Editorial: Amazing Amazon rainforest reality

March 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Chugging up the Rio Tambopata, one of the major Amazon tributaries, in a
motorized canoe, we were struck during a January 1999 visit to the Tambopata-Candama
Reserved Area in southeastern Peru by the contrast between the Amazonian rainforest as it
is and the image most people have of it––an image crafted over the past few decades chiefly
by conservation groups.
Funding rainforest research, documentary film-making, lobbying, and even the
start-up of ecotourism, most of these organizations have also rather blindly stumbled down
the tangled trail blazed since 1961 by the World Wildlife Fund.
WWF, as ANIMAL PEOPLE has often pointed out, is not just the world’s
wealthiest and most influential wildlife advocacy group: it also happens to be the world’s
best-disguised lobby for sport hunting and other consumptive wildlife use.
WWF founder Peter Scott was the duck-shooter who introduced the North
American ruddy duck to England; WWF and allies now clamor for an expanded ruddy
duck season and no bag limit, on the bio-xenophobic claim that ruddy ducks are miscegenating
English white-headed ducks into illegitimate hybrids.

Clinton declares war on ferals

March 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

WASHINGTON D.C.—Declaring
war on species not native to the U.S., President
Bill Clinton on February 2 issued an executive
order creating an interagency Invasive Species
Council which within 18 months is to produce a
plan to “mobilize the federal government to
defend against” what Clinton called “aggressive
predators and pests.”
The ISC will be jointly chaired by
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Commerce
Secretary William Daley, and Agriculture
Secretary Dan Glickman. USDA Wildlife
Services, just eight months after the House of
Representatives briefly voted to rescind more
than a third of its funding, would appear to be
the chief beneficiary of $29 million for invasive
species eradication that Clinton included in his
proposed fiscal year 2000 budget, sent to
Congress in late January.

REVIEWS: Field Guides

March 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Marine Wildlife
From Puget Sound Through
the Inside Passage
by Steve Yates
Sasquatch Books (615 2nd Avenue,
Suite 260, Seattle, WA 98104), 1998.
264 pages, paperback; $14.95.

On the Trail of Bears
by Catherine & Remy Martin
On the Trail of Whales
by Jean-Michel Dumont
& Remy Marion

On the Trail of Big Cats
by Geraldine Veron
Barron’s Nature Travel Guides
(250 Wireless Blvd., Hauppauge,
NY 11788), 1988. 128 pages each,
paperback, $11.95.

Where elephants roam

January 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

BANGKOK, Thailand; BRITS, South Africa––
The five survivors among a group of six young Asian elephants
whom Thailand exported to Indonesia in October 1997 returned
home on December 31 to floral necklaces, cheering crowds, a
welcoming banner at dockside in Ao Makham, and all the
bananas, sugar cane, and pineapples they could eat.
Presiding over the feast were prime ministerial secretary
Wattana Muangsuk, Phuket member of parliament
Anchalee Theppabutr, and Phuket governor Padet Insang.
Explained Attaya Chuenniran of the Bangkok Post,
“The five beasts, and another, who died in Indonesia, were
sent with their mahouts in October 1997 under a 10-year contract
to help their Indonesian counterparts catch wild elephants,”
who were allegedly terrorizing the countryside in the
wake of fires set to clear brush and facilitate rainforest logging.

South China tigers go the way of the Yeti

January 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

BANGKOK, BEIJING––1998, the Chinese “Year
of the Tiger,” ended with an admission from Wang Menghu,
deputy secretary-general of the China Zoological Protection
Association, that the South China population of Asian tigers
has gone to the realm of the yeti––the legendary “abominable
snowman.”
On December 14, Chinese forestry and wildlife conservation
director Zhang Jianlong and colleague Lie Yongfan
told the world through the government news agency Xinhua
that official investigations underway since 1984 have found no
evidence that the yeti ever existed.
“All reported sightings were actually other wild animals,”
Zhang said.
Elaborated Yan Xun, director of the 1,800-squaremile
Shennongjia Reserve, “There are no basic primate foods
such as berries or broadleaf trees in the mountains of
Shennongjia, where most yeti enthusiasts believe the mysterious
creature lives.”

Temple elephants approach extinction

January 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka– – Eleph-
ant hunting and capture have been banned in
Sri Lanka since 1960.
Now the Sri Lankan tradition of
temple elephant keeping is at risk. None have
been born in captivity in five years; only
seven have been born in half a century.
Often hired to lead processions,
and a magnet for visitors and donations, temple
elephants have long been a mainstay of
the Sri Lankan religious economy. And the
ostentatiously devout like to keep their own
yard elephants. Of the estimated 2,000 elephants
in Sri Lanka, about half are privately
owned. Most are beyond their prime reproductive
years, even if they could be induced
to mate in captivity.
When a baby elephant vanished
from the Pinnawela elephant refuge circa
November 1, wildlife conservation department
deputy director Nandana Atapattu
observed to Susannah Price of the South
China Morning Post that, “Owning an elephant
is extremely prestigious––he could be
sold for a million rupees,” or about $37,000.

Gray wolves, red wolves, orange-painted wolves

January 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

JACKSON, Wyo.; TUCSON,
Ariz.; KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – – Another
confirmation of the success of the 1995
restoration of wolves to Yellowstone
National Park and northern Idaho came in
December 1998 when young packs of two
and three were spotted at multiple points in
Grand Teton National Park, just to the
south––the first time wolves apparently
born in Yellowstone fanned out into the
Tetons to find new territory.
The initial 41 wolves brought
from Alberta have multiplied up to more
than 120, enough that some might need to
extend their range beyond territory known
to their immediate forebears.
During the winter of 1997-1998,
the Soda Butte pack made a reconnaisance
of northern Grand Teton, near the village
of Moran, but stayed only briefly.

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

January 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel
on December 31, 1998 rejected a suit filed by
the Mountain States Legal Foundation,
Colorado Cattlemen’s Association,
Colorado Woolgrowers, and Colorado
Outfitters Association, which sought to keep
the Colorado Division of Wildlife from reintroducing
lynx by contending that the state is
improperly managing a federal species recovery
program. Mountain States Legal
Foundation attorney William Pendley said he
would take the case on to the 10th Circuit
Court of Appeals, and would seek an emergency
injunction against any lynx releases
while the matter remains in litigation.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
continues to tout the so-called “no surprises”
Multiple Species Conservation Program his
office negotiated in 1994 with San Diego
developers as a model for endangered species
conservation on privately owned habitat, but
the California Native Plant Society, San
Diego Audubon Society, and San Diego
Herpetological Society in a December 27
lawsuit claim the Multiple Species
Conservation Program is not adequately protecting
habitat. They cite as case in point the
recent bulldozing of a wetland which included
about 60 vernal pools, home to endangered
San Diego fairy shrimp.

Newfoundland asks to kill 2 million seals

January 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

OTTAWA––With Canadian fisheries
minister David Anderson imminently
expected to announce the 1999 seal-killing
quota, Newfoundland fisheries minister John
Efford on January 5 recommended a “onetime
cull” of two million harp seals and grey
seals––almost half the total population, by
government estimates.
Should Anderson prove unwilling
to authorize such a slaughter, Effords said he
would favor increasing the annual sealing
quota to 400,000––68% more than were
legally killed in either 1997 or 1998.
Known for his furious assertions
that seals rather than overfishing are responsible
for the economically catastrophic depletion
of Atlantic Canadian cod, mackerel,
salmon, and skates, Efford buttressed his
recommendation with a 32-page report
authored by former Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans head research scientist
George Winters.

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