1958 slaughter act protects all species, say lawsuits

January 2, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

SAN FRANCISCO, WASHINGTON D.C.–Separate
federal lawsuits filed by the Humane Society of
the U.S. and the Humane Farming Association
contend that Congress meant the 1958 Humane
Methods of Slaughter Act to cover all species who
are routinely killed for human consumption.
Filed in San Francisco one month apart,
both lawsuits place jurisdiction for the first
ruling and first two steps of the inevitable
appellate phase before the Ninth U.S. Judicial
Circuit, a court which has historically been
more friendly toward animals than most other
jurisdictions.
USDA enforcement of the Humane Methods of
Slaughter Act, as well as being sporadic and
uneven, has always exempted poultry, rabbits,
and ranched “wildlife” species such as bison,
deer, and elk. In consequence, more than 95%
of all the animals slaughtered for meat in the
U.S. have had no legal protection from cruelty.

BOOKS: Canada Goose Habitat Modification Manual

December 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Canada Goose Habitat Modification Manual
by Donald S. Heintzelman
Friends of Animals (777 Post Road, Suite 205, Darien, CT 06820),
2005. 16 pages, illus. $4.00.

“Just as world-renowned ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson
opposed mute swan egg-addling, Friends of Animals opposes addling
Canada goose eggs,” the FoA Canada Goose Habitat Modification Manual
opens. “Addling–destroying eggs by shaking, piercing, or coating
the eggs with oil–is invasive and traumatic for these famously
protective nesters.”
Many humane organizations including GeesePeace reluctantly
promote addling as at least less invasive and traumatic than killing
geese. The moral issue involved is comparable to the question of
whether or not to spay a pregnant cat or dog, when the alternative
is that more homeless cats or dogs may be killed by animal control.
In New Jersey, for instance, with 4.3 non-migratory Canada
geese per square kilometer, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
recommends that as many as 57,000 geese should be killed during the
next 10 years, to try to achieve a 40% population reduction.
Intensive egg-addling is also part of the plan.

If only the baboon ploy helped with elephants

December 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

JOHANNESBURG, CAPE TOWN–Baboons are a
traditional head-ache for South African wildlife
officials, but environment and tourism minister
Marthinus van Schalkwyk probably wishes elephant
issues could as easily be handled.
Failing to achieve broad-based agreement
in favor of culling the Kruger National Park
elephant population at a series of consultatation
meetings in November and December 2005, South
African environment and tourism minister
Marthinus van Schalkwyk scheduled another
consultation meeting for early 2006.
Van Schalkwyk is believed to favor
culling, but only with political cover
sufficient to prevent harm to the South African
tourist industry.
Van Schalkwyk’s Cape Province counterpart avoided
a similar confrontation over baboons when
CapeNature acting chief executive Fanie Bekker
appropriated 3.5 million rand, worth about
$530,000 U.S., to hire baboon monitors.

Wild horses & cattle at risk in the Danube Delta

December 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Wild horses & cattle at risk in the Danube Delta
by Andreea Plescan with further research by ANIMAL PEOPLE

Untamed and undiscovered by tourism and
development, the Danube Delta is home to more
than 300 bird species, 160 fish species, and
more than 800 plant families.
Protected as a wetlands biosphere
reserve, the Romanian portion of the Danube
Delta occupies 2,622 square miles of channels and
canals, widening into tree-fringed lakes, reed
islands, marshes, some oak forest intertwined
with lianas and creepers, desert dunes, and
some traditional fishing villages.
The Danube Delta is also home to the
largest population of wild horses and cattle in
Europe. Their combined population is officially
estimated at about 7,500. Some escaped from
farms to join wild herds during the 2005 floods.
Some escaped earlier, or their ancestors did.
Many were released to graze on the biosphere
reserve by farmers who hoped to recapture them
later, but abandoned them when horse flesh and
beef prices dropped.

Elephant Sanctuary to get last Cuneo eles

December 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

CHICAGO–The Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee, in
late December 2005 expects to receive nine female elephants from the
Hawthorn Corporation of Richmond, Illinois. The move will put John
Cuneo, 74, out of the elephant training and rental business after
48 years.
Cuneo started the Hawthorn Corporation as a traveling circus
in 1957. Later Cuneo found a more profitable business niche in
leasing animals to other circuses and boarding exotic animals.
Cuneo agreed in March 2004 to settle 47 alleged Animal Welfare Act
violations by divesting of his 16 elephants by August 2004. The
divestiture was repeatedly delayed by disputes over where to send
them.

Wildlife in the hard-hit Gulf region is most imperiled by human activity

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Hurricane Katrina first hit wildlife along the east coast of Florida.
“About 200 loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings born on
Hutchinson Island were unable to crawl through deposits of sea grass
washed ashore by the storm,” Palm Beach Post staff writer Kimberly
Miller reported. “Beachgoers from Delray Beach south found about two
dozen hatchlings that experts believe made it into the water, but
were spit back worn out onto the beach by the waves.”
Treated for dehydration and exhaustion by the Gumbo Limbo
Environmental Complex in Boca Raton and the Marinelife Center in Juno
Beach, most were returned to the sea within days.
There they encountered a new threat. After hurricanes the
National Marine Fisheries Service often suspends the requirement that
shrimpers must use turtle exclusion devices (TEDS) on their nets,
because floating debris often fouls TEDS and tears nets.
The timing of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma meant
that the TED rule was continuously suspended from September 26 to
November 23.
Meanwhile, as Katrina roared westward, about 50 sea turtle
nests were destroyed along the Alabama coast. Habitat for the
endangered Alabama beach mouse and red-cockaded woodpecker was also
destroyed.

Will Thai zoo crowd eat Kenya wildlife?

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

BANGKOK, NAIROBI–A long-controversial sale of 135 wild
animals from Kenya to the Chiang Mai Night Safari zoo in Thailand on
November 10 appeared to be almost a done deal.
Kenya president Mwai Kibaki and Thai prime minister Thaskin
Shinawatra ceremonially signed the agreement at the State House in
Nairobi.
The transaction is to include both black and white rhinos,
elephants, lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, servals, hippos,
and at least 14 hooved species.
But the deal was originally to have included more than 300
animals, as described in July 2005. It was scaled back after Youth
for Conservation rallied international opposition to the animal sale,
over a variety of humane, tactical, precedental, and conservation
considerations.

International animal legislation

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Twenty-three nations with native chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas, and orangutans on September 9, 2005 signed a Declar-ation
on Great Apes in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, committing
themselves to protecting great apes and ape habitat in terms similar
to the language of the 1982 global moratorium on commercial whaling
and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change.
The treaty was brokered through four years of negotiation by
the Great Apes Survival Project, formed by the United Nations
Environment Program and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation. “GRASP has convinced nearly all of the range states
that saving great apes is very much in their interests, by stressing
that apes can bring enormous economic benefit to poor communities
through eco-tourism,” summarized Michael McCarthy, envronment
editor of the London Independent. “The new agreement places ape
conservation squarely in the context of strategies for poverty
reduction and developing sustainable livelihoods.”

Africans defending national wildlife parks turn from guns to courts

November 2, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

NAIROBI, HARARE, GABORONE, JOHANNESBURG–Amboseli,
Kalahari, Hwange, Kruger: the names alone evoke images of
wide-open wild places on a sparsely inhabited continent–at least to
non-Africans. But to many Africans whose tribal lands they
historically were, these and other globally renowned wildlife parks
are symbols of conquest, occupation, and deprivation.
To those who till land or keep livestock, the parks are the
source of marauding wildlife, and appear to hoard disproportionate
shares of the green grass and water.
To those who have nothing, the parks symbolize inaccessible
opportunity.
To politicians, the great African wildlife parks often
represent potential largess, expendible to build a power base.
Preserving the parks as unpeopled as European and American
ecotourists and wildlife conservation donors imagine the “real”
Africa to be is a multi-million-dollar industry, but there is also
big money in opening them to more hunting and other commercial
exploitation, while returning the parks to tribal control is an
oft-expressed rhetorical ideal often most strongly favored by whoever
anticipates gaining easy access to resources in exchange for giving
tribal partners a few more dusty acres in which to graze goats.

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