ALLEGED SPORTSMEN

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Clay Peterson, age 11, wrote a

letter to the Nashville Tennesean criticizing

poachers, published on April 6. “He was

thrilled,” his mother Debra wrote to the

paper a week later. “I was immediately wor-

ried when I noticed that his address was also

printed. My fears were justified,” by a bar-

rage of hate mail, including one missive that

warned Clay, “armed force is necessary to

eliminate those who would force the issue.”

The Tennessean then published the Peterson

family address again. Tell the Petersons they

have friends c/o 1667 Highfield Lane,

Brentwood, TN 37027.

Fishing industry fights over bones

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“This meeting was called to fight over

the meat,” reads the caption below a popular

office calendar cartoon showing wild-eyed and

desperate Neanderthals. “There is no meat. It is

moved that we fight over the bones.”

The cartoon could describe the col-

lapse of oceanic ecosystems. Recent editions of

the journals Science and Nature warned of

crashing zooplankton and algae populations, as

result of pollution, global warming, and over-

fishing, which is taking biomass out of the

oceans faster than it can be restored. But instead

of making oceanic habitat restoration a global

priority, both fishing fleets and the political rep-

resentatives of fishing nations fight with increas-

ing fury for whatever fish remain, with ominous

implications for world peace as well as for

aquatic animals.

MARINE MAMMALS

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Seal hunt

Canada on April 11 denied an allegation by the

International Fund for Animal Welfare that the Shanghai

Fisheries Corporation and a sealing industry delegation from

the Magdalen Islands of Quebec met the day before in Hong

Kong to sign a deal to increase the export of seal penises to

China. “Because it’s penises, people laugh,” said IFAW

spokesperson Marion Jenkins, “but the Chinese medicine

market has been responsible for the near extinction of the

tiger and the rhino.” Despite the lack of other apparent

viable markets, the seal slaughter shifted from the

Magdalens to Newfoundland in mid-April, encouraged by a

quota of 186,000 and a federal bounty of 20¢ per pound on

seal carcasses landed. Newfoundland fisheries minister Bud

Hulan claims the Atlantic Canada seal population is circa

eight million, and that the seals are contributing to the

decline of cod, recently pronounced “commercially extinct.”

However, current research by Thomas Woodley and David

Lavigne, of the International Marine Mammal Association,

indicates there are no more than 3.5 million harp seals, prob-

ably fewer; 400,000 hooded seals; and 142,000 grey seals,

the only species whose numbers are increasing. Cod make

up only about 1% of the seals’ diet.

POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

The Sierra Club, National Audubon

Society, and Natural Resources Defense

Council on April 4 unveiled a $1.3 million TV

campaign and a $500,000 radio blitz to inform the

public about how regulatory rollbacks under the

Republican “Contract with America” will affect

“the food they eat, the water they drink, and the

air they breathe,” and about the links between

“those who pollute and those who write the laws

on pollution.” Sierra Club director Carl Pope

called it the largest such effort “ever launched by

the environmental community.” The announce-

ment came five days after Speaker of the House

Newt Gingrich accused “left-wing environmental-

ists” of using environmental protection laws as a

vehicle to “oppose free enterprise, jobs, and eco-

nomic activity.” They look for the “hysteria of

the year,” Gingrich charged, “whether it’s going

to be nuclear winter or global warming or whatev-

er this year’s particular hysteria is.”

ZIPPO raid

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“As a portable source of flame, the

Zippo windproof lighter has always been the

natural choice for those who care about the envi-

ronment,” claims a press release for the Zippo

“mysteries of the forest” collectible lighter

series. “Zippo believes it is vital,” the flaks

add, “that we safeguard the delicate balance of

the remaining wilderness for both the animals

that live there and for future generations of

humanity.”

Animal health

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Fifteen thousand cattle have

died so far in Tanzania from an outbreak

of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia––

and it could spread to Zambia, Malawi,

and the rest of southern Africa, United

Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza-

tion animal health officer Peter Roeder

warned on March 29. “Cattle movements

from Uganda and Kenya, sometimes as

result of civil strife, have already caused

major outbreaks in Zaire and Rwanda,” he

said.

Canine distemper is on the

wane in Serengeti National Park, says

Melody Roelke-Parker, chief veterinarian

for Tanzania National Parks––after it

killed 80% of the now rebounding lion

population.

“Full speed ahead and damn the manatees!”

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

ORLANDO, Florida– – Killing

manatees at a record rate of almost two a

week, boaters could extinguish the Floridan

subspecies in the wild––if they keep it

up––before the end of the 20th century, now

less than five years away. More than 60

Florida manatees died during the first quarter

of 1995, twice the rate of 1994, when 192

manatees were found dead, second only to

the 206 deaths reported in 1990 among the 25

years that statistics have been kept. As in 24

of those 25 years, the leading cause of death,

claiming exactly 60, was being sliced or

stabbed by power boat propellers, prows,

and keels. That broke the 1989 record of 58

human-caused deaths, 53 of them caused by

boats. Severe cold is the manatees’ only other

significant killer.

TREASON CHARGE FOR DOLPHIN VIDEO

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

CORAL GABLES, Florida––Aldemaro Romero is alive and well as an Adjunct

Associate Professor at the University of Miami. That annoys the Venezuelan government.

Officially, he’s wanted for treason. Unofficially, some authorities would rather have his tor-

tured corpse in a ditch, along with that of his colleague Ignacio Agudo, a fellow academic

and president of Fundacetacea (The Whale Fund), who has been dodging dragnets in

Venezuela for more than a year now.

Said Ramon Martinez, governor of Sucre state, to Wall Street Journal reporter Jose

de Cordoba, “If it were up to me, I’d have them shot.”

Their alleged crime was videotaping a fishing crew in February 1993 during the acts

of harpooning a dolphin, then hacking her apart alive for use as bait.

“The remains of 13 other dolphins were found on the beach,” states Romero. “The

crew said on tape that they kill dolphins for shark bait. They also provided information about

the number of dolphins they kill per month, and where they get the harpoons.”

BOOKS: The Endangered Species Act: Time for a Change

April 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

The Endangered Species Act: Time for a Change, by Thomas Lambert and Robert J. Smith.

Center for the Study of American Business (Washington University, Campus Box 1208, One Brookings Drive, St.

Louis, MO 63130-4899), 1994. 63 pages. Free on request.

Thomas Lambert and Robert J. Smith evidently

subscribe to the theory that the Endangered Species Act “is

being used for little more than the achievement of de facto

national land use control and the regulation of economic

development.” Though they avoid saying so themselves,

they quote and paraphrase others to this effect so often that

one is inclined to start looking under the bed for the “out-of-

work Soviet economists” that they suggest through another

quotation might be influencing U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service data analysis. Either that, or bolt the door against

the National Biological Survey, which is––again through

unrefuted quotations––equated with an “eco-Gestapo.”

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