Seals & cod pieces

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince
Edward Island––Gabrielle Fredericks, 102,
of Toronto, in early March demonstrated just
what kind of rugged macho man it takes to go
out on the ice among newborn harp seal pups:
none at all. A paid customer of Natural Habitat
Adventure Tours, a Boulder, Colorado-based
ecotourism firm, Fredericks shrugged off two
tour guides who held her arms at first, and
walked among the seals alone for several hours
in the Northumberland Strait, reported Nancy
Willis of the Charlottetown Guardian.
Fredericks left before the annual sealclubbing
bloodshed broke out on March 15.
She has a knack for leaving just in time: sixty
years earlier she, her late husband Joe, and
their son Martin fled Adolph Hitler and Austria
just a day before the outbreak of World War II.

Read more

EPA WANTS TO REGULATE FACTORY FARMS AS INDUSTRIAL POLLUTERS

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Environ-
mental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner
on March 5 personally announced an EPA plan
to regulate livestock feedlots, hog barns, and
poultry sheds like industrial plants.
For the first time invoking the Clean
Water Act against agricultural polluters, the
EPA will require about 6,600 of the biggest
factory-style farms in the U.S. to obtain pollution
permits and undergo routine federal
inspection. Anyone keeping more than 1,000
animal units, defined as 1,000 cattle, 2,500
swine, or 100,000 hens, would fall under the
new rules, to be phased in over seven years.
Not long ago, such a notion would
have been politically decried as a bureaucratic
assault on God, Mom, fried chicken, and
hamburgers, possibly thought up by animal
rights activists.

Read more

Hunters on the march––but is it a bluff?

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

LONDON, U.K.––The Countryside Alliance,
mobilized by the British Field Sports Society,
claimed 284,500 fox hunting supporters marched past
750 volunteer stewards who counted them by ranks at
the start of the March 2 Countryside March.
The departures alone took five hours.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare,
relying on Napier University scientists who used electronic
recorders, put the crowd count at less than half as
many: 142,000. Scotland Yard guesstimated 250,000,
still more than the estimated 215,000 British fox hunting
participants, and more than two-thirds of the total
BFSS membership––though not all attendees claimed to
be either fox hunters or BFSS members.
Representatives of about 60 Irish hunting
clubs weren’t even British citizens, but demonstrated
solidarity in support of recreational bloodbath anyway.

Read more

WILD WOLVES AND TRUE TALES OF VICIOUS PREDATION

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

About as far from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence seal hunt as one can get and still
be within Canada, the government of the
Northwest Territories has invoked rhetoric
similar to that of Newfoundland, based on
local culture and poverty, in defense of a mere
dozen native hunters who reportedly used
snowmobiles to chase down more than 460
wolves during the winter, who were shot and
skinned after collapsing of exhausting.

Read more

Whale research is booming

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

KAILUA KONA, Hawaii– – Ocean
Mammal Institute volunteers tried apparently unsuccessfully
to amplify last-minute opposition to
Surveillance Towed Array Sonar System Low
Frequency Sound testing northwest of Hawaii,
begun by the U.S. Navy in February, scheduled to
continue through March.
The area is “immediately adjacent to the
Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National
Marine Sanctuary,” explains a newly leaked August
1997 memo from Hawaii Division of Aquatic
Resources staffer Emily Gardner to state Board of
Land and Natural Resources chair Michael D.
Wilson. ANIMAL PEOPLE obtained the memo
from Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch, who said he
received it from an anonymous source.

Read more

MARINE MAMMALS

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

Days before former U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service CITES
Operations Branch chief Susan
Lieberman was promoted to head the
Office of Scientific Authority ( page
14), she told ANIMAL PEOPLE that
while the Makah Tribal Council h a s
reportedly “made assurances to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration that” the grey whales it
intends to kill in Washington coastal
waters this fall “will be used exclusively
for local consumption and ceremonial
purposes, and will not be sold or offered
for sale, the USFWS has not had any
official communication with the Makah
Tribal Council on this issue. In the
event that the Service does communicate
officially with the Makah Tribal
Council on this issue,” Lieberman continued,

Read more

OBITUARIES

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

Max Corkill, 50, his motorcycling
cat Rastus, and sidecar passenger
Gaynor Martin, 48, died on January 20
about twenty miles from their home in New
Plymouth, New Zealand, when a car hit
them head-on. Corkill found Rastus about
nine years ago as an abandoned kitten at a
motorcycling meet in Canada. They moved
from Canada to New Zealand in 1994, but
planned to return to Canada this year with
Martin. Riding everywhere with Corkill in a
custom-made zipper pouch, Rastus was a
major fundraiser for the Royal New Zealand
SPCA. “Max and Rastus were completely
irreplaceable,” mourned RNZSPCA committee
chair Jackie Poles. Hundreds of bikers
turned out for their funeral.

Read more

Saga of a running dog

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

MEDFORD, Oregon––The Oregon law
protecting livestock from canine harassment came
under fire as a February 17 execution date approached
for Nadas, a collie/Malamute mix held by Jackson
County since September 1996 for allegedly repeatedly
chasing a neighbor’s horse.
Nadas’ owner, Sean Roach, was convicted
of criminal mischief for appearing at the county shelter
wearing a clown suit, in an apparent attempt to
recover Nadas on Halloween 1996. Roach and Nadas
were represented in subsequent appeals by Lake
Oswego attorney/activists Robert and Gail Babcock,
who took the case––unsuccessfully––to the Oregon
Supreme Court. The Babcocks, allied with Portland
activist Roger Troen, have long opposed Oregon and
Portland/Multnomah County dangerous dog laws.

Read more

ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

Not doing the job
“Fearing lawsuits charging poor
enforcement” of public safety and
humane laws, Los Angeles city attorney
James Hahn’s office in January moved “to
change city law so that the Animal Regulation
Department no longer is bound to
impound abused or neglected animals on
private property,” Los Angeles Daily News
reporter Patrick McGreevy revealed on
January 29. “The department also would no
longer have to keep detailed records on all
impounded animals, a change that would
reduce the city’s liability is a pet is killed by
mistake,” McGreevy continued. The effort
was delayed, pending public hearings, by
city councillor Laura Chick. Hahn’s office
in late 1997 defended the Animal Regulation
Department against a suit by C i t i z e n s
for a Humane Los Angeles, who alleged
that former Animal Regulation Department
head Gary Olsen for at least eight months
improperly ignored an illegal cat shelter
housing more than 600 cats, to avoid the
political and fiscal fallout that might have
resulted from closing it and seizing the cats.

Read more

1 … 497 498 499 500 501 … 720