A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
Project Puffin:
How We Brought Puffins
Back to Egg Rock
by Stephen W. Kress
as told to Pete Salmansohn
40 pages, hardcover, $16.95.
Giving Back To The Earth:
A Teacher’s Guide for Project Puffin
and Other Seabird Studies
by Pete Salmansohn and Stephen W. Kress
70 pages, paperback, $7.95.
Both from Tilbury House
(132 Water St., Gardiner, ME 04345), 1997.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
NAPLES, Fla.; CAPE TOWN, South Africa;
HONG KONG; NEW DELHI & MUMBAI, India;
TOKYO, Japan; TAIPEI, Taiwan; KUALA LUMPUR,
Malaysia; BANGKOK, Thailand––Officials in Naples,
Florida, in late July endured an exotic headache when someone
complained to the local health department about a colony of
feral South American squirrel monkeys who have lived in the
trees overlooking the tennis court at the Collier Athletic Club for
at least 50 years.
The Health Department forwarded the complaint to
Lieutenant Wayne Maahs of the Florida Game and Fresh Water
Fish Commission, who in 1995 reportedly recommended
removing the monkeys because they are not native to Florida.
Maahs called trapper Gary Rosenblum, 42, owner of World
Exotics Zoo Supply in South Naples. Rosenblum agreed to capture
the five-pound monkeys for resale as pets. He expected to
get about $500 apiece for them.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST,
California––Three people from ANIMAL
PEOPLE spent nearly seven hours at Wildlife
Waystation recently, including five hours of
hiking up hill and down dale behind the seemingly
inexhaustible founder, Martine Colette,
viewing more than 1,000 animals. Yet we still
saw the most remote paddock for hooved animals
only from a distance.
The scale of the Waystation is overwhelming
to those who may be familiar only
with sanctuaries of ordinary size. Near
Sacramento, California, the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, for instance, reportedly
sheltered 38 animals as of September
1997, while the Farm Sanctuary site at Orlans,
California, had 47.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
WASHINGTON, D.C.– –
Humane Society of the U.S. vice president
for legislation Wayne Pacelle
claimed a small victory on July 21
when the Senate Committee of
Environment and Public Works
approved S.263, the proposed Bear
Protection Act, which would ban sales
of U.S. bear viscera to foreign buyers.
“Unfortunately,” Pacelle
lamented, “the committee removed
one of the main provisions: a ban on
interstate trade in bear gall bladders
and bile. The weakening was pushed
by Senator Dirk Kempthorne,” also
behind numerous attempts to weaken
the Endangered Species Act, “who is
leaving the Senate to run for governor
of Idaho.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
CARROLLTON, Texas;
HENDERSON HARBOR, N.Y.––
Responding to citizen complaints
about noise, stench, and filth, city
officials in Carrollton, Texas said,
they revved up a bulldozer before
dawn on July 23 and flattened an
egret rookery in mid-nesting season.
Neighbors wakened by the
machinery and falling trees discovered
the damage was mostly done.
Hundreds and perhaps thousands of
cattle egret chicks were crushed,
along with mothers who didn’t leave
their nests. Rescuers saved an estimated
300 chicks.
Egrets are protected undernder
the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty
Act. Carrollton was supposed to
have a permit from the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service before touching the
site. It did not. Neither did
“Operation Remove Excrement,” as
Carrollton officials called it, make
the neighborhood more sanitary.
Instead, warned Dallas County
Health and Humane Services
Department medical director Karine
Lancaster, the bulldozers might
have spread the fungal spores that
cause histoplasmosis.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
HONOLULU––Preparing to
reintroduce Guam rails to Guam in
October, a decade after the flightless bird
species was extinguished from its native
habitat by accidentally introduced brown
tree snakes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service warned at a late July symposium
in Honolulu that the snakes could likewise
devastate Hawaiian wildlife, if ever
allowed to establish themselves.
The symposium came 10 days
after Hawaii Department of Land and
Natural Resources chief Mike Wilson
announced bans on the transportation or
release of Jackson’s chameleons, apple
snails, red-eared slider turtles, and ringnecked
parakeets.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
Twenty years ago the Yoplait division of General Mills began selling yoghurt in conical
cups which foraging animals, especially skunks, sometimes got stuck on their heads.
After wildlife rehabilitators identified 14 such cases in 1997, General Mills redesigned the
cups. Modified to enable animals to extricate themselves, the new cups are now in stores.
That didn’t satify Animal Protection Institute staffer Camilla Fox, who according to
Los Angeles Times staff writer Susan Abram, recently ripped General Mills “for testing the
new container on a simulated model of a skunk-sized animal,” instead of on real skunks.
“You can’t test this on a real animal because that would be cruel,” responded
General Mills spokesperson Jack Sheeham, apparently better getting the point of decades of
humanitarian protest against animal use in product testing.
We have praised Fox for her handling of several previous campaigns, but this time
her ethical inconsistency and inability to say thanks won her and API the ANIMAL PEOPLE
“Head-In-A-Jar Award” for self-defeating tactics.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:
NEAH BAY, Wash.; NEWPORT,
Ore.––If the media drama underway in the
Pacific Northwest was a professional wrestling
match, it would be billed as the Makah
Harpooners vs. Willy the Whale, alias Killer
Keiko, orca star of the hit films Free Willy!,
Free Willy II, and Free Willy III.
Scrapping for air time, they might
make a show of enmity, and their partisans
might fall for it, but more cynical viewers
would suspect they were working for the same
syndicate.
But who might own the syndicate––
Hollywood, or Japan?
Whoever wrote the “Keiko-vs.-
Makah” script, literal or figurative, seems to
have worked for four years to bring about an
autumn battle of Leviathans. Captain Paul “The
Pirate” Watson and fellow voyagers of the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society will try to put
themselves between the Makah whalers and
migrating gray whales. The Free Willy/Keiko
Foundation, led by David Phillips, also head of
Earth Island Institute, will meanwhile prepare
Keiko to become the first of his species ever
returned to the ocean after prolonged captivity.
The real struggle will come through
your TV and mailbox, as their causes vie for
public interest and donations.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:
Red Tails In Love:
A Wildlife Drama
in Central Park
by Marie Winn
Pantheon Books, 1998
305 pages. $24.00, hardcover.
Covering a span of about five
years, Red Tails In Love explores the lives
of two communities within Central Park.
The hawks as part of the greater wildlife
community are avidly monitored by another
community, the birdwatching Regulars.
Written as a play, in acts and scenes, the
book weaves their stories.