• In Chicago, bird smuggler
Tony Silva, 36, was jailed pending sentencing,
after prosecutors Sergio Acosta a n d
Jay Tharp argued that he was likely to jump
bail. Silva, who ran a wild-caught bird
smuggling ring while posing as an outspoken
foe of the wild-caught bird traffic, in January
pleaded guilty to reduced charges of conspiracy
and tax evasion, but on May 17 sought
unsuccessfully to withdraw the plea, after
former Playboy Mansion animal keeper
Theodora Swanson, 36, in April drew a
lighter sentence for conviction on contested
charges than her confederates got after copping
pleas.

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Hopi eagle sacrifice offends Navajo

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona––Members of the
Hopi Tribe must report their eaglet and hawk gathering activities
every five days to federal judge Earl Carroll and the
Navajo Nation until June 30, Carroll ruled on June 13, reaffirming
his May 8 preliminary verdict––and may take no
more than 12 golden eaglets and two red-tailed hawks from
Navajo land.
Carroll also refused a Hopi request to drop individual
criminal complaints against each of 11 Hopis who were
cited on May 2 for collecting two eaglets at Twin Horn Butte
without a permit from the Navajo Fish and Wildlife bureau.
The Hopi had asked Carroll for unlimited eaglet and
hawk gathering privileges. At issue were the customs and
ceremonies surrounding traditional Hopi eaglet and hawk sacrifice,
abhored by many Navajo, which may have begun
before recorded history in connection with Hopi resistance to
Navajo predation. The Hopi, descended from the cliffdwelling
Anasazi, are the northernmost people of the Aztec
linguistic family. The Navajo, related to the Shoshone, were
nomads before European settlement, who frequently raided
Hopi villages. The Navajo were and are by far the larger and
politically more powerful tribe.

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Deer roundup

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Urban deer problems spread to Manhattan for
the first time on June 1, when a two-year-old whitetailed
doe startled passengers exiting the 190th Street
subway station. The Center for Animal Care and
Control tranquilized her in nearby Port Tryon Park and
relocated her to the 150-acre Green Chimneys Farm
and Wildlife Center in suburban Brewster.
That approach wouldn’t be legal in
Cincinnati or Cleveland, according to an April directive
from the Ohio Department of Wildlife. Noting that
sport hunting is ineffective and impractical in populated
areas, the directive urges habitat modification to
discourage deer, and lethal culling when deer must be
removed. Any deer who is tranquilized must be killed.

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The system sucks

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

DENVER––Gay Balfour, 54, and David
Honaker, 34, of Cortez, Colorado, are in their fifth
year on the road with Dog Gone, a device that vaccuums
unwanted prairie dogs out of their holes and
into a padded cage without harming them. Dog
Gone itself has been certified humane by all investigators
to date, including Animal Rights Mobilization
president Robin Duxbury.
But then there’s the question of what to do
with the prairie dogs, known to ecologists as the
most important species in maintaining nutritious
grasslands along the Rocky Mountain ridge, yet
widely considered a pest and even subject to bounties
by ranchers who don’t understand that a field full of
prairie dogs and biodiversity produces more calories
for cattle than a field of undisturbed grass.

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Conflicts with wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The fourth annual Dr. Splatt
roadkill survey, coordinated by
Brewster Bartlett of Pinkerton
Academy in Derry, New Hampshire,
found a marked decrease in roadkill
frequency, for the third year in a row,
but a sharp rise in roadkilled beavers
––especially in the Derry area. Forty
schools participated in the nine-week
roadkill count this year. The distribution
and participation level is sufficient
to produce credible roadkill estimates
for the northeast, with just
enough information from other
regions to make crude national projections
possible, which are nonetheless
the best supported by data of any
made to date. The northeast is
believed to have the greatest roadkill
frequency because it has the most
wildlife habitat in close proximity to
large human populations, with the
most heavily traveled roads and also
the most old, narrow, and winding
roads. The overall roadkill frequency
is probably down primarily because
the unusually long winter depressed
wildlife breeding populations, while
beaver kills were up, Bartlett
believes, in part because beavers had
a successful breeding season last year
in heavily surveyed parts of New
Hampshire where busy roads cut
through wetlands. Most of the dead
beavers in that area, Bartlett told
ANIMAL PEOPLE, appeared to be
young, apparently just setting out to
find their own territory.

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