Sultan bans hunting in Johor Baru, Malaysia

April 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2010:

JOHOR BARU, Malaysia– Johor state ruler Sultan Ibrahim Ibni
Almarhum Sultan Iskandar on March 5, 2010 ordered a halt to hunting
and called for gun licensing to be tightened.
Sultan Ibrahim said that alleged nuisance wildlife, such as
boars or crows, should be reported to the Johor Wildlife Department,
which might still use lethal measures in specific situations.
Personally involved in breeding endangered species and
rehabilitating injured wildlife, Sultan Ibrahim reportedly has as
many as 18 tigers, several panthers, and 400 deer on his property.

SeaWorld trainer death & Oscar for “The Cove” convince Solomon Islands dealer to free his dolphin inventory

April 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2010:

ORLANDO, HOLLYWOOD (Calif.), VICTORIA–A third fatality
involving the captive orca Tillikum and an Academy Award for
anti-marine mammal captivity activist Ric O’Barry convinced Solomon
Islands dolphin broker Chris Porter to seek O’Barry’s help in
releasing the last 17 dolphins in his unsold inventory.
Porter captured as many as 170 dolphins in 2003 and about 50
in 2007, 83 of whom were eventually sold to resorts in Dubai and
Cancun, Mexico. Pending sale, the dolphins were kept in heavily
guarded sea pens at Fanalei on the island of Malaita.
“I have decided to release the remaining animals back to the
wild,” Porter confirmed to Judith Lavoie of the Victoria Times
Colonist during a late March 2010 visit to his part-time home in
Victoria, British Columbia. “It’s driven by the incident with
Tilikum. I’m disillusioned with the industry,” Porter said.
Porter trained Tilikum at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria
before going into the dolphin capture business. In 1991 Tillikum and
two other Sealand orcas battered and drowned trainer Keltie Byrne,
20, during a water show. All three orcas were sold to SeaWorld when
Sealand went out of business in November 1992.

BOOKS: Ape

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Ape by John Sorensen
Reaktion Books Ltd.
(33 Great Sutton St., London EC1M 3JU, U.K.), 2009.
224 pages, illust. $19.95 paperback.

Ape, by Brock University sociologist and professor of
critical animal studies John Sorenson, is the 25th in a projected
series of 40 titles edited for Reaktion Books Ltd. by Jonathan Burt.
Burt himself produced the series template in Rat (2006). Each volume
is succinctly titled for the species or order of animals that it
covers. Each summarizes the state of knowledge about how the animals
behave, where they live, and how they evolved, but the focal topic
is the influence of the animals on human culture.

Crashes kill biologists in California and Oregon

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

FRESNO, CORVALLIS–Air-craft accidents during wildlife
population counts killed five wildlife agency workers in two weeks in
January 2010.
California Department of Fish & Game biologists Clu Cotter
and Kevin O’Connor, and scientists’ aide Tom Stolberg, died on
January 4 when their helicopter hit a power line while they were
counting deer near Redinger Lake, in the Sierra National Forest.

BOOKS: Planet Ape

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Planet Ape
by Desmond Morris with Steve Parker
Octopus Publishing Group (2-4 Heron Quays, London E14 4JP, U.K.), 2009.
288 pages, hardcover. $ 49.95.

The DNA of the great apes and humans differs by only a hair.
Desmond Morris and Steve Parker in Planet Ape show us the
similarities between humans and the other great apes, especially in
behavior such as tool-making, using politics to gain community
influence, and killing other species for food. We differ most
prominently in that humans are bipedal, walking upright while other
great apes walk upright only for short distances. Also, humans lost
the heavy coat of fur characterizing other apes, and now wear
clothes. Well, most of us do.

“Saving” tigers by selling them

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

JAKARTA–The Year of the Tiger on the Chinese calendar opened
on February 14, 2010 with schemes to “save” tigers that posed
perhaps a greater threat to tiger welfare and wild tiger survival
than even aggressive poaching that has cut the wild tiger population
in half since the last Year of the Tiger in 1998.
For nine days in January 2010 the Indonesian wildlife
protection organization ProFauna enjoyed a rare victory against both
tiger poaching and the exploitation of captive tigers. ProFauna
helped to send the most brazen tiger poacher in memory to prison,
for the August 22, 2009 pre-dawn killing and butchery of a
20-year-old tiger named Sheila in her cage at the Taman Rimba Zoo in
Jambi, capital of Jambi province.

Florida conservationists cold toward iguanas & pythons in record chill

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

MIAMI–Conservationists rushed to help endangered sea turtles
and manatees during one of the coldest winters on record in Florida,
but many vocally hoped that the January 2010 cold snaps would
extirpate non-native iguanas and pythons.
“Anecdotally, we might have lost maybe half of the pythons,”
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission exotic species
coordinator Scott Hardin told David Fleshler and Lisa J. Huriash of
the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in mid-February, after several weeks
of doing habitat assessment.

Tiger defenders sued

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

BANGKOK–Wildlife Friends founder Edwin Wiek and
representatives of the Bangkok Post on February 3, 2010 entered
their responses to a defamation case filed against them by the Wat Pa
Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery, better known as the
Tiger Temple.
According to Tiger Temple publicity, the facility “started
in 1999,” with “a sick baby tiger, orphaned by poachers,” and
expanded to house other tiger orphans.”
Under Buddhist influence, the tigers “even sit for the
meditating sessions with the monks,” and also are extensively
handled by thousands of paying visitors.

Good winter for bison

March 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

WEST YELLOWSTONE–Montana hunters killed only one bison who
roamed out of Yellowstone National Park during the winter of
2009-2010, after killing only one the previous winter. The state
issued 144 bison tags to members of the Nez Perce tribe, and 144 to
other Montana hunters.
During the harsh winters of 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 more than
1,000 bison were either shot or trucked to slaughter after testing
positive as potential carriers of brucellosis, feared by the Montana
cattle industry, but few bison left Yellowstone during the mild past
two winters.

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