Namibian seal hunt

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

The 2006 Namibian sealing season opened on July 1, with a
quota of 85,000 pups, 20,000 more than in 2005, and 7,000 bulls.
Adult females are exempted, to keep the seal breeding population up.
Just a fraction of the size of the annual Atlantic Canadian
seal hunt, the Namibian hunt has attracted little public attention
and protest–and even less since South Africa ended sealing in 1990.
As Namibia and South Africa share the same seal population, a common
misperception was that all sealing had ended along the Atlantic coast
of Africa. In fact, the Namibian sealing quota was doubled to
60,000 after 2000, when according to the Namibian government as many
as 300,000 seals starved due to depleted fisheries. Overfishing and
climatic change due to global warming appeared to be the major causes
of the seal deaths, but Namibia claimed the seals had overpopulated
their habitat. Current reports indicate, however, that the
Namibian seal population has never recovered to more than 75% of the
size it was in 1993, the recent recorded peak year.

China tries to rewrite the prescription for tigers

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

HONG KONG–Trying to reshape world opinion about tiger
conservation, in hopes of reopening legal commerce in tiger parts,
the State Forestry Administration of China during the second week of
June 2006 hosted visits to two major tiger farms by four outside
“experts.”
Three of them soon extensively praised Chinese tiger programs
in published statements.
Free market economic advocate Baron Mitra, who directs the
Liberty Institute in Delhi, India, in a guest column for India
Today unfavorably compared tbe faltering Indian effort to conserve
wild tigers with the Chinese proliferation of tigers in captivity.

BOOKS: Hurt Go Happy

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby

Tom Doherty Associates (175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010), 2006.
267 pages, hardcover. $17.95

“I called all over trying to find a place, but there are
hundreds of chimps in need of a place to go, and they were especially
uninterested in a chimp who can’t be housed with other chimps.”
This is the age-old problem of keeping baby “wild” animals as
pets: what to do when they grow older and stronger, and can no
longer live with humans in their homes.
Hurt Go Happy is the story of such a chimp. Although
fiction, the novel is based on the true story of an ill-fated chimp
named Lucy, who was raised as a human child in Oklahoma, as part of
a language experiment. Rehabilitated and returned to the wild in
1977, as one of Gambia-based sanctuarian Janis Carter’s early
projects, Lucy was killed by poachers in 1987.

Thai zoo deals with Kenya and Australia put on hold

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

BANGKOK, MELBOURNE, NAIROBI–Two controversial
international zoo transactions involving Chiang Mai Night Safari Zoo
in Thailand may yet proceed, but as of mid-July 2006 were both on
hold.
Fast-tracked by the national governments of Thailand,
Australia, and Kenya, both animal exchanges were derailed by rising
public skepticism about the humaneness of keeping wildlife in
captivity.
Activist pressure in each case eventually exposed alleged
self-interested dealing by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and
Chiang Mai Night Safari Zoo director Plodprasop Suraswadi, who
previously served as both fisheries minister and wildlife minister,
but lost both positions amid allegations of facilitating wildlife
trafficking.
Both Thaksin and Plodprasop were sued on June 7, 2006 by the
Love Chiang Mai network, for allegedly improperly creating the Night
Safari Zoo in a national park.

Norwegian buyer declares whaling moratorium after IWC ban holds

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

OSLO, ST. KITTS, TOKYO– The Norwegian fish wholesaling
firm Norges Rafisklag on July 7, 2006 asked whalers to stop killing
whales because there is insufficient market for whale meat to warrant
more whaling this year.
“We don’t have buyers for more whales than those already
shot. Therefore we are sending out a message to halt the hunt,”
Norges Rafisklag spokesperson Hermod Larsen told NRK, the Norwegian
national broadcasting company.
Larsen is the Norges Rafisklag regional director for Lofoten,
the hub of the Norwegian whaling industry. Norges Rafisklag is the
only major buyer of whale carcasses.
“It’s not possible now, for those who don’t have their own
[storage] facilities, to shoot more whales for the time being,”
Larsen added.

Foie gras vector for H5N1?

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

WASHINGTON D.C.– The U.S. Department of Agriculture on June
29, 2006 released a draft summary of a $91 million battle plan to
combat any U.S. outbreaks of a “highly pathogenic avian influenza,”
such as the H5N1 strain that has killed more than 130 people
worldwide since 1996.
The plan discusses migratory bird surveillance, the
bird-breeding industry, poultry dealers, live-bird markets,
auctions and slaughterhouses, but appears to make no specific
reference to foie gras farming, a $25 million a year branch of
poultry production with just three major U.S. producers, whose farms
are concentrated in upstate New York and northern California.
The odds that H5N1 or any other deadly influenza might hit
the U.S. through foie gras farming may be incalculably low–but if
H5N1 begins killing human poultry workers in Europe, as it has since
2003 in Southeast Asia, experts suspect the lethal crossover might
begin on the sprawling foie gras farms of southwestern France and
parts of Hungary.

Navy, NRCA settle conflict over sonar use

July 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2006:

LOS ANGELES–The U.S. Navy and the Natural Resources Defense
Council on July 11, 2006 announced an out-of-court settlement of
cross-filed lawsuits over the use of high intensity mid-frequency
sonar during the “Rim of the Pacific 2006” war games.
“The settlement prevents the Navy from using the sonar within
25 miles of the Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument and
imposes a variety of monitoring methods to watch out for and report
the presence of marine mammals,” said Associated Press writer Eric
Berkowitz.
Involving 35 ships from eight nations, RIMPAC 2006 during
the latter half of July tested the ability of U.S. anti-submarine
defenses to detect ultra-quiet diesel/electric submarines belonging
to Australia, Japan, and South Korea, whose technology is believed
to be similar to that of China, Iran, and North Korea.

Animal obits

June 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2006:

Squeak, 14, the Jack Russell terrier who on March 18, 2002
defended Zim-babwean farmer Terry Ford from land invaders, and
refused to leave Ford’s side after Ford was killed, died on May 9,
2006 at the home of Ford’s son Mark. The North Shore Animal League
America and ANIMAL PEOPLE honored Squeak with the July/August 2002
Lewyt Award for Heroic & Compassionate Animals.

Lynn, Marty, and Arthur, three ex-laboratory chimpanzees
who were longtime residents of Primarily Primates, all in their
mid-thirties, died in May from causes respectively identified as
osteomyelitis, a neurological disorder, and acute peritonitis.
Their deaths followed the deaths soon after arrival of former Ohio
State University chimps Kermit, 35, and Bobby, 16. “Chimps have
been known to live to 50,” Prmarily Primates president Wally Swett
told Susan Pagani of the San Antonio Current, “but even though that
is quoted a lot, it’s very rare. “Chimps who have been used in
research are much more susceptible to disease than those that have
not, because of the stress and isolation they have endured.”

Obituaries

BOOKS: Wildlife Demography

June 1, 2006 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jine 2006:

Wildlife Demography: Analysis of Sex, Age, & Count Data
by John R. Skalski , Kristen E. Ryding, & Joshua J. Millspaugh
Elsevier Academic Press (30 Corp. Dr., Suite 400, Burlington, MA
01803), 2005. 656 pages, hardcover, $69.95.

As the ANIMAL PEOPLE statistician as well as the editor, I
jumped at the chance to review Wildlife Demography: Analysis of Sex,
Age, & Count Data, for two reasons.
First, at times I feel as if I spend half my life explaining
to people in humane work and animal control the basics of animal
population analysis. Humane workers and animal control officers have
a constant need to estimate and compare populations of street dogs,
pet dogs, feral cats, pet cats, raccoons, deer, nonmigratory vs.
migratory Canada geese, et al.

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