CHARC tapes rodeo shocker

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WHEATON, Illinois––The calls became familiar: “Steve
here,” barked a hoarse voice from a highway telephone booth. “I went to
the [any town] rodeo last night. I caught ‘em shocking the bulls again in
the chutes and just coming out, right on the anus and testicles.”
Temporarily grounded by damage to his paraglider and lack of
funds to fix it, Chicago Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi
opened July by leading a fifth year of protest against the Wauconda
Rodeo, whose receipts have fallen 30% since the demonstrations began,
but Steve then fell uncustomarily quiet. Anonymous callers, possibly
spies, asked ANIMAL PEOPLE if he was maybe in jail somewhere.
But before Hindi et al were the Flying CHARCS, noted for flying
between birds and hunters, and for chasing deer away from hunters,
they were the videographers whose dramatic night footage stopped the
rocket-netting of deer in several Chicago suburbs, whose undercover
work won passage of an Illinois ban on horse-tripping as part of charro
rodeo, and whose penetration of the notorious annual Lone Pine turkey
shoot, formerly held in Middleport, Pennsylvania, shut it down as soon
as the organizers realized what Hindi’s camera had captured.

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Biotech can’t bring ‘em back alive without DNA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Noah, as Stephen Tello of Primarily Primates points
out, was both the first known zookeeper and––perhaps due to
job stress––the first winemaker.
He also ran the first captive breeding program.
According to the Biblical prescription, he needed just two of
each species. Genetic diversity apparently took care of itself.
Sometimes captive breeding to recover endangered
species works that easily, but more often not. In real life,
when some animals are paired at the wrong time, one eats the
other. Such considerations inhibit pairing only the second
female Cape pygmy rock lobster found in 200 years, discovered
in May, with a male found one month earlier. Both turned
up near East London, South Africa. Only one other female and
14 other males have ever been seen.
Model-maker Ian Hughes of the Dudley Zoo in
England recently saved the tiny triop Cancriformis shrimp
through captive breeding, of a sort. Believed to be the world’s
least evolved multicellular animal, the triop lays eggs that can
live up to 15 years before hatching, but wild triop habitat is a
single pool, closely protected by the conservation group
English Nature. Eggs from the pool were sent to many zoos
and scientists. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Merton
Mere managed to hatch a few, but Hughes hatched 10,000 on
his office window sill.

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FEW CHEER SPECIES COMEBACKS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Surprisingly little acclaim attends the rediscovery of
species believed to be recently extinct or extirpated––and less
political popularity. Rediscoveries are unpopular with proponents
of trade and development because they raise the threat of
new protective regulation, but are not much better liked by
advocates of stricter conservation laws, since they lend weight
to claims that the purportedly high current rate of extinction is
more an artifact of incomplete research than a scientific verity.
Rediscoveries are also sometimes even scientifically
suspect: some species haven’t been seen in decades perhaps
mainly because no one was looking.
Advances in genetic research have narrowed the likelihood
of anyone fooling the scientific community with a faked
rediscovery, but attempted fakery has occurred, especially in
cases where species still found in one habitat apparently turn up
again in another, without any sign as to how they persisted
without observation, or recolonized an area with no record of
having crossed intervening territory.

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No relief for wild horses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Fighting allegations that
wild horses removed from Bureau of
Land Management property are
clandestinely sold to slaughter, Salt
Lake District BLM state wildforce
manager Glade Anderson on July 28
told Deseret News staff writer
Steven R. Mickelson that Utah
Hunter Association volunteers
would henceforth screen prospective
adoptors and inspect their facilities.

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What to do with 1,000-plus surplus lab primates?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Rattie, a seven-inch albino rat
belonging to Judy Reavis, M.D., of
Benecia, California, earns her living
pulling computer wiring through woodwork
for Hermes Systems Management, exercising
skills developed originally by running
mazes in a psychological research lab to
claim rewards of cat food and candy.
If laboratory primates had comparable
abilities and work habits, labs now
downsizing would have little trouble finding
homes for them all––but primates have been
used mainly to suffer from disease and
breed more primates. As disease research
moves away from animal models, the cost
of keeping chimpanzee and rhesus macaque
colonies has the governments of both the
U.S. and Canada looking at phase-out
options. Chimp maintenance alone costs
U.S. federal agencies a combined total of
$7.3 million a year. The estimated cost of
maintaining each chimp over an average 25-
year lifespan is circa $300,000.

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LETTERS [Sept 1997]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

The bear truth
Regarding the Florida “Habitat for
bears” license plate campaign that kicked off
in June, mentioned in your July/August edition,
it is essential to note that other specialty
plates in Florida, like the manatee plate,
are specifically designed to provide funds for
the conservation of particular endangered
species. The bear plate, as proposed, would
simply create a new funding source for the
Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish
Commission. If the petition drive in support
of the bear plate is successful, the
Commission will get $15 from every plate
sold, to use as needed, including to promote
blood sports.
Revenue from hunting and fishing
license sales in Florida is plummeting. Sales
of one-year freshwater fishing licenses to
Florida residents, for instance, have
dropped by more than 100,000 since 1986.

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Shipboard with the Sea Shepherds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

News traveled chiefly by ship for thousands of years. The first newscasters were
literally anchormen, who shouted the latest word of current events to the crowds who gathered
at dockside whenever a ship came in. After printing was invented, early newspapers
published not the news itself but rather lists of ships arrived and departing, with their recent
and future ports of call, so that to find out what was happening in China, one could find
the crew of the latest arrived China clipper.
The news was still traveling by ship on August 3, a sunny Sunday we spent on
Puget Sound with Captain Paul Watson and the crew of the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society vessel The Sirenian. We met them at Eastsound, the main village on Orcas Island,
where they relaxed in the shade of an old church, and sailed with them to Friday Harbor,
on San Juan Island, where Watson had a Monday night speaking engagement.

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ADC GIVES POOR THE BIRDS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.–– Thousands
of Canada goose carcasses sent to soup
kitchens around the U.S. by the Animal
Damage Control unit of the USDA might be
full of lead, mercury, lawn chemicals, and
potentially lethal microorganisms––but the
recipients may never know it, Friends of
Animals special investigator Carroll Cox discovered
July 10, while probing such a carcass
giveaway in Virginia.
Contrary to common assumption,
the gift meat is not USDA-inspected.
“The USDA does not regulate or
inspect wild meat,” USDA deputy chief
inspector for the Virginia region Maher
Haque affirmed to Cox.

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Licensed to kill

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––You probably
think the Endangered Species Act, Marine
Mammal Protection Act, and Migratory Bird
Treaty Act protect wildlife.
What they actually do is require special
permission to kill or harass wildlife––and
spot-checking recent requests for permits and
exemptions, ANIMAL PEOPLE and Friends
of Animals’ special investigator Carroll Cox
quickly confirmed that the permitting and
exempting procedures are easily and often
manipulated.
“Permitting and exemptions are the
Achilles heel of wildlife law enforcement,”
says Cox, a former special investigator for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and game warden
for the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “With the right permit or an exemption,
you can do anything.”

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