Hunting bears with bait, dogs, traps, & loaded ballot language

October 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

JUNEAU, AUGUSTA–Alaska and Maine voters will decide on
November 2, 2004 whether to ban baiting bears into shooting range,
but as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press the exact wording of the Alaska
ballot proposition remained in doubt.
Alaska Lieutenant Governor Loren Leman reworded descriptions
of the anti-bear baiting measure and two unrelated propositions after
they had already won enough petition signatures to qualify for the
ballot. The petition language was approved in June 2003 by Alaska
assistant attorney general Marjorie Vandor. Leman did not seek
approval of his rewrites from the organizations promoting the ballot
measures, and is known to oppose all three.
Half a million ballots were printed before Anchorage Superior
Court Judge Morgan Christen ruled on September 29 that Leman’s
rewrite of one proposition was illegal.
“Christen said that destroying the old ballots was the only
way to correct the misleading, biased, and factually inaccurate
working of the Trust the People initiative to strip the governor’s
authority to fill a vacated U.S. Senate seat by appointment,” wrote
Richard Mauer and Joel Gay of the Anchorage Daily News. Mauer and
Gay anticipated that Leman would appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court.

Big winners & losers at CITES 2004

October 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

BANGKOK–Minke whales, Irriwaddy dolphins, and great white
sharks were among the big winners at the 13th meeting of the 166
nations belonging to the United Nations Convention on International
Trade In Endangered Species, held October 2-14 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Black rhinos and crocodiles were among the big losers.
Whether elephants won or lost varied with the perspectives of
the participants. A Kenyan proposal to extend the 1989 global
moratorium on ivory trading failed, but the delegates approved a
resolution committing every African nation with a domestic ivory
trade to either strictly control it or halt it.
“Unregulated domestic markets across Africa are fueling a
significant part of the poaching we are seeing in central Africa,”
explained Tom Milliken, eastern and southern Africa director for the
wildlife trade monitoring organization TRAFFIC. “These markets
consume up to 12,000 elephants annually,” Milliken continued, “so
it’s time we close this huge loophole in the global effort to save
elephants.”
Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, and
Nigeria have the most open domestic ivory markets, according to
TRAFFIC.

Bogus charges filed against snake-charming foes prove to be their lucky charm

October 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

AHMEDABAD–Being arrested on bogus charges as an alleged
dangerous criminal proved to be a blessing in disguise for Animal
Help Foundation founder Rahul Sehgal, his associates, and the
snakes they were trying to rescue, Sehgal told ANIMAL PEOPLE
afterward.
When it happened, though, it sounded bad.
“Twelve activists of the Animal Help Foundation were booked
for kidnapping, wrongful confinement, and unlawful assembly,” the
Indian Express reported from Mumbai on September 16, “after snake
charmers from Ganeshpura village in Ganghinagar district filed a
police complaint accusing the activists of abducting them from the
village on September 3.
“Snake charmer Babulal Madari said he and six others were
returning home when they were intercepted by the activists on the
highway and beaten up,” the Indian Express continued.
More than 30 years after the 1973 Wildlife Protection Act
outlawed capturing snakes from the wild, and 14 years after the
Supreme Court of India upheld the portions of the act banning
commerce in snake products and wild animal fur, Indian
snake-charmers still capture more than 400,000 snakes per year,
Wildlife Trust of India researcher Bahar Dutt reported in June 2004.

Galapagos rangers win exit of pro-fishing boss

October 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Quito, Ecuador–Ecuador environment minister Fabian
Valdivieso on September 27, 2004 appointed Galapagos National Park
biologist Victor Carrion interim park director, ending a 17-day
strike by the 300 park rangers.
Moving to placate fishers and their Ecuadoran Navy allies, Valdivieso
on September 10 touched off the strike by firing former park director
Edwin Naula.
Several international scientific and environmental
organizations froze funding to the park in anticipation of Naula’s
ouster, park spokesperson Diego Anazco told Associated Press. In
consequence, the rangers had not been paid since July.
Naula, a marine biologist, had led Galapagos National Park
staff efforts to halt sea cucumber poaching since 1997. The local
fishers responded with escalating mob violence. After the Ecuadoran
Navy failed to support the park rangers, Naula in 2000 invited the
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to help patrol the Galapagos marine
reserve.
The Sea Shepherds in 2001 “documented an admiral accepting a
bribe to release a poaching vessel in the marine reserve,” according
to Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson. The admiral lost his job. The
navy retaliated in June and August 2004 by attempting to evict the
Sea Shepherds from Ecuadoran waters.

Lab demand threatens Asian urban monkeys

October 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

“For lab animals who have died for the health of humans,”
reads the inscription on the front of a newly installed monument in
front of the Wuhan University animal research center, in Hubai
state, China.
On the back it reads, “In special memory of the 38 rhesus
macaques whose lives were devoted to SARS research.”
Both inscriptions were authored by vaccine researcher Sun
Lihua, the Xinhua News Agency reported in early October 2004.
Researchers rarely welcome such public reminders that their
work causes animals to suffer and die.
In 1903, for example, British National Anti-Vivisection
Society president Stephen Coleridge had a fountain built in the
Battersea district of London to mark the life and death of a dog who
had been vivisected at nearby University College. Seven years of
frequent street fighting followed between medical students trying to
smash the fountain and local working class youths who defended it.
The Brown Dog Riots, as the conflicts are remembered, ended
after the city council had the fountain removed in 1910, but
modern-day University College students and faculty objected when a
replica fountain was installed at Battersea Park in 1985.
Opposition to animal research tends to be quiet in China.
Protests of any kind have long been repressed, and there is no
visible antivivisection movement.

BOOKS: Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant

October 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2004:

Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant
by Stephen Alter
Harcourt Inc. (15 E. 26th St., New York, NY 10010), 2004.
320 pages, hardcover. $25.00.

A thorough introduction to the history, mythological roles,
and present status of elephants in India, Elephas Maximus reviews
all the familiar elephant issues pertaining to habitat, poaching,
domestic use, and exhibition, and delves into others that have
received little attention in centuries.
For example, were the military capabilities of elephants
worth the risk and expense of keeping war elephant herds? An
elephant charge could devastate enemy infantry, but apparently war
elephants were almost as likely to wheel and trample the troops
behind them as those in front–as shown in the computer-made scenes
of elephant warfare in the second and third episodes of the Lord of
the Rings film trilogy.
Elephants dragged cannon into firing position as recently as
World War II, but had to be removed from the vicinity before the
cannon could be discharged.

Thai crackdown on animal trafficking hits high officials as CITES nears

September 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

BANGKOK–Delegates arriving in Bangkok for the 2004 meeting
of the parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species, to start on October 1, will find the clandestine animal
traffic thriving, despite a year-long crackdown.
The good news is that the crackdown is still underway,
reaching higher and farther into the web of corrupt officials who
have enabled Bangkok to persist as a global hub of illegal animal
dealing.
Wildlife Conservation Office director Schwann Tunhikorn will
head the Thai CITES delegation, replacing Manop Laohapraser, who
was removed from his post in July 2004 for alleged misconduct in
authorizing the export of 100 tigers to the Sunya Zoo in China two
years earlier. The zoo is owned by the Si Racha Tiger Farm.
An investigation headed by National Intelligence Agency
director Joompol Manmai concluded that the tiger sale was a
commercial transaction, not a breeding and exhibition loan as
defined by CITES.
“Some believe [the tigers] were destined for human
consumption,” London Observer correspondent Mark Townsend reported
on September 13.

What happened to the circling vultures?

September 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

NEW DELHI–“The government is taking its own sweet time in
phasing out a veterinary drug blamed for bringing vultures to the
verge of extinction,” Chandrika Mago of the Times of India news
network charged on September 8, 2004.
Washington State University microbiologist Lindsay Oaks in
January 2003 identified the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac as the
cause of the loss over the past decade of more than 95% of the once
common Oriental white-backed vulture. Also fast declining are
long-billed and slender-billed vultures.
“Vultures have an important ecological role in Asia, where
they have been relied upon for millennia to clean up and remove dead
livestock and even human corpses,” explained Peregrine Fund
biologist Munir Virani when the diclofenac link was disclosed.
“Their loss,” Virani continued, “has important economic,
cultural, and human health consequences,” especially for millions
of Parsees, about 1% of the Indian population, for whom exposing
corpses to consumption by vultures is a religious mandate.
The Bombay Natural History Society warned in February that
continued sale of diclofenac could cause the extinction of Indian
vultures. A similar warning came in June from Samar Singh,
president of the Tourism & Wildlife Society of India. Yet diclofenac
is still in unrestricted over-the-counter veterinary use.

Doctor fined up to $70,000 for buying Cuban dolphins

September 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

MIAMI–Graham Simpson, M.D., 53, in late August 2004 told
Miami Herald correspondent Charles D. Sherman that he is “negotiating
a fine of up to $70,000″ for violating the U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba by purchasing six wild-caught dolphins from Cuba to stock the
Dolphin Fantaseas swim-with-dolphins facilities that he and his wife
formerly owned in Antigua and Anguilla.
Originally from South Africa but now a naturalized U.S.
citizen, Simpson said several years ago that he traveled to Cuba
under a British passport, and paid $45,000 each for the six dolphins.
Simpson and his wife recently sold Dolphin Fantaseas to Dolphin
Discovery, of Cancun, Mexico.
Owned by U.S. citizens, Dolphin Discovery has purchased “at
least 33, maybe 70″ Cuban dolphins over the years, Dolphin Project
founder Ric O’Barry told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Having brought the Dolphin Fantaseas dolphin acquisition from
Cuba to light, O’Barry and Gwen McKenna of Toronto are now targeting
Dolphin Discovery.
“If they got even a $1 million fine, it would not put a dent
in that operation,” said O’Barry.
The Dolphin Project, now sponsored by the French group One
Voice, is currently “campaigning in the Cayman Islands trying to
keep Dolphin Discovery from expanding into that country,” said
O’Barry, who has been trying to end dolphin captivity since 1970.

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