Winter 2013

Volume
62
Number
1
Winter 2013 AWI Quarterly - Cover Photo by Elliott Neep/Minden Pictures
About the Cover

Face to enormous face with an African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) in Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Increasingly, protected areas offer elephants scant sanctuary against ivory hunters. On January 5, poachers wiped out a 12-member elephant family in Kenya's Tsavo National Park. Less than two weeks later, police in Kenya seized more than two tons of ivory. According to a government source, the confiscated ivory was taken from elephants in Rwanda and Tanzania, and bound for Indonesia. As the brief on ivory trade in the United States (below) and the article on the global ivory trade (page 6) attest, ivory lust is driving an escalating assault on elephants. While some countries, like Kenya, battle the poachers and smugglers, others seek to profit from the slaughter. As nations gather in March in Bangkok for the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (see page 16), the illicit ivory trade—and whether the global community is fully committed to combatting its ruinous effects—will once again be on the agenda.

Photo by Elliott Neep/Minden Pictures

Table of Contents

Animals in Laboratories

Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. (SCBT), one of the world’s largest suppliers of antibodies derived from the blood of animals (goats and rabbits), has been cited by USDA veterinary inspectors for apparent egregious violations of the...
Most of the 360 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-owned chimpanzees currently in laboratories should be permanently retired from research and moved to sanctuaries—which need to be expanded to accommodate the animals.
In September, the NIH announced its plan to move 110 chimpanzees from the New Iberia Research Center—10 to Chimp Haven, a lush 200-acre sanctuary, and 100 to Texas Biomedical Research Institute (TBRI), which experiments on...

Farmed Animals

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has elected to take on the task of establishing an international technical specification for the raising of animals for food.
All over the world, conditions for the overwhelming majority of farm animals are getting worse. Intensive and industrial pig, poultry, and beef/dairy cattle production factories are getting larger, and their tentacles are spreading into countries...
For years, American consumers have heard frightening news accounts about the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other contaminants in factory-farmed poultry products. Now a warning has been issued regarding dangers that lurk in pork produced...

Marine Life

At last June’s 64th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Denmark—on behalf of its territory, Greenland—sought not only to renew, but to increase the existing aboriginal subsistence whaling quota for Greenland natives.
Marineland, a marine park in Niagara Falls, Canada, has been ordered by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to stop burying animals on its grounds. Former Marineland employees told The Toronto Star that the park—without...
The Watamu Marine Association (WMA) was established in 2007 in Kenya in order to bring together members from the community, tourism, and environmental sectors in the coastal resort town of Watamu to promote community development...

Terrestrial Wildlife

Reports surfaced in late October that a trapper employed by the USDA ’s Wildlife Services (WS) program in Wyoming had posted graphic images and commentary online indicating he allowed his dogs to menace, maul, and...
The 16 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES CoP) is taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, from Sunday, March...
AWI, Project Coyote, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund obtained a default ruling in December declaring that the possession of coyotes by WCI Foxhound Training Preserve, a penning facility in Linton, Indiana, is unlawful.
Since the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) approved a temporary rule in August 2012 to allow night hunting of coyotes in the state, at least nine critically endangered red wolves have been shot. This...
In the article beginning on page 6, we discuss the unrelenting slaughter of African elephants for their ivory. In the United States, import of African elephant ivory has been prohibited—via the African Elephant Conservation Act—...
The siege is getting worse. African elephants are being killed at a greater rate than at any time since the worldwide ban on the ivory trade was adopted in 1989. Every 15 minutes, on average...
Florida’s Everglades region has a rather big problem: Burmese pythons, one of the world’s largest snakes, are having a devastating effect on the ecosystem. As this non-native species—released into the wild accidentally or intentionally by...
As many wildlife populations decline, the ability to monitor population sizes and changes is critical to conservation efforts. To determine population trends, researchers often must capture animals and apply unique bands or tags that can...
At last November’s Partnership Meeting on Wildlife Trafficking hosted at the U.S. State Department, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted that over the past few years, wildlife trafficking has become more organized, lucrative...

Government Affairs

AWI’s Rosalyn Morrison and Chris Heyde met in December with Dave Kush from the office of Rep. Chris Smith (D-NJ) and Ariel Penaranda, Minister for Legislative Affairs and Consul at the Embassy of the Philippines...
In the Summer 2012 AWI Quarterly, we reported that more than 10,000 animals each year are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in military training exercises.
An attempt to undermine longstanding wildlife, land conservation, and public health laws was defeated in November, when the Sportsmen’s Act of 2012 (S. 3525) was blocked from passage in the U.S. Senate.
In the first case under the 2010 federal crush video law, passed after the Supreme Court struck down a 1999 law against animal cruelty films for being overbroad, the U.S. Attorney in Southern Texas has...
On January 2, 2013, President Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2013 (H.R. 4310), which authorizes the Secretaries of the various military services to transfer back to Lackland Air Force Base...
Shortly before the M. Wells Dinette opened at the Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 gallery (MoMA PS1) in Long Island City, New York, in late September, the restaurant’s chefs announced that the menu would include...

Reviews

Wenonah Hauter’s Foodopoly weaves nearly every aspect of the food system—from retail and fast food to the indentured nature of farming contracts—into a unique and highly accessible analysis of not just America’s food systems, but...