BOOKS: From the Jungle to Kathmandu: Horn & Tusk Trade

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2010:
(published October 5, 2010)

From the Jungle to Kathmandu: Horn & Tusk Trade
Esmond Bradley Martin
Wildlife Watch Group
(20-Pulchowk, Machaagal, Lalitpur, Nepal), 2010.
186 pages, paperback.
Order c/o <www.citesnepal.org>

From the Jungle to Kathmandu anthologizes Kenyan wildlife traffic
investigator Esmond Bradley Martin’s previously published
investigations of rhino horn and elephant ivory poaching and
trafficking in Nepal, 1979-2008–the last decades of the former
hereditary dynastic government and first years of an elected
coalition government including leaders of a Maoist insurgency that
supported itself in part by selling rhino horn and elephant ivory.
Along the way Martin, formerly United Nations special envoy for
rhino conservation, refutes the common belief that rhino horn is
coveted in Asia for alleged aphrodisiacal properties.

Ted Nugent pleads “no contest” to poaching

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

SACRAMENTO–Rock star and Outdoor Channel hunting show host
Ted Nugent on August 17, 2010 pleaded “no contest” in Yuba County
Superior Court to misdemeanor charges of illegally baiting a deer and
failing to have a properly signed hunting tag. Nugent was fined
$1,175.
The violations came to light when Nugent broadcast videotape
of his actions on the February 9, 2010 edition of his Spirit of the
Wild television program.
Hunting guide Ross Albert Patterson was fined $1,125 after
pleading “no contest” in connection with the same incidents, which
occurred in September 2009 in El Dorado County, California, near
the town of Somerset.

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BOOKS: Animal Investigators: How the world’s first wildlife forensic lab is solving crimes and saving endangered species

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Animal Investigators:
How the world’s first wildlife forensic lab is solving crimes
and saving endangered species
by Laurel A. Neme, Ph.D.
Scribner (c/o Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of
the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2009.
256 pages, hardcover. $25.00.

Animal Investigators, by International Institute for
Sustainable Development Reporting Services newsletter editor Laurel
Neme, focuses on the work of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service animal
forensics laboratory, on the campus of Southern Oregon University in
Ashland, Oregon. The lab supports the work of 200 federal wildlife
law enforcement agents, every state fish and game agency, and the
wildlife law enforcement agencies of all nations belonging to the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Neme begins with the late 1989 discovery of 415 headless
walrus carcasses along the shores of the remote Seward Peninsula, in
northwestern Alaska.

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BOOKS: Deadly Kingdom: The book of dangerous animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Deadly Kingdom: The book of dangerous animals
by Gordon Grice
Random House (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019), 2010. 352
pages, hardcover. $27.00.

Almost all animals can be dangerous, shows Gordon Grice in
Deadly Kingdom.
Dogs, among the most familiar species to humans, inflict an
estimated 4.7 million reported bites per year in the U.S., causing
at least 800,000 people, mostly children, to require medical help.
Currently more than 30 Americans per year die from dog bites. Dozens
more are horribly disfigured. Abroad, dog bites are still the most
common vector for transmitting rabies to humans.

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BOOKS: Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time:
My Life Doing Dumb Things With Animals
by Richard Conniff
W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110), 2010. 304
pages, paperback. $15.95.

Swimming with Piranhas opens with author Richard Conniff and
a park ranger in Botswana looking for African wild dogs. Often
maligned, Lycaon pictus is more closely related to wolves than to
domestic dogs. As with wolves, Conniff explains, “humans
persecuted them into extinction over most of their range.” Only
about 5,000 remain. Playful and gentle with each other, African wild
dogs travel in packs and rarely come into contact with humans. They
have a highly evolved social structure. Despite efforts to protect
the remaining African wild dogs on wildlife preserves, they suffer
from fragmented habitat, diseases introduced by domestic dogs, and
continued hostility from livestock ranchers and herders. They often
end up as lion lunch, too.

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What the Sea Shepherds did during the summer in the Galapagos, Faroe Islands, and Tokyo

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:

 

FRIDAY HARBOR– The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
celebrated but pledged to remain involved in the Galapagos Islands on
July 28, 2010, after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organiz-ation’s World Heritage Committee voted 14-5 to drop
the Galapagos from the UNESCO list of endangered World Heritage
sites. Added to the list in 2007, the Galapagos were downlisted in
recognition of improved environmental protection by the government of
Ecuador– including restraining alleged economic exploitation by
senior officers in the Ecuadoran navy.
The Sea Shepherds began helping the Galapagos National Park
Service to patrol the Galapagos Marine Reserve in late 2000. In
early 2001 one of the first Sea Shepherd missions undertaken with the
park service exposed the involvement of Ecuadoran navy vessels in
support of shark poaching. The Sea Shepherds later donated the
patrol boat Sirenian to the Galapagos National Park Service, and
established a permanent office in the Galapagos in support of ongoing
anti-poaching efforts.

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Bear kept by wrestling promoter kills worker

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
Pressure on Ohio Governor Ted Strickland to issue a promised
executive order to ban private possession of exotic and dangerous
animals intensified on August 20, 2010 when one of nine bears kept
by bear wrestling promoter Sam Mazzola killed Brent Kandra, 24, a
six-year employee at Mazzola’s 17-acre compound in Lorain County.
The bear was reportedly not one used in the wrestling shows.
Begun circa 1986, Mazzola’s traveling barroom bear wrestling
act briefly disappeared after Mazzola was sent to Ohio state prison
in 1990 for alleged cocaine trafficking. The act was closed or
prohibited by authorities in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Ontario,
and Manitoba between 1994 and 1998. In 2008 the USDA took away
Mazzola’s exhibiton license and fined him $14,000 for allegedly not
permitting inspections and threatening officials.
In September 2009 Mazzola “pleaded guilty in U.S. District
Court to two federal criminal charges of exhibiting and selling
exotic animals without a license. He was sentenced to three years
probation and ordered to do community service,” reported Amanda
Garrett of the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Defenders of Wildlife stops paying ranchers for livestock lost to wolves

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2010:
WASHINGTON D.C.–Defenders of Wildlife on August 20, 2010
announced that it will end paying compensation for verified livestock
losses to wolves in most states on September 10.
The 23-year-old Wolf Compensation Trust managed by Defenders
is widely credited with opening the way to wolf reintroduction in the
Rocky Mountains. Defenders has paid $1.4 million since 1987 to
ranchers in six states, for the deaths of 1,301 cattle, 2,431
sheep, and 108 other animals. “Our goal is to shift economic
responsibility for wolf recovery away from the individual rancher,”
said the Wolf Compensation Trust mission statement, “and toward the
millions of people who want to see wolf populations restored. When
ranchers alone are forced to bear the cost of wolf recovery, it
creates animosity and ill will toward the wolf,” which can “result
in illegal killing.”

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BOOKS: Forbidden Creatures

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:

Forbidden creatures
by Peter Laufer, Ph.D.
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2010.
272 pages, hardcover. $19.95.

“The chimp killed my friend,” screamed Sandra Herold into
the telephone on February 16, 2009 as her pet chimp Travis mauled
her friend Charla Nash. Nash had come to help corral the
out-of-control animal, who had previously behaved well for her,
but Travis pulled her from her car, bit and clawed off most of her
face, and tore her hands off. Cornered upon arrival in his patrol
car, police officer Frank Chiafri shot Travis dead after Travis
pulled the driver’s side door open.

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