Navy agrees to restrict use of SURTASS-LFA sonar

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

SAN FRANCISCO–U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth D. Laporte was at
press time for the October 2003 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE expected to
ratify an agreement by the U.S. Navy that will restrict peacetime
use of Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System-Low Frequency Active
(SURTASS-LFA) to protect whales.
Settling a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the Humane Society of the U.S., the pact follows a
permanent injunction issued by Laporte on August 26 against any use
of the new sonar system within a 14-million-square-mile area,
constituting 40% of the Pacific Ocean.
“Under the injunction,” said Washington Post staff writer
Marc Kaufman, “the Navy can use the new sonar–which emits
low-frequency sound waves that travel for hundreds of miles–only
off the eastern seaboard of Asia, an area of about 1.5 million
square miles. Both sides said they could not discuss the reasons for
that exception. The agreement prohibits the use of SURTASS-LFA
within 30 to 60 miles of the coastlines of the approved area,

Read more

BOOKS: In My Family Tree & In the Kingdom of Gorillas

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

In My Family Tree:
A Life With Chimpanzees
by Sheila Siddle, with Doug Cress
Grove Press (841 Broadway, New York, NY
10003), 2002. 284 pages, hardcover. $25.00.

In The Kingdom of Gorillas:
Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land
by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas,

New York, NY 10020), 2001
.
370 pages, hardcover. $27.00.

Sheila Siddle, cofounder with her
husband David of the Chimfunshi Wildlife
Orphanage in central Zambia, never seems to have
doubted her calling, once she found it.
Certainly she never lacked the courage to accept
a challenge.
At age 16, in 1947, Siddle traveled
with her family by ferry and truck from England
to South Africa. When one of her brothers fell
ill, the brother and both of her parents
returned to England for a year, but Siddle
remained behind in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe), to study toward becoming a nurse.

Read more

Saving the “rescued” turtles of Thai temple

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

BANGKOK–More than two tons of turtles, including 136 of
soft-shelled species and 102 with hard shells, were removed from the
“klongs” (reflecting ponds) of Wat Bovorn in early August 2003 and
hauled to quarantine ponds for evaluation and treatment. Those in
good enough health are to be released at a sanctuary pond in Bang
Sai, reported Laurie Rosenthal of The Nation newspaper.
Mostly purchased from live food markets and dropped into the
klongs by the Buddhist faithful, in the belief that releasing them
would build good karma, the turtles represented a five-year
accumulation.
Draining the klongs and collecting the turtles, many of them
malnourished and diseased, took three weeks.
“Heavy metals and chemicals such as chlorine have affected
the turtles’ livers,” said Nantarika Chansue, DVM, of the
Chulalongkorn University veterinary faculty.
“Many of the hard-shells had round holes on their shells made
from pointed objects,” said Rosenthal.
Explained Nantarika, “People have been taking the turtles
out of the water and trying to kill them for food. Some people also
‘recycled’ them. They took them out of the water and released them
again to make merit,” a perversion of actual Buddhist teaching.
Called the Wang Tao Project, the turtle rescue was funded by
Charoen Pokphand Group executives Wanlop Chiaravanont and his son
Kachorn.

Dolphin captures in the Solomons

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

CANCUN, Mexico; HONORIA, Solomon Islands–One of as many
as 200 dolphins who were captured in the Solomon Islands during a
lawless interim before the July 21 arrival of Australian peacekeeping
troops reportedly died on July 28, a week after 28 of the dolphins
were flown to the Parque Nizuc swim-with complex in Cancun, Mexico.
Twenty-eight dolphins arrived, anyhow. Greenpeace claimed
33 dolphins were actually loaded for the flight.
The chartered Brazilian-owned DC-10 carrying the dolphins
took off only hours ahead of the arrival of the 2,000 Australian
soldiers, who quickly ended 18 months of civil strife. Guadalcanal
island warlord Harold Keke surrendered to the Australian forces on
August 13. Keke led a coup attempt in 2000 that led to the deaths of
about 50 people and the destruction of 15 villages along the Weather
Coast of Guadalcanal, the largest island in the Solomons archipelago.
How many dolphins will die as an indirect consequence of
Keke’s insurrection is still anyone’s guess.

Read more

Iceland plans to start “research whaling”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

REYKJAVIK–Iceland fisheries minister Arne Mathiesen and
International Whaling Commission delegate Stefan Asmundsson announced
on August 6, 2003 that Iceland will emulate Japan by starting a
“research” whaling industry. Iceland last hunted whales in 1989.
The announcement confirmed a statement to Japanese news media
by Iceland prime minister David Oddsson in January 2003, while in
Tokyo seeking investment and foreign aid.
Japan has often economically assisted smaller nations in
quid-pro-quo for political support in trying to resume commercial
whaling and thwart further international protection of ocean species
and habitat
Soon after Asmundsson spoke, U.S. State Department
representative Philip Reeker reminded news media that the U.S. could
impose sanctions against Iceland under the Pelly Amendment to the
Fishermen’s Protective Act of 1967. The State Department again
denounced the Icelandic resumption of whaling in a separate written
statement less than 24 hours later, but the written statement did
not mention sanctions.
European Union Agriculture and Fisheries Commissioner Franz
Fischler personally took EU objections to the planned resumption of
whaling to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, said Agence
France-Presse.

Read more

Kamchata bears wiped out

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

TORONTO–Bear researchers Charlie Russell and Maureen Enns
returned to Canada heartbroken in mid-July 2003 after poachers using
a helicopter killed all 20-to-40 of the grizzly bears they had
studied since 1995 on the Kamchata Peninsula of Siberia.
Russell and Enns documented their work in a PBS television
special, Walking With Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia, and in the
book Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of
Kamchata.
“The people who killed the bears nailed the gall bladder of a
baby grizzly to the research station’s kitchen wall as a gruesome
taunt,” wrote Alanna Mitchell of the Toronto Globe & Mail.
“The bears were killed so we would go home,” Russell told
her, after permanently closing the research station because no more
living bears could be found.
Russell and Enns formed and funded a ranger team in 1998 that
aggressively pursued poachers of bears, sturgeon, and salmon.
Tigers had already been poached out of the region.

Five pilot whales regain freedom off Florida

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

MIAMI–The Florida Keys Marine Mammal Rescue Team on August
10 returned five pilot whales to the edge of the continental shelf,
12 miles offshore, where they frequently swim and feed. The four
adult female pilot whales and one yearling male were among a pod of
28 who became stranded on April 28. Eight died, six were
euthanized, and nine eventually were able to swim away, Florida
Keys Marine Mammal Rescue Team director Becky Arnold told Associated
Press. Approximately 1,000 volunteers helped to nurse back to health
the five who were judged capable of recovering in temporary
captivity. Tracking tags will allow researchers to follow them by
satellite for about eight months.

Wildlife Court Calendar

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

U.S. District Judge for the D.C. Circuit Gladys Kessler on
July 31 rejected a Fund for Animals lawsuit challenging the authority
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to issue import permits for
Argali sheep trophies imported from Mongolia, Tajikistan, and
Kyrgyzstan. The Fund argued that hunting the Argali put the species
in peril. Responded Kessler, in granting a motion for summary
judgement solicited by Safari Club International on behalf of USFWS
and the Department of the Interior, “Because U.S. hunters generally
pay the highest prices for hunting permits issued by the Tajikistan
government, the absence of legal U.S. hunting substantially
decreased the permit revenues received by the Tajikistan government.
Because permit revenues were used in part for conservation and to
‘convince the local population not to poach,’ the decreased revenues
actually resulted in increasing the amount of poaching in the
region.” In short, Kessler reaffirmed the paradigm prevailing in
wildlife law since the Middle Ages that because hunters fund wildlife
management, wildlife management should favor hunting.

Read more

Getting biodiversity backward

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  July/August 2003:

CANBERRA,  Australia–At least 1,595 Australian native plants
and animals are at risk of extinction,  2,900 regional ecosystems are
imperiled,  and the leading threats come from land clearing,  sheep
and cattle grazing,  drought,  and fires,  says a recently published
national Terrestrial Biodiversity Assessment.  Predation and
competition with native species by introduced species ranked as a
lesser threat in most parts of Australia.
Principally authored by ecologist Paul Sattler,  the
assessment was commissioned by the national government.  It was
presented to Parliament in late April 2003.
What,  three months later,  is Australia doing about the findings?

*  The Cooperative Research Centre for Pet Control has
applied for permission to send a genetically engineered mouse herpes
virus into field trials–in effect,  to begin yet another
introduction of a non-native species.
The Cooperative Research Centre “aims to spread the virus throughout
the exotic mouse population,”  reported the Brisbane Courier-Mail,
noting that mouse plagues annually “cost the nation’s grain farmers
about $150 million.”

Read more

1 57 58 59 60 61 173