Archive: Terrestrial Wildlife

Today, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), In Defense of Animals (IDA), the American Environment Foundation (AEF), and two individuals asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) of the US Department of the Interior in a 14-page letter to cancel an illegal black bear hunt scheduled for Dec.1 and 2 in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

The letter includes substantive evidence that the FWS has failed to comply with proper procedures and has ignored its duties under federal law to evaluate the environmental impacts of the hunt. As part of a cover up, they note, the agency failed to reveal that the two black bear studies it relies on to justify the hunt both recommended that no hunt be allowed until and unless additional studies are conducted. The author of one study indicated that a bear hunt could exacerbate a loss of genetic diversity. According to these studies, the Refuge’s bear population is already threatened by genetic concerns, as well as habitat destruction and fragmentation outside its bounds.

“There is no question that the hunt violates federal law, so we expect the FWS to cancel it immediately,” said IDA Communications Director Kristie Phelps.

Bears have been protected in the Great Dismal Swamp since the Refuge was established in 1974.

James D. Parker, American Environment Foundation President stated, “Though the FWS claims to have authorized bear hunting in 1998, evidence documented in our submission demonstrates that the agency never legally approved a bear hunt.”

“The FWS is engaged in an intentional game of hide and seek, withholding critical information about the Refuge’s bears from the public, while seeking to implement an illegal hunt,” said AWI Wildlife Biologist D.J. Schubert. “These bears must be protected to ensure their existence in the face of habitat loss and genetic decline.”

AWI and AEF are headquartered in Va. and IDA is based in San Rafael, Calif.

In an 8-page letter to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) delivered today, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and In Defense of Animals (IDA) questioned the legality of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge’s black bear hunt. In addition to condemning the 2007 hunt which is set to begin tomorrow the groups requested that the FWS agree to the preparation of a new environmental impact review prior to deciding on whether to conduct a hunt in 2008.

“We are asking the US Fish and Wildlife Service to take a step back and simply agree to subject the refuge bear hunt to a new environmental analysis as required by federal law to address the legal deficiencies inherent to the current hunt,” states D.J. Schubert, AWI’s Wildlife Biologist. “We believe the evidence, if fully disclosed and objectively evaluated, will demonstrate that this hunt is unnecessary and harmful to the refuge bear population.”

The letter documented the legal inadequacies inherent to the current black bear hunt including the failure of the FWS to properly authorize bear hunting on the refuge and its woeful analysis of the environmental impacts of the hunt. Its current analysis provided virtually no substantive assessment of the impacts of the hunt in blatant violation of federal law.

The 2007 hunt is only the second year that bear hunting has ever been allowed on the refuge. A lawsuit to stop the 2006 hunt was unsuccessful but, fortunately, not a single bear was killed during the two-day hunt last year. The 2007 hunt may result in the death of up to 20 bears.

“Recreational hunting has no place on America’s national wildlife refuges which should be sanctuaries for wildlife—not shooting arcades for hunters,” explains Elliot M. Katz, DVM, IDA’s President. “Considering the myriad threats to the Great Dismal Swamp bears as a result of off-refuge development pressures, the government should be protecting not persecuting these bears simply to provide a recreational opportunity for hunters.”

A copy of the 8-page letter is available at http://www.vabear.org/letter or can be obtained by contacting D.J. Schubert of AWI via e-mail at dj@awionline.org.

Today, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the federal district court in Washington DC issued a major ruling rejecting the last-ditch attempt of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus to avoid trial over charges that the circus abuses its Asian elephants in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act.

The groundbreaking lawsuit, brought by the Animal Welfare Institute, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, The Fund for Animals, the Animal Protection Institute, and Tom Rider, a former employee of Ringling Bros., alleges that the circus violates the Endangered Species Act by abusively training and disciplining elephants with sharp implements such as bullhooks, by intensively confining and chaining the multi-ton animals for prolonged periods, and by forcibly separating baby elephants from their mothers.

“The ASPCA is delighted with today’s ruling, which paves the way for the real case at hand: whether Ringling Brothers violated the Endangered Species Act in its treatment of the elephants,” stated ASPCA Senior Vice President Lisa Weisberg.

In its ruling, the Court scolded the circus for “wast[ing] a considerable amount of time and resources” of the Court and the groups by engaging in “dilatory” delay tactics over several years. The Court had previously ruled and today reiterated that the circus had repeatedly withheld critical evidence, in violation of a Court order.

“After five years of legal wrangling, we look forward to unveiling the curtain at trial to expose the suffering and death of elephants at the hands of the so-called ‘Greatest Show on Earth,'” said Tracy Silverman, General Counsel for the Animal Welfare Institute. “These magnificent animals will finally have their day in Court.”

In today’s ruling, the Court also recognized the important “public policy in favor of protecting the animals from unlawful harassment or harm.” The Court further admonished that “promoting the public interest in the preservation of such species will remain an ever-present threat to those seeking to unlawfully harm such species.”

“Today’s strongly worded decision shows that the Court has run out of patience for Ringling Brothers’ stalling ploys,” said Michael Markarian, president of The Fund for Animals. “This trial will come not a moment too soon, as Ringling’s elephants continue to suffer every day from abusive discipline and prolonged chaining.”

The Court also rejected Ringling’s attempt to interject baseless counterclaims against the plaintiffs, and to harass the plaintiffs with discovery on irrelevant issues.  The Court ordered all further discovery to be completed by the end of the year, and a trial date is expected soon.

“We’re excited to move forward with this case and hope the spotlight continues to shine on the use of inhumane chains and bullhooks and Ringling’s cruel behind-the-scenes treatment of elephants,” said Nicole Paquette, General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs at the Animal Protection Institute.

The plaintiffs are represented by the public interest law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal.

Facts

• Witnesses and former circus employees have given sworn testimony to the US Department of Agriculture, as recently as October 2006, that behind the scenes at circuses, elephants are kept tightly chained by one front and hind leg and unable to move freely. In the wild, elephants travel many miles each day. There are reports of circus elephants being confined this way up to 20 hours or more each day. Research shows that this leads to psychological and physical problems such as arthritis, crippling foot problems, and behavior that is indicative of high levels of stress.
• As recently as July 2006, undercover investigators have videotaped trainers beating elephants, contrary to statements that the animals are trained exclusively through positive reinforcement. The lawsuit alleges that trainers use a stick with a sharpened metal hook on the end (called a “bullhook” or “ankus”) to repeatedly beat, pull, push, torment and threaten elephants.
• In a January 2005 e-mail, Ringling’s own “Animal Behaviorist” recounted to Ringling’s General Manager that she saw an elephant named Lutzi “dripping blood all over the arena floor during the show from being hooked,” after a handler “hook[ed] Lutzi under the trunk three times and behind the leg once in an attempt to line her up for the T-mount.” A “T-mount” is a stunt where two elephants and at least one person stand on the back of a kneeling elephant.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), and Mr. Walt Farmer, a Jackson, WY area resident have asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) to immediately suspend the bison hunt on the National Elk Refuge (NER) which began on September 15th. In their eleven-page letter to the agencies, a number of federal and state laws and related procedural requirements that have been overlooked or ignored in their great haste to allow hunters to kill bison on the refuge are identified. Two bison were killed during the first weekend of the three-month long hunt.

“It’s bad enough that the agencies have elected to turn a refuge where bison have been fed and protected for over 15 years into a killing ground,” states D.J. Schubert, AWI’s wildlife biologist. “It is worse when the agencies have failed to comply with existing law, ignored their own directives, and manipulated procedures to expedite hunter access to the killing grounds.”

Among the issues raised in the letter are a doubling of the number of bison to be killed on the refuge compared to the numbers disclosed in the management plan, a failure by the WGFD to establish a bison herd objective prior to implementing the hunt, and the misuse of an emergency rule when no emergency existed. Other legal, procedural, and policy issues are addressed including concerns about whether the hunt is “ethical” or can meet “fair-chase” standards.

The hunt is the product of a 10-year long planning effort after a previous hunt was halted by litigation. The final management plan, approved in April, allows the killing of more than half of the Jackson bison herd and increases the number of elk to be hunted but provides no concrete plan to phase out the supplemental feeding of elk and bison on the refuge. The FWS has been providing supplemental feed for elk and bison on the refuge for nearly 100 and 30 years, respectively. This feeding program has allowed the bison population to grow to its present size. Moreover, the scientific evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates, as the FWS concedes, that the feeding program is the underlying cause of many of the alleged threats to the refuge and Grand Teton National Park; particularly wildlife disease concerns.

“The federal agencies have elected to favor politics over science and common sense in approving the management plan,” explains Schubert. “Their need to placate the WGFD and decision to capitulate to the state’s demands will only serve to prolong the problems and increase the threats posed by supplemental feeding.”

AWI is one of this nation’s oldest animal protection organizations dedicated to reducing the sum total of pain and fear inflicted on animals by humans. BFC is based in West Yellowstone, Montana and is the only group working in the field everyday to stop the slaughter of Yellowstone’s wild free-roaming buffalo.

A diverse coalition of tribal, conservation, hunting, animal welfare and wildlife groups, an outfitting business, and concerned citizens from Montana and South Dakota, have filed an emergency rule making petition with the US Department of the Interior seeking to stop the National Park Service from slaughtering wild bison inhabiting Yellowstone National Park and adjoining lands on the Gallatin National Forest in Montana.

Yellowstone is home to America’s only wild bison who have continuously occupied their native habitat.

This winter, Yellowstone National Park and the State of Montana have engaged in an unprecedented slaughter or removal of over 1,550 bison that have migrated to their winter range near and beyond park borders. One-third of the entire bison herd has been wiped out with 1,284 captured and shipped to slaughterhouses on order from officials in the National Park Service and the Montana Department of Livestock under Governor Brian Schweitzer.

“The Park Service’s current course is to slaughter bison without concern as to the damage being done to the genetic diversity of the distinct bison populations in Yellowstone,” explains D.J. Schubert, a wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute. “The petition raises a red flag that unprecedented, large scale slaughtering of wild bison is jeopardizing their long term survival.”

The petition presents scientific evidence of at least two genetically distinct bison populations inhabiting the park. The National Park Service currently manages the bison in the park without consideration of this evidence.

To ensure bison’s long-term survival and health, the National Park Service must sustain a minimum of 2,000 bison in each distinct bison population. That number would ensure that genetic diversity is conserved—allowing bison to naturally evolve and adapt to a changing environment, and retain important survival behaviors like natural migration and selection.

The coalition says the National Park Service has ignored this science and failed to adapt its bison management plan to ensure the long-term survival of each distinct bison population.

The petition, submitted under the authority of the Administrative Procedures Act, asks Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to publish an emergency rule prohibiting the National Park Service from killing or participating in the killing of bison, or otherwise permanently removing bison from either population, when the population is reduced to 2,000 or fewer bison. Both bison populations have been reduced to fewer than 2,000 animals this winter.

“The Park Service, at the direction of Montana’s livestock interests, is slaughtering one of America’s most iconic wildlife species, endangering the only continuously wild, free-roaming bison population left in the U.S.,” states Michael Mease, President and Co-founder of the Buffalo Field Campaign. “The public must rise up and put an end to the livestock industry dictating control over America’s last wild bison herds.”

The diverse coalition of signatories to the petition includes: Animal Welfare Institute, Buffalo Field Campaign, GravelBar, Natural Resources Defense Council, American Buffalo Foundation, Western Watersheds Project, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Development, Horse Butte Neighbors of Buffalo, Big Wild Adventures, Gallatin Wildlife Association, American Indian Law Alliance, The Humane Society of the United States, WildEarth Guardians, Ms. Karrie Taggart, Ms. Barb Abramo, Mr. George Nell, and Ms. Rosalie Little Thunder.

Today, a coalition of animal protection organizations and a former Ringling Bros. employee asked a federal district court in Washington DC to immediately order a halt to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (Ringling Bros.)’s cruel practice of shackling and confining endangered Asian elephants for days on end in a manner that prevents them from walking or even turning around in place.

Newly obtained evidence based on the circus’s own documents reveals that Ringling Bros. keeps elephants virtually immobilized in chains for the majority of their lives. Internal records of the circus’s train travels show that the elephants are chained while confined in boxcars for an average of more than 26 hours at a time, and sometimes for as much as 60 100 hours without a break as the circus moves across the country.

“The evidence is simply shocking,” says Lisa Weisberg, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). “The public should be outraged at the amount of time these animals are forced to be shackled and confined, and Ringling Bros. should be ashamed at hiding this cruelty from the public eye.”

“We hope that the Court will order Ringling Bros. to immediately unchain these incredibly intelligent and, social animals and spare them from suffering a lifetime of misery,” says Tracy Silverman, General Counsel for Animal Welfare Institute. “No animal should be chained for days at a time, week after week, month after month and year after year.”

The request for an immediate halt to prolonged chaining and confinement of elephants is part of a groundbreaking lawsuit by the ASPCA, the Animal Welfare Institute, The Fund for Animals, Born Free USA united with Animal Protection Institute (Born Free USA), and former Ringling Bros. employee Tom Rider against Ringling Bros. Circus.  The suit alleges that the circus is violating the Endangered Species Act by abusively training and disciplining elephants with sharp implements such as bullhooks, and by intensively confining and chaining the animals for prolonged periods of time.

“Shackling elephants for days on end without the ability to walk or even turn around is inherently cruel,” said Michael Markarian, President of The Fund for Animals.  “Endangered species deserve something better than a lifetime of suffering.”

Although Ringling Bros. has denied that the elephants spend most of their lives in chains, former circus employees and other witnesses have given sworn testimony to the US Department of Agriculture that the elephants are kept tightly chained by one front and hind leg—unable to move freely or even turn around—for hours on end.

“The overwhelming evidence we have obtained confirms what former Ringling Bros. employees have said for years about the unimaginable cruelty that goes on under—and behind—the Big Top,” says Nicole G. Paquette, Senior Vice President for Born Free USA. “These new revelations of prolonged chaining of elephants should not only have significant implications for this case, but also assist in our national efforts to pass legislation prohibiting cruel training practices commonly used on captive elephants.”

The plaintiffs are represented by the public interest law firm Meyer Glitzenstein & Crystal.

Archival document; for complete account, please see http://awionline.org/cases/protection-asian-elephants.

The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the Wildlife Alliance of Maine (WAM) sent a letter of intent to sue Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife (DIFW) Commissioner Roland D. Martin today to compel the agency to comply with federal law and take immediate action to protect Canada lynx from deadly traps. The letter, which was also sent to Governor Baldacci and Attorney General Steven Rowe, reveals that at least 8 Canada Lynx a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act—were caught in traps set for other species in a one month time period between October 15, 2007 and November 13, 2007.

“The state has failed to protect Canada lynx from indiscriminate traps and is therefore in violation of the Endangered Species Act every time a lynx gets caught,” said Camilla Fox, Wildlife Consultant for AWI. “With eight lynx trapped in just 29 days, this means that on average at least one lynx is trapped every four days during the trapping season,” said Fox. “And that’s just the reported number.”

A similar lawsuit filed by the Animal Protection Institute last year led to a consent decree settlement with the state that required DIFW to restrict certain traps in specific regions inhabited by lynx. “Unfortunately those restrictions were woefully inadequate,” said Daryl DeJoy, Founding Executive Director of WAM. “More lynx have been trapped after the settlement was implemented than in previous years so we will be forced to go to court if DIFW fails to take immediate action to better protect lynx from non-selective traps.”

The state has attempted to obtain an incidental take permit from the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) which would remove the legal burden from the state if trappers incidentally trap lynx and would require the state to implement protective measures to minimize and mitigate lynx trapping. However, three drafts have been rejected by the FWS to date and each time the federal agency has told DIFW that it must do better to protect lynx from traps set for other furbearers.

Maine’s resident lynx population is estimated at only 200-500 individuals. However, the FWS has stated that the population may be in decline and snow shoe hare populations—the main source of prey for lynx—are in severe decline. “It is biologically reckless for the DIFW to continue to allow trappers to use traps that pose a danger to lynx at a time when lynx populations and their main source of prey are likely in decline,” said Fox.