Cats removed from “Island of the Blue Dolphins”

January 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

VENTURA–Birders and feral cat defenders
both claim victory over the outcome of a cat
eradication program on San Nicolas Island, 65
nautical miles west of the California mainland.
The semi-arid 24-square-mile island was
occupied by the Nicoleño people when discovered
by Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno in 1602.
The Nicoleño were evacuated in 1835 by Spanish
missionaries who hoped to save them from bloody
raids by Russian-led Aleut sealers. None
survived exposure to mainland diseases for more
than a few years.

2010 BLM wild horse gathers start early

January 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

RENO–The most aggressive year of Bureau of Land Management
wild horse captures since the passage of the 1971 Wild Free-Ranging
Horse & Burro Protection Act started early, with a first gather
apparently timed to try to evade activist notice.
Explained Martin Griffith of Associated Press, “The roundup
of 217 horses and burros along the Nevada-California border ended the
day before a BLM advisory board ignored advocates’ request for a
moratorium on such gathers. It also began shortly after the BLM
postponed a nearby roundup of thousands of wild horses in Nevada
because of a lawsuit.”

Killing owls in the name of saving owls

January 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

PORTLAND, Oregon– Public comment on a U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service proposal to shoot barred owls to see if killing them helps
spotted owl recovery closes on January 11, 2010.
Barred owls would be shot in spotted owl study areas near Cle
Elum, Washing-ton; the Oregon Coast Range mountains; and the Klamath
mountains of southwestern Oregon. The experiment would repeat on a
larger scale a 2005 study in which seven barred owls were shot in
habitat recently vacated by spotted owls in northern Calif-ornia.
After the larger and more aggressive barred owls were killed,
spotted owls returned. The California study became the rationale
for a rewrite of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan produced in mid-2008
by appointees of former U.S. President George W. Bush. Blaming
barred owls and wildfires rather than logging for the decline of
spotted owls, the Bush administration plan reduced the designated
critical habitat for spotted owls by 1.6 million acres, and would
have increased timber sales in the region fivefold.

Zimbabwe suspends hunting to save rhinos

January 1, 2010 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

Special to ANIMAL PEOPLE by Barnabas Thondlana
with additional research by Merritt Clifton

HARARE-Internationally criticized for
failing to stop rhinoceros poaching, the
Zimbabwe National Parks & Wildlife Author-ity on
November 30, 2009 temporarily suspended wildlife
hunting licences, interrupting trophy hunting by
foreign visitors near the peak of the season.
Trophy hunting has in recent years been
among the few reliable sources of foreign
exchange for the financially depleted Zimbabwean
government.
“National Parks & Wildlife Authority
would like to warn the public that all current
hunting permits have been suspended with
immediate effect to verify them,” said a notice
published in state-approved media. “All current
permit holders are advised to approach the Parks
Authority to verify validity of their permits,”
the notice added.

BOOKS: Search for the Golden Moon Bear

November 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

Search for the Golden Moon Bear

by Sy Montgomery
Chelsea Green Publishing (85 N. Main St., Suite 120, White River
Jct., Vermont 05001), 2002, 2009.
336 pages, paperback. $19.95.
No bear like the golden moon bear is known to science, says
Sy Montgomery–but science, so far, says the golden moon bear is
just a rare color morph of the Asiatic black bear, also known as the
moon bear for a crescent-shaped patch of light-colored chest fur.
Hoping that the golden moon bear might be a new species or a
subspecies, Montgomery and Northwestern University professor of
evolutionary biology Gary J. Galbreath in 1999 trekked through much
of Southeast Asia seeking material evidence. They found none, yet
Montgomery’s 2002 book Search for the Golden Moon Bear became a
cryptozoological classic. Rarely mentioned during the 40 years that
the U.S. had troops and aircraft in Southeast Asia, the golden moon
bear has become one of the best-known undocumented animals that
anyone still seriously contends might once have existed.

Efforts continue to ban the “elephant hook”

November 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

BOSTON–“All ears to the plight of the
GOP symbol,” according to Boston Herald reporter
Jessica Van Sack, Massachusetts state senator
Robert Hedlund has tried since 2004 to ban
keeping elephants in chains and striking them
with the ankus, or bullhook. The 2006 edition
cleared the Massachusetts senate, but not the
house of delegates. The 2009 edition reached a
legislative hearing on November 16.
A Republican representing Weymouth,
Plymouth and Norfolk, Hedlund distances himself
from those he calls “politically correct
left-wing do-gooders,” but concerning chaining
and the ankus, “”The more I got involved in the
issue, the more I became passionate about it and
emotionally tied to it, knowing the abusive
conditions these animals have to endure,” he
told Van Sack.

India bans keeping elephants in zoos & circuses

November 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

NEW DELHI–The Central Zoo Authority of
India on November 9, 2009 sent a rumble
throughout the world with a decree that elephants
may no longer be exhibited by zoos and circuses.
Rumored to be coming for more than 18
months, the order came from the government of
the nation with the most captive elephants,
about 3,500 in all; the oldest history of
elephant use and exhibition, about 3,500 years;
the largest population of wild Asian elephants,
approximately 28,000; and the longest record of
protecting both elephants and elephant habitat,
beginning about 2,240 years ago.

Feds to investigate horse slaughter & welfare

October 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Who wants or needs horse slaughter? The
Government Accountability Office is to spend the next few months finding out.
Signed by U.S. President Barack Obama on October 21, 2009,
the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Adminis-tration,
and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 included a clause
continuing the three-year-old prohibition of USDA inspection of
horsemeat, which brought the closure of the last three U.S. horse
slaughterhouses.

No home on the range for wild horses

October 1, 2009 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:

WASHNGTON D.C.–If Interior Secretary Ken Salazar imagined
his plan for wild horses would please anyone for long, he guessed
wrong. Few wild horse advocates have had praise for any it, fiscal
conservatives have slammed the projected cost of it, and almost
nobody imagines that the Salazar plan will lastingly solve the
problem of the Bureau of Land Management holding almost as many
“surplus” wild horses in captivity as remain on the western range.

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