COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Dog Crimes
The Cuyahoga County, Ohio
grand jury on April 23 indicted Jeffrey
Mann, 36, for murder, alleging that he
ordered his pit bull terrier to fatally maul his
common-law wife, Angela Kaplan, 28, on
September 2, 1992. The indictment came
as result of an eight-month probe by
Cleveland homicide detective Michaelene
Taliano, and extensive observation of the
dog’s nature by animal behaviorist Karen
Arnoff. Taliano suspected the attack was a
murder, not an accident, because the dog
bit Kaplan more than 100 times, but never
around the neck and throat, the usual sites
of fatal bite wounds. Mann pleaded inno-
cent and was freed on $25,000 bail.

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“Wear the badge and the uniform.” How a small Alabama shelter wins big in court

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA––On March 12,
the Montgomery County Humane Society took a man
named Tom Green to court. His offense, testified executive
director Mary Stanley Mansour, was keeping seven
Weimeraners in “complete darkness and filth in a large
warehouse for several months.”
It was the sort of case anti-cruelty officers often
hesitate to recommend for prosecution, a case of neglect
rather than overt physical abuse, involving conditions that
in many poor communities aren’t demonstrably far from
“normal,” no matter how undesirable. Mansour was not
eager to prosecute Green, either. She gave him repeated
warnings.

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Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

New head of USFWS
faces fight to renew ESA
LAND USE CONFLICTS ERUPT ALL OVER
WASHINGTON D.C.– Nominated
by President Bill Clinton to head the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, forester Mollie Beattie
of Grafton, Vermont is expected to be Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s chief mapmaker, as
the administration seeks to secure renewal of a
strong Endangered Species Act by reorienting
the law to protect critical habitat rather than
individual species.
Her main duty, she told Burlington
Free Press reporter Nancy Bazilchuk upon
receiving word of her nomination, will be to
“map and inventory the country’s ecosystems,
so we know which ones are scarcest and need
more protection.”

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Habitat

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Over the past 28 years, the Land and Water
Conservation Fund financed by offshore oil and gas
drilling royalties has raised more than $9 billion, the
revenues from which––$900 million a year––were sup-
posed to have been spent on acquiring land for national
parks and wildlife refuges. However, the Ronald
Reagan and George Bush administrations gradually
diverted the money elsewhere. The current federal bud-
get, Bush’s last, allocated only $284 million for land
acquisition, and Bill Clinton’s proposed budget cuts that
24%, to just $208 million.
China has set aside 77,000 square miles in
northern Tibet as a wildlife sanctuary––an area the
size of South Dakota. More than 125,000 square miles
of the remote Himalayan nation had already been
reserved for wildlife. Nearly 40% of Tibet is now offi-
cially protected habitat for yaks, snow leopards, rare
high-altitude sheep, and a vareity of antelope species.
New York City has announced plans to sepa-
rate the Central Park Reservoir from the city water
system later this year. The reservoir, one of the critical
habitats for New York’s urban wildlife, may be added to
the park area intact––or may be drained, filled, and
converted into athletic fields.

Alaska revives plan to strafe wolves

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

JUNEAU, Alaska––Just six months after an
international tourism boycott forced the Alaska Board of
Game to rescind a plan to strafe radio-collared wolves,
the board is ready to ratify essentially the same
plan––unless it ratifies one even deadlier.
On the agenda for the June 26 meeting of the
Board of Game are 92 separate wolf management pro-
posals, including two from the state Department of Fish
and Game that differ from last winter’s proposal mainly
in that they would encourage killing as many wolves as
possible from the ground before the air strikes begin.
Hunters and trappers would be given the radio collar
frequencies, so that they could trace each wolf pack in
the Delta and Fortymile areas, south of Fairbanks, right
to their dens. The killing could start as early as July 1.

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Birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Trying to find out why a pair of peregrine falcons have been
unable to produce eggs in five years of nesting atop Terminal Tower in
downtown Cleveland, raptor expert Harvey Webster of the Cleveland
Museum of Natural History captured the female on April 30––and learned
she was a sterile hybrid of a peregrine and a prairie falcon, illegally bred
by a falconer whose leather tethers remained on her legs. The falcon was
sent to the University of Minnesota aviary for live study. Her mate, who
in 1988 was the first captive-bred peregrine released in Ohio, is expected
to find another female soon, as several others have recently been seen in
the area.

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Jaws

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

The National Marine Fisheries Service on
April 29 issued fishing quotas on 39 shark species
native along the U.S. coast from Maine to Texas, and
banned catching sharks just to cut off their fins, which
command high prices in China, Japan and Southeast
Asia. The action is intended to prevent the slow-breed
ing and heavily hunted sharks from becoming endan
gered. A total ban on commercial pursuit of the great
white shark, tiger shark, and black tip shark is under
consideration. West coast sharks were not protected
because, NMFS spokespersons said, they are already
covered by various state laws.

Zoos & Aquariums

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

The Zoological Society of London on April 13
rejected plans by entrepreneur David Laing and New Zoo
Developments Ltd. to build a $55 million walk-through
aquarium and wildlife film theatre on the 36-acre site. The
166-year-old London Zoo, the world’s oldest, has raised
$3.8 million independently, toward the cost of $32.5 mil-
lion worth of renovations it needs to become a captive
breeding facility. Laing said he would try to situate the pro-
posed aquarium and theatre elsewhere in London.
The Pittsburgh Zoo opened an insect gallery on
April 24, featuring a $24,000 video camera that allows visi-
tors to zoom in on particular insects, magnify their view,
and follow them around a terrarium. Nineteen insect species
are featured in the gallery, and are rotated in the magnifica-
tion area.

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Whaling ban holds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

TOKYO, Japan––The 47th annual meeting of
the International Whaling Commission concluded May 14
with the 1986 ban on commercial whaling still
intact––and Japan and Norway still threatening to follow
Iceland in quitting the treaty that holds the IWC together.
Norway has already announced that it will
resume commercial whaling this summer, risking trade
sanctions from the United States. Meanwhile, Norway
and Japan are already harpooning 100 and 300 minke
whales apiece per year for “research.” The rudimentary
research ends in each nation with the whale meat on
restaurant tables. Claiming that the Southern Hemisphere
minke whale population is up to 760,000 and out of dan-
ger, Japan wants to kill 2,000 a year. The Japanese gov-
ernment is also desperately worried that the IWC will
extend its authority from minkes, the smallest of the great
whales, to smaller cetaceans such as dolphins and porpois-
es. As with the great whales, some species of dolphins
and porpoises have been driven close to extinction by
aggressive huntiing, and public opinion in most of the
developed nations favors protecting them.

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