Who killed hunting profits in Zimbabwe?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

HARARE–The search for someone to blame is underway in Zimbabwe.
“We have a situation where the previous hunting season earned $24
million U.S. and then suddenly the last hunting season earned only
$13 million,” fumed National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority
chief executive Morris Mtsambiwa to Isadore Guvamombe of the
government-controlled Harare Herald in mid-August 2004.
“Our question is, what happened to the other $11 million?
Investigations are in progress,” Mtsambiwa continued.
Mtsambiwa said nothing of land occupations by mobs of “war
veterans,” confiscations of especially attractive properties by
corrupt public officials, uncontrolled poaching, and the near
complete destruction of many of Zimbabwe’s renowned private wildlife
conservancies. His remarks, however, hinted at a pretext for
further seizures.
“Hunting proceeds are paid in advance to the safari
operators,” Guva-mombe wrote, “but last year many operators,
working in cahoots with white former farmers, devised methods of
circumventing foreign currency declaration procedures.”
Hwange safari operator Headman Sibanda meanwhile sued
Zimbabwean environment and tourism minister Francis Nhema for
allegedly improperly awarding a hunting concession to a company
headed by a Nhema associate named Marble Dete.

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Kenya leads opposition to lifting CITES ivory trade ban, seeks lion trophy trade ban

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

NAIROBI–Kenya will again lead the opposition to lifting the
global embargo on ivory and rhino horn trafficking at the October
2004 conference of the 166 parties to the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species in Bangkok, Thailand, Kenyan
assistant minister for the environment and natural resources George
Khaniri announced on August 26.
Kenya is also proposing to ban international traffic in
African lion trophies, but the Kenyan recommendation is opposed by
the U.S. and Britain, two of the nations with the most lion hunters.
The wild African lion population is believed to have fallen
70% since 1996, to just 23,000, distributed among 89 locations.
Half live in the Masai Mara and Serengeti region of Kenya and
Tanzania, the Selous game reserve in Tanzania, Kruger National Park
in South Africa, and the Okavango Delta of Botswana.
Khaneri told The Nation that Kenya now has 28,000 elephants
and 500 rhinos, up from 16,000 and 250 since CITES imposed the ivory
and rhino horn trade bans in 1989.
Anticipating that the ivory and rhino horn embargoes might
soon be eased or lifted, poachers typically raiding from Somalia
have recently escalated their activity, as often occurs on the eve
of a CITES meeting.

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Governments push hunting the big bucks, boars, et al–for the price on their heads

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

CANBERRA, JOHANNESBURG,
NAIROBI–Australian government agencies are
missing the gravy train by hiring sharpshooters
to kill non-native wildlife, University of
Queensland faculty members Gordon Dryden and
Stephen Craig-Smith reported in early September
2004 to the Rural Industries Research &
Development Corporation.
The RIRDC is a federal think-tank formed
to create jobs in the Outback. It envisions the
Outback as a tourism draw rivaling Africa–for
one type of tourist.
“Wealthy hunting enthusiasts around the
world would be happy to cull these animals that
nobody in Australia wants, and would pay for the
privilege,” Craig-Smith said. “This would be a
niche tourism market targeted at cashed-up
hunters,” he added, “not a wholesale slaughter
of animals.”

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BOOKS: Parrot Culture

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Parrot Culture by Bruce Thomas Boehrer
University of Pennsylvania Press (4200 Pine Street, Philadelphia,
PA 19104), 2004. 224 pages, paperback. $27.50.

The parrots who were popular in Greco-Roman imperial times, and
thereafter in Europe during the Middle Ages, came from India. But
the overland traffic in parrots slowed after the rise of Islam,
partly because Mohammed taught against caging birds and partly
because warfare between Christians and Muslims significantly reduced
the chances of moving fragile species through Central Asia alive.
Bruce Boehrer’s research shows that the parrots who flooded
into Europe after the Renaissance came from the New World, as a
direct result of Christopher Colum-bus’ voyages of discovery.
Over two millennia, the reverence with which captive parrots
were originally treated disappeared and the birds later became
objects of ridicule and satire. Boehrer delves at some length into
depictions of parrots in art and literature over the ages. Included
is the famous Monty Python “Dead Parrot Sketch.”
Renaissance writers transformed parrots into comic figures,
and some painters of the period did the same thing. Parrots appear
in numerous paintings by great masters including Rubens, Van Dyk,
Manet, and even some of the French impressionists, notably Renoir.

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Black & white

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff “is dedicated to
Lloyd Tait, VMD, the ASPCA’s first ‘head of shelter medicine,’ who
was everything one could imagine in a friend and mentor. Irascible,
supportive, quixotic, and fiercely dedicated to animal welfare, he
laid the early foundation for the formal practice of veterinary
medicine in the ASPCA shelters,” editors Lila Miller and Stephen
Zawistowski acknowledge.
Tait now works for the World Society for the Protection of
Animals. We recently received a copy of his comprehensive report on
the progress of dog sterilization in place of animal control killing
in Sri Lanka.
Tait joined the ASPCA staff in 1968, following former ASPCA
Brooklyn shelter director George Watford, now retired, as the
second nationally prominent humane worker of African descent. Miller
joined the ASPCA staff in 1977. She became the third nationally
prominent humane worker of African descent.
Since Miller was hired, a few other people of African
ancestry have become prominent in shelter work, perhaps most notably
longtime National Animal Control Association board member Keith
Robinson, but a convention of Afro-American executive directors of
humane societies could probably be held around one small table, and
would still have empty chairs.

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BOOKS: Vegetarianism: A History

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Vegetarianism: A History by Colin Spencer
Four Walls Eight Windows (39 W. 14th St,, New York, NY 10011),
2004. 384 pp., paperback. $16.00.

Until recent times, the history of vegetarianism was also
the history of religion and politics. The first two thirds of Colin
Spencer’s book describes the evolution of humanism and political and
religious influence on meat-eating.
Until the 18th century, vegetarianism in Europe was usually
equated with radicalism and heresy. During the Albigensian Crusade
against the vegetarian Cathari, who from about 1150 until circa 1250
challenged the primacy of Catholicism in southern France, alleged
heretics were required to prove their innocence by eating meat.
Spencer relates how “heretics” were brought before the
Emperor: “Among other wicked Manichean doctrines, they condemned
all eating of animals and with the agreement of everybody present,
he ordered them to be hanged.”
Circa 500 years B.C. the Greek philosopher and mathematician
Pythagoras was viewed with suspicion, though treated with greater
tolerance, when he openly abjured flesh. Pythagoras cited his belief
in the health benefits of vegetarianism, and his hope that
vegetarian societies would be less inclined to wage war. The basis
of his vegetarianism, however, appears to have been a belief in the
transmigration of souls (reincarnation).

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BOOKS: Life With Darwin & Other Baboons

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Life With Darwin
& Other Baboons
by Fransje Van Riel
Penguin Books South Africa Ltd.
(2nd floor, 90 Rivonia Rd., Sandton, 2196,
South Africa), 2003. 227 pages, paperback.
113 South African Rands .
(about $21 U.S., c/o <www.exclusivebooks.com>.)

It is undeniable that baboons cause problems for farmers in
South Africa. Unfortunately, the usual response to their presence
is to shoot them. Life With Darwin & Other Baboons seeks to reduce
hostility toward baboons by providing insight into the complexities
of baboon society and the inevitable conflicts that arise when
animals and humans use the same habitat.
I once visited the South Texas Primate Sanctuary in Dilley,
Texas (now known as the API Primate Sanctuary). Founder Lou Griffin,
then still the director, knew every snow monkey and understood how
they fit into the group. When Lou introduced me to the snow monkeys,
she gave me the privilege of entering a fascinating new world. Life
With Darwin opens a similar door.
Fransje Van Riel introduces us to baboons through Karin Saks,
foster mother to an orphaned infant named Gismo. As Karin cared for
his physical and emotional needs, she realized that she would
ultimately have to find him a wild baboon family. Locating a wild
troop, she slowly introduced Gismo to it. Thanks to her
extraordinary efforts, the troop accepted him.

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Animal obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Shopper, 6, a California sea lion who swam up the Napa
River to visit a Petaluma motorcycle shop, was shot circa July 5 by
an unknown person near Benessere Vineyards, north of St. Helena.
Captured by Marine Mammal Center staff after his first swim inland,
Shopper was released on June 22 at Point Reyes National Seashore,
but returned upriver the next day. Napa radio station KVON raised a
reward fund of $12,500 for the conviction of his killer.

Tina, 34, an Asian elephant born at the Oregon Zoo, kept
at the Greater Vancou-ver Zoo 1972-2003, died suddenly on July 21,
2004 at the Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee, her home
since August 2003, much missed by two companions.

A.J., 12, the bloodhound who inspired Kat Albrecht to use
dogs to track lost pets, died on July 7. “His history included many
searches for criminals and lost people,” Albrecht wrote. “In 1998,
A.J. was retired from police work due to hip displasia, and moved
straight into tracking pets. On his first search he found a missing
diabetic cat named Marmalade in less than eight minutes. He received
hip replacement surgery in 1999 and lived afterward in relative
comfort. A.J. was featured in the PBS program Dogs With Jobs., and
in the PAX program Miracle Pets (now shown on Animal Planet as Animal
Miracles). Several of his searches are featured in The Lost Pet
Chronicles,” reviewed on page 20.

Oasis in a storm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

BENSON, Arizona–Since the high-tech stock crash of
2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, hundreds
of charities have coped with abrupt losses of income, but the ups
and downs of the Oasis Sanctuary Foundation have occurred for other
reasons.
Sybil Erden in 1997 started Oasis from her home in Phoenix to
provide lifetime care to cast-off tropical birds. Also in 1997,
two strangers, Mary and Jason Sanderson, of Nashua, New Hampshire,
won a $66 million Powerball lottery. They became acquainted with
Erden in 1998.
Struggling with a cumulative deficit of almost $80,000,
Erden in 1999 moved Oasis to a 72-acre former pecan orchard beside
the San Pedro River at Cascabel, Arizona, secured on a five-year
mortgage with a pledge from the Sandersons to donate $100,000 a year
for 24 years. In January 2004, however, the Sandersons told Erden
that their pending divorce would end the payments. Oasis is now
suing them for the unpaid balance.

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