Legal Struggle for Wolves Continues

Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as an amicus curiae - friend of the court – to support an argument for an injunction by attorney Jay Tutchton of WildEarth Guardians on behalf of an alliance of non-profits litigating for the wolves of the northern Rocky Mountains. The case asserts that Congress acted unconstitutionally (slipping a rider onto a must-pass budget bill in April 2011) to remove Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Idaho, Montana, and parts of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

Idaho and Montana have, since August, issued more than 36,000 wolf-hunting permits. Hundreds of wolves are now being killed. The states insist this bloody business won’t endanger the wolf population. Yet wildlife biologist Jay Mallonee recently reviewed Montana's wolf population data and found figures derived through faulty mathematics.  Consequently, any management decisions based on the data are also flawed. 

Wolf supporters continue to boycott Idaho and Montana, where wolves are intensively targeted. This boycott has international ramifications as it includes Yellowstone National Park travel.

PHOTO:   Wikimedia Commons

In October 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published its 12-month finding on a petition to list red-crowned parrots under the Endangered Species Act. The government determined that listing the parrots as threatened is warranted, and added the birds to the candidate species list. The government will “develop a proposed rule to list the red-crowned parrot as our priorities allow.”^[1] By law, this requires a subsequent finding to be made within twelve months.

 

 

This finding responds to a January 2008 petition by Friends of Animals, as represented by the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver, requesting listings for 14 parrot species. In March 2010, Friends of Animals and WildEarth Guardians sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for failure to make timely 12-month findings on the petition to list the 14 species.^[2] In July 2010, pursuant to a court-approved settlement agreement, the government agreed to publish determinations for at least four of the species by the end of September 2011.^[3]

Population Matters

Red-crowned parrots – birds who love pine seeds and acorns, fruits, berries, buds and flowers – once numbered more than 100,000. But where hundreds of parrots once flocked, the birds now only appear in scattered pairs or small groups. The global population of red-crowned parrots is now under 5,000 and plummeting.

Over the past decade, Mexico’s forestland, where more than half of the parrots live, has rapidly declined. Up to 60 percent of mature forests are expected to disappear while agribusiness doubles in Mexico by 2030. Trees in which red-crowned parrots nest, roost and eat are constantly displaced by cattle ranchers. (Buying the products of cows thus threatens the existence of parrots.)

Cleared forestland means easy access for bird traders too. Thousands upon thousands of parrots were captured to be sent to the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s, with more than half the birds dead after capture and never sent. Even after 1997, when red-crowned parrots received international treaty protection, smugglers continued to funnel parrots from Mexico to U.S. buyers.^[4] And no evidence shows that the illegal trade in red-crowned parrots has slowed since Mexico’s ban on commerce in native parrots was implemented in 2008.

In the two Texas counties where red-crowned parrots live, the human population increased by 36 percent ( Hidalgo County) and 21 percent ( Cameron County) between 2000 and 2010, and each county’s population is projected to increase 50 percent by 2040. This translates into deforestation for agriculture, timber and development. And it raises an urgent issue for animal law and advocacy: How can free-living animals ever have a chance to keep their autonomy (and indeed their very lives) if we may create property rights in their territories, and their stake in that same space goes unrecognized?

This presses us to conceptualize nonhumans' property — a recognition of other animals’ stake in their habitat, their water, their interest in reproducing and interacting — coupled with some way of resolving to control ourselves, our expansion across Earth’s finite space, and our urge to take the resources from or launch assaults on other members of the bio-community; and certainly it presses us to question the assumption that we, as benevolent keepers, ought to have and hold other animals. Environmental law offers a framework with potential for presenting animal-rights ideas as acceptable, sane, and necessary.

“Teaching ‘animal law’ differs substantially from advocating ‘animal rights,’ and the presentations I make as an ‘animal law’ professor reflect that difference,” notes Verne Smith, who teaches the course at Widener University in Delaware.

“What if,” posits Smith, “all 100-plus professors teaching Animal Law around the country decided at once to change their course to Animal Rights Law? The semantic shift and the signal it sends could be significant.”^[5]

Perhaps animal law is more than just a course by the same name. The Environmental Law Clinic at Denver is working in animal law as its faculty and student attorneys collaborate with Friends of Animals to defend parrots from a stream of commerce flowing into the United States. Could animal rights and environmental law deliberately form a nexus? Combined, they’d chart a course that could genuinely be called Animal Rights Law. We’ll do all we can to hasten it along.

Yellow-Billed Parrots Get Attention Too

In October, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued a proposed rule to list yellow-billed parrots as threatened. This too responds to last year’s lawsuit filed by Friends of Animals and WildEarth Guardians, with pro bono work contributed by the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Denver — specifically, the second deadline in the court-ordered settlement agreement.

Yellow-billed parrots live in Jamaica, often in large, communal roosts. But trapping as well as habitat loss and degradation, mainly due to bauxite mining and road construction are constant threats, as is farming for the well-known brand Blue Mountain Coffee.

Frugivores who eat nuts and berries, blossoms and figs, the yellow-billed parrots disperse seeds and contribute to forest regeneration. In contrast, human farmers remove natural forests to plant crops and graze cattle and goats. Yam plants require support stakes, and farmers take saplings by the millions annually to use for stakes. Native forests are also ruined for plantations that grow pine, blue mahoe, Honduran mahogany, and cedar wood. These activities have left the central spinal forest severely fragmented. Mining roads cut into forests and ravage the land of yellow-billed parrots. Boas prey on parrot nests easily in cleared (edge) habitats.

 

 

 

 

 

On top of it all, climate change is increasing the force of storms. Hurricanes wreck trees and nests and blow parrots out to sea, drowning them. And then there are the farmers who shoot parrots to protect their crops (particularly after harsh weather events), and opportunistic pet traders. Though buying or selling Jamaican parrots is outlawed, parrots are sought as pets in Jamaica because of their bright feathers and ability to mimic human sounds.^[6] Poachers for the pet trade, who cut trees to get to nests or use trapping sticks baited with fruit and covered in glue, are the main cause of failures of adult parrots to fledge young birds. The Fish & Wildlife Service states, “Stringent gun control has been instituted by the Jamaican government, but a stricter policy on poaching of nests is needed.”

Strengthening gun control, or challenging deforestation, ranching and construction in Jamaica would be difficult for U.S. animal advocates. But 1970s-era environmental policy legislation, including the Endangered Species Act, has broad ramifications for free-living animals; by applying it thoughtfully, we can defend communities of animals who’d otherwise lose everything — their very existence on Earth. Our readers can support this work by challenging parrot sales in pet supply chain stores and local pet shops. A store manager will likely answer that the parrots sold at the shop are not members of endangered species, or that they are captive-bred. We can reply that this is all part of the same wrong. Selling any parrot perpetuates the socially acceptability of the cage-bird trade. This must end.

“Cheap” Takes Its Toll

With the headline “Vegan Food at Target,” a popular animal-advocacy group’s blog recently exclaimed, “Being vegan just got even easier (and cheaper!): Target just revamped its grocery sections to include tons of vegan products. Check it out…”

One of the biggest U.S. retail chains, with more than 1,600 branches that invariably require massive parking areas, Target contributes to environmental and community degradation and sprawl; as a result of this company’s quest for growth, nonhuman animals are constantly pushed aside. Maybe it’s time for some vegans to get outside and experience nature, and learn why it’s worth defending.

Philadelphia Council Ignores State Law to Slam Raccoons

A public hearing took place in October in Philadelphia after Council member Darrell Clarke introduced a bill t o wrest responsibility of raccoon abatement from the state game commission. The provision effectively declares war on raccoons by stating that any raccoon “ engaged in any nuisance activity”— and that includes “disturbing the peaceful enjoyment of the property by anyone inhabiting or visiting the property”—may be reported to the municipal animal-control department, whereupon the raccoon “shall be abated.”

Despite false media reports and Clarke's assertions, removal of a raccoon from a city structure is a death sentence. Pennsylvania law makes it so.^[7] The city’s provision passed, but is legally meaningless because, in fact, state law controls the response to raccoons.

 Testifying for the bill was a highly frustrated Philadelphia resident who lives next to an empty house whose inhabitant went to jail. Sightings of animals in or around vacant buildings highlight the need for upkeep of empty city structures; but this matter won’t be solved by a raccoon-killing campaign. The Council members, though, played up the outrage over the presence of raccoons. Darrell Clarke showed a television segment with a raccoon climbing a building. Was this supposed to represent some terrible, imminent danger? If so, no one said how. The Council ignored the testimony of a wildlife biologist who explained that the problem is not raccoons, but a city that needs to pick up after itself. Multiple times, the council members were told state law controls the handling of raccoons – native wildlife. The members showed no interest in that legal reality.^[8]

This bizarre provision and the way it passed continues to be discussed in Philadelphia, which is part of the native range of raccoons. As I testified in the hearing on behalf of our members:

These   omnivorous animals are recyclers: they take leftovers in municipal waste and use it; they also control insects in private or community gardens. They are beings to be respected; legislation against them would cause undue alarm and yet another needless concept of animals as nuisances when in reality they are born on and belong to the Earth — including Greater Philadelphia — as we do.

Local parties testifying against the bill included Christina Kobland for East33.org, Lisa Levinson for the Toad Detour Committee, and wildlife biologist Rick Schubert.

Single-Issue Campaigns: What They Are and How They Work

Increasingly, activists use the buzzword single-issue to describe interventions for specific animals or communities of animals in particular locales. I’ve given this some thought recently. And it’s dawned on me that single-issue is a misleading term. Each individual, and each community of animals, is connected with others. No raccoon, no deer, no coyote, no fox is a lone raccoon, deer, coyote or fox. Each is an individual whose life matters, yet deer or foxes or coyotes interact with each other (which is how they are defined as a species); and they are, in turn, members of a larger community of life on Earth.

In any case, should anyone’s plight be dismissed for being particular, and thus somehow undeserving of current attention?

It’s appropriate to defend serious anti-fur campaigns; to stop a local, state or federal deer kill; or to support other specific interventions. Let us celebrate and support campaigners and caregivers who present a local case in connection broad changes in culture.

Friends of Animals’ work, as readers know, includes the recognition of good reasons to stop fur sales. Now, if a group is going to argue to the U.S. agriculture department that a Michigan farm ought to kill its chinchillas with one method instead of another, then we would explain (and we have explained!) the trouble with that kind of non-committal campaign.

In contrast, say a state, province or country banishes fur farms. We could count that as a welcome advancement. If we can end the use of pelts, wherever such ending might be possible, animals who could have lived free (minks, lynx, rabbits, seals, beavers, Arctic foxes…), can live free. Any time we successfully defend a free-living animal’s (or community’s) interest in living free of human domination, any time our actions free entire communities to actually experience what would be theirs if animal rights were a reality, this is a good thing and it is a step ahead.

Indeed, even though bulls cannot enjoy animal rights in the sense of living free, what animal advocate wouldn’t welcome an outright end to bullfighting in México? An adios to a sector that breeds bulls to torment and kill them for sport would be worthy of at least an audible sigh of collective relief. Although the best ban is the one we enact by controlling ourselves when we stop exploiting other animals, various bans are, in the meantime, ethically important where they can be obtained.

Some ask whether targeting fur and not leather in a given campaign is inconsistent. Leather is largely a commodity related to and encompassed by a bigger sector: animal agribusiness. Thus, we can’t ban it, so much as work on the vital issue of urging the people of our society to stop buying animal products. In the new edition of Friends of Animals’ Vegan Starter Guide, we talk about why avoidance of leather is important in animal advocacy. Check it out and share!

Striving for a consistent message, we challenge exploitation everywhere we can. Sometimes this means working on a project to stop the extermination of raccoons, sometimes to challenge language labs, sometimes to challenge the use of animal skins for fashion, and sometimes to encourage people to buy organic cotton socks instead of wool. There are many facets. If a fur ban is possible, let’s seize the day. Some will say it would not bring about a vegan culture. But it would bring our society nearer to a full shift in consciousness; so it is one of those things we need to achieve a vegan culture.

Footnotes