Ivory auctions net much less than African nations expected

December 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2008:
Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South
Africa between October 31 and November 7, 2008
collected $15.4 million from the sale of 108 tons
of stockpiled elephant tusks to Chinese and
Japanese traders, in the first ivory sales
approved by the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species since 1999.
But the sellers were reportedly disappointed in their take.
The average price paid for ivory was $152
U.S. per kilogram, less than a fifth the price
that some conservationists have claimed is paid
for poached ivory.

Pickens bids to save BLM wild horses

December 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2008:
RENO–Just as the Bureau of Land
Management seemed poised to kill 2,000 healthy
mustangs, due to lack of adoptive homes,
Madeleine Pickens “arrived on a white horse,” as
Washington Post staff writer Lyndsey Layton put
it.
Pickens on November 17, 2008 turned a
public hearing in Reno from a perfunctory
condemnation ritual to a celebration.
“Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone
Pickens, made known her intentions to adopt not
just the doomed wild horses but most or all of
the 30,000 horses and burros kept in federal
holding pens,” reported Layton. “Lifelong
animal lovers, the Pickenses just a few years
ago led the fight to close the last horse
slaughterhouse in the United States.”
Posted Pickens afterward to her personal
web site, “Wild horses on federal land are
living symbols of the history of the American
West and must be protected. My view is for a
wild horse sanctuary that will be a tourist
destination where Americans and tourists from
around the world can observe this great part of
American history.”

BOOKS: Elephants & Ethics

October 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)

Elephants & Ethics:
Toward a Morality of Coexistence
Edited by Christen Wemmer & Catherine A. Christen
Johns Hopkins University Press (2715 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218), 2008. 483 pages, hardcover. $75.00.

We have been defining our relationships with the elephants for as long as we have been people, opens John Seidensticker in his preface to Elephants & Ethics: Toward a Morality of Coexistence. When discussing the ethics of human/elephant relationships, he adds, we should keep in mind a historical reality: In any confrontation, elephants almost always lose.
Seidensticker in the next several paragraphs traces the 3,000-year retreat of wild elephants from Beijing to the Myanmar border. As rice cultivation enabled the rise of civilization in China, the conversion of former lowland forests to paddies steadily reduced elephant habitat.

BOOKS: Reprises of Born Free

October 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)

The Daily Coyote by Shreve Stockton
Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2008. 279 pages, paperback. $23.00.

The Parrot Who Thought She Was A Dog by Nancy Ellis-Bell
Harmony Books (c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019), 2008. 245 pages, hardcover. $23.00.

Of Parrots & People by Mira Tweti
Penguin Group USA (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2008. 300 pages, paperback. $25.95.

Behind The Daily Coyote, The Parrot Who Thought She Was A Dog, and an entire genre of similar books which since 1960 have reshaped public opinion about wildlife stands the ghost of George Adamson and the influence of Pat O Neill, a Kenyan who later inherited the Broadlands equine stud farm near Cape Town, South Africa, and converted it into the Kalu Animal Trust.

Rhino babies bring hope to Zimbabwe

October 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
WEDZA, Zimbabwe Two bottle-fed orphaned Zimbabwean black rhino babies may live happily ever after, if the uneasy power-sharing pact between president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai brings stability and economic recovery to the nation.
Signed on September 15, 2008, the agreement was jeopardized as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press by Mugabe s determination to retain control over key cabinet posts. Members of Mugabe s ZANU-PF party still roam the countryside, poaching wildlife, intimidating political opponents, looting aid convoys and invading farms, claiming privilege as war veterans whether or not they had anything to do with the revolution that brought Zimbabwe into being and brought Mugabe to power in 1980.

Studies refute pretexts for deer hunting

October 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio; WASHINGTON , D.C. Two of the most common pretexts for deer hunting in late October 2008 took a hit from data published by researchers who had no intention of discouraging hunting.
At least 31 states rationalize efforts to promote deer hunting by claiming an urgent need to kill more deer, to prevent deer/car collisions and protect biodiversity, supposedly harmed by too many deer devouring plants.
The Highway Loss Data Institute and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported that the number of people killed in deer/car crashes rose from 101 in 1993 to 150 in 2000 and 227 in 2007.

Courts restore federal protection to wolves in all Lower 48

September 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
WASHINGTON D.C.–Wolves are again a federally protected
species throughout the U.S., after U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman
ruled in Washington D.C. on September 29, 2008 that the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service improperly removed wolves in Michigan, Minnesota,
and Wisconsin from the endangered species list in 2007.
Anticipating the similar verdict in a pending case in
Missoula, Montana, the Fish & Wildlife Service on September 22,
2008 asked U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy to return the estimated
1,455 wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains to Endangered Species
Act protection.

Tigers scarce, poachers zero in on leopards, warns Indian conservationist

September 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
NEW DELHI–Poachers who cannot find tigers to kill and
traffickers who have increasing difficulty moving tiger parts from
India to customers in Nepal and China are turning their notice to
leopards, warns Wildlife Protection Society of India program manager
Tito Joseph.
“Tiger parts fetch a price 20 times higher than those of
leopards,” Joseph told The Times of India on September 7, 2008 “but
their bones are considered on par.”
Compounding the situation, leopards are coming into
increasingly frequent and deadly conflict with humans–partly because
more desperately poor people are taking the risk of moving into their
habitat, partly too because more hungry leopards are coming into
villages to hunt livestock.

Closer regulation of exotic cat facilities may follow two tiger attacks in Missouri

September 1, 2008 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:

ST. LOUIS–Kenneth and Sandra Smith, owners of the now
closed Wesa-A-Geh-Ya exotic animal park in Warren County, Missouri,
and Wesa-A-Geh-Ya board member Roy Elder were on September 19, 2008
charged with evidence tampering for allegedly trying to mislead the
county sheriff’s department into believing that a pit bull terrier
rather than a tiger attacked volunteer Jacob Barr.
“Barr, 26, had part of his leg surgically amputated
following the August 3 mauling,” recounted Associated Press writer
Betsy Taylor. “Elder and Sandra Smith are accused of lying to
investigators. Kenneth Smith, who shot and killed the attacking
animal, is accused of moving the dead tiger’s body to a different
location.”

« 1 … 24 25 26 27 28 … 173 »