Alaska Board of Game scraps own accountability rules to allow shooting wolves from aircraft

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

ANCHORAGE–Ten years after Alaskans banned hunting wolves
from aircraft by ballot initiative, 157 pilot/gunner teams are
shooting wolves from aircraft by authorization of the Alaska Division
of Wildlife Conservation and Board of Game–as hunters have every
winter since 2003/2004–and there is nothing that Friends of Animals
can do through the law to stop it, Alaska Superior Court Judge
Sharon Gleason ruled on January 31, 2006.
On January 17, 2006, three years after FoA sued seeking to
stop the airborne wolf hunt, Gleason ruled that the Board of Game
violated its own rules by failing to publish written justification
for it, including explanations of why alternatives to lethal control
such as wolf sterilization could not be used.
The 2006 airborne wolf hunt was suspended for two weeks after
only 24 wolves were killed, out of a quota of more than 500. The
quota exceeds the total of 445 wolves killed during the first three
winters of the program.

Hitting fur in the high Himalayas

March 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

NEW DELHI, CHENNAI–Rajasthan police on
February 3, 2006 arrested Nepal-based Tibetan
wildlife trafficker Tshering Nema, also known as
Neema Kampa, in north Delhi, finding him in
alleged possession of the skins of 34 leopards
and four otters.
“The consignment was en route to Siliguri
in West Bengal,” reported the Times of India
News Network, “to be then dispatched to Tibet
through Nepal.”
Identified by the Indo Asian News Service
as “an associate of notorious poacher Sansar
Chand,” Nema is believed to have been a kingpin
in the gang that in 2004 exterminated tigers
within the Sariska tiger reserve, significantly
reduced the Ranthambore reserve population, and
poached down the populations at 12 of India’s 25
other tiger reserves.
Nema allegedly relayed poached pelts to
Tibet via his father, Tamdin Vangyal of Nepal.
Rajasthan Police spokesperson A.K. Jain said that
Vangyal was also in Delhi when Nema was nabbed,
but eluded arrest.

BOOKS: Baboons: Tales, Traits & Troubles

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Baboons: Tales, Traits & Troubles
by Attie Gerber
Lapa Publishers (380 Bosma St., Pretoria, South Africa), 2004.
360 pages, hard cover. 180.95 rand.

Attie Gerber, now a university instructor of video
production and digital photography, cofounded the popular South
African television program 50/50, which has covered ecological
matters for more than 20 years. Baboons: Tales, Traits & Troubles
combines superb photographs with commentary mixing information about
baboons with advice about wildlife photography.
Gerber explores the interaction of Afrikaans and British
settlers with baboons through mentions of baboons in early South
African literature. Hated by farmers for crop-raiding, but
respected for their intelligence, baboons were at times even put to
work. For example, the Cape Argus reported in 1884, a railway
signalman named Jumper lost both legs in an accident, and procured a
baboon he called Jack to assist him. Photographs show Jack operating
the signal levers at Jumper’s instruction.

BOOKS: No One Loved Gorillas More

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

No One Loved Gorillas More: Dian Fossey Letters from the Mist
by Camilla de la Bedoyere with photographs by Bob Campbell
National Geographic Society (1145 17th St. NW, Washington, DC
20036), 2005. 191 pages, illustrated. $30.00 hard cover.

World Atlas of Great Apes & Their Conservation
edited by Julian Caldecott & Lera Miles
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA
94704), 94704. 424 pages, illustrated. $45.00 hard cover.

A case could be made that if Dian Fossey had not authored
Gorillas In The Mist (1983), the World Atlas of Great Apes & Their
Conservation would not exist.
Even if Julian Caldecott and Lera Miles had managed to
compile the World Atlas of Great Apes, it probably would not have
been published in a volume with 150 color photos, 50 maps, and a
preface by United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan. The heavily
footnoted text would be buried in obscure scholarly journals, not
piled on coffee tables.
Annan probably would never have written, “The great apes are
our kin. Like us, they are self-aware and have cultures, tools,
politics, and medicine.”

DNR seeks to keep wildlife rehab out of West Virginia

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

CHARLESTON, W.V.– West Virginia is the only U.S. state that
does not issue wildlife rehabilitation permits, and the state
Depart-ment of Natural Resources means to keep it that way, says
wildlife section chief Curtis Taylor.
The West Virginia 2006 legislative session convened on
January 11. Humane Society of the U.S. director of urban wildlife
programs John Hadidian and urban wildlife field director Laura Simon
have indicated that obtaining wildlife rehab authorization will be a
state HSUS priority.
The issue surfaced in October 2005 when a state police
officer investigating a complaint about shots fired on posted land
found about 60 caged raccoons on land belonging to rehabilitator
Patricia Hoffman-Butler, 47. The raccoons were seized, killed,
and examined for disease by DNR officials. Hoffman pleaded no
contest to illegal possession of wildlife on December 13, 2005, and
paid $173.50 in penalties.
West Virginia banned keeping raccoons after a coonhunting
club trucked as many as 2,000 raccoons north from a rabies-endemic
part of Florida in 1976, and released most of them before realizing
that some were rabid.

BOOKS: Bear & The Grizzly Maze

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

Bear by Robert E. Bieder
Reaktion Books Ltd. (79 Farringdon Rd., London, EC1M 3JU, U.K.),
2005. 192 pages, paperback. $19.95.

The Grizzly Maze by Nick Jans
Dutton (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2005.
275 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

Robert Bieder and Nick Jans explore the mythology of bears
from opposite angles but to common purpose in Bear, a global
overview, and The Grizzly Maze, an examination of the fatal
maulings of bear advocate Timothy Treadwell, 46, and his friend
Amie Huguenard, 37, by a brown bear on October 6, 2003, in Katmai
National Park, Alaska.
Bieder, a career scholar, starts with the evolution and
diversification of bears. Bear ancestors emerged in Europe and Asia
as long as 25 million years ago, but the forebears of today’s bears
appeared at about the same time that great apes evolved in Africa.
Conflict emerged between modern bears and early humans as
soon as population expansion brought them into overlapping habitat.
Bears, as carnivores who had developed the ability to eat
vegetation, and humans, as ancestral vegetarians who had learned to
scavenge and hunt, were direct competitors. Each killed and ate the
other, if able.

Kites vs. kite-birds & other species in the skies of India & Pakistan

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

AHMEDABAD–As many as a million kites soared aloft over
Indian cities on January 15, 2006 as Hindus celebrated Makar
Sankranti, the Day of the Sun.
Festivals throughout India featured kite-fighting contests, in which
flyers tried to saw through each other’s strings.
Celebrity kite-fighters included Sonia Gandhi, president of
the ruling Congress Party, and recently retired former prime
minister and Bharatija Janata Party president Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
who met in Jaipur.
Everywhere kites rose through the air space occupied by
sidewalk and garden bird species such as sparrows and bulbuls, up
past ringnecked parakeets and house crows patrolling at treetop
height, on to baffle the kite-birds and vultures whose
congregations, circling on thermal currents, are often the first
sign that Indian airline pilots see of their destination cities,
while the cities themselves are still beyond the horizon.

Non-enforcement erodes U.K. pack hunting ban

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

LONDON–Almost a year after the Hunting
Act banned most forms of hunting with dogs in
England and Wales, effective on February 19,
2005, pack hunting participation on Boxing Day
was reportedly undiminished.
As many as 250,000 people either rode to hounds
or followed the dogs on foot on December 26,
2005, the traditional peak of the British pack
hunting season.
“Far from consigning hunting to history,”
Times of London countryside editor Valerie Elliot
claimed, “thousands more are in the saddle or on
foot in pursuit of a fox scent, sometimes
accidentally hunting real foxes.”
Entering 2006, there were still 317 active hunt
clubs in Britain, including 184 that hunt foxes
and 100 that hunt hares. The Aldenham Harriers,
of South Hertfordshire, disbanded in
mid-January, but hunting participation overall
is up an average of 33%, asserted Elliot.

Greenpeace, Sea Shepherds chase whalers

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

SOUTHERN OCEANS WHALE SANCTUARY–Neither Australia, New
Zealand, nor the United Nations defends the Antarctic whale
sanctuary declared in 1974 by the International Whaling Commission,
so Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society did it
themselves in December 2005 and January 2006, while the Japanese
whaling fleet sought to kill 935 minke whales and 10 fin whales
within the sanctuary limits –which Japan does not recognize.
Greenpeace pursued the whalers with two ships, the Esperanza
and the Arctic Sunrise, a helicopter, and combined crews of 60
people, including two photographers and two videographers. For
Greenpeace, wrote Geoff Strong of the Melbourne Age, “the most
important weapon is not the water spray designed to confuse the
harpoonists’ aim,” a new tactic used to reported great effect, “but
the new satellite Internet link that allows them to send fresh
broadcast-quality images.
“Sea Shepherd has a different method of disseminating the
message,” Strong continued. Aboard the Farley Mowat were “an
embedded contingent of independent media, including representatives
from Australia’s Seven network, National Geographic, and
documentary filmmakers from the U.S., France, Brazil, and Canada.
“The whalers have a public relations machine too,” Strong
noted. “For the first time they too have been releasing images.”

« 1 … 42 43 44 45 46 … 173 »