ACTIVISTS CHANGE THE GUARD ON PUGET SOUND

November 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

SEATTLE, VANCOUVER––T h e
Sea Shepherds are coming, Bear Watch is
gone, and no one is saying yet what may
become of the Sea Defense Alliance [SeDnA].
Maintaining a vigil off Neah Bay
against Makah tribe whaling for much of the
past two years, and anticipating further confrontations
with the Makah, the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society expects to soon open a
permanent headquarters at Friday Harbor, on
San Juan Island.
The Sea Shepherd fleet operated
from Friday Harbor throughout spring 1999,
but berthed at Seattle during the summer. Sea
Shepherd vessels have been continuously stationed
on Puget Sound since 1996, after many
years of frequent visits, and the Sea Shepherds
have had personnel continuously in the area
since 1995, when the Makah first announced
their intent to resume whaling.

BLM hopes to sell wild rides at the Mustang Ranch

November 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

RENO––Sex sells. Sex was notoriously
sold at the Mustang Ranch brothel in
Storey County, Nevada, for 32 years.
Holding more than 5,500 wild horses
captured in past roundups, more than roam the
range in any state but Nevada, and under pressure
to capture more, the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management desperately needs to sell more
Americans on adopting a mustang, or two
mustangs, under a foal-and-dame program
started in 1998––or needs to sell Congress on
funding more wild horse sanctuary space, not
open to competitive use such as cattle grazing.
In 1997 the BLM rounded up 10,443
wild horses, managing to adopt out 8,700, but
ranchers, hunters, and environmentalists
opposed to the presence of allegedly nonnative
species want another 16,500 horses
removed from the range, immediately. Their
ire was elevated earlier this year when Cornell
University researcher David Pimentel reported
that wild horses eat about $5 million worth of
forage per year, otherwise accessible to cattle,
sheep, and hunted populations of deer, elk,
and pronghorn.

Russians halt beluga whale killing for sale to Japan

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

HOKKAIDO––Russian whalers on
September 10 reportedly delivered to Japanese
buyers 13 metric tons of whale meat from at
least 36 and perhaps as many as 50 belugas
killed a week earlier in the Okhotsk Sea,
which lies between the Kamchata Peninsula
and Sakhalin Island.
It was the first Russian commercial
whale slaughter since 1986, and its first in
northern waters since 1979.
It will not be repeated, the Russian
government decreed four days later after a
cabinet-level review of the deal in Moscow.
Said International Fund for Animal
Welfare director of commercial trade and
exploitation Karen Steuer, “Reopening the
international trade in whale meat would have
set a dangerous precedent. The Russian decision
shows that Russia sees commercial whaling
for what it i ––an outmoded practice with
no place in modern society.”

BOOKS: Nature’s Keepers

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

Nature’s Keepers: On the Front Lines
of the Fight to Save Wildlife in America
by Michael Tobias
John Wiley & Sons (605 3rd Ave., New York, NY 10158), 1999.
238 pages, hardcover, $24.95.

Poachers were the undisputed heroes
of cops-and-robbers with a wildlife motif for
at least the first 700 years they existed as a
genre. Only late in the 20th century has the
Robin Hood image of the poacher tarnished,
to the point that recent renditions of the Robin
Hood legend––like the animated version from
Walt Disney Studios and the live-action version
starring Kevin Costner––have utterly
ignored his reputation as a deerslayer, gillnetter,
and master of the snare.

HOW THE ALEUTIAN GEESE WERE GUNNED––FEDS BLAMED FOXES

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

WASHINGTON D.C. – –
There was a story behind the story,
mentioned only in passing, when U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service on July 30
proposed dropping Aleutian Canada
geese from Endangered Species Act
protection, as recovered, with a population
now estimated at 32,000.
As USFWS told media, trappers
and fur farmers introduced foxes
to the 190 islands of the Aleutians
where the Canada goose subspecies
nests, beginning in 1750. The most
vigorous epoch of fox introduction was
1915-1930. By 1938 the Aleutian
goose had vanished, though closely
related species survived in Siberia.

Let me tell you about the bats and the birds and the beetles and the turds…

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

LONDON––Trying to bring a rare
bird called the clough back to Cornwall, the
National Trust on advice of English Nature in
1996 banned the use of avermectin-class vermicides,
including Ivermectin, in cattle who
graze NT pastures. Residues from the wormkillers
were believed to be inhibiting the reproduction
of dung beetles, the clough’s chief
food source. About 100 farms were affected.
There are still no cloughs in Cornwall
––but the rare greater horseshoe bat has become
more numerous within the 100-farm area than
anywhere else in England, and the even scarcer
hornet robber fly has appeared as well.
Even with the Cornwall bat boom,
there are still fewer than 4,000 greater horseshoe
bats in Britain, among just a handful of
colonies. English Nature and The Bat
Conservation Trust hope to persuade other
farmers to forgo the use of avermectins.
“And I thought the new highly efficient
parasiticides only eradicated parasitologists,”
said World Health Organization epidemiologist
Martin Hugh-Jones.

Wildlife trafficking busts in China bring record seizures

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

HONG KONG––Banning imports of turtles for
meat after verotoxin-producing e – c o l i bacteria turned up in a
cargo of live freshwater turtles brought from Thailand via
Hong Kong, officials in Shenzhen, China proved they meant
business on September 8, seizing 6.6 metric tons of live Thai
softshelled turtles from a Hong Kong-registered fishing boat
off Sha Chau.
The turtles reportedly would have brought about
$400,000 if delivered to market. Vessel master Kwan Lamwa,
31, and a 28-year-old crew member were arrested.
Just a year ago the Sha Chau bust would have been
the biggest ever made by Chinese authorities. In 1999,
though, it wasn’t even the biggest of the summer.

Wildlife Report

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

Bird habitat
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service credits killing
thousands of nest-parasitizing cowbirds since 1991 with bringing
the least Bell’s vireo up from just 268 known pairs in 1991
to more than 2,000 in 1999. “Just as important,” explained Los
Angeles Times reporter Gary Polakovic, “the vireo’s comeback
may prove that habitat along streams in Southern
California is recovering––a critical indicator of environmental
health in a state that has lost 97% of its riparian woodlands,
more than any other.” As Illinois Natural History Survey
scientist Scott Robinson observed in 1995, after examining the
relationship between vanishing songbirds and cowbirds,
“Small nature preserves, which work fine for preserving plants,
don’t work for migratory birds,” whose nesting sites become
vulnerable to cowbirds when deforestation removes their cover.
“The [British] Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds are completely barking,” Game Conservancy Trust
head of grouse research David Baines recently told Daily
Telegraph environment editor Charles Clover, because after
five years of intensively killing crows and foxes to protect a
rare grouse called the capercaillie, the RSPB has experimented
since 1995 with not killing predators. The capercaillie population
is down from 2,200 in 1995 to about 1,000. But the RSPB
says the main reasons for the drop have been bad weather at
nesting season and, wrote Clover, “the death of up to a third of
its capercallie by flying into deer fences put up to allow the
regeneration of native pines.”

How we helped save some coyotes

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

LOS ANGELES––By order of
the Los Angeles Animal Services Commission,
the city Department of Animal
Services on September 8 retrieved traps
that were loaned just before Labor Day
to two residents of Northridge and
Woodland Hills in the San Fernando
Valley to help them kill coyotes.
The residents were to set and
monitor the traps, but were to call
Animal Services to dispatch any coyotes
they caught.
The trap loans reversed Animal
Services Commission policy in effect
since 1993. Scare stories about why the
loans were made revived old phobias
about coyotes that “Coyote Lady” Lila
Brooks and others have fought for more
than 30 years.

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