Wildlife & people

October 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

Rabid vampire bats reportedly

flew out of a graveyard in Satipo, Peru, to

bite more than 200 people during the week

of September 11-16. “Vampire bats repro-

duce at an extremely fast rate, and there are

already a dangerous number of them in the

region,” the Xinua news agency warned

––but in fact vampire bats rarely attack peo-

ple, and almost never kill their hosts when

not rabid. Under normal circumstances a

vampire bat bite is considered to be little

more harmful to the victim than a mass of

mosquito bites.

At least 357 of Florida’s threat-

ened black bears have been killed by cars

since 1976; bear numbers hover circa 1,500.

Fourteen bears have been killed on a single

three-mile stretch of State Road 46 just

north of Orlando. Hoping to save the bears,

the state has built an overpass above their

favored migration route. A proposed expan-

sion of State Road 40 through the Ocala

National Forest into a four-lane highway

threatens to split the bears’ habitat, howev-

er, which may end the genetic viability of

the bear populations caught on either side.

MARINE LIFE

October 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

Earth Island Institute and

Public Citizen on September 14 sued

the Commerce Department, alleging

non-enforcement of the requirement

that Gulf of Mexico shrimpers use tur-

tle excluders to keep endangered sea

turtles from getting caught in their

nets. The Commerce Dept. says the

excluders cut shrimp catches by 5%;

the Texas Shrimp Association says it’s

more like 20%. Irate shrimpers are

blamed for killing more than 270 tur-

tles whose mutilated remains have

been found since March. The National

Marine Fisheries Service has posted a

$10,000 reward for information bring-

ing the arrest of the culprits.

Kenya denies supplying Saudi canned hunts

October 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

NAIROBI, Kenya––The Kenya Wildlife Service

on September 9 denied a report that it had sold endangered

giraffes and zebras to canned hunts in Saudi Arabia. KWS

director David Western said Kenya did recently donate ani-

mals to the national zoos of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,

however, including giraffes, zebras, ostriches, Thompson

gazelles, mongooses, porcupines, dikdiks, and exotic

birds. He said none of the animals are endangered in

Kenya. Western succeeded Richard Leakey as head of

KWS earlier this year. The service is often at odds with

political factions who wish to reintroduce trophy hunting,

now banned, to Kenya.

Russia objects; MAY IGNORE WHALE SANCTUARY WITH IMPUNITY

October 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

MOSCOW, Russia– – Already

holding a formal objection to the global whal-

ing moratorium decreed by the International

Whaling Commission in 1986, Russia on

September 13 filed an objection to the May

creation of the Southern Ocean Whale

Sanctuary as well––meaning that under IWC

rules, Russia not only may kill whales com-

mercially without fear of trade sanctions, but

also may kill whales below the 40th parallel,

where about 80% of the world’s surviving

baleen whales spend up to 80% of their time.

Intended to protect whales in

Antarctic waters, the sanctuary was in effect

won by the U.S. delegation at cost of conced-

ing the passage of a Revised Management

Plan for setting commercial whaling quotas.

A tale of two species: Wolves, coyotes killed as lookalikes

October 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1994:

ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE, N.Y.– –

Long hated and persecuted for resembling wolves, coyotes

again figure to pay the price for their bigger cousins as

wolves, their own image rehabilitated, are reintroduced to

fragments of their former habitat. The strongest argument

wolf defenders have for reintroduction, they’ve found, is not

that North American wolves have never verifiably attacked a

human being, nor that they’re the lovable creatures whose

family life Farley Mowat recorded in Never Cry Wolf!

Rather, it’s that, “A wolf will kill a coyote if he sees

it,” as Michael Kellett of RESTORE the North Woods

explains at every opportunity.

“Wolves have larger territorial needs than coyotes,”

elaborates Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife

biologist Tom Schaeffer. “They live in well-established

groups,” including many adults of both sexes plus cubs, “who

require a larger area, sometimes as much as 200 square miles.

Thus you would be dealing with a smaller number of wolves

in an area than coyotes,” who live in family units typically

structured around a monogamous pair. A coyote family usual-

ly occupies about 24 square miles, though territories of up to

100 square miles are not unheard of.

Killing for the hell of it

September 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

A federal anti-hunter harassment statute

tucked into the Crime Bill is likely to stay there––and

pass––as the Clinton administration strives to get

around National Rifle Association opposition to the

Crime Bill as a whole, which would ban 19 types of

assault rifle. The NRA on August 10 claimed credit

for temporarily defeating the Crime Bill on a proce-

dural vote in the House of Representatives.

The Senate version of the California

Desert Protection Act, passed in April, would cre-

ate an East Mojave National Park between the Joshua

Tree and Death Valley National Monuments, which

are to be upgraded to National Park status––meaning

a ban on hunting. However, in a move of symbolic

import to the NRA, the House version passed on July

27 downgrades East Mojave to the status of a

National Preserve, to allow hunting. National Park

Service director Roger Kennedy pointed out that

because preserves require more staff than parks, the

House version will cost $500,000 more per year to

run. Since hunters kill an average of only 26 deer and

five bighorn sheep per year in East Mojave, Kennedy

said, this amounts to “a subsidy of $20,000 per deer.”

A House/Senate conference committee must reconcile

the conflicting versions before the bill goes back to

both the Senate and House for final passage.

Horse notes

September 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

A legal parallel to the White

Sands situation came to light on the

Yakima Reservation, at Toppemish,

Washington, and the Warm Springs

Reservation near Madras, Oregon,

after horse enthusiast Sheila Herron

traced several injured horses she found

in a horsemeat dealer’s feedlot at Yelm,

Washington, back to annual roundups

authorized by the tribal councils.

Yakima councillors told Herron they

were “weeding out the crippled and

old,” but most of the horses at the feed-

lot were healthy, Herron said, and

some were foals. A Warm Springs

councillor said the Madras horses are

privately owned. “I was certainly

unaware,” Herron told ANIMAL PEO-

P L E, “that only mustangs and burros

from BLM or Forest Service lands are

protected by federal law. Mustangs and

burros from Park Service, Indian, mil-

itary or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

lands have no protection from being

rounded up and sold for slaughter.”

Horses starve at White Sands

September 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

WHITE SANDS, New Mexico–– Three of the four wild horse herds on the

White Sands Missile Range survived an early summer drought in good shape, but

between July 6 and July 15, when rain came and the grass grew, the Mound Spring

herd lost 122 of an estimated 400 members to starvation––49 of them shot by military

police to end their misery. Descended

from ranch horses left when the range was

expropriated in 1946, from 1,300 to

1,500 horses roam about two million

acres. The New Mexico Department of

Game and Fish says the range can support

no more than 500 horses. In 1989 protest

halted a White Sands attempt to auction

some horses for slaughter, via the state

Livestock Board, which by state law

owns all free-roaming horses not covered

by federal law. In 1990 Rep. Joe Skeen

(R-N.M.) won an appropriation of

$200,000 to enable White Sands to pay

the Bureau of Land Management to adopt

out some of the horses. The New Mexico

wild horse law stopped that.

Book Reviews

September 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1994:

Track of the Cat, by Nevada Barr. G.P.

Putnam’s Sons (200 Madison Ave., New York, NY

10016) 1993, 238 pages, $19.95 hardcover.

“When is a cougar not a cougar?” asks National Park

Service Ranger Anna Pigeon, the heroine of this mystery

novel. Anna discovers the corpse of fellow park ranger Sheila

Drury while on a routine expedition searching for signs of

mountain lions. Drury has apparently been killed by one of

the big cats, but there are inconsistencies, which only Anna

seems to recognize. The authorities order the inevitable hunt

for the killer cat, and a lactating female cougar is blamed and

sacrificed. Anna, a native New Yorker who is more at home

with the desert wildlife of the Texas outback than with people,

is outraged and begins to probe. The plot twists and turns,

and the suspense carries through the last page. A bonus for the

animal person is that the book, written by real-life park ranger

Nevada Barr, is totally “animal rights” while being blessedly

bereft of philosophizing.

––Kim Bartlett

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