From bunkers to bat caves by Doug Reed

April 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

NEWINGTON, N.H. –– The weapons storage

area lies brooding at the core of the Great Bay National

Wildlife Refuge, surrounded by an eight-foot-high chain

link fence capped with barbed wire and razor wire. Thirty

concrete block buildings, 250 power poles, miles of wire,

and 15 weapons storage bunkers––fortified cement crypts

covered with earth and grass––crowd the site with silence.

Clustered at the far end of the 62-acre storage

area, the bunkers are empty of the missiles and explosives

stored there for the past 30 years. The double steel doors

are six inches thick and weigh five tons each. A heavy-

duty hydraulic jack opens one door, and visitors, mostly

members of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire,

wander into the dark. Jim Halpin, the manager of this new

refuge, explains that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is

exploring the bunkers’ potential as bat caves. It’s an ironic

exchange of wildlife for arms: bats for bombs.

The price of conversion

April 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

MADISON, Indiana –– The

pros and cons of converting no-man’s land

into wildlife refuges are nowhere more evi-

dent than at the 57,600-acre Jefferson

Proving Ground. Since 1941, Army per-

sonnel have fired more than 23 million

artillery, mortar, and tank rounds at

Jefferson, including 1.4 million dud

rounds that may still go off at any minute.

The Army wants to close Jefferson, to

save $7 million a year. But the closure

will cost southern Indiana at least 410

civilian jobs. Virtually the only alternative

use for the site would be as a wildlife

refuge, which would require the least

amount of clean-up. But even removing

enough unexploded ordinance to make

Jefferson minimally safe for refuge person-

nel could run as high as $550 million.

Despite all the shooting, the

edges of Jefferson are still forested, while

the firing ranges, carpeted with wildflow-

ers, attract birds and butterflies. Whether

or not Jefferson is formally designated a

wldlife refuge, chances are it will be

increasingly important to wildlife as the

human presence diminishes.

Wildlife in no-man’s-land: Are war zones safer than refuges?

April 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1993:

When the Persian Gulf War erupted in February

1991, ecologists shuddered at the probable fate of the wet-

lands at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The region, where Kuwait meets Iraq, is among the world’s

busiest corridors for migratory birds––both songbirds and

waterfowl, coming and going from Europe, Africa, Asia,

and the Indian subcontinent. The bird populations were

already in trouble. Intensive sheep-grazing had desertified

thousands of acres of vegetation. Oil-rich Kuwaiti

thrillseekers compounded the damage with reckless use of

offroad vehicles and contests to see who could shotgun the

most birds, without regard for either endangered species or

bag limits.

Diet & Health

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Responding to public panic over

tainted meat, President Bill Clinton on

February 11 ordered the USDA to hire 160

more meat inspectors, while Agriculture

Secretary Mike Espy promised a complete

overhaul of the meat inspection

system––which the Ronald Reagan and

George Bush presidential administrations

had streamlined by reducing the number of

inspectors. The panic began in December

when a six-year-old girl in San Diego

County, California, died after eating a

tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, and

escalated January 22, when a two-year-old

boy died in Seattle, Washington, from the

same cause. More than 400 people who ate

Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers developed E.

Gene and Diana Chontos: Helping the tough and stubborn

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

“Talking to someone about myself beyond my life

with burros seems abstract to me now,” Diana Chontos told

ANIMAL PEOPLE, “since my life has become burros and

their continued survival. I am a daughter of the pioneers of

Washington, and continue to live by many of the same val-

ues as my great-grandparents, except that during my child-

hood I found the practice of slaughtering and eating animals

abhorent. As soon as I possibly could, I became a vegetari-

an.” Her first animal rescue may have been at age 13,

when, “I rode my horse, galloping bareback, between a

gun-happy bounty hunter and a beautiful coyote I had been

watching as she caught and ate grasshoppers.”

Gene Chontos, Diana’s partner of 18 years, came

to animal rescue later in life, but no less dramatically. “I

was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1937,” he

remembers, “son to Hungarian immigrants. My father and

all his kin served the Bethlehem Steel Company as cheap

labor and resided in lower class poverty, replete with ethnic

prejudice, hatred, and violence. I escaped at age 17

through a four-year enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Guest column: Stop the war on wild horses! by Anna Charlton

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

A modern-day range war is underway on the vast

prairies of Nevada. Unless there is drastic and immediate

action, the casualty of this war will be the wild horse,

whom ranchers and bureaucrats seem determined to exter-

minate.

The wild horse is an enduring symbol of the

American west. The sight of a herd of these magnificent,

proud animals thundering across the open range evokes the

image of freedom. Responding to public outrage over the

slaughter of wild horses, Congress in 1971 passed the Free

and Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, which calls for

the protection, management, and control of all wild horses

and burros on public land. But despite this legislative pro-

tection, wild horses are still shot, poisoned, and rustled.

The greatest threat to their survival, however, comes from

the Bureau of Land Management––the agency Congress

entrusted as their guardian. The BLM appears intent upon

“managing” wild horses out of existence, to increase the

profits of cattle and sheep ranchers.

Reprieve for Alaskan wolves, But the Yukon opens fire; Tourist boycott of Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta underway

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

WHITEHORSE, Yukon, Canada –– Dispatched in near-secrecy circa

February 5 by the Yukon territorial government, a helicopter attack team will have killed

150 of the estimated 200 wolves in the Aishihik Lake region, and be heading home again

as ANIMAL PEOPLEgoes to press.

The scheduled 20-day mission was undertaken in direct defiance of international

appeals and threats of a tourism boycott. Protests held at various points in Canada and the

U.S. on February 8 were ignored by Yukon minister of renewable resources Bill Brewster.

BOOKS: Animal Rights & Human Rights: Ecology, Economy and Ideology in the Canadian Arctic

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Animal Rights Human Rights: Ecology,

Economy and Ideology in the Canadian

Arctic, by George Wenzel. 1991. 206 pages,

paperback. University of Toronto Press.

Animal Rights Human Rights author George

Wenzel, says the back cover, “is an anthropologist and geo-

grapher,” who has been working among the Inuit (Eskimos)

of Baffin Island since 1972. His book “is both a careful aca-

demic study and a disturbing comment on how environmen-

tal activity may oppress a whole society.” To wit, Wenzel

supposedly shows how anti-seal hunt protesters’ “own cul-

tural prejudices and questionable ecological imperatives

brought hardship, distress, and instability to an ecologically

balanced traditional culture.”

Wildlife

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill contin-

ues to kill Alaskan wildlife, researchers revealed

February 5 at a symposium hosted by the

University of Alaska and the American Fisheries

Society. Among the victims are 14 orcas, who dis-

appeared and are presumed dead; 300,000 murres,

a bird species that hasn’t nested successfully since

the spill; and sea otters and ducks, who are still

being poisoned by mussels who in turn have been

poisoned by oil.

Zimbabwe is trying to raise $2 million

to spend on culling 5,000 elephants from a nation-

al herd officially estimated at 80,000.

« 1 … 167 168 169 170 171 … 173 »