Artful Dodge gets Agudo family out of Venezuela

April 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

GLENCOE, Missouri––Wanted for treason by Venezuela, because in February
1993 he and colleague Aldemaro Romero videotaped fishers in the act of killing a dolphin,
Professor Ignacio Agudo is safe in Brazil, after two years on the run. His daughters Esther,
seven, and Lina, 15 months, are with him.
Romero too is alive and well, having escaped to Miami in February 1994. His wife
followed soon after. But Agudo’s wife Saida, Esther and Lina’s mother, died in hiding on
April 26, 1995, at age 36, because she couldn’t get medication she needed for a chronic
heart condition. Their grandfather, Agudo’s father, repeatedly interrogated by Venezuelan
police, shot himself in December 1994, to avoid giving away their location.

COURT CALENDAR

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Crimes against humans
Preliminary hearings began
January 30 in Chicago in the case of Marsha
Norskog, of Palos Hills, vs. Roger and Gayle
Pfiel, of Crete Township. In October 1995 the
Pfiel’s son Steven, 19, drew 100 years for the
July 14, 1993 thrill-killing of Norskog’s daughter
Hillary, 13, and the March 1995 bludgeoning/slashing
murder of his brother Roger, then
19. Norskog contends in a potential landmark
case that Steven Pfiel’s history of sadistic animal
killing gave his parents ample warning that
their son was a threat to commit murder, but
that instead of dealing with his violent tendencies,
they encouraged him to hunt and gave
him the car and hunting knife he used to kill
Hillary. Roger Pfiel is a meatpacking executive.

Monk seals imperiled by near-war in Aegean

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

ISTANBUL––As a game of capture-theflag
among youths on the rocky islands between
Greece and Turkey escalated from taunts to trouble in
late January, Turkish Mediterranean monk seal expert
Bayram Ozturk of the Istanbul University faculty of
fisheries apparently tried to pour oil on the troubled
waters, but only stoked the conflagration, which was
eventually stopped only through the personal intercession
of U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Said Ozturk on January 31 via the MARMAM
online bulletin board, “The Mediterranean
monk seal population in Turkey is no longer stable,”
something of an understatement. “The most recent
census, made last year, found 47 individuals. On
the Bodram Peninsula, only six individuals including
pups are living in the small islands called Cavus,
Iremit, and Kardak. Since 1991, the Monk Seal
Protection Project has been conducted in these islets
on behalf of the Turkish Ministry of the Environment
by Istanbul University. Unfortunately,” Ozturk continued,
“Kardak got occupied by Greek soldiers.

Clinton not expected to stand up to Japanese whalers

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––At the ANIMAL PEOPLE deadline, President Bill Clinton
was imminently expected to send a message to Congress about Japanese whaling, responding to
a December advisory from the Department of Commerce that Japan was vulnerable to trade sanctions
because of its decision to kill minke whales within the Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary.
But Clinton was not expected to impose sanctions.
Argued Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in a February 7 letter to Clinton, “At this point,
any efforts short of sanctions would signal a lack of commitment to whale conservation by the
United States.” Japan officially moved into compliance with the 1986 global moratorium on
commercial whaling in 1988, but has continued to conduct gradually escalating hunts of minke
whales for “scientific research.”

Marine mammals

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Nets and dolphins

EDINBOROUGH––The Royal
SPCA and World Wide Fund for Nature
head a nine-group coalition protesting a proposal
by Scots Office Minister Raymond
Robertson to make Scots fishers more competitive
by lifting a ban on the use of
monofilament gil nets which might drown
harbor porpoises. Such nets are used in the
waters of other European nations.
Eleven dolphins apparently
drowned in fishing nets washed up in
Cornwall between January 4 and January 11,
prompting Cornwall Wildlife Trust chair
Nick Tregenza to apply to the European
Commission for funds with which to develop
an alarm to warn dolphins away from
nets. The EC is already funding a similar
project called CETASEL, formed under the
1994 Agreement on the Conservation of
Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North
Seas, a.k.a. ASCOBANS. “The project
started in the beginning of 1995, and the
first sea trials were carried out in March
1995,” said CETASEL coordinator Dick de
Haan. “The first enclosure trial, on a
stranded harbor porpoise, showed the animals’
sensitivity to ‘chirp and sweep’
sounds. In 1996 two sea trials are planned
off the southwestern coast of Ireland.”
Read more

Animal health

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

University of Minnesota researcher Dr. Jesse Goodman and team announced January 24 that they have managed to isolate and grow the bacterium that causes human granulocytic ehrlichiosis, a newly identified and sometimes fatal disease borne by the same ticks as Lyme disease.

Having apparently gotten away with a wind-assisted premature release of the rabbit-killing calcivirus during field tests last September, without apparent harm to species other than rabbits, Australia is now hoping to halt the advance of South American cane toads through the use of the Irido virus, which apparently kills both toads and tadpoles in Venezuela. The cane toads were themselves introduced about 60 years ago, in hopes they would eat insects who plagued sugarcane growers.

Avian epidemiology

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

The Florida Keys Wild Bird
Center in January declared finished a
five-year epidemic of “wasting synd
r o m e ” among cormorants. The victims
were found anemic, dehydrated,
and severely underweight, but without
obvious disease or injury. About 90%
died. The syndrome was to become
subject of a major study––but in March
1995, cases quit coming. Overall, the
Wild Bird Center treated 130 cormorants
in 1994 and 133 in 1995. Half of those
treated in 1994 had “wasting syndrome,”
but most in 1995 had been hurt by fishing
gear––like most other birds the center
receives. “We have pelicans, pelicans,
fishhooks and pelicans,” director
Laura Quinn told Nancy Klingener of the
Miami Herald, “because pelicans hang
around fishers.”

Sea Shepherds want to herd Hondo

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

SEATTLE––Hondo, the California sea lion
who ambushes salmon and steelhead at the base of the
Ballard Locks near Seattle, was back for the start of
this winter’s spawning runs, with others, and when
the National Marine Fisheries Service said it had no
money to capture and hold him throughout the spawning
season, as it did last year, at cost of $120,000,
shooting seemed imminent. But on January 25 the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society put the killing on hold
by formally proposing to relocate Hondo and friends to
San Francisco Bay.
“Sea Shepherd has offered to pay this year’s
costs of temporary housing and immediate translocation
of sea lions to California,” said Sea Shepherd
Pacific Northwest coordinator Michael Kundu. “We
have legal permission from the San Francisco Bay
Commission to return these sea lions to California,”
their native waters.

More Canadian wildlife traffic–– with government support

March 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

WINNIPEG––”Vowing to
upset Manitoba government plans to
privatize the province’s wild elk and
transform it into antler farms to supply
the international wildlife parts
trade,” People for Animal
Liberation coordinator James
Pearson announced February 6,
“PFAL has sent a team of activists to
the Swan River Valley to shield wild
elk from capture.”
Already, Pearson said,
activists had vandalized a corral and
squeeze chute used to hold the elk as
their antlers are cut off. “Highly
veined and innervated,” he charged,
“the antlers are sawn off at the most
sensitive stage of their development.
Elk ranchers involved with the plan,”
Pearson continued, “want to see the
government begin trade in bear gall
bladders, a logical next step.”

« 1 … 124 125 126 127 128 … 173 »