Spring 2000
-
Thief Caught at Camp Leakey This charming account of orangutan intelligence and enterprise is excerpted from Pongo Quest (Fall/Winter 1999, magazine of Orangutan Foundation International ). Orangutans never swim, but they love to eat flowers from big flowering trees. One of the orangutans in Biruté Galdikas' sanctuary in... more...
-
Whales Threatened by Japan and Norway By Ben White Japan has proposed the downlisting of the Antarctic population of minke whales, one North Pacific population of minke whales, and one North Pacific population of gray whales. Norway has proposed the downlisting of the Northeast Atlantic and the North Atlantic Central minke whale... more...
-
Silent Thunder, In the Presence of Elephants Katy Payne New York, Simon and Schuster, 1998, 288 pages, $25.00 Hardcover ISBN: 0-684-80108-6 Long before Katy Payne's powerful book, Silent Thunder, In the Presence of Elephants, was published, she told us about her experience with elephants in the Portland, Oregon, Washington Park Zoo. She... more...
-
The Polish Resistance By Tom Garrett John Steinbeck once wrote that family farmers are "the soul and the guts of this nation or of any other nation." This can be nowhere truer than in Poland. Since Polish peasants armed with scythes overran Russian artillery at Raclawice during the Kosciuszko uprising of... more...
-
Disappeaaring Planet of the Apes A Taste For Extinction The flesh of species such as chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, giant pangolins, and other wildlife ("bushmeat") has historically provided a source of food for people throughout central and western Africa. Today, encroachment of logging companies and destruction of... more...
-
Dog Nursing Pups Mutilated in so called "Padded" Trap Shortly before Christmas, a mother dog was seen limping around the neighborhood in the White Knoll, South Carolina community. Her right front paw was held in the viselike grip of a steel jaw leghold trap. Apparently, the dog wasn't able to pull her foot out of the trap, but she... more...
-
Jumbo Thieves A further concession of the 1997 elephant downlisting was facilitation of "export of live animals to appropriate and acceptable destinations." The problem is that there is no clear definition of what an "appropriate and acceptable destination" really is. As a result, insidious animal dealers... more...
-
Coulston on the Ropes Again The Coulston Foundation (TCF) continually allows the grossly negligent deaths and inhumane treatment of chimpanzees for whom it is responsible. Now TCF is facing a new set of problems from the Food and Drug Administration for violations of Good Laboratory Practice (GLPs) regulations.... more...
-
Chimp Bill Introduced On November 22, 1999 Representative James Greenwood (R, PA), introduced H.R.3514, the "Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act" (CHIMP) to create a congressionally-chartered non-profit retirement sanctuary where all chimpanzees formerly used in research could... more...
-
An Unbearable Trade The trade in bear gallbladders and bile continues to put pressure on endangered bear populations across the globe. All bear species are listed under the Convention's Appendices, but different CITES Parties have different regulations regarding the bear parts trade. The CITES... more...
-
Trouble in Paradise An Angry Report from Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea's treasures are being destroyed by foreign corporations but Gundu and his cohorts have mounted Environmental Awareness Campaigns in remote provinces and are bringing much needed information to the Papua New Guinea populace. After... more...
-
Kidnap and Violence Echoes the Plight of Orangutans By Dave Currey, Environmental Investigation Agency "We've been badly beaten and now we're with the police" was the opening line from Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) investigator Faith Doherty's call from the town of Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan on the Indonesian part of... more...
-
The Three R's: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement A Conference in Bologna At the third annual meeting of the World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences that took place in Bologna, Italy from August 29 to September 2, 1999, Christine Stevens founder and president of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) was honored with... more...
-
Ivory of the Sea? Many conservationists argued that the downlisting of certain populations of African elephants to allow an "experimental" sale of ivory would set a dangerous precedent that CITES Parties would use to open up trade in other listed species. This blueprint has been followed in Cuba's... more...
-
A Deadly Experiment Gone Wrong "Thereafter, under experimental quotas for raw ivory not exceeding 25.3 tonnes (Botswana), 13.8 tonnes (Namibia) and 20 tonnes (Zimbabwe), raw ivory may be exported to Japan…" — Annotation accompanying the 1997 downlisting of three African elephant populations An "experiment" is... more...
-
In Monstrous 20,000 Cow-Factory Farms By Chris Bedford American's small family dairy farms face extinction. The farm gate price of milk has dropped to below 1978 levels, as a result of market manipulation by large dairy cooperatives which function like giant agribusiness corporations. As a consequence, many family dairy... more...
-
Human Population 6,000,000,000 and Growing The world has reached a population of six billion, meaning the number of the globe's inhabitants has doubled in less than 40 years. It took all of human history for the planetary population to reach one billion in 1804, but then little more than 150 years to reach... more...
