Is anyone watching out for Indian wildlife?

March 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

DELHI–“There is no one left to raise hell with,” People for
Animals founder and former Indian minister of state for animal
welfare lamented to ANIMAL PEOPLE on February 15, after disclosures
raised questions as to whether anyone is looking out for wildlife
within the present Indian government.
The most humiliating disclosure, had anyone been paying
attention, was that the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species on December 22 recommended that “all Parties [to
the United Nations-brokered treaty] suspend commercial trade in
specimens of CITIES-listed species with Gambia and India until
further notice.”
The suspension came because Gambia and India failed to submit
legislative plans for strengthening CITES enforcement.
The humiliation might have been acute because the CITES logo
was designed in India and India has three times chaired the CITES
standing committee.
But hardly anyone in India knew about the suspension, Times
of India correspondent Chandrika Mago disclosed on February 18.
“Even seniors in the environment ministry have just heard of
the decision,” Mago wrote. “They hope CITES will relax its stance
in a month or so.”

Indian ocean marine life less hurt by tsunami than was feared

March 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

COLUMBO, CHENNAI, PHUKET–Concern for marine life after the
Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 centered on sea turtles
and coral reefs.
Sea turtles, just beginning their nesting season, and usually
drowned by the thousands in trawler nets, appeared to be among the
few beneficiaries–other than fish–of the destruction of fishing
fleets and beachfront development.
Thirty olive ridley sea turtles hatched on February 16 at
Tanjung Beach on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for example, a
tsunami-struck resort area where sea turtles had not nested
successfully in more than a decade.
But U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service coral reef expert
Tom Hourigan told Paul Recer of Associated Press that reefs badly
damaged by the regional El Nino effect of 1997-1998 were likely to
have taken a further pounding.
“It is very likely that the tsunami would damage the coral
and some of the worst damage would come from debris thrown up against
the reefs,” Hourigan told Recer.
“Some entire reef ecosystems could have been buried by
sediments flushed into shallow environments,” added coral reef
division chief Russel E. Brainard of the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration.

BOOKS: Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology,
Behavior, and Conservation by James R. Spotila
Johns Hopkins University Press (2715 N. Charles
St., Baltimore, MD 21218), 2004. 224 pages,
illustrated. $24.95 hardcover.

“The lessons from Malay-sia are clear,”
James R. Spotila summarizes in the next-to-last
paragraph of his section on leatherbacks, three
paragraphs from the end of Sea Turtles.
“Developers built hotels and cottages right on
the nesting beaches to accommodate as many as
1,000 people a night who came to see the
leatherbacks nest. In addition, Malaysians
continued to take the eggs. The result was
near-extinction.
“People can make a difference,” Spotila
continues, “by assisting in efforts to oppose
development on leatherback beaches and by
demanding that their governments get industrial
fishing under controlŠWe may not be able to
accomplish this in counties like India and
Malaysia during our lifetimes,” he concludes on
a note of pessimism.

Bill introduced to halt wild horse slaughter; horse lovers rally

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., RENO– U.S. Representatives Nick J. Rahall
(D-West Virginia) and Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) on January 25
introduced a bill to restore to wild equines the full protection
extended by the 1971 Wild & Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Protection Act.
The Rahall/Whitfield bill, HR-297, would repeal a stealth
rider attached by Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana), to the
Consolidated Appropriations Act passed by Congress on November 18,
2004.
“If allowed to stand, the Burns provision will lead to the
slaughter of thousands of wild horses for human consumption abroad,”
summarized American Horse Defense Fund attorney Trina Bellak.
An impromptu demonstration of the symbolic significance of
wild horses to the American public came on January 21 at Damante
Ranch High School in Nevada.
Fearing that the Nevada Department of Agriculture was
rounding up mustangs to sell to slaughter, 30 to 40 students left
their classes, marched to the temporary corral in two separate
groups, so that if one group was intercepted the other might get
through, and released about a dozen horses who had already been
captured with hay as bait.

Tsunami destruction of fishing fleet brings respite for sea turtles

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

VISAKHAPATNAM, VELANKANNI, PHUKET–The Indian Ocean sea
turtle nesting season had just begun when the tsunami hit on December
26, 2004.
“I was awake by five a.m.,” Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep
Kumar Nath told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Every morning during the nesting season Nath organizes
volunteer foot patrols to find and protect sea turtle nests along the
beaches of Visakhapatnam, India. The volunteers try to spot the
turtles as they come ashore, keep crowds away, and ensure that the
nests are properly buried, to avert predation by street dogs,
jungle cats, jackals, and foxes. “I have witnessed such incidents
since we began our turtle protection program,” Nath said. “The
dogs eat quite fast.”
On December 26, Nath recalled, “Our
poacher-turned-volunteer saw a sea turtle laying eggs, while another
turtle returned to the sea without laying, he informed me around
8.30 a.m.” It was a quiet morning. Done at the beach, the Visakha
SPCA team departed–just in time.

Wildlife fared better in Sri Lanka than Thailand

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Like the wildlife of India, Sri Lankan wildlife mostly
seemed to have sufficient warning to escape the tsunami–but the
wildlife of Thailand, hours closer to the earthquake that detonated
it, fared far worse.
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society president Ravi Corea
inspected Yala National Park soon after the tsunami.
“There were reports that elephants fled the coast just before
the tsunami hit. We saw no dead animals except for two feral water
buffalo,” Corea e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We saw large herds of
axis deer, a male elephant, many peacocks, wild boar, black-naped
hare, two species of mongoose, and a pack of five jackals,” Corea
recounted.
However, Corea saw longterm threats to Sri Lankan wildlife
in the extensive damage to vegetation and fresh water sources.
“It is important to assess how salt water is affecting the
life in lakes and will affect the food chain, especially for apex
feeders such as aquatic birds, fish-eating mammals, and reptiles,”
Corea said. “Such study might help us to understand how global
warming and a resulting rise in sea level might affect inland coastal
areas.”

Hunting, brucellosis, and the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction 10 years after

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK–Ten years after the January 1995
reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, elk near
Gardiner, Montana, are getting a reprieve from seasonal human
hunting pressure. A planned resumption of bison hunting along the
northern park boundary has been postponed–not directly because of
wolves, but because of increased local sensitivity toward the views
of non-hunters.
Growing numbers of wolves are killed attacking livestock,
however, and wildlife managers in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming are
already anticipating the opportunity to sell wolf hunting permits
when wolves come off the federal Endangered Species List.
The role of wolves in regulating Yellowstone elk and bison
numbers is still disputed, but biologists increasingly credit the
return of wolves with increasing the health of the herds by devouring
sick animals, including those who carry brucellosis and chronic
wasting disease.

BOOKS: The Lions of Tsavo

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

The Lions of Tsavo:
Exploring the Legacy of Africa’s Notorious Man-eaters
by Bruce D. Patterson
McGraw-Hill Co. (Two Penn Plaza, New York,
NY 10121), 2004. 231 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

Eight years after shooting two maneless male lions who had
killed as many as 135 railway workers in a two-year binge, Colonel
John H. Patterson in 1907 published The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, the
first authoritative book about the aleady famous episode.
Financially stressed, Patterson in 1925 sold the pelts of
the two lions to the Field Museum in Chicago. Stuffed and mounted as
a prominent exhibit, the pelts sustained interest in the serial
attacks sufficient that Paramount Pictures produced the film The
Ghost & The Darkness in 1996. The film took a few liberties in
condensing incidents and characters, but remained close to the
well-known history.
Drawing heavily upon research by Bruce D. Patterson of the
Field Museum, Philip Caputo published The Ghosts of Tsavo in 2002,
exploring and eventually rejecting the possibility that the two
maneless lions were representatives of a different subspecies from
the familiar African lion.

Fishing causes global crash of wild predators

December 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2004:

NEW ORLEANS–Responding to findings that the global
population of “apex predator” fish has fallen 90% since 1950, the
63-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic
Tunas on November 21 agreed to ban killing sharks for their fins in
the Atlantic ocean.
The U.S. banned shark finning in Atlantic territorial waters
in 1993, and in Pacific territorial waters in 2002.
Eighteen days after ratifying the ICCAT agreement, the U.S.
State Department and U.S. Customs moved to strengthen regulations
meant to exclude from the U.S. shrimp and shrimp products caught by
means that kill sea turtles. Six of the seven sea turtle species are
now considered critically endangered. Leatherbacks have declined 95%
since 1980.
The recent regulatory actions were just a start, however,
to the drastic measures that scientists are increasingly often
recommending to save pelagic ecosystems.
“More than 600 scientists from 54 countries have signed a
petition urging the United Natons to impose a moratorium on longline
fishing in the Pacific,” noted Sunday Telegraph environment
correspondent David Harrison, as ICCAT met. “Longline fishing was
expected to reduce unnecessary catches [of non-target species] produced by dragging large nets,” Harrison recalled.

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