War hurts wildlife

October 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

Scarce wildlife habitat in both Lebanon and Israel took a big
hit from the July and August 2006 fighting.
“Huge swaths of forests and fields across northern Israel
were scorched by Hezbollah rocket strikes,” reported Associated
Press writer Aron Heller. “Charred branches stick out of the ground
like grave markers at the Mount Naftali Forest overlooking Kiryat
Shemona. In all, rocket fire destroyed 16,500 acres of forests and
grazing fields, said Jewish National Fund forest supervisor Michael
Weinberger, the top administrator of Israel’s forests. About a
million trees were destroyed.

“Lawrence of the hyenas” talks Lord’s Resistance Army into sparing rhinos

October 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
“Lawrence Anthony, founder of the South African
environmental group The Earth Organisation, has persuaded the Lord’s
Resistance Army to join with scientists to protect the northern white
rhino, of which only four are thought to remain in the wild,” London
Guardian environment correspondent David Adam reported on September
13, 2006.
“As part of an ongoing peace process,” Adam continued, “the
rebels have pledged not to harm the animals and to tell wildlife
experts if they see one.”
The LRA in 2005 invaded Garamba national park, “a sprawling
and densely forested reserve close to the Ugandan border in the far
northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Adam explained.
“The LRA is notorious for use of child soldiers and has been accused
of atrocities including rapes, mutilations and the mass murder of
civilians. Conservation seemed far from its priorities,
particularly after members shot dead 12 game rangers and eight
Guatemalan UN soldiers sent to the region to keep order.”

Marine mammal exhibitors join protest against Japanese coastal dolphin killing

October 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

More than 60 organizations demonstrated
outside Japanese embassies and consulates in 32
cities against “traditional” coastal whaling on
September 20, 2006, the second annual Japan
Dolphin Day declared and coordinated by Ric
O’Barry of One Voice. Most notoriously practiced
at Taiji, the coastal whaling method consists of
driving dolphins into shallow bays from which
they cannot escape and then hacking them to death
en massé, after some are selected for live
capture and sale to swim-with-dolphins
attractions and exhibition parks.
The so-called “drive fisheries” have been
protested for more than 30 years by marine mammal
advocates including Sakei Hemmi of the Elsa
Nature Conservancy/Japan, film maker Hardin
Jones, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder
Paul Watson, and Steve Sipman, who invented the
name “Animal Liberation Front” in connection with
releasing two dolphins from a Hawaiian laboratory
in 1976. The Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks &
Aquariums and the American Zoo & Aquarium
Association finally issued statements of
objection to the “drive fisheries” in March 2004,
as did the World Association of Zoos & Aquariums
in June 2006.

Thai coup may hit wildlife traffic

October 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
BANGKOK–The September 20, 2006 Thai
military coup postponed for six days the already
long delayed return of 41 smuggled orangutans
from Thailand to Indonesia. Still, Wildlife
Friends Found-ation Thailand founder Edwin Wiek
told members of the Asian Animal Protection
Network, “We believe that under the new rule the
conservation of wildlife will improve.”
The repatriation flight, orginally set
for September 23, was rescheduled for September
29.
Another seven orangutans are suffering
from hepatitis, the Jakarta Post reported on
September 16. Indonesia has refused to accept
them, at least until after they recover.
“The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
and Wildlife Friends, who were to facilitate the
repatriation for the Indonesian government, were
told that the Indonesian Navy plane that was to
pick up the apes could not land in Thailand until
further notice,” Wiek said earlier.

BOOKS: Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey

September 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

Two views of–

Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey
by Georgianne Nienaber
Universe (2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100,
Lincoln, NE 68512), 2006. 255 pages
paperback. $19.95.

Fearless fighter for gorillas

Gorilla Dreams purports to be
posthumously narrated by the late gorilla
researcher Dian Fossey herself. Georgianne
Nienaber writes from what she believes to be
Fossey’s own perspective about how she believed
she was abused, swindled, maligned,
manipulated, used, harassed and obstructed by
cruel and corrupt people, many of them
representatives of respected mainstream
conservation charities.
Asks Nienaber in the Fossey persona,
“How much of my legacy has been used by
fraudulent conservation authorities to collect
funds from those least able to afford them, only
to have those moneys flow into corrupt coffers,
never to reach the gorillas?”

BOOKS: Return of the Condor

September 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

Return of the Condor: The Race to Save Our Largest Bird from Extinction
by John Moir
Lyons Press (246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437), 2006.
187 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

Science writer John Moir relates in this book the drama of
the last-ditch captive breeding program that undoubtedly saved the
Californian condor from extinction. Inter-agency politics and
eloquent lobbying by non-interventionists, led by Friends of the
Earth founder David Brower, nearly kept the Condor Recovery Program
from starting.
Brower, who previously headed the Sierra Club and later
founded Earth Island Institute, argued that capturing the last wild
California condors for captive breeding would set a bad precedent for
reducing endangered wildlife to zoo specimens, that reintroduction
would probably fail because captive-bred condors would not learn from

Whales’ navy gains two ships

September 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

The global “navy” defending whales has added two ships–the
Leviathan, recently acquired by the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society, and the Stenela, the first dolphin-watching vessel based
in Mozambique, funded by the German Society for Dolphin
Conservation, Save Our Seas Foundation, and Deutsche Umwelthilfe.
While the Stenela will attempt to protect whales and dolphins
by promoting appreciation of marine mammals in a new part of the
world, the Leviathan will lead the Sea Shepherd intervention against
Japanese “research” whaling within the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary,
designated by the International Whaling Commission in 1994 but not
recognized by Japan.
“We will be bringing two ships, a helicopter, and about 60
volunteers,” pledged Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson. Watson said
that the Levithan appears to be as fast as the Nisshin Maru, the
Japanese whaling factory ship, which repeatedly sped away from the
former Sea Shepherd flagship Farley Mowat last winter in high seas
skirmishes also involving two Greenpeace vessels.
The Institute of Cetacean Research, the Japanese whaling
front, plans to kill up to 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales within
sanctuary waters this coming winter.

League Against Cruel Sports wins first Hunting Act foxhunting conviction

September 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

DEVON, U.K.–The League Against Cruel
Sports on August 3, 2006 won the first
conviction for fox hunting under the Hunting Act
of 2004, which banned fox hunting throughout
England and Wales. Barnstaple Magistrates’ Court
District Judge Paul Palmer fined Exmoor Foxhounds
huntsman Tony Wright, 52, £500 plus prosecution
costs of £250 after an intensely publicized
week-long hearing. Wright allegedly hunted a fox
with dogs on April 29, 2004.
“The League brought the case at a total
cost of more than £100,000 after Avon and
Somerset Police declined to take the case,”
reported BBC News.

BOOKS: Wild Horses: The world’s last surviving herds

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

Wild Horses: The world’s last surviving herds
by Elwyn Hartley Edwards
Hylas Publishing (129 Main Street, Irvington, NY10533), 2006. 144
pages, hard cover. $24.95.

Well-researched and beautifully presented, with inspiring
photos of exquisite horses, this book presents a wealth of
information about feral horses around the world.
Feral horses persist in places as remote as the Namib desert
in Africa and as seemingly unlikely as the saltwater marshes of the
Camargue region in southern France.
Unfortunately, there are now no longer any true wild horses,
except for Africa zebras and Asiatic wild asses, and their numbers
too have declined because of hunting.
Page after page describes how various wild horse herds were hunted
out of existence.

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