Chimp sanctuaries save evidence of human origin

July 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2003:

CHINGOLA, Zambia–Humane education and
conservation through rescue are the commonly
cited goals of great ape sanctuaries in Africa,
but another could be added: genetic research is
increasingly demonstrating that in saving the
scattered remnants of isolated and soon to be
extinct wild chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla
bands, the sanctuaries are becoming
conservatories of the history of human evolution.
David C. Page of the Whitehead Institute
in Cam-bridge, Massachusetts, in the June 19,
2003 edition of Nature erased yet another of the
presumed distinctions between humans and chimps.
Summarized New York Times science writer Nicholas
Wade, “The genomes of humans and chimpanzees are
98.5% identical, when each of their three
billion DNA units are compared. But what of men
and women, who have different chromosomes?
Men and women differ by one to two percent of
their genomes, Dr. Page said, which is the same
as the difference between a male human and a male
chimpanzee or between a woman and a female
chimpanzee.”

Eradicating feral foxes from Aleutian island leaves auklets to the rats

July 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2003:

ANCHORAGE–Perhaps the most catastrophic consequence for
conservation yet of the U.S. federal effort to eradicate “invasive
species” from sensitive wildlife habitat is evident on Kiska Island
in the Aleutians, touted earlier as scene of a major victory.
“In 1986, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service eradicated
foxes from Kiska as part of a campaign to save Aleutian Canada geese
from extinction,” Doug O’Harra of the Anchorage Daily News recounted
on July 14. “About 49,000 beef tallow baits laced with Compound 1080
poison were dropped on the island, killing an estimated 700 foxes”
who were introduced decades earlier by fur farmers.
“Biologists visiting the island in spring 1987 found that
Norway rats had exploded in number with the foxes gone, the
Associated Press reported that spring. A federal report noted the
apparent surge in rats as evidence that the foxes had been
eliminated,” wrote O’Harra.

How pygmies came to be on the bushmeat menu and memories of a primate researcher who worked in both the bush and the lab

June 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2003:

A Primate’s Memoir:
A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life
Among the Baboons
by Robert M. Sapolsky

Touchstone (c/o Simon & Schuster,
1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 2001.
304 pages, paperback. $14.00.

Eating Apes
by Dale Peterson
with afterword & photos
by Karl Amman
University of California Press
(2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley,
CA 94720), 2003.
333 pages, hardcover. $24.95.
Read more

Where cats belong–and where they don’t

June 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2003:

KISSEEMEE, Florida–Depending on who you listen to, the
Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission either declared war
on feral cats at a May 30 meeting in Kisseemee, or clarified their
position that they have no intention of so doing.
Claiming the support of the American Bird Conservancy,
National Audubon Society, and National Wildlife Federation, Florida
Wildlife Division director Frank Montalbano talked like a man going
to war in a March interview with Orlando Sentinel outdoors writer Don
Wilson.

Locke vetoes Washington trap ban repeal & other state legislative highlights

June 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2003:

Three of the biggest wins for animals during spring 2003
legislative sessions were the defeat of anti-animal bills in
Washington, Texas, and California.
Washington Governor Gary Locke on May 22 vetoed a repeal of
Initative 713, banning the use of body-gripping traps. The
initiative was approved in November 2000 by 55% of the electorate.
It was vulnerable in the legislature because support was concentrated
along the heavily populated eastern shore of Puget Sound, which is
proportionally underrepresented in both the state house and senate
relative to rural districts.
Despite vetoing the repeal bill, Locke asked the state
Department of Fish and Wildlife to “place limited enforcement
resources into higher-order priorities than against homeowners,
businesses, and the timber industry, that trap for moles, gophers,
and mountain beavers.”

Finding the sentience of fish

June 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2003:

Credit scientific discovery. Credit
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Credit Finding Nemo, the latest pro-animal
animated production in a 64-year string from Walt
Disney Productions.
Whatever the reason, humans around the
world are suddenly talking about the suffering of
fish as never before.

BOOKS: Monster of God

May 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Monster of God:
The man-eating predator in the
jungles of history and the mind
by David Quammen
W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110), 2003.
384 pages, hardcover. $26.95.

Certain to be classified by most librarians as “natural
history,” Monster of God has already been mistaken by many reviewers
as a screed in defense of “sustainable use.”
Monster of God is actually a book mostly about faith,
exploring the influence of the human evolutionary role as prey upon
concepts of religion, and of the more recent human ascendance as a
top predator on our ideas about conservation.

Elephant captures & rampages spotlight habitat encroachment

May 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

PRETORIA, NEW DELHI, NAIROBI, SAN DIEGO, BANGKOK,
COLOMBO–Pretoria Regional Court magistrate Adriaan Bekker on April 7
found African Game Services owner Riccardo Ghiazza of Brits, South
Africa, guilty of cruelty to 30 young elephants in 1998-1999. The
verdict reportedly took Bekker four hours to read.
Convicted with Ghiazza, but on just two cruelty counts, was
student elephant handler Henry Wayne Stockigt.
Charges were dismissed against another handler, Craig
Saunders, and another company, African Game Properties Inc.
Captured in the Tuli district of Botswana during July 1998,
the elephants were transported to Brits for training and sale to
overseas zoos.
Global outrage erupted first over the separation of the
elephants from their mothers, and then over alleged rough treatment
of the elephants by trainers hired from Indonesia. The South African
National SPCA began the long effort to convict Ghiazza after
videotape surfaced that reportedly showed Stockigt and others beating
the chained elephants.

Vegetarian mandates

May 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

“Tourists visiting wildlife sanctuaries in Orissa state will
now have to turn vegetarian for the entire duration of their trip,”
Times of India News Network correspondent Rajaram Satapathy reported
from the Bengal coast city of Bhubaneswar in February.
“Concerned with rampant poaching, the state government has
banned cooking and eating non-vegetarian food in all 18 sanctuaries
in Orissa,” Satapaty elaborated. “The order, issued by the chief
conservator of forests, is being strictly implemented. Recently
more than 125 tourist vehicles, on a single day, were refused entry
into the Similipal Tiger Reserve because they were found carrying
meat and chicken for consumption.”
Taking an opposite view of diet on the opposite coast, South
Mumbai leaders of the neo-fascist Shiv Sena political party in
mid-April threatened to retaliate against Jain and Hindu vegetarian
housing cooperatives by opening stinking fish or chicken stalls
beside their buildings, wrote Haima Deshpande of the Indian Express.
Shiv Sena is a “party, movement and gang at once,” wrote
Julia M. Eckert in The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics
and the Shiv Sena, recently published by Oxford University Press.
Build-ing a power base among disaffected Hindus of the meat-eating
middle classes and military castes, it was once the second strongest
faction within the Hindu nationalist coalition government headed by
the Bharatiya Janata party, but fell from influence after alienating
the Jains, Brahmins, and other vegetarian classes, along with the
Dalits, who are the poorest of the poor.

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