Cetaceans in captivity

[Guest guest]

This rebuttal is long. Those without time to read it through can take

my word for it that we are indeed united in our opposition to wild

capture of cetaceans. What is controversial is what we do with the

cetaceans already habituated to a life of captivity. Those interested to know

more of the background, please read on.

John.

 

>This is a disturbing article which has recently been brought to my

>attention. I would be interested to read a rebuttal.

 

Dear John:

 

Shrug. Here we go again. This commentary by Ben White first

surfaced in mid-1996, I believe. I last heard from someone who had

seen it in 2003.

 

Rule #1 in journalism is to verify claims. In this case,

you need to read the multi-part investigative series " Dirty Pool " and

the commentary by Paul Watson to which Ben White was responding,

published just over 10 years ago. I'll forward the works to you.

 

Rule #2 is to look at the motives behind allegations. Ben

White in many respects led a double life, appearing on the one hand

to be a dedicated super-activist (which to some extent he genuinely

was) while damaging and defaming almost every organization he was

involved with: American Indian Movement, Rolling Thunder Review,

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Friends of Animals, SeDnA.

 

At the time White wrote this, he knew I was looking into his

history, and had background covering 15 years of his life that were

& are virtually unknown to most of his animal rights movement

associations.

 

White's pattern changed in 1998, after I confronted him with

everything I had that could be verified, about a year after he took

the place of " Rick Spill " at the Animal Welfare Institute, about

four years after he posted the essay you just forwarded. After that,

White became much quieter.

 

I'll send you some published background about White, too.

 

Further to the background, while hard evidence as to the

extent of White's involvement may never surface, it is very

interesting to me that six months after White's death the feds have

arrested a small army of his activist contacts on ALF/ELF-related

charges.

 

Incidentally, I believe White was sincere about much of his

activism-- but I suspect he was in effect on a leash much of the time

because of past history, and--ironically--became more free to do

what he wanted after I made clear that I could & would blow his cover

if necessary to protect innocent people, after blowing " Rick

Spill " 's cover.

 

I believe White was a mostly well-meaning man who spent most

of his life caught between the devil & the deep blue sea. I believe

" Spill " basically blackmailed him. White died horribly from a

stomach cancer that may have reflected his internal dilemmas.

 

 

>This is particularly relevant to me at the moment as we in Hong Kong

are

>trying to decide how to stop our Ocean Park from pursuing their plan

>to capture wild orcas in Indonesian waters. Ocean Park is trying to

>justify this action by saying that the captured orcas will be

>ambassadors for their species and will educate the people to care for

>animals in the wild. Are we not united in our opposition to this

idea?

 

Neither Paul Watson, Ric O'Barry, nor I have ever favored

capturing marine mammals from the wild. What all three of us have

pointed out, repeatedly, is that many of the marine mammals now in

captivity are not suitable for release, and that Keiko was among the

weaker candidates for release.

 

Watson has not otherwise said much about captivity, one way

or another.

 

O'Barry, though the strongest and most consistent voice

against captivity for more than 35 years, is willing to give the

devil his due in acknowledging that captive dolphin venues have done

a lot to increase public recognition and appreciation of marine

mammals, despite their many faults and his belief that all of this

could be done in better ways.

 

My own view, first of all, is that I am a reporter, not an

activist. I cover the news; I don't make it. I evaluate issues,

by every means available, and try to make all the most important

facts and reasonable perspectives known. My often cited creed is

Mark Twain's advice to journalists to, " Get your facts first. Then

you can distort 'em as you please. "

 

My present assessment is that while there is no good reason

to remove dolphins from the wild, other than stranding victims who

can perhaps be saved, those dolphins who are still in captivity and

are habituated to it, often having been born there, still have

their own job to do in helping to educate the public, most

especially in helping the public to fall in love with them to the

point of opposing commercial slaughter, and should be given the best

possible conditions in which to do that job.

 

Cheers,

 

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

for free sample, send address.]

 

 

(From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1994.)

 

Dirty Pool, part 1

 

ORLANDO, NEW YORK CITY, MYSTIC--Activists don't believe

anything they hear from the " aquaprison industry. " Oceanarium people

don't trust activists to know truth when they see it. And small

wonder on either side, given the pitch of the propaganda for and

against keeping marine mammals in captivity.

This debate differs from the equally bitter conflicts over

hunting, trapping, meat-eating, and the use of animals in

biomedical research. Knowingly or not, the antagonists in the

oceanarium debate express smilar visions of what oceanariums should

be--and issue many of the same criticisms of what they are. They

agree that saving marine mammals is among the urgent moral and

ecological priorities of our time. Their only substantive

disagreements concern the morality of capturing marine mammals from

the wild, a practice now largely but not totally history, and the

ethics of putting them on display.

The overlap of concerns is so great that Steve Wynn, owner

of the Mirage hotel and dolphinarium in Las Vegas, has apparently

been the biggest donor to the militantly anti-whaling Sea Shepherd

Conservation Society since 1988. The bitterness of the divide is

such that anti-captivity leaders including Ric O'Barry of The Dolphin

Project and Ben White of Friends of Animals call Sea Shepherd founder

and captain Paul Watson a " sellout " and worse for taking the money.

After examining that dispute in our December 1993 issue,

ANIMAL PEOPLE wondered just how many of the other claims and

counterclaims surrounding marine mam mal captivity stand up. We

spent almost a year probing the factual claims of four influential

propaganda pieces, two from each perspective, which are frequently

used as source documents by the opposing factions.

From the " Free Willy! " side, we investigated the two Fund

for Animals Cetaceans in Captivity series fact sheets on dolphins and

orcas, authored by whale protection activist Jerye Mooney, no

longer with The Fund, in early 1992; the current editions were

updated on August 28, 1993. The Fund authorized numerous other

animal protection groups, e.g. The Dolphin Project, to reprint

these sheets with their own contact information added. Abbreviated

editions are also often used by local groups as handouts, both with

and without credit to the source. The Cetaceans in Captivity fact

sheets purport to tell the truth about the lives--and deaths--of

dolphins and orcas at oceanariums and other entertainment facilities.

From the oceanarium side, we reviewed two essays purporting

to tell the truth about anti-cetacean captivity activists:

Bureaucracy and Politics Crippling Aquariums and Marine Mammal

Research, Part II, first published in the Third Quarter 1990

edition of Seaword, the newsletter of the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium

in Mystic, Connecticut; and Marine Mammals in Zoological

Environments: Current Threats, Goals, and Opportunites, by Brian

E. Joseph, DVM, of the Minnesota Zoological Garden, initially

presented to the 1990 conference of the International Marine Animal

Trainers Association. Marine mammal exhibitors still routinely send

copies of each essay to the media in response to protests.

We selected these four propaganda pieces not because they are

uniquely bad--in fact, they are much less flamboyant than many--but

because they appear to be parti-cularly credible, coming from

credible authors and organizations, and yet are not, for reasons

apparently having as much to do with communication failures as with

any intent to mislead. They represent the point at which

misinformation perhaps presented in good faith becomes canon, and

differences of opinion become a self-escalating and ultimately

self-destructive conflict because each side now sees the other as

acting in bad faith.

 

Dolphins in captivity

 

The saying that camels, giraffes, and zebras originated as

a team of horses designed by committee could be applied to the

Cetaceans in Captivity fact sheets, because the published versions

familiar to activists bear little resemblance to Mooney's originals,

which she graciously furnished to ANIMAL PEOPLE. A variety of

editors cut her text by more than half, simplifying explanations,

dropping details, and deleting footnotes. In the process, informed

opinions evolved to appear as fact; limited-case observations

metamorphized into seeming universals. No one person appears

blameworthy for the distortions, which accumulated over 18 months of

trimming and revision. Questioned about the evolution of the fact

sheets, Mooney immediately expressed her dissatisfaction with them

as published, while Fund president Cleveland Amory praised her as

" simply a mine of information on marine mammal issues, " seeming

unaware that she was unhappy with them.

Yet even the original editions, charges Sea World research

biologist Daniel K. Odell, are " filled with rhetoric, clear bias

and statements taken out of context. " In particular, Odell objects,

" Statements lump together all marine mammals in all facilities, some

of which no longer exist. No attempt has been made to show any

changes over the relatively brief history of marine mammal parks. "

The tendency to use charged rhetoric in lumping all marine

mammal exhibitions together is even more apparent in the published

editions. For example, the dolphin sheet charges, " Most marine

parks are exper-ienced in entertainment, not education. The animals

are used as performers, in the circus tradition, and the

performances reinforce the concept of human dominance over animals,

while teaching nothing about the animals' own natural history or the

concept of interspecies relationships. "

Though this wasn't always the case, major oceanariums today

tend to employ more Ph.D.-holding scientists than former circus

trainers. Many, including the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium, the John

G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, and the New York Aquarium, are

incorporated as nonprofit educational institutions. What they teach

may be subject to debate; likewise, the line between education and

entertainment may be blurred--as, indeed, educators often strive to

blur it. Yet these facilities differ hugely from the vanishing

beachfront dolphin shows of the " Flipper " era, the 1950s through the

1970s.

Odell provided a page-by-page, line-by-line critique of the

original draft of each Fund fact sheet, and sent along copies of

each study Mooney cited in her footnotes.

It is to be expected that Odell's interpretations clash with

Mooney's. Just as Mooney and The Fund oppose keeping any healthy

marine mammals captive, so Odell, as a senior staffer at the

world's largest ocean-arium chain, is a frank defender of the

ocean-arium industry. But disagreements are one thing, and fair

representation quite another.

One part of Mooney's draft on dolphins that appears intact in

the published edition asserts, " Adult males captured from the same

groups have been maintained together with little aggression; yet

when captive groupings contain adult males from different capture

localities, the animals have been known to fight viciously over

females or lead an injurious attack on a helpless poolmate. "

Mooney's referenced source, an article by by J.R. Geraci,

published in Zoo & Wild Animal Medicine (1986), says nothing about

different capture locations. " It is not uncommon for a dominant

dolphin to lead an injurious attack on a helpless poolmate, " it

agrees, then qualifies: " Few species seem to be genetically

incompatible, but for some reason the common dolphin does not always

coexist well with the Atlantic bottlenosed dolphin and other large

dolphins. "

In other words, big and little species don't mix well,

regardless of sex--which is quite another matter. Some support for

Mooney's statement does come from the article " Marine Mammal

Behavioral Diagnostics, " by Jay Sweeney, DVM, included in The

Handbook of Marine Mammal Medicine (1990), cited by Mooney in

support of other passages. However, the Sweeney reference is

strictly to juveniles recently captured from the wild.

But there was one case bearing out Mooney's contention as

written: in December 1986, Sea World bought out Marineland of the

Pacific. In February 1987, Sea World placed a " subdominant " male

bottlenose named Sundance into a tank among other male bottlenoses it

already had--contrary to the advice of his Marineland tranier,

Joanie Hay. Within 24 hours Sundance died of a fractured skull and

cerebral hemorrhage.

" One can only speculate, " Mooney wrote, in another passage

that The Fund published intact, " why animals equipped with natural

echolocation and sonic capabilities have collided with pool walls,

with resulting injury and even death. " Often cited, this allegation

wasn't referenced even in the original.

" We are not aware of any instances of this kind, " the Mystic

Marinelife Aquarium declared in examining the same charge as part of

Bureaucracy and Politics.

The closest thing to a reference that ANIMAL PEOPLE could

find in Mooney's footnoted sources was Sweeney's acknow-ledgement,

in the paper cited above, that, " There are, however, occasional

instances of minor self-inflicted trauma that occur in animals

through contact within their environments. " Sweeney went on to

explain, however, that the principal examples involve abrasions to

pinnipeds, such as seals and sea lions, when they drag themselves

out of water and over rough concrete.

Only one source ANIMAL PEOPLE consulted could recall any case

of a captive dolphin injuring himself or herself in a pool wall

collision: Ric O'Barry of The Dolphin Project was aware of two, one

in the Bahamas and one in Brazil. That's two self-injured dolphins

out of several thousand captives, over a 30-year period--and one of

those two was kept alone for nine years in an extremely small pool.

Despite the paucity of supporting evidence, the myth that

dolphins' sonar is disrupted by pool confinement has become a staple

of anti-captivity literature; an article of faith that to many

people brands oceanarium staff as liars if they even try to deny it.

 

Orcas in captivity

 

The same allegations surface in The Fund's fact sheet on

captive orcas, in almost the same language. " The level of

aggression in captive orcas--presenting life-threatening risks to

other animals and their trainers/handlers--has never been observed in

wild populations, " Mooney wrote. " Captives have died from many

causes, but none as spectacular and tragic as those from

self-inflicted trauma, from internal injuries resulting from

aggression of incompatible animals, and from shattered skulls from

collisions with pool walls caused by panic responses. "

There are in fact many examples of orcas harming and even

killing themselves in attempting to evade capture, though most of

those involving U.S. oceanariums occured before 1973. There are very

few cases of orcas doing themselves fatal harm in collisions with

pool walls: perhaps only one, that of Kahana, in 1991. That

collision has never been definitively explained. Captive orcas have

killed each other at least twice, once in Great Britain in October

1981, when three recently captured young males fought for dominance

of a small tank and one suffered severe internal injuries, and once

at Sea World San Diego in 1990, where Kandu, a 14-year-old female,

bled to death from a broken jaw after colliding with Corky, a

somewhat older female recently arrived from the defunct Marineland of

the Pacific. In each case, the killing might not have happened in

the wild, where the antagonists might have more readily disengaged.

Yet it isn't clear that the aggression was unusual.

" Where is the evidence that these behaviors have not been

observed in the wild? " Odell demands. Mooney cited no reference,

but in fairness it isn't always easy to find a reference to anything

that isn't seen.

Other Fund fact sheet claims about captive orca behavior may

likewise overreach. " Marine parks insist that the tricks featured

during show performances are all extensions of natural behaviors, "

it asserts. " In reality, these animals do not naturally catapult

humans into the air, or allow humans to ride them, walk on them,

or climb on them. "

Retorts Odell, " The author of this 'fact' sheet missed the

point of her previous sentence. The operative word is 'extensions.'

No one is claiming that orcas push people around in the wild.

However, they do push other things around--especially seals and sea

lions. Training orcas is no different from training dogs, " Odell

continues, pointing out the adaptations of hunting behavior in such

common dog tricks as catching a Frisbee. The object, with either

species, is to encourage normal activity in a different context.

The Fund fact sheet wanders into still deeper water in the

next paragraph, asserting that, " Some facilities even allow

children from the audience to be 'hugged' and 'kissed,' or to sit

upon the orca's back for souvenir photographs. " Neither Mooney nor

any of the other users of this fact sheet whom ANIMAL PEOPLE

contacted could cite a single instance of any such practice taking

place at any U.S. or Canadian facility; it would violate federal

regulations and would probably also much interest the facility's

liability insurer.

The most sensitive Fund allegations, to Odell, concern the

mortality of captive orcas and the purported failure of captive

breeding. " From 1964 to 1989, 138 orcas were captured for aquariums

worldwide, " the fact sheet states. " As of 1993, only 35 of these

animals remain alive. "

" Out of context, " Odell growls. " Nothing lives forever. "

According to Jay Barlow, head of coastal marine mammal

research at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla,

California, studies of orca mortality suggest a death rate of about

7% per year in captivity, compared with about 5% per year in the

wild. Those figures are disputed, as are estimates of the maximum

orca lifespan, but one point both Mooney and Odell agree on is that

the best current maximum longevity figure is circa 29 years for males

and 50 years for females.

Mooney's statistics on captive breeding were amended from 30

pregnancies and nine surviving offspring to 27 pregnancies and just

six survivors before her manuscript went to press. Either way, says

Odell, the figures are, " just a partial list. In my opinion, " he

continues, the success of holding orcas in captivity is the success

of the captive breeding program. Field observers in the Pacific

Northwest estimate that orca calf mortality in the first six months

after birth is about 45%, " he says, whereas Sea World claims a

neonatal mortality rate of zero.

Other facilities have not done as well; in 1989 an orca calf

starved to death at the Vancouver Aquarium through failure to nurse

successfully, a problem that somehow eluded the staff even though

she was kept under almost around-the-clock observation. Still, the

orca captive breeding record compares well to that of many other

species, e.g. panda bears and gorillas.

" Given the relatively brief time that orcas have been held in

breeding groups, reproduction has been incredibly successful, "

Odell believes. The early years of attempted captive breeding

brought several important discoveries, among them that orcas have a

17-month gestation cycle, not the 12-month cycle that was once

supposed, and that female orcas can reach sexual maturity at only

six years of age, not 12, though the latter is still the most

commonly cited estimate. As Odell puts it, " Age at sexual maturity

in captivity may reflect the species potential which may not be

achieved in the wild where other factors come into play. "

 

Sea World

 

It is to be noted that Sea World, Odell's employer, has

engaged in misleading propaganda quite as avidly as anyone else. In

November 1991, Mike Thomas of Florida Magazine obtained a " top

secret " internal memo instructing Sea World staff to refer to their

animals as " acquired, " not captured; to their native habitat as

" the natural environment, " not the wild; and to their current

condition as a " controlled environment, " not captivity. The words

" tank " and " cage " were to be shunned in favor of " enclosure. "

Further, the memo instructed, " If people ask you about a

particular animal that you know has passed away, please say 'I don't

know.' "

With that Orwellian attitude toward plain speech, it's no

wonder Sea World suffers a basic credibility problem when obliged to

explain just what did happen to any animals whose fate they don't

know, even though the animals dwelled in an enclosure in a

controlled environment after acquisition from the natural environment.

 

Bureaucracy & politics

 

In part, the Mystic Marinelife Aquarium publication

Bureaucracy and Politics Crippling Aquariums and Marine Mammal

Research Part II is an effective rejoinder to many of the more

misleading claims issued by anti-captivity activists. It is factual

and reliable in refuting the International Wildlife Coalition's

contention that, " Mortality is extremely high for belugas during

capture and transport, " and that deaths are not recorded; in

actuality, no belugas have died during either capture or transport

during the past 30 years. It further convincingly demolishes the

Animal Rights Front's claims that wild belugas perform 2,000 deep

dives per day, or 83.3 per hour, 24 hours a day, when in actuality

belugas don't dive to great depths at all. It also makes a strong

case that the average and median longevity of whales and dolphins in

captivity is quite as good, if not better, than their longevity in

the wild.

But " rhetoric, clear bias and statements taken out of

context " are quite as evident in the Bureaucracy and Politics

description of activists as in the Fund fact sheets' description of

oceanariums. " To speak bluntly, " the anonymous author asserts,

" extremist groups are typically unreasonable and unethical,

notwithstanding that many of their members are well-meaning people

sincerely concerned about the welfare of animals. Most of the

membership-at-large is simply misinformed--if it is informed at

all--about what the leadership is up to. The extremists circulate

distortions, half-truths, and plain lies. They are Rumor that

grows tongues everywhere, so that after a while even their most

preposterous claims gain credibility in the minds of Federal

bureaucrats. "

Apparently all anti-captivity organizations fall under the

heading of " extremist. " Disregarded is the equally adamant

suspicion of anti-captivity activists that the oceanarium industry

more-or-less " owns " the regulatory bodies. All of the Mystic

allegations may be true of some organizations and some anti-captivity

leaders, but the blanket condemnation dismisses any possibility that

there are well-informed critics of keeping marine mammals in

captivity, whose opposition is founded in both science and

conscience.

This in turn raises the unanswered question " why? " Why

exactly have the leaders of the anti-captivity movement founded and

developed such a movement, if not for serious reasons? For money

and glory? Many anti-captivity activists who once were part of the

captive marine mammal industry have paid a considerable economic and

professional price for taking the positions they have. Ric O'Barry,

for instance, who first became famous during the mid-1960s as a

trainer of the dolphins on the Flipper television show, has drawn

the wrath and ridicule of marine mammal captivity defenders since

Earth Day 1970, when he tried unsuccessfully to free a half-blind

dolphin named Charlie Brown from a research laboratory in Bimini.

Charlie Brown didn't take the opportunity to escape; O'Barry

reported his own deed to the authorities, served a week in jail,

was fined $5.00, and campaigned in obscurity for most of the next 18

years while earnng his living as a diver. Only since the 1988

publication of his book, Behind The Dolphin Smile, has O'Barry

enjoyed any particular celebrity or possibility of economic advantage

as a conscientious objector.

Nearly 20% of Bureaucracy and Politics is devoted to an

attack on O'Barry, including the false charge that he was caught in

the act at Bimini and the highly questionable allegation that he

tried to sell dolphins to Steve Wynn when the Mirage dolphinarium was

under construction. While many versions of O'Barry's failed

negotiations with Wynn float about, O'Barry's own version that he

wanted the Mirage to become a halfway house for dolphins in training

for re-release seems most plausible (instead, it is more a

board-and-care home for aged dolphins who probably couldn't be

released successfully).

Certainly O'Barry can be accused of overstating his case at

times, and of extremism. But as he says of himself, " My life is an

open 10-page comic book--I don't have any secrets from anybody. "

The virulence of this attack calls to mind the late J. Edgar

Hoover's aphorism that one is honored by one's friends and

distinguished by one's enemies.

 

Threats, goals

 

Within the past six months, three major marine

mammal-related organizations and exhibitors have forwarded to ANIMAL

PEOPLE copies of Marine Mammals in Zoological Environments: Current

Threats, Goals, and Opportunities, by Brian Joseph, DVM, which

they seem to pass out much as the Gideon Society distri-butes

abridged Bibles. Authored in the midst of a long battle between the

Animal Rights Coalition and Joseph's employer, the Minnesota Zoo,

over the ethics and humane aspects of displaying belugas, Joseph's

piece purports to be a scholarly review of the conflicts over cetacan

capitivity, yet the level of scholarship is just good enough to fool

people who don't already know the subject.

" The animal protectionist movement was preceded by the animal

welfare movement, originally known as the antivivisectionist

movement, " Joseph wrote, seemingly unaware that the foundation of

all of these movements was the humane movement of the

early-to-mid-19th century, which included the causes of abolishing

slavery and child labor as well as the cause of animals. Though the

antivivisectionist movement shares some roots with the animal

protection movement, it rose mostly in the latter quarter of the

19th century, after the formation of the American SPCA in 1869, the

Women's Humane Society in 1871, the American Humane Association in

1876, and many other mainstream animal protection groups. Joseph

remarked with alarm that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

enjoyed a twenty-fold increase in membership between 1980 and 1990;

in fact, the growth was much more rapid than that, since PETA was

only incorporated in 1979.

Origins seem generally to have confused him, since he

further asserted that, " A proliferation of animal rights

organizations has occurred during the last 20 years, ranging from

the peaceful Humane Society of the U.S. and American SPCA to more

strident groups including the Animal Rights Coalition and PETA. " Yet

both HSUS, founded in 1954, and the then-121-year-old ASPCA had by

1990 adopted policy statements distinguishing their views from

" animal rights " philosophy, and indeed PETA as well as the Fund for

Animals, the International Society for Animal Rights, and Friends

of Animals, among other avowed animal rights groups, were founded

expressly because of splits with HSUS and the ASPCA over basic animal

rights issues.

" Recently the full agenda of many groups has been revealed, "

Joseph continued. Without naming the groups, he cited as the agenda

" the elimination of farm animals, companion animals, hunting,

fishing, and zoo animals. " While the elimination of hunting and

fishing have been goals in animal protection almost from the start of

the humane movement, most of the others tend to be maybes even among

animal rights militants: yes to eliminating animal husbandry for

meat, but qualified answers to raising animals for eggs, milk,

wool, and riding, under circumstances far more considerate of

animal well-being and longevity than are common today. Yes to

eliminating the capture of animals from the wild solely for exhibit,

but also yes, usually, to species conservation via zoos until such

time as natural habitat can be reclaimed, recovered, and protected.

And yes, PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has said that in a perfect

world, dogs and cats would not be born, but though virtually all

major animal protection groups urge neutering pets to reduce pet

overpopulation, none--of any shade of philosophy--actually oppose

keeping pets.

So it goes. After extensively accusing just about everyone

involved in animal protection of opportunism and mendacity, Joseph

argued that marine mammal parks should align themselves with Putting

People First, the militant anti-animal rights group formed by direct

mail fundraising hucksters Bill Wewer and Kathleen Marquardt. Wewer

apparently got into direct mail hustling through simultaneous stints

as a board member with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and

the American Tax Reduction Foundation, 1980-1989. Connecting with

Marquardt, Wewer formed the National Committee to Preserve Social

Security and Medicare in 1982, where they were two of the four board

members. Their first mass mailing, in 1983, drew a formal

complaint from the Social Security Administration and a reprimand

from the U.S. Postal Service. In 1984 the NCPSSM was reprimanded by

the Justice Department for improperly using governmental insignia.

By 1987 a variety of allegedly misleading mailings brought the NCPSSM

under the scrutiny of the House Committee on Aging. Wewer and

Marquardt departed to found the Doris Day Animal League. Although

Marquardt reportedly founded Putting People First in September 1989,

Wewer remained on the DDAL payroll--and did legal work for the 1990

March for the Animals--until PPF was formally incorporated six months

later.

Having also decried the limited instances of illegal

activities by animal rights groups, Joseph next urged marine mammal

exhibitors to to the now-defunct Animal Rights Reporter, a

pricy newsletter published by Perceptions International. This was

the private security firm employed by U.S. Surgical, whose

undercover operative Marylou Sapone was apparently the Animal Rights

Reporter's chief newsgatherer. Posing as an animal rights activist,

Sapone repeatedly told ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton at a

party on January 18, 1988, as Clifton later testified under oath,

that she wanted to find someone to help her blow up U.S. Surgical

president Leon Hirsch. After Clifton told Sapone it was a stupid

idea and that she ought to sober up, she went on to meet activist

Fran Trutt in April 1988. On November 29, 1988, Trutt was driven

to U.S. Surgical by another Perceptions International operative,

Marc Mead, to whom Sapone had introduced her. There Trutt planted

a bomb, bought with money Mead gave her, and was arrested by

police waiting in ambush. Tape recordings disclosed during pretrial

hearings revealed Sapone's part in encouraging the plot, as Trutt's

self-designated best friend, apparently to undermine public support

for activists who were then in the ninth year of an unsuccessful

13-year-effort to get U.S. Surgical to cease doing sales

demonstrations of surgical staples on live dogs.

 

When neither side demonstrates either accurate knowledge of

the other or a good-faith effort to converse, mutually harmful

conflict is inevitable.

In our December issue we'll look in depth at three specific

conflicts where the propaganda over marine mammals in captivity has

itself become the primary issue--probably to the detriment of all

concerned.

 

Dirty Pool, part 2

 

VANCOUVER, KANSAS CITY, CHICAGO--Propaganda wins converts to

causes by reducing issues to good against evil, forcing observers to

take sides. Propaganda is among the most effective tools of warfare;

but like warfare itself, it exacts a high price from those who use

it. Much as the dead from either side don't " win " a war,

propagandists for any cause often find themselves obliged to wage

wars they can't afford simply because they chose to use exaggerated

rhetoric in trying to win a simple reform. The nature of propaganda

is that in making broad accusations of bad faith by the opponent, it

cuts off communication, making enmity out of disagreement and

mendacity out of misunderstanding.

No one ever used propaganda more effectively than World War

II British prime minister Winston Churchill; but it was also

Churchill who urged that propaganda be used with judicious restraint.

" Never ascribe to malice what may be ascribed to stupidity, " he

warned, " and never ascribe to stupidity what may be ascribed to

ignorance. "

Even in combatting Nazis--the real Nazis, not just the

metaphorical Nazis who have haunted debate over ethical matters ever

since--Churchill urged recognition that his foes might be acting

honorably as they perceived honor. Accusing oceanariums of

operating concentration camps for whales and activists of copying Big

Lie tactics from Adolf Hitler, few participants in the marine mammal

captivity debate have demonstrated any omparable inkling of

statesmanship. Even those who feel the need for it have little idea

how to proceed, given the poisoned atmosphere on either side.

Wrote Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums executive

director Marilee Keefe in response to the first installment of Dirty

Pool: " I couldn't agree with you more that there are things we

should be doing together. I know we all need to learn to disagree

without being enemies. At first glance, my thoughts are that we

have to learn to trust each other on some little things before

jumping into some of the bigger things, " such as jointly

orchestrated and monitored releases of selected " surplus " captive

marine mammals who might have a good chance for survival in the wild.

" However, " Keefe continued, " both sides' rhetoric is heating up,

and we're facing negotiated rulemaking on USDA Animal and Plant

Health Inspection Service care and maintenance standards " for marine

mammals. " Nobody may be in the mood right now. I, for one, have a

headache. "

In November, ANIMAL PEOPLE reported on the many

misunderstandings and resultant misrepresentations we discovered in a

probe of four leading propaganda pieces relating to marine mammal

captivity: two widely distributed activist " fact sheets " on captive

orcas and dolphins, and two articles purporting to tell the " truth "

about activists, widely circulated among oceanarium management.

The often recited mis-statements in the pieces in question,

deliberate or not, account for much of the escalation of rhetoric

that Keefe observes. Obscured in the taking of sides is that not all

captive venues are the same, or even comparable. Some, like Sea

World, are large and run for profit; others, like most north of

the sunbelt, are nonprofit; and still others are the marine mammal

equivalent of roadside zoos. Conversely, not all opponents of

captivity are the same. Some oppose captivity of particular species

or indivi-duals at particular sites, but do not object to keeping

what they deem appropriate species or individuals at appropriate

sites. Others oppose all captivity, on principle--yet many in this

camp make exceptions for stranding victims and elderly captive-born

animals whose chances of survival in the wild might be poor.

Examples of debates over marine mammal captivity that have

degenerated into warfare are myriad. ANIMAL PEOPLE examines three of

particular note in this issue: Lifeforce vs. the Vancouver Aquarium

in Vancouver, British Columbia; People for Animal Rights vs. Oceans

of Fun, in Kansas City, Missouri; and the Chicago Animal Rights

Coalition vs. the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois, which is

essentially a continuation of protests initiated by other people and

organizations long before CHARC was formed. In a sequel series next

year, we hope to look at others, among them the escalating debate

over the adequacy of the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary in Florida,

where Ric O'Barry of the Dolphin Project and others are preparing

several captive dolphins for return to the wild when and if they get

the necessary federal permits, and the role of oceanarium demand for

pseudorcas in the continuing Iki Island " drive fishery " massacres off

the shore of Japan. In each instance, allegations and

counter-allegations are many, yet there is paradoxical agreement

that the animals in question do deserve to live in good health, and

though there may be right and wrong tactical judgements, the only

clear black-and-white may be the heaving flanks of the stranded

pseudorcas as their tormentors--reviled by most oceanarium people as

well as captivity opponents--close in with harpoons.

 

Vancouver Aquarium

 

" Save the Sea Lions, " the Lifeforce flyer implores.

" Aquarium Vivisection, " claims a banner across the front of a

photograph of five young Stellar sea lions playing

king-of-the-mountain. " Behind the glass prison wall, " the caption

explains, " the young [sea lions] have to fight for space on the only

tiny island. The exhibit is too small for adult sea lions, who can

weigh up to 2,200 pounds and measure up to 10.5 feet long. " A second

photograph, of a transportation container, is captioned, " Deprived

of food and imprisoned in an enclosed experimental chamber. "

Recipients are asked to " demand that the Vancouver Aquarium

immediately stop the inhumane experiments on the Stellar sea lions,

close the sea lion exhibit, and release the sea lions. "

The text elaborates: " The Stellar sea lions were cruelly

abducted from their mothers and natural home in July 1993 for

experimentation and exploitation for financial profit. They were

only two weeks old. The research, related to food intake and energy

costs, is conducted by the U.S. North Pacific Universities Marine

Mammal Research Consortium and funded by U.S. fish processing

companies, which circumvented U.S. regulations by capturing and

experimenting on the sea lions in Canada. While on display and

during experiments, the victims will be continuously exposed to

human imprinting, which jeopardizes a successful release, and

inhumane conditions. They will continue to be subjected to cruel

experiments that include food deprivation, confinement in an

enclosed metabolic chamber and, in the near future, forced

swim-mill tests. They could also be electrically shocked by

perimeter fence wires if they try to escape or if they try to

determine the source of adjacent whale, dolphin, and human sounds

by looking over the wall. It is highly likely that other sea lions

will be captured under the guise of rehabilitation or research to

keep the new exhibit open. "

The flyer went on to assert that the research in question is

bogus because, " The Alaskan sea lions and other wildlife may be

declining but studying in captivity members of the stable British

Columbia population does not apply. "

ANIMAL PEOPLE received the Lifeforce flyer in early August,

just after observing the sea lions in question first-hand while

researching our September cover feature on captive orcas, belugas,

and dolphins. Spending considerable time with the sea lions, we

noted that they evinced no fear whatever of humans, not exactly what

one would expect from animals who had purportedly been vivisected;

showed great interest in socializing with human visitors; played

very much as young sea lions do in the wild; and were most unlikely

to get close enough to the electric fence to get a shock, which was

obviously there half to inhibit misguided humans from taking up the

sea lions' apparent invitation to dive in and play, half to insure

that no sea lion under any circumstances ever ventured into the

adjacent orca exhibit. Orcas, after all, eat sea lions.

Noted marine mammologist Peter Olesiuk of the Canadian

Department of Fisheries and Oceans also received the Lifeforce flyer

in early August. He promptly demanded written explanations, which

Vancouver Aquarium researchers Andrew Trites and Peter Watts readily

shared with ANIMAL PEOPLE.

" The U.S. fishing industry is funding a large part of this

research, " Trites and Watts acknowledged. " However, they do not

stand to profit from these experiments. In fact, they could well be

negatively affected if the data shows that overfishing is to blame

for the Stellar decline. Some public skepticism about the

independence of the research is completely understandable. However,

it would be wiser to base judgement upon the quality of our research,

not the identity of our funders. It has been suggested, " they

continued, " that we do not have to do any research because we

already know that overfishing is the problem, and all we have to do

is shut down the fishery. The fact is that we do not know any such

thing. It is one of the theories but evidence is lacking. Should a

multimillion dollar industry cut itself back and put people out of

work on the chance that the suspicion is right, or should decisions

be based on sound scientific data? "

So far as ANIMAL PEOPLE can determine, the overfishing

hypothesis is the only plausible explanation for the decline of

Steller sea lions, which closely parallels the growth of the Alaskan

bottomfishing industry over the past 20 years. Nonetheless,

political reality is that more extensive scientific documentation

than presently exists will be required to shut down the bottomfishing

industry, if indeed it can be shut down before it exterminates

itself along with Steller sea lions and other species, by

extinguishing the fish stocks.

" We do not vivisect sea lions, " Trites and Watts further

explained. " We never never vivisected sea lions, or anything else,

for that matter, nor will we ever. Such an allegation is usually

made by people who simply do not know what the word means, or by

people who count on others to not know what it means. Our research

program is designed to learn how much energy it takes sea lions to

engage in their usual wild activities: resting, foraging, swimming

at various speeds, and keeping warm in sea water which can approach

freezing. We cannot learn such things from wild animals. What we

can learn from wild animals is how much time they actually devote to

these activities; satellite tags allow us to monitor their location,

swim speed, and even stomach temperature, which drops when prey is

ingested. Thus the field research we are involved in reveals what

wild animals do, and the captive work tells us how much it costs.

From there we can estimate the energetic needs of wild individuals,

and by extension, of the whole population.

" The sea lions are not being 'starved' or 'subjected to food

deprivation experiments,' " Trites and Watts added. " Basal metabolic

rates cannot be measured from animals who are actively digesting

food. Therefore, the sea lions are not fed for the 12 hours leading

up to such measurements, which to date have been collected every two

weeks. Since our metabolic studies begin first thing in the morning,

this generally means that the animals skip breakfast once every two

weeks, and are fed extra fish immediately following the

measurements. Our animals at the Vancouver Aquarium are fed far more

regularly than young Stellers would be in the wild; lactating

mothers commonly leave their pups for two or three days at a time

whenever they leave the rookery to feed.

Trites and Watts admitted occasionally confining the sea

lions in the " metabolic chamber. "

" We take blood samples every three weeks, " they wrote. " We

measure lengths and girths once or twice a week, generally while

feeding the animals, who ignore the presence of the tape measure in

favor of the fish being offered. We put them in a metabolic chamber

once every couple of weeks, usually for an hour or less. It should

be noted that stressed animals have increased metabolic rates, which

would show up on our instruments. What usually happens while the sea

lions are in the chamber is that they either fall asleep, or quietly

groom themselves, not the sort of behavior expected from 'tortured'

individuals. Our own needs dictate that the animals not be stressed,

because this would invalidate our results. We have not yet begun the

swim mill studies, but we do not expect these to be stressful to the

sea lions either. In fact, evidence from other labs indicates that

seals actively seek out the opportunity to swim against a current. "

Trites and Watts did not discuss the capture of the sea

lions. However, while ANIMAL PEOPLE does not favor removing healthy

marine mammals from the wild under most circumstances, we must

acknowledge that capturing two-week-old pups essentially simulated

the effect of natural predation on their mothers and the sea lion

population.

Neither did Trites and Watts discuss the likelihood that the

Steller sea lions in question have become so conditioned to captive

life as to be poor candidates for successful return to the wild.

This is problematic, since the Vancouver Aquarium does not presently

have a tank big enough to house them when they reach adulthood.

The Vancouver Aquarium sea lion research project is therefore

vulnerable to some criticism. On balance, however, Lifeforce

coordinator Peter Hamilton's credibility is considerably

compromised--even more so, Trites and Watts argue, because, " Mr.

Hamilton knew the facts before he wrote his release. He had spoken

for over two hours with Dr. Watts, and had received background

information from us. "

This was the third time in four years that Lifeforce and

Hamilton attacked the Vancouver Aquarium in a questionable manner.

The first time involved an appeal for letters protesting purported

plans to capture and exhibit narwhals. In 1970 the Vancouver

Aquarium did in fact try to exhibit narwhals; six were captured and

all soon died. In 1987 Vancouver Aquarium researchers Deborah

Cavenagh and John Ford spent three months laying groundwork for a

second attempt, which Cavenagh predicted would come within three to

five years. But Ford, now the Vancouver Aquarium marine mammal

curator, denied in 1990 that he had any plans to capture and exhibit

narwhals. Communications manager Marissa Nichini recently told

ANIMAL PEOPLE, in response to a specific inquiry, that whatever

plans had once existed were now so long abandoned that she'd had

difficulty finding anyone on staff who remembered them well enough to

give her details for relay to us.

In 1993 Hamilton published Orca: A Family Story, a detailed

history of British Columbian and Washingtonian orcas in captivity

that accurately indicts the Vancouver Aquarium for its part in many

brutal captures during the 1960s and 1970s--but as the story moves

from the relatively distant past into the present, it shifts from

highly partisan but essentially factual narration to fiction

masquerading as journalism, with the identities of people and

institutions altered just enough to dodge libel suits.

The Vancouver Aquarium's recent record on orcas is also

vulnerable to criticism: of two orca calves born there so far, one

starved to death after 22 days in 1988, as the staff failed to

observe her failure to nurse successfully, while the other died of a

brain infection at age three months in early January 1992. The

infection was detected only 10 hours earlier, as she repeatedly

battered herself against the walls of her pool, apparently from

disrupted equilibrium, and eventually smashed her own jaw. Each

death might have been prevented by earlier recognition of symptoms

followed by appropriate care. Neither incident is mentioned in

Hamilton's book, however, the latter part of which focuses on

Corky, an orca kept at Sea World in San Diego.

 

Oceans of Fun

 

At Oceans of Fun, an adjunct of the Worlds of Fun amusement

park, two bottlenose dolphins share a nine-foot-deep circular tank

measuring 35 feet in diameter, about one- eighth the size of a

regulation baseball infield. By any standard, that's small. The

tank meets the basic USDA requirements, but the requirements are

intended to insure physical survival, not happiness. Ric O'Barry of

the Dolphin Project and People for Animal Rights president Norma

McMillen allege that the dolphins are disturbed by the proximity of a

Ferris wheel; that excessive chlorination may cause the dolphins to

suffer skin disease and blindness; and that sonic echoes off the

tank walls may drive the dolphins mad. McMillen further objects

that the tank lacks shade, and that the dolphins are not protected

from coin-tossing spectators.

Responds Oceans of Fun director of general services Gary

Noble, " The dolphin pool is 40 yards away from the Ferris wheel.

The wheel is inaudible and is totally hidden with trees and shrubs.

The water is not over-chlorinated. If it were, the animals would

not perform. Only happy animals will execute tricks. There is no

scientific evidence that dolphin pools are echo chambers. The sounds

that dolphins emit do not cause them stress. In fact, the clear

water in pools makes it unnecessary for dolphins to use their sonar

constantly, unlike their wild counterparts who are exposed to a

barrage of sound in the tragically fouled and murky coastal waters of

our planet. We are happy, " Noble continues, " that no animal has

died at Worlds of Fun in the 12 years Marine Animal Productions has

produced our dolphin exhibit. " And, he concludes, " Most of what

mankind knows about dolphins has been learned by working closely with

animals in a public display setting. This type of interaction

between the two species is primarily responsible for the appreciation

of the dolphin by the general public. In Worlds of Fun's 21 years of

presenting dolphin shows, over 10 million persons have met the

Atlantic bottlenose dolphin face-to-face at our facility. Most of

these people have had no other contact with these wondrous animals.

Yes, our show entertains; but it also informs and educates. For

the longterm survival of the dolphin, we are performing an important

service. "

The matter of the Ferris wheel may reveal the most about the

quality of the arguments pro and con: 40 yards is 120 feet, the

distance from home plate to second base. This in itself proves

nothing, inasmuch as the entire New York Aquarium is scarcely wider,

and is surrounded by the Coney Island boardwalk, roller coaster,

and a busy street, yet provides quality outdoor exhibits for sea

otters, sea lions, and harbor seals, among other species, with

improved facilities for belugas and dolphins under construction. PAR

literature asserts that the dolphin tank is " under " the Ferris wheel,

never mentioning the trees and shrubbery; at the same time, it is

doubtful that as Noble asserts, the Ferris wheel and the crowds it

attracts are " inaudible " from behind a mere treeline.

On the second count, overchlorination may cause dolphins

serious harm, but PAR has produced no evidence of either actual

overchlorination or actual harm. But again, Noble strains

credibility in claiming that the dolphins wouldn't perform under

unsatisfactory conditions. Animals, including dolphins, generally

perform either for food rewards or to please a trainer. They rarely

associate the trainer with their environmental conditions, which is

why, historically, some facilities have been able to keep

performing animals in miserable conditions for years. Though the

Oceans of Fun dolphins may be happy and healthy, the mere fact that

they perform does not prove the point.

Noble is on firmer ground in refuting the contention about

the sonic echoes, in citing the park's recent record on dolphin

health and safety, and in asserting linkage between public contact

with dolphins and the growth of public concern for protecting the

species. However, the assertion that most of what we've learned

about dolphins in more than 3,000 years of recorded contact has been

learned from public display settings is at best debatable. McMillen,

on the other hand, seems unaware that there isn't any shade on the

open ocean, either. Nor do the dolphins at any facility have

protection against coin-tossing s, other than the vigilance of

the security staff.

The propaganda claims in the Oceans of Fun case seem to have

obscured the most important point: if indeed the dolphins are seen

by up to 1.3 million people a year, the purported 1993 paid

attendance, why hasn't a modest percentage of the admission price

been invested in building them a tank closer to the size of a whole

infield?

 

The Shedd

 

In retrospect, the John G. Shedd Aquarium on the shore of

Lake Michigan in Chicago was remarkably uncontroversial for the first

57 years it existed. When the Shedd opened in 1930, after six years

of fundraising and construction, there were barely a dozen aquariums

in the United States, and no more than two dozen in the world. The

Shedd, the largest indoor aquarium ever built, was also considered

one of the best--even though the fish displayed there died at such a

rate that from 1929 until 1972 it maintained its own railroad car to

fetch replacements, still keeps an 83-foot collecting ship, and was

obliged to close its salt water gallery during World War II because

replacements of ocean-going species were unavailable.

Learning how to keep species alive who were seldom

observed--or observable--in their native habitat took decades. As

techniques improved, management by 1964 recognized the original

Shedd facilities as obsolescent. Ambitious renovation and expansion

plans were drafted, but finding the means to fulfill them took more

than 20 years. New exhibit areas and a science center were added

piecemeal.

Finally, in 1983, the Shedd moved to regain

state-of-the-art status by creating the world's largest indoor

oceanarium, designed to resemble the habitat of the Gulf of Alaska.

Construction costs were estimated at $30 million; by the opening on

April 27, 1991, the facility actually cost $43 million. But the

overruns were only briefly contentious. Even most Shedd critics

agree that it got what it paid for.

The real source of controversy is that the objective of the

oceanarium is to house marine mammals. Crowds drawn by the marine

mammals are to pay off the construction bond issues, making possible

everything else the Shedd wants to do. When this strategy was

announced in 1964, it was greeted with enthusiasm; keeping marine

mammals was then the most prestigious accomplishment in oceanarium

science. Three decades later, however, public attitudes toward

keeping marine mammals captive have become ambivalent. The Shedd was

slow to recognize the concerns of captivity critics; then erred,

like many other whale exhibitors, in lumping all critics together as

" extremists " --and compounded the fiasco by practicing denial when

things went wrong.

As the Shedd publication Aquaticus v.23, #1 recounts,

acquisition of the beluga whales who are central to the oceanarium

" was dogged by several small but zealous groups of animal rights

activists [who] objected to cetaceans being taken from the wild for

public display. The activists engaged the aquarium in several legal

skirmishes that threatened to check the beluga collecting trip. They

were successful in obstructing, at least in time for the opening,

the acquisition of false killer whales. "

The latter episode is now officially remembered as a

management decision not to acquire false killer whales, more

properly called psuedorcas, because of the difficulty of managing

breeding populations of three different cetacean species in limited

habitat.

In fact, some small but zealous groups did protest the

Shedd's cetacean capture plans, and also some larger and more

mainstream groups. Some opposed the captures on principle; some for

practical reasons. To date, Shedd cetacean captures have been

actively opposed by at least 29 different organizations. Even the

Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans questioned the Shedd

strategy of trying to capture belugas in 1989, two years in advance

of completion of the oceanarium, then keeping them until needed in a

relatively small tank at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in

Tacoma, Washington. That arrangement insured that the belugas would

be available for the ribbon-cutting ceremony and the TV cameras, but

doubled their transport and readjustment stress. As lead agency in

defending the long controversial harp seal hunts along the shores of

Atlantic Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has almost

never sided with animal protection groups. Yet eventually it limited

the Shedd to capturing only two rather than three belugas in advance;

the remainder of the proposed captive group of six would be captured

in 1992.

The proposed pseudorca acquisition was likewise fought by

mainstream opponents as well as animal rights radicals, because the

whales were to be purchased either directly or indirectly from the

notorious Japanese " drive fisheries. " As the drive fisheries drew

international protest during the late 1980s, oceanarium buyers

argued that their purchases spared some pseudorcas who would

otherwise have been killed. However, when the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration obliged purchasers to certify that any

imported pseudorcas were captured " humanely, " imports ceased.

Debate over the Shedd collapsed into enduring mistrust with

the 1990 publication of an Aquaticus account of the 1988 captures of

Pacific whitesided dolphins for exhibit, which omitted any mention

of the capture of a pregnant female, released two weeks later; the

capture and release of two juveniles; and the capture and death from

pneumonia within 46 days of a young male, for whom a release permit

was sought. The permit was received 24 days after capture, but by

then the dolphin was already requiring medical treatment and could

not be released with any chance of survival.

Midwest Whale Protection discovered and promptly revealed the

nondisclosures. " It appears that the Shedd Aquarium deliberately

withheld information from the public, " the group charged, " to make

the capture of these whales appear to be a smooth operation without

disturbance to wild stocks or disruption of wild family units. "

Yet while advocating frankness and honesty, MWP itself

hinted that the Shedd had applied for a release permit to get rid of

the dolphin who eventually died before he did die--a significant

distortion of what actually happened.

In 1992 the Shedd roused further outrage with the alleged

rough captures of the additional belugas it had sought since 1989.

Six belugas were chased to exhaustion and cornered with speedboats in

waters north of Churchill, Manitoba, then wrestled into submission

as two different activist groups videotaped and tried to disrupt the

procedures. Two belugas, considered unhealthy, were released at the

capture site. The remaining four were flown to Chicago on August 18,

1992--but on September 22, scarcely a month later, a pair died

within a 15-minute span from overdoses of deworming medicine.

The treatment was medically necessary, and at least one

beluga among the four might have died without it. However, the

simultaneous dosing of the belugas was widely criticized because it

divided staff attention and lessened the chances that any

complications suffered by one whale might be seen and arrested before

treatment of another began. A subsequent investigation by the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered that Shedd

veterinarian Dr. Jeffrey Boehm wasn't properly licensed in the state

of Illinois. On December 21, 1993, the Shedd paid a $2,510 fine,

euphemistically described as a settlement agreement involving

nonadmission of guilt. Nine days later--while denying any direct

connection between the events--Canadian fisheries minister John

Crosbie cut off Shedd access to replacements by announcing that his

government would " no longer consider the live capture of belugas for

export. "

These developments came less than a month after the Shedd

eluded protesters from the Whale Rescue Team and Chicago Animal

Rights Coalition to capture three Pacific whitesided dolphins off San

Nicholas Island, 70 miles southwest of Los Angeles, touching off a

month of frustrated and furious anti-captivity rallies and press

conferences at the temporary holding facility on the San Diego

waterfront.

 

CHARC attack

 

CHARC, headed by former deep-sea fishing enthusiast Steve

Hindi, was a latecomer to the ongoing Shedd controversies--as was

Hindi to animal rights activism. In 1989 Hindi was en route to go

shark fishing when, on a whim, he stopped at Hegins, Pennsylvania,

to watch the notorious annual Labor Day pigeon shoot. After years of

unsuccessful vigils, the pigeon shoot had gradually been abandoned

as a protest target because Hegins actually seems to revel in public

displays of meanness, while the gun lobby has such a hold on the

Pennsylvania state senate that stopping the shoot through legislation

appears unlikely.

Shocked by the lack of sportsmanship he witnessed, Hindi

mulled it over for most of the next year, then gave up hunting and

fishing, became a vegetarian, and returned to Hegins to

singlehandedly revitalize the protests with a confrontational style

that made up in media flair what it lacked in polish. Hindi's

weapons are videotaping and direct challenges that make great

headlines and sound-bites, backed up by lawsuits. Though Hindi and

CHARC haven't stopped the Hegins pigeon shoot, they have stopped

pigeon-shoots in Illinois--and have forced Pennsylvania to spend many

times more money than the Hegins shoot brings in each year to provide

police protection against mass civil disobedience.

Hindi first challenged the Shedd on April 27, 1993,

alleging that he had several hours of video footage documenting

stereotypical behavior by the beluga Naluark--an indication, if

true, of maladaption to the facility. Maybe that's what the video

shows and maybe it isn't, but either way the Shedd pursued a classic

corporate public relations strategy, a critical blunder. The

classic strategy assumes the institution is well-run, and that

criticism therefore comes chiefly from chronic malcontents. The

object is to keep the malcontents from grabbing public attention.

This is done by ignoring them as much as possible, dancing a little

sidestep to avoid public confrontation, and stonewalling over actual

problems to avoid giving the malcontents ammunition.

This often works well for institutions whose business is done

behind closed doors, such as biomedical research laboratories, but

it doesn't work for zoos and aquariums, whose facilities are by

definition open to the public, and where problems, if they exist,

are often readily observed by visitors who learn to look for them.

Institutions dealing directly with the public are better advised to

remember the retailer's maxim that the customer is always right: the

customer may be wrong about the nature of a particular problem, but

if a problem is perceived, there is a problem of some sort, which

must be dealt with in an open manner.

Ignored for six weeks, Hindi on June 10, 1993 challenged

the Shedd to a public showing of the video. That was the Shedd's

opening to resolve the issue. Instead, the Shedd declined the

opportunity, to avoid creating " a circus. " Once again it was

classic corporate public relations strategy but suicidal in context.

The Shedd could have avoided a " circus " by arranging for the video to

be screened in the dignified atmosphere of an impartially moderated

formal forensic debate, open to the media and an invited audience of

several hundred other people, with equal numbers of the same printed

invitation to be sent by either side. Subjecting the audience to the

entire video would not have been necessary: a few minutes followed

by random fast-forwarding through the several hours would have been

sufficient to ascertain what is on it, after which Hindi and a

selected expert from his side could have made their case, heard

rebuttal from equivalent Shedd personnel, asked each other

questions, and taken questions from the media and the floor. In

this scenario the Shedd had nothing to lose. If the facts supported

Hindi, the Shedd might have had to acknowledge and deal with

problems, but criticism could have been disarmed by the

demonstration of willingness to deal openly and fairly with critics.

Hindi, on the other hand, had everything to lose. Large

institutions start out with a public presumption of credibility.

Squandering it takes years of error. Activists start out as presumed

crackpots, who gain credibility either through making a good case or

attracting large followings--and they can lose credibility overnight

with a single well-publicized misjudgement. If Hindi's claim to

possess videotaped evidence had been clearly and openly refuted, he

might have picketed the Shedd alone for decades, but he'd have had a

hard time regaining the confidence of either the Chicago media or

most fellow activists. If Hindi's evidence was inconclusive, he'd

have still lost, because the Shedd, by giving it consideration,

would have been doing what responsible institutions do to keep their

credibility. In a formal forensic debate, Hindi could only have

" won " by being demonstrably right about the beluga's behavior; and

even then, the Shedd could have won too by finding a way to change

the behavior.

By refusing to engage Hindi's allegations when the onus was

on him to prove his point, the Shedd appeared to be afraid of the

truth, whatever it was; gave media the pretext to air snippets of

video that alone didn't prove the allegations but appeared to lend

them weight; and provoked a year and a half of further

confrontations, many of them embarrassing. For instance, on August

23, 1993, the Shedd barred activist Debra Leahy from the premises

for wearing a t-shirt reminding viewers of the deaths of the two

belugas, thereby giving her a media platform from which to disclose

Shedd stock holdings in Monsanto, U.S. Steel, and Philip

Morris--three firms she linked to water pollution. Each firm is so

large and the pollution so incidental to operations that the

disclosure by itself probably wouldn't have made the newspapers.

As at Hegins, where record crowds of demonstrators in 1991

and 1992 were met by even greater crowds of ruffians looking for

trouble, Hindi's protests against the Shedd appear to be running out

of steam. While the Shedd made a tactical blunder by declining to

debate, Hindi blundered by committing CHARC to weekly demonstrations

throughout the summer of 1994. That set up a war of attritition that

CHARC, with limited resources, could only lose. The demonstration

crowds predictably dwindled throughout the past summer, Hindi's

language became shrill--he refers to the Shedd now as the " Shedd

Aquaprison " --and trying to recapture media and activist interest, he

issued various charges about animal exhibition schedules and

quarantines in August and September that came across as simply

paranoid beside the Shedd's explanations.

Yet no one wins wars of attrition. While the Shedd is likely

to outlive Hindi's offensive, at least this time, thousands of

visitors who barely remember the issues are now aware that some

people found something there so wrong that they spent their whole

summer trying to make the point. The next time the Shedd does

something controversial, or loses a well-known animal, more of the

public will be inclined to disbelieve the official version of

whatever happened. Erosion of trust in the institution goes on

nightly on the computer networks and radio talk shows. It may never

do the Shedd serious harm, yet it does the Shedd no good, either.

Can such a situation of ideological opposition compounded by

mutual mistrust be resolved? Perhaps, but only if the stronger

party is self-confident and generous enough to accept the

parliamentary idea of " the loyal opposition, " an enfranchised and

respected body of critics whose challenges to debate are accepted and

whose objections to proceedings, when sufficiently supported, are

accommodated through policy amendments. Conversely, the weaker

party must accept that it is more effective to have access to

information and have a voice in decision-making, if only a dissident

minority voice, than to remain forever on the outside, with no

voice and no inside knowledge. The stronger party must feel secure

that in admitting the weaker party to strategic discussions, it is

not inviting a viper into its nest; the weaker party must understand

that it must not act like one, including understanding that

sometimes mistakes are made despite the best efforts of all

concerned. That Jeffrey Boehm badly erred in deworming the belugas,

for instance, does not make him a murderer; he is in fact a very

young veterinarian in a field where there are few longtime

practitioners and as yet only a slim body of medical knowledge.

Calling him a murderer is dirty pool.

Both parties must understand that productive coexistence

involves compromises of procedure, not principle. The object is not

to patronize, co-opt, subvert, sabotage, or otherwise gain the

advantage; the object is to solve problems so as to meet the

concerns of both sides, or at least give the weaker side more

consideration than it would have if still on the outside. It is not

only acceptable but useful in rapproachment to draw clear lines of

disagreement: the Shedd is going to keep the belugas and dolphins.

CHARC respectfully opposes this policy. There might be a place for a

written agreement to disagree, stipulating rules for fair debate and

establishing a grievance procedure if one party or the other feels

the rules have been broken. Within such an understanding,

disagreement can be accomodated, and can even be integrated into the

educational function of an oceanarium. In lieu of enduring

demonstrations, for instance, a particularly courageous management

could even allow a protest group to write one half of a handout,

setting forth the objections to keeping marine mammals in captivity,

while the oceanarium would in the other half present the opposite

case.

Both parties must finally recognize that enfranchising

formerly hostile outsiders as a loyal opposition is a tricky

business. There will be misunderstandings and communication

failures, as already happened in April 1994, when new Shedd

director Ted Beattie tried to work out a truce with Hindi that ended

in each party frustratedly telling associates that the other is

untrustworthy. Communication failures--and ANIMAL PEOPLE has written

evidence that this is all that happened--must not be misread as bad

faith. If one party or the other feels dealt with in bad faith, the

thing to do is talk about it--not withdraw and resume conflict.

There are clues that a de-emphasis of hostilities at the

Shedd is possible. No one objected to the Shedd acquisition of four

sea otter pups in 1989, who were orphaned by the Exxon Valdez oil

spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Nor did anyone object to the

acquisition of three harbor seals from the National Aquarium in

Baltimore--an adult stranding victim and two captive-bred offspring

of stranding victims. It is also worth noting that most of the

activists criticizing the Shedd management have not criticized the

physical facilities except by contrast with the wild; only CHARC has

criticized the animal care staff other than in connection with the

two beluga deaths; and even Hindi has repeatedly stated that he has

no objection to the Shedd exhibiting marine mammals of any species

who for whatever reason could not be released into the wild.

What is done is done. To be considered now is what will be

done in the future.

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

Moral relativism & Marine World

(From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995.)

 

VALLEJO, California--Any day now the fishing crews of Iki,

Japan, may string nets between their boats and, banging metal

objects together to make a noise that carries underwater, herd

scores of Dall's porpoises and pseudorcas into an inlet to be

harpooned and hacked apart with machetes. Spring is the season for

such massacres, conducted intermittently at least since 1900 and

almost annually since 1967 despite international protest. The

traditional rationale is reducing competition for yellowtail; also,

much of the porpoise and whale meat is either eaten or sold.

A few months later, Eskimo hunters in power boats will shoot

walruses up and down the Bering and Arctic coasts, ostensibly for

meat but perhaps mostly to get ivory tusks, according to witness Sam

LaBudde, a research biologist and native of Alaska who has observed

the killing for Friends of Animals. LaBudde's testimony is backed by

Alaskan eco-journalist Tim Moffat. Some hunting parties retrieve

whole carcasses, those that don't sink; others just hack off tusked

heads, carve out genitals, and leave the rest, contrary to Marine

Mammal Protection Act requirements. While bulls are the main

targets, some cows will be shot as well. Orphaned young--if not

shot for meat--will starve or be eaten by polar bears.

Both in Japan and Alaska, some animals might be saved by

cash-bearing oceanarium collectors. And that raises the question,

is it right to save a wild animal from an agonizing death, at

benefit to those who persecute the species and at cost of keeping the

animal captive? Many animal rights activists and environmentalists

say no; wildlife should not be captured, certainly not at the price

of paying the killers. Zoo and oceanarium people say yes; captivity

beats death.

Oblivious to philosophy and pecuniary considerations, four

irrepressibly inquisitive young walruses at the Marine World Africa

USA theme park in Vallejo, California, masters of untying shoes by

sucking the laces, provide woofing, nuzzling, body-rubbing

testimony to their love of life, despite their traumatic history.

Their affection for their keepers, " jailers " though they may be, is

as apparent as their mistaken belief that humans are their

mothers--or angels.

The presence of the walruses, and the absence of four

pseudorcas purchased in Japan under similar circumstances, indicates

that the issue is sufficiently unsettled that the National Marine

Fisheries Service can apply a double standard. In May 1993 NMFS

forbade the import of the pseudorcas; a year later, the walruses

were brought from Alaska with little trouble.

But hardly anyone knew about the walrus acquisition. Word

has since gotten out. A similar acquisition scheduled by the

Indianapolis Zoo is catching flak from Tanya Tuell of the Animal and

Environmental Defense Association, and may have a different outcome.

In February 1994, nine months after NMFS blocked the Marine World

pseudorca import, Tuell won a fight to keep the Indianapolis Zoo

from buying four pseudorcas from a Japanese aquarium, to replace a

pseudorca who died in 1992, three years after capture. " Unable to

provide proof the whales were not obtained through the Japanese drive

fisheries, " Tuell explained, " zoo officials could not bring them to

the U.S. "

The conflicts are as old in essence as the warnings of the

late Gerald Durrell 40 years ago that fellow zookeepers' interest in

rare species had stoked a speculative market that threatened the

animals' existence. (See obituaries, page 18.) The Marine Mammal

Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species were adopted in 1972-1973

in part to halt institutional purchases that encouraged the depletion

of wildlife.

In that regard, the laws have been successful. Poaching and

wildlife trafficking are bigger now than ever, stoked by Asian

demand for medicinals based on wildlife parts. But zoos and

aquariums are effectively out of the market. The last noteworthy

end-run around CITES by a major American or Canadian zoo occurred in

1983.

Marine World wildlife curator Terry Samansky and public

relations director Jim Bonde are as quick as anyone to rip

trafficking. Indeed, several of the most prominent exhibits at the

nonprofit but pricy and heavily commercialized park attack the

elephant ivory trade and the role of the fur industry in imperiling

exotic cats. For the anti-fur message, Marine World has been

blistered by the front group California Fur Industry Inc., even as

animal rights protesters picket sporadically because it keeps captive

marine mammals, occasionally breeds tigers, and chains elephants

overnight.

Although Marine World is among the older marine mammal parks,

it is regarded by peers as one of the best. Of the many captive

wildlife authorities ANIMAL PEOPLE consulted before visiting it,

incognito until after a long inspection, only Pat Derby of the

Performing Animal Welfare Society said bad things about it, and many

of her criticisms predated recent changes. As Bonde points out,

Marine World may be the only major marine mammal park which has never

suffered the death of a dolphin or an orca, though both species have

been kept there for more than 20 years.

" I recommend Marine World's care standards and practices to

anybody, without hesitation, " says Kathy Travers, captive wildlife

expert for the American SPCA, " and I'll come down on anyone if I

think they deserve it. "

 

The walruses and the curator

 

Samansky didn't just fax off an order for walruses and await

delivery. Instead he applied to NMFS for a " salvage tag, " which

permitted him to bring back from Alaska four walruses orphaned by

aboriginal hunting. To certify their origins, Samansky had to

journey to the Arctic himself, go out in small boats with the

Eskimos, and witness the killing of walrus mamas so that their

babies could be captured. Only Samansky doesn't see the killing that

way.

" Our permit stipulated that our presence could not cause the

additional orphaning of animals, " Samansky and Bonde both emphasize.

And Samansky, a self-admitted admirer of the traditional

Eskimos, doesn't agree with LaBudde that the main motive for

aboriginal walrus hunting these days is the money to be made from

selling walrus ivory and genitals.

" The mothers were going to be killed anyway, for meat, " he

insists. " We saved a lot of walruses, by occupying the hunters with

capturing these orphans alive and bringing them back to the village

during several days when they could have been out killing. The

village we worked with eats walrus all winter. They kill any

walruses they can find. They don't actually kill many of the bulls,

because the bulls stay out too far. They kill the mothers and the

juveniles, except that this time we took the juveniles. If they

don't find the juveniles, the orphans die from hunger and the

elements, or a predator kills them. "

Adds Bonde, " There is no walrus quota for the aboriginals.

They can take as many as they want, but they must use all of the

animal. That's why it's very important that you work with the right

village, " one that follows the rules. " You're not allowed to buy a

walrus, and they're not allowed to sell one. We were allowed to pay

them the going local wage for the days they spent helping us, but

that was all. "

At about the same time MWA-USA got their walruses, the New

York Aquarium acquired some the same way. The Indianapolis Zoo

acquisitions, scheduled for this summer, will increase the captive

walrus population to a size that the zoological community hopes will

permit sustainable captive breeding.

Is it needed? On paper, anyway, walruses remain viable in

the wild, despite hunting and poaching. But if the regulators are

wrong, successful captive breeding may help insure species survival.

Samansky and Bonde don't talk about the walruses' drawing

power. Yet the pecuniary motive may be the best argument for keeping

them, from a conservation viewpoint. Whatever the arguments against

captivity, it is a fact that the public is most militant on behalf

of species they know.

And then there are the four walruses, who inhabit a fenced

enclosure including a holding tank while their permanent exhibit is

built. Raising them from infancy with frequent bottle feeding has

given the MWA-USA staff new insight into walrus behavior. For

instance, Samansky says, they learned that when alarmed the young

walruses immediately submerge and hide on the shadow side of their

floating platform, which substitutes for the piece of ice they would

have rested on in the Arctic. Because of their youth at capture,

this has to be instinctive rather than learned behavior.

Knowing the fate the walruses were spared gives the MWA-USA

staff an evident sense of moral accomplishment. Countless walrus will

be killed before they either go extinct or humans cease to afflict

them; but these are safe. Adopting an orphan does not prevent war,

yet is worth doing, handlers say as they give the 400-pound babies

lunch. And as Bonde puts it, they can't for the life of them see

what's the difference between paying Alaskan natives to save four

walrus and buying pigeons by the crate to spare them from the guns at

the annual captive bird massacre in Hegins, Pennsylvania--as some of

Marine World's most vehement critics have done repeatedly. Either

way, killers are rewarded, to save the mere handful of animals who

can be saved.

Marine mammal parks should be allowed to do the same,

Samansky and Bonde contend, for the pseudorcas.

 

Killers and whales

 

" We're bitter about the pseudorcas, " Bonde admits, who are

now on exhibit at an oceanarium in Japan--and are reportedly

effective representatives of their species. Domestic opposition to

Japanese government support of whaling and especially to the Iki

massacres has dramatically grown in recent years. One can't prove

the rise is because of the exhibition of pseudorcas and other small

whales, any more than one can prove or disprove that proliferating

marine mammal parks helped spark the " Save the whales " movement in

the U.S., but it is an indicative coincidence.

From 1990 through June 1993, In Defense of Animals and Earth

Island Institute beseiged Marine World with letters, demonstrations,

newspaper ads, and petitions. The initial focus was a demand for

the release of the orcas Yaka and Vigga, kept at the park since 1969

and 1981, respectively. Emphasis shifted to keeping the pseudorcas

out in April 1993, after the four pseudorcas in question were

captured and Marine World applied for an import permit. The orca

campaign hadn't produced results, while the opportunity to link the

park to notorious cruelty was irresistible.

" When places like Marine World pay money to fishermen for the

whales and dolphins, " charged Hardy Jones, who filmed the Iki-like

massacre at Taiji in 1978, " it makes the slaughter economically

feasible. "

Added Mark Berman of Earth Island Institute, in an April 21,

1993 op-ed column for the Vallejo Times-Herald, " The Iki and Taiiji

drive slaughterers actually market these animals to captive

facilities in advance through a broker in Tokyo. Orders for the

species, sex, size, and age are taken. At the time of the

roundup, specific animals are herded into a holding area while the

remainder are slaughtered without any opposition from the captive

display industry. This entire commercial operation is shrouded in

secrecy and is perpetuated by those who profit from the slaughter as

a means to acquire whales and dolphins at less expensive prices while

appearing to save several from death. "

In a passage subsequently more embarassing to the protesters

than to the targets of protest, Berman added, " Finally, last week,

eyewitness accounts of where Marine World's pseudorcas are kept on

Iki surfaced. The netted area in the bay happens to have 12

bottlenose dolphins--one was seen floating dead on the surface--and

at least nine pseudorcas. Several young calves have been noted as

well within these numbers, and all appear to be extremely stressed

and are swimming in their own waste. "

Ben White, then working for In Defense of Animals and now

with Friends of Animals, was in Japan. According to the third

paragraph of an IDA press release issued the same day, " Sources

inside Japan led White to where the pseudorcas were believed to be

held. There White observed at least 20 dolphins and pseudorca,

including very young calves, confined to an unsanitary sea pen. 'I

have never seen dolphins in a more agitated state,' White said.

'The pseudorca were huddled together. The animals, who had

witnessed their families massacred in the shore drive, were being

held in extremely inhumane conditions...' White, who had traveled to

the island with video and still photography equipment, decided to

cut the nets rather than just document the conditions. Reports out

of Japan this week indicated that 40 dolphins had been freed. "

In other words, White was said to have freed nearly twice as

many cetaceans as were believed to be in the sea pen to begin with.

But White says he never made that claim himself. As he remembers,

" I didn't know how many were in the pen. It's pretty hard to count

dolphins in the water. I cut the net and I saw a mama and a baby

swim toward the opening, and I got out of there. I went back at

dawn, briefly, before I caught the first plane away, and I didn't

think I saw as many dolphins as previously. "

Ironically, the Marine World pseudorcas were never in that

sea pen, as White learned later. Marine World representative John

Kirtland was tending those pseudorcas at a different site--and

advising Marine World not to reveal that fact. " As long as the

animal rights terrorists continue to mistakenly believe that the

animals are there, our animals will be safe where they really are, "

he said.

As to the alleged release, Kirtland continued, relaying

statements by drive fishery spokesman Teruo Shono, " On the morning of

April 14, one of the nets enclosing a number of dolphins at the

'dolphin park' was discovered cut. " This placed the incident a full

week earlier--although IDA didn't mention it in either an April 16

press release or at an April 18 press conference. White thinks the

discrepancy is because IDA was awaiting official confirmation from

Japan that some dolphins had escaped, which eventually did come from

Tokyo news media. White also believes the Tokyo papers were the

source of the number 40.

" Contrary to IDA's claim that 40 dolphins were freed, "

Kirtland continued, still giving Shono's version, " in truth not one

animal was freed or escaped. Three dolphins did become entangled in

the cut net, and as a result, drowned, " a claim White doubts,

saying none were entangled when he made his dawn visit to the scene,

shortly before the cutting would have been discovered.

Further, Kirtland said, the dolphins and pseudorcas in the

sea pen were removed from the main group 12 days before any were

massacred--and the sea pen was several miles from the massacre site.

Thus the sea pen group couldn't have seen what became of the rest.

White today acknowledges that this might have been the case.

Kirtland didn't explain why the massacre victims were held so long

before they were killed, when presumably pressure against killing

them should have been building by the day.

Added Kirtland, " The collection of pseudorca by Iki

fishermen was completed before Marine World ever learned of it; it

was not driven by Marine World. "

That, in fact, was why NMFS disallowed the imports.

Explained Marine World president Michael Demetrios, " When our

collector, Scott Rutherford, arrived in Iki, the drive had already

started. He had the choice of saving four animals already collected

by the fishermen, or going outside the net to collect in the way our

NMFS permit stated. We opted to save four animals who were going to

be killed. NMFS says this action violated our permit because

Rutherford was not present for the initial herding process and thus

could not verify that the animals were herded humanely by the

Japanese. "

Perhaps catching activists exaggeration was not a triumph

Marine World boasts about.

Says Bonde, " I wouldn't want to stake my reputation on what

the drive-fishers said, either. " He estimates that the truth lies

somewhere between the conflicting versions. The bottom line for

Bonde is that whatever became of the animals in the sea pen, whether

any escaped, and however many there were, none came to Vallejo.

 

Captain Paul

 

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson has

looked at the Iki Island and pseudorca situations as long and hard as

anyone, not only as the world's most noted whale defender, but also

as a longtime admirer of Japanese culture, martial arts, and

philosophy, and with a record of working more closely with some

oceanariums than most other leading activists. Watson himself has

tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to stop the Iki Island killing.

" I do not believe that the drive fishery would cease if

aquariums stopped their purchases of pseudorcas, " Watson told ANIMAL

PEOPLE. " The purchases are a lucrative supplement to drive fishing,

but they are not the reason for it. Otherwise the fishers would

capture the animals for live sale and not kill the others. It is the

position of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, however, " he

continued, " that it is immoral for oceanariums to reward Japan for

their mass slaughter of cetaceans by exploiting the kills to purchase

exhibits. This is similar to African poachers killing off mountain

gorilla or chimpanzee adults for their body parts and then selling

the juvenile animals to zoos, " a common practice until stopped by

CITES.

" The poachers are criminals and a respectable institution

should not be dealing with criminals. I understand that the

oceanariums believe the animals they purchase are saved from

otherwise certain death, " Watson concluded. " There is some validity

in this. However, it is ethically questionable that Japanese

dolphin killers should be given large sums from funds raised from

'educational exhibits.' I think that many patrons of these

facilities would be very upset to learn that money they in part

provided is going directly to people engaged in slaughter. There is

no justification for oceanariums to do business with Japanese dolphin

killers. By doing so, they become accessories to the crime and

undermine the credibility of their institutions. "

Yet it is hard to look into the eyes of a young walrus and

think saving him--by whatever means--was wrong.

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

 

The Cult of Animal Celebrity

by Captain Paul Watson

 

Within the animal protection movement, there are two types

of animals: those with individual names and those without. The

movement is accordingly split between advocates for animals with

names, and advocates for all the rest.

Free Keiko, free Lolita, free Corky, free Hondo. These

are wonderful and appealing ideals--but not all captive cetaceans can

or should be freed. Not all facilities holding marine animals are

the enemy. And the huge sums raised to free a few individuals could

be more positively directed toward ending the slaughter of hundreds

of thousands of nameless whales, dolphins, and seals on the world's

oceans.

The amount of money raised for the cause of freeing marine

mammals with names may exceed $45 million a year, from the thousands

raised to aid local seals and dolphins in distress to the $14 million

estimated cost of someday, maybe, freeing Keiko, the orca star of

the film Free Willy!

Never in the history of the animal protection movement have

so many given so much for so few--and so many given so little for

such large numbers.

Just as celebrity humans make loads of cash while the

commoners work harder to get by, so it is with whales. Keiko is a

movie star. Corky and Lolita are cause celebres. Hondo the sea lion

is a Seattle character.

Several times a year when a marine mammal gets lost up a

river, stuck on a sand bar, or trapped in ice, the media descends

in a frenzy of sound bites, the animal receives a name like

" Humphrey the humpback, " and the baptism allows citizens to fret as

they follow the animal's plight and applaud a " rescue " which may be

no such thing. A seal is trapped in the St. Lawrence River, for

instance, and the media names her. The public gives thousands of

dollars to transport her to freedom in the Gulf of St. Lawrence--

where the slaughter of tens of thousands of seals like her is

simultaneously underway and unremarked.

Media glorification of animals in distress indicatively

focuses on animals in conflict with nature. When nature is the

culprit, humans identify with their fellow creature. Thus the

Russians spent more money to rescue two California gray whales from

ice entrapment in the Arctic than they made from slaughtering 200 of

the same species the same winter off the Siberian coast. The media

knighted them as liberating heroes for rescuing two and ignored the

massacre of 200. At the same time, then-President Ronald Reagan was

a hero for championing the cause of the two trapped whales--even as

he refused to sanction Iceland for illegal whaling.

The media has even reported about trapped dolphins and pilot

whales being heroically rescued in Japan, Iceland, and

Newfoundland, by people who regularly kill the same species,

without questioning the contradictions involved.

When the Shedd Aquarium captured two dolphins off the

southern California coast in 1994, the Sea Shepherd Conservation

Society and I were criticized for not dropping what we were doing to

run to their defense. We were accused of being callous, of

supporting dolphin captures, and one prominent advocate against

captivity, Ric O'Barry, called me " the worst enemy dolphins have. "

What was not reported was that we were engaged in a project

to stop gill-netting off the same coast, which killed dozens of

dolphins every night. We received no support and very little

encouragement. The media was uninterested. We could have jumped on

the bandwagon and participated in the media circus, chasing the

Shedd boats around with banners. Instead we kept our eyes focused on

the greater tragedy.

Also overlooked was that a year before, we helped fund the

opposition to the capture of beluga whales in Hudson's Bay by the

Shedd Aquarium. This led directly to a Canadian ministerial order

placing an indefinite moratorium on further captures. We are opposed

to captures from the wild. We exercise our opposition legally, when

it will be effective. We do not simply strut before the cameras when

it is convenient to do so.

 

Biological Armageddon

 

Now, what could a marine wildlife conservationist, a

protector of species, do with the kind of money made available to

those who champion marine animals with names?

Plenty.

This year, the Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroese, Japanese,

Koreans, Portuguese, Russians, Canadians and Americans will

slaughter thousands of whales. The victims will include endangered

bowheads, under native subsistence quotas, in addition to hundreds

of minkes and unknown numbers of pirated sperms, grays, pilots,

and belugas.

We like to think that dolphins are safe because one can buy

dolphin-safe tuna in the supermarkets. But reality is that the tuna

industry reflagged their vessels outside of the U.S. when hit with

regulation requiring dolphin-safe fishing practices; the same ships

continue to slaughter tens of thousands of dolphins each year.

Federal legislation barring the import of tuna netted " on dolphin "

took effect on June 1, 1994--but Mexico successfully had sued the

U.S. to block effective enforcement a year earlier, under the terms

of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Accordingly, the Japanese, Venezuelans, Panamanians,

Mexicans, Peruvians, Faroese, Norwegians, Americans, and Koreans

will massacre hundreds of thousands of defenseless dolphins.

The Norwegians, Canadians, Russians, and Namibians will

slaughter nearly half a million seals.

Albatrosses are dying in the thousands as they are cruelly

hooked on 25-mile longlines or become ensnared in 50-mile driftnets.

The U.S. shrimp industry devastates sea turtles. (Even Forest Gump

was a turtle killer.) Once seemingly limitless fish populations are

at the brink of extinction. The North Atlantic cod fishery has

collapsed. A dozen salmon runs a year vanish from the Pacific

Northwest.

Even the recently pristine Galapagos Islands are under

assault by fishers, who kill seals, dolphins, and turtles on the

side.

Reality is that our generation is presiding over a marine

biological Armageddon.

Money is needed to restore and protect spawning areas. Money

is needed to lobby, legislate, and litigate against the fishing,

whaling, and sealing industries. Money is needed for research,

investigation, and enforcement. Money is needed at every level,

from government agencies to non-governmental organizations to

individuals in the field. Yet the money is not available. The great

tragedy of the commons is that there is every economic incentive to

exploit the oceans and little economic incentive to protect them.

Many animal protection groups respond by going where the

money is: to celebrity, a form of currency, which can be traded

quite profitably within the media marketplace. It is easy to entice

schoolchildren and the general public to fork over funds to " save "

Dotty the dolphin or Sally the seal. It is easy for people to relate

to the plight of the individual, especially through endearing

pictures. It is quite another thing to capture people's attention

over the horrific slaughter of thousands of animals in the name of

profit. Pictures of this only make most of us want to avert our

eyes--and thoughts.

Some groups raise support for wild whales by setting up

so-called whale adoption programs. Donations to save all whales are

attracted by placing the publicity focus on individuals, who respond

to protect " their " whale as they never would to an appeal for all the

whales.

 

Diversionary issues

 

In recent years attention has also centered on captive

dolphins held by oceanariums. This too has attracted more support

than work on behalf of the animals in the wild: the oceanarium

animals have names. They can be seen.

Unfortunately, the attacks on the oceanariums have been a

media blitzkrieg of indiscriminate irrationality, pushing all

facilities into one category: the enemy. Any dissent within the

movement, i.e. any questioning of the overall strategy and tactics,

is stifled. Those who champion the captive animals become the good

guys, no matter what, and those who keep the animals are the bad

guys.

Reality is of course never so simple. In truth Sea World

rescues more animals in the wild, chiefly from strandings, than all

animal advocacy groups combined. Also forgotten is that Sea World

does not capture dolphins or whales from the wild, and that the much

maligned Shedd is involved in breeding, maintaining, and restoring

more than 100 species of African freshwater fish called cichlids.

The truth is that the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas holds animals

rescued from inferior facilities. Many of the Mirage dolphins were

at one time cruelly abused. No expense is spared now to give them

the best care available. They are not forced to perform. The

anti-captivity movement, however, dismisses these arguments by

saying that the animals are simply held to make profits--a form of

slavery. Again, the facts are otherwise. The Mirage subsidizes the

dolphin facility to the tune of $1.5 million dollars a year. No

profit has ever been made nor is it planned for. The dolphins cannot

be returned to the wild; they have never known freedom, and would

simply perish.

A double standard is at work when the Sugarloaf Dolphin

Sanctuary in Florida is considered politically correct for holding

unreleasable dolphins, while the Mirage is condemned. The

difference between the two is that the facilites at the Mirage are

far superior, but the Mirage is owned by a business man, while

Sugarloaf is owned by prominent members of the anti-captivity

movement. Apparently it's okay to hold dolphins captive if you are

publicly against captivity.

Actually, oceanariums in many ways are victims of their own

success. They educated the public so well about dolphins, whales,

and other marine life that a public that didn't care a fig about

these animals before 20 years ago now cares a great deal.

Unfortunately this compassion for whales and dolphins is not

harnessed as a force against the killing industry, but is instead

turned back against the teacher.

The oceanariums have also failed to aggressively educate the

public about the slaughter in the wild. Many facilities like the

Vancouver Aquarium and Sea World do not risk overt criticism of the

Japanese whaling industry. The fact is that tens of thousands of

Japanese tourists love to look at lovable dolphins, and pay good

money to do so. Unfortunately, too many insist upon keeping

dolphins and whales on their sushi plates.

Earth Island Institute is raising $11 million to build Keiko

a bigger tank in Oregon so that he can be moved from his tank in

Mexico. Warner Brothers has already kicked in a few million. Keiko

probably cannot be released due to a potentially contagious skin

disease, yet the fundraising to " free " him continues--including by

groups not associated with Earth Island and not accountable for their

use of the cash, much of it apparently spent on " public education "

via further direct-mail funding appeals.

Meanwhile the conservation side of the animal protection

movement needs ships to police the Galapagos and to protect the

Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary, where the Japanese killed at least

300 minke whales this year alone and might have killed whales of

other species with no one the wiser because no one was even there to

watch, let alone to defend whales. We need to police overfishing

and pirate whaling. Unfortunately, these far more serious threats

are out of sight and out of mind. The victims are nameless and their

loss is considered media-insignificant.

 

Rights, welfare, conservation

 

My purpose here is not to belittle the efforts of those who

champion individual animals. The strength of any movement is

diversity, including diversity of strategies and tactics.

Conservationists, animal welfare advocates, and animal rights

advocates have many objectives in common. At the same time there

must be tolerance of other opinions and understanding of the

importange of agreeing to disagree.

Animal welfare is humanity in action. Animal rights is the

philosophic attempt to better that humanity. Conservation is simply

survival and thus the foundation of our collective concerns. To

address the issues of animal welfare and animal rights while ignoring

the foundation of conservation is to collapse the structure of all.

There should be concern for individual animals, and I am not saying

that animals with names should be ignored. However, it is

imperative that the interests of species receive priority attention.

Individuals will inevitably die, and that is the ultimate fact of

life. Once a species is gone, it is gone forever, and with the

species gone, there will be no individuals left to be named.

It must be recognized that there is much to be learned from

all phases of activity within the animal protection movement. The

hardcore vegan animal rights advocate and the Shedd staffer working

to protect a vanishing species are each involved in what they

perceive to be the best strategy to help animals. It is not that one

is right and the other wrong. Both are right within the context of

their individual values. The bottom line is that both are positively

active. Positive criticisms of each others' strategy is positive.

Unfortunately the animosity between different approaches is becoming

increasingly more negative and destructive.

The cry of " Free Willy! " is exciting and inspirational, but

what does it really mean? Free Willy to an ocean where whales and

dolphins are slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands? To an ocean

stinking with pollutants--an ocean of abuse? A future where as one

of the masses, the celebrity whale will be just another target for a

harpoon, in a world that doesn't give a damn for what it can't see

and can't name?

There are hundreds of dolphins held in tanks around the

world. There are millions whose numbers diminish daily in the

largest human-controlled killing tank of all: the ocean. If we

don't halt the wanton killing in the wild, the only place dolphins

will survive will be in captive facilities.

It's time to fight the real enemy, out there on the high

seas, the killing grounds where the scarlet blood of dolphins,

whales, seals, sea birds, turtles and fish flows forth each day

like a river of a million tributaries, into the azure blue and

toward the inky blackness of oblivion.

 

 

Captain Paul Watson is founder of the Sea Shepherd

Conservation Society.

 

 

Dirty Pool III: Keiko

 

ANIMAL PEOPLE hadn't scheduled a third part of our " Dirty

Pool " series on propaganda interfering with marine mammal protection,

but as the second part went to press on November 22, Warner Brothers

and New Regency Productions donated $2 million to a new Free

Willy/Keiko Foundation formed by Earth Island Institute, the purpose

of which is to raise $10 million to buy Keiko, the orca star of both

the 1993 film Free Willy! and a forthcoming sequel made with

out-takes; fly him to a yet-to-be-built rehabilitation site in

Newport, Oregon; and prepare him for eventual release. But Keiko's

owner, the Reino Aventura amusement park in Mexico City, is

apparently not yet commited.

The Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor, Washington,

made the matter look a bit like a re-run with a November bulletin

headlined " How is Keiko, and what can be done to help? " CWR claims

to have struck a verbal deal in August 1993 with Reino Aventura, to

fly him to a rehabilitation center in the Bahamas and prepare him for

release. However, the story goes, the Alliance of Marine Mammal

Parks and Aquariums got wind of it and dispatched executives to

Mexico City in the Sea World jet to keep it from happening. CWR gave

up on the deal in May 1994.

This is not a new story. ANIMAL PEOPLE published a version

of it as a letter from Chris Stroud of the Whale and Dolphin

Conservation Society in December 1993, as Sea World declined

comment. A year later, though, we're aware of at least five deals

purportedly made by various groups on Keiko's behalf, none of them

completed.

The AMMPA version of the Keiko story is that members had

been trying to cure Keiko of a skin virus for two years before CWR

got involved. According to AMMPA executive director Marilee Keefe,

AMMPA and Sea World were unaware of CWR's purported deal when a team

flew to Mexico City to install a new water chilling and filtration

system at Reino Aventura--needed to cure the virus, necessary before

Keiko can be moved to live with other orcas.

Continued Keefe, " CWR threatened to sue us if we continued

our efforts, claiming these efforts somehow interfered with an

agreement they believed they had with Keiko's owners. Keiko's owners

consistently stated no such agreement ever existed. We told CWR we

would not continue our efforts if they persisted in threatening a

lawsuit. We requested that CWR sign a written release so we could

continue to help Keiko. So far, CWR has refused. "

We asked both CWR and AMMPA to document their accounts.

AMMPA and other sources close to AMMPA promptly sent copies of legal

correspondence affirming Keefe's version. But Howard Garrett of CWR

retorted, " You just called me a liar! The things I told you are as

good as if they were under oath. That doesn't mean they are

necessarily true, but it does mean they are true to the best of my

knowledge. I didn't claim we reached a contract with Reino. It was

a verbal agreement, to be followed by a written letter of intent. "

But attorney Margaret R. O'Donnell on October 24, 1993

claimed there was a contract, advising AMMPA that CWR was " prepared

to pursue all legal remedies available to it " for alleged " tortious

interferance with the contractual relationship between CWR and Reino

Aventura, conspiracy, and possibly defamation. "

Reino Aventura general manager Oscar Porter denied having

made a deal to give up Keiko in a letter to CWR dated November 22,

1993. " Keiko is not for sale, Keiko is not promised to you, Keiko

remains our responsibility! " , Porter wrote, adding, " You have no

authorization from us to use our Keiko, now famous, as the basis

for fundraising. In our previous correspondence, we made that

clear. Yet you persist in doing so. In our view, this borders on

fraudulent activity. "

Releases

Along with the " How is Keiko? " bulletin, CWR published a

list of 380 purported cetacean " releases, " most of them by the

captive marine mammal industry, compiled by Ken Balcomb. " If

post-captive release is lethal, dangerous, and irresponsible as

many marine park spokespeople now claim, " Balcolm wrote, " then why

has it been done so many times by those very organizations? "

But of the 380 cetaceans " released, " 272 were orcas caught

in mass round-ups during the 1960s and 1970s. None were removed from

their native habitat. Only four were held captive longer than they

had lived in the wild. Only two were taken from their pods. None

were released from marine mammal parks--and all the releases occurred

at least 15 years ago. No marine mammal park executive now

responsible for orcas was in a management post then.

Of the other " released " cetaceans, 89 were dolphins, 32 of

whom were kept in marine mammal parks or under comparable conditions.

Sixteen either escaped or were released without follow-up; 12 were

released successfully; four were released unsuccessfully.

 

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

 

Activists change the guard on Puget Sound

(From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999.)

 

SEATTLE, VANCOUVER--The Sea Shepherds are coming, Bear

Watch is gone, and no one is saying yet what may become of the Sea

Defense Alliance [seDnA].

Maintaining a vigil off Neah Bay against Makah tribe whaling

for much of the past two years, and anticipating further

confrontations with the Makah, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

expects to soon open a permanent headquarters at Friday Harbor, on

San Juan Island.

The Sea Shepherd fleet operated from Friday Harbor

throughout

spring 1999, but berthed at Seattle during the summer. Sea Shepherd

vessels have been continuously stationed on Puget Sound since 1996,

after many years of frequent visits, and the Sea Shepherds have had

personnel continuously in the area since 1995, when the Makah first

announced their intent to resume whaling.

Having killed one young female gray whale in May, Makah

whalers say they hope to kill up to four more during the fall 1999

migration. They claim a quota of five, allocated by the National

Marine Fisheries Service under a treaty with Siberian native whalers.

NMFS holds that the allocation is legal according to the terms for

" indigenous subsistence " whaling approved by the International

Whaling Commission, but other parties to the IWC, led by Australia,

argue that the phrasing of the IWC resolution was meant to prevent

Makah whaling, which is done ostensibly for cultural reasons rather

than for food.

Whatever the Makah do, SeDnA--if it takes an active

role--will not be the crew led in 1998 and early 1999 by longtime

direct action advocate Jonathan Paul, 34.

The younger brother of Baywatch television series star

Alexandra Paul, Jonathan Paul was previously noted for helping to

disrupt bighorn sheep hunts in the Mojave desert as a member of a

southern California hunt saboteurs group during the late 1980s.

In 1990 Jonathan Paul was indicted along with Sacramento-

area

activists Bill Keogh and Cres Velucci as alleged accessories after

the fact in connection with the 1986 Animal Liberation Front removal

of about 200 animals from a University of Oregon laboratory. Oregon

circuit judge George Woodrich threw out the charges in April 1991

because the prosecution refused to identify a key undercover witness.

Paul was later imprisoned for five months in 1992-1993 for

refusing to testify to a grand jury about the activities of a former

housemate, then-fugitive Rod Coronado. Coronado recently finished a

five-year prison term for his role in burning several facilities

involved in research on behalf of the fur trade.

SeDnA, according to ex-crew member Joshua Harper,

24, " was

started by Paul in Santa Cruz several years ago. At that time it was

called the Ocean Sanctuary Alliance, but soon the group began work

against Exxon and shark hunting. They felt a name change was in

order, so they changed the name to SeDnA after a Native American

story about a witch who pulls boats to the bottom of the ocean. "

The attempt to establish a clear identity backfired when at

about the same time the mineral exploration firm Apollo Development

Inc., of Canada, chose the new name Sedna Geotech Inc. and began

trading on the Vancouver Stock Exchange in January 1997. The

principle Sedna Geotech asset is Andes Drilling Inc., of Peru. Web

searches on either " SeDnA " or " Sedna " have tended to pull up the

wrong one ever since.

Despite the confusion, Paul and associates rallied enough

support to put two vessels on the water off Neah Bay for seven weeks

in spring 1999. Six days before the Makah finally killed a whale,

Harper and then fellow SeDnA crew member Jacob Conroy, 23, were

arrested after an alleged violent confrontation with the Makah

whalers. Four days after that, the 42-foot SeDnA flagship was

seized, along with two Sea Shepherd small craft and a Jet-Ski

belonging to Oregon schoolteacher Cheryl Rorabeck-Siler. Jonathan

Paul came aboard the Sea Shepherd patrol boat Sirenian--but with the

intervention force depleted, the Makah were able to slip out to kill

the whale on the morning of May 17, as the Sirenan was en route back

to Neah Bay from overnight refueling at Friday Harbor.

A rift had already developed among the SeDnA board when

Harper and Conroy accused board member Kenny Cryst of unethical

personal conduct. Cryst and two other board members, longtime

Seattle-area activist Allison Frost and Microsoft engineer Joe DiBee,

31, eventually voted Paul off the board, according to Harper.

Cryst and Frost then left the board themselves, turning their seats

over to Animal Welfare Institute marine mammal consultant Ben White

and Ruckus Society organizer John Sellers.

 

New cast

 

White, involved in activism of various sorts since the late

1960s, claims to have protested against the Vietnam War and to have

informed on the Ku Klux Klan for the FBI while still in high school.

He joined the 1973 American Indian Movement occupation of the Bureau

of Indian Affairs offices in Washington D.C., and was eventually

asked to leave, as were other non-Native supporters.

White also traveled for a time with the Rolling Thunder

medicine show, which popularized Native American causes and

spirituality during the 1970s and 1980s. He was repeatedly accused

of fomenting strife within both AIM and the Rolling Thunder

entourage, but as Native American newspapers of the era document,

such accusations were common among the intensely factionalized Native

movement, and were also often directed at movement leaders.

White shifted his focus to marine mammals and old growth

forests in the mid-1980s. In 1990-1991 he reportedly led dissidents

who came within a vote of ousting Paul Watson from the Sea Shepherd

helm. Watson detailed his conflicts with White in his 1995 book

Ocean Warrior. White told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the Watson accounts

misrepresent him.

Employed for a time by In Defense of Animals, White left

that post and in May 1994 helped Friends of Animals lead a protest

against the Greenpeace position of not opposing whaling " in

principle, " if whale populations are recovered. While an FoA

staffer, White was central--as a purported peacemaker--to the

breakup of the Sugar Loaf Dolphin Sanctuary in the Florida Keys

during 1994-1995.

From 1994 through 1996, White was especially closely

associated with his predecessor at AWI, one " Rick Spill, " whom

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes was actually attorney Bill Wewer. Wewer, who

reportedly died earlier this year, had a long history of association

with both far-right and animal-related causes. His wife Kathleen

Marquardt founded the now defunct anti-animal rights group Putting

People First, which claimed in 1992 to represent Norwegian whalers

and sealers. Wewer himself boasted to ANIMAL PEOPLE in a 1997 fax of

having infiltrated the animal rights movement under deep cover.

White was fired by FoA in January 1997, according to FoA

memos received by ANIMAL PEOPLE, for unauthorized acts including

leaving a message on the Sea Shepherd answering machine in which he

threatened that FoA would destroy the Sea Shepherds over ideological

differences.

Sellers, according to Associated Press writer Will Lester,

led the Ruckus Society " activist training camps " annually in rural

Virginia from 1995 through 1998. He is now reportedly organizing

demonstrations to greet the World Trade Organization summit scheduled

to open in Seattle on November 30.

DiBee, the only holdover SeDnA board member, has

associated

himself in Internet discussion with support for Native American land

claims, and was among seven Greenpeace activists who hung from a

bridge in Seattle for two days in August 1997 to protest alleged

overfishing.

 

Bear Watch

 

Bear Watch formed circa 1988 as one of several grassroots

coalitions emerging from protests against old growth logging on

Clayquot Sound, Vancouver Island. Other organizations had protested

for years against British Columbia bear hunting quotas that were and

are allegedly set so high as to put regional bear populations in

peril, but Bear Watch particularly raised the profile of the issue,

especially from 1992 on, by directly confronting hunters.

Beginning in late 1994, Bear Watch also teamed with another

grassroots coalition, the Grizzly Project, to publish sporadic

editions of a newsprint magazine.

Until 1995, the Bear Watch core group had no particular

public personna. The many different Bear Watch writers and

spokespersons remained personally obscure-- and news coverage

accordingly remained focused on bears instead of personalities. That

changed when in 1995-1996 Bear Watch added convicted Animal

Liberation Front vandals Darren Thurston and David Barbarash to the

staff, reportedly on salary while other key personnel were still

volunteers.

Thurston and Barbarash had recently completed sentences for

allegedly committing a June 1992 break-in at the University of

Alberta. Thurston was earlier convicted of firebombing three trucks

belonging to a fish dealer. Barbarash was earlier convicted of

vandalizing a fried chicken restaurant in 1987. That charge was

plea-bargained down from initial charges alleging that he had

possessed explosives, carried illegal weapons, and vandalized the

University of Toronto veterinary school in 1986.

At least a dozen Bear Watch members were arrested after

clashes with hunters, some of them prominently featuring Thurston

and Barbarash, in 1995. The charges were dropped in early 1997, a

year after Thurston and Barbarash left Bear Watch.

After their departure, the British Columbia Wildlife

Federation accused Bear Watch itself of " criminal actions of

terrorism, " but apologized when Bear Watch objected. By way of

making amends, the B.C. Wildlife Federation donated $2,000 to a bear

sanctuary designated by Bear Watch.

But the brief Bear Watch association with Thurston, 29,

and

Barbarash, 36, surfaced in media again in March 1998, when

Thurston and Barbarash were jointly charged with allegedly mailing

razor blade devices to furriers, hunting guides, and hunting

columnists. Thurston and Barbarash were also accused of having sent

pipe bombs to Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, of Toronto, and white

supremacist Charles Scott, of B.C., who both escaped injury.

The day before Scott received a bomb, however, a mail bomb

severely injured animal researcher Terry Mitenko, of Cochrane,

Alberta, in a case authorities and media believed was related.

Thurston and Barbarash were not charged with that offense.

The March 1998 charges have apparently not yet been resolved.

Having employed Barbarash and Thurston may have handicapped

Bear Watch as the core group returned to near-anonymity and tried in

1996, working with the Western Canada Wilderness Coalition and other

organizations, to put an anti-bear hunting referendum measure on the

B.C. ballot. Needing to gather 220,000 signatures in 90 days to

qualify for the ballot, the petitioners actually obtained only

89,000.

Despite that setback, Bear Watch built momentum for another

attempt in 1997 by publishing an officially suppressed report by B.C.

Ministry of Environment, Lands, and Parks habitat biologist Dionys

de Leeuws, which argued that, " There is no ecological, ethical,

or social justification for continuing to hunt grizzly bears. "

The Environmental Investigation Agency, of London,

reinforced the de Leeuws report with a 1998 critique of B.C. bear

hunting entitled Trigger Happy. Forty-four organizations, including

ANIMAL PEOPLE, asked B.C. to stop grizzly bear hunting. Polls

showed the request had the support of up to 78% of B.C. voters.

On February 2, 1999, in a first concession to bear hunting

opponents, B.C. environment minister Cathy McGregor closed eight

portions of the province to spring grizzly bear hunting.

But, as other activist groups emerged to work on the issue

and compete for media attention and funding, Bear Watch in early

1999 closed its Vancouver office, and on August 30 told members

that, " Due to lack of resources, both human and financial, we can

no longer continue operating. "

--M.C.

 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

 

A Report on the 1996 Dolphin Catch-Quota Violation

at Futo Fishing Harbor, Shizuoka Prefecture

Wild Orca Capture: Right or Wrong?

both by Sakae Hemmi

Elsa Nature Conservancy (POB 2, Tsukuba-Gakuen Post Office,

Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8691, Japan.) No prices listed.

 

 

A Report on the 1996 Dolphin Catch-Quota Violation at Futo

Fishing Harbor, Shizuoka Prefecture, initially published in

Japanese, now translated, details how in October 1996 the Elsa

Nature Conservancy forced the Futo Fishing Cooperative to release

more than 100 dolphins who were captured in excess of a " drive

fishery " kill quota, and a week later obliged two aquariums to

release six psuedorcas who had been taken from the excess for

exhibition.

" The protest movement against the dolphin capture was the

first of its kind, " author Sakei Hemmi explains. Previous

opposition to drive fisheries came from foreign activists, notably

filmmaker Hardin Jones, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder

Paul Watson, and Steve Sipman, who invented the name " Animal

Liberation Front " in connection with releasing two dolphins from a

Hawaiian laboratory in 1976.

" In this case, however, " Hemmi writes, " Japanese citizens

took the lead. "

Hemmi herself opposes all whaling and whale-catching,

questions that eating whales is really part of Japanese culture, and

readily reminds readers that Japan continues to kill more than 22,000

small whales per year in coastal waters.

She omits, however, any but passing mention of Japanese

" research " whaling, which in 1998 included killing at least 440

minke whales within the nominally protected Southern Oceans Whale

Sanctuary.

Wiithin a year of the Futo incident, the indigenous

Japanese

anti-whaling movement, Hemmi included, had become almost wholly

preoccupied--like much of the U.S. " save the whales " movement--with

opposition to keeping whales in captivity.

Hemmi's 1998 volume, Wild Orca Capture: Right or Wrong?

details the influence and involvement of the U.S.-based Cetacean

Freedom Network in making the capture of five orcas for exhibition

briefly an international cause celebre, but Hemmi's perspective is

interestingly different. CFN electronic bulletin board postings gave

the impression that the central protest event was U.S. activist Ben

White's threat to stage a hunger strike at Taiji. The hunger strike

never occurred, however, because the orcas had already been

dispersed to aquariums before White got there. White then claimed he

had been sabotaged by the Sea Shepherds, who had posted a reward of

$20,000 for anyone who could secure the orcas' release.

Neither White nor the Sea Shepherds rate even a word from

Hemmi. She documents instead much activity within Japan by Japanese

citizens, mostly never previously mentioned, to our knowledge, by

anyone else writing or speaking in English.

Founded in 1976, and now among the oldest animal protection

organizations in Japan, the Elsa Nature Conservancy " always looks

for the blind spots of the conservation movement, things everyone

has forgotten about, and has campaigned for protection of animals

who are going extinct unnoticed, " according to its mission statement.

Yet Hemmi herself seems blind to proportion. Beside the

scale of Japanese whale-killing, the orca captures were trivia.

Moreover, the growth of the U.S. whale and dolphin exhibition

industry, from 1938 to recent years, closely paralleled the growth

of anti-whaling activism. The public cared little about whales and

dolphins until live exhibition permitted direct acquaintance. The

same phenomenon may be occuring in Japan; the protests of October

1996 may paradoxically have been produced at least as much by the

rise of a Japanese exhibition industry as by the work of longtime

committed activists.

ANIMAL PEOPLE suspects the Japanese whaling industry knows

that. ANIMAL PEOPLE suspects--as outlined in " Fixing for a battle of

Leviathans, " page one, September 1998--that at least one covert

operative for the whalers was instrumental in forming the Cetacean

Freedom Network, back in 1995, and that the whaling industry would

like nothing better than for all activists to focus on freeing

Willy/Keiko et al while the 1986 International Whaling Commission

covenant against high seas whaling is dismantled and circumvented.

The less the American, European, and Japanese people have

the opportunity to look living whales in the eye, the less whalers

need fear the growth of empathy for the animals they want to kill.

--M.C.

 

Tales from the crypt

(From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000.)

 

Bill Wewer, the far-right tax attorney and direct mail

fundraiser who formed the Doris Day Animal League in 1986 and the

anti-animal rights group Putting People First with his wife Kathleen

Marquardt in 1990, was reported dead in San Francisco on April

Fool's Day 1999.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has repeatedly identified Cetacean Freedom

Network founder Rick Spill as apparently being a Wewer alter ego,

based on clues that Wewer himself provided in a taunting 1997 fax,

many eyewitness identifications of photographs of each one as the

other, and much other circumstantial and behavioral evidence.

But Spill reportedly appeared during the late November/early

December protests against the World Trade Organization meeting in

Seattle, helping longtime close associate Ben White and others to

build sea turtle costumes.

If Wewer is dead but Spill is alive, ANIMAL PEOPLE must be

wrong, right?

Right, but looking into the circumstances of the alleged

Wewer death, ANIMAL PEOPLE found that the San Francisco Medical

Examiner's office never actually saw or identified a body.

The death report was recorded as having been telephoned to

the Medical Examiner's office by one nurse Carolyn Schultz at the

Coming Home Hospice, and the death certificate was signed--or

appeared to be--by oncologist Bertrand Tuan, M.D., of San

Francisco. Having no reason to consider the death suspicious, the

Medical Examiner accepted it as " official " without asking questions.

However, the death certificate makes no mention of Schultz,

identifying Marquardt as the " informant " that death had occurred.

The remains were allegedly then cremated, leaving nothing for anyone

else to identify.

Neither Tuan, addressed at his office, nor Schultz,

written to in care of the Coming Home Hospice, responded to a

request to identify photos of the alleged deceased from among packets

of photos of both Wewer and Spill sent by ANIMAL PEOPLE with prepaid

reply envelopes on November 19, 1999.

ANIMAL PEOPLE meanwhile found writings by Wewer and

Marquardt, published in the early 1990s, taking strong positions

against the establishment of world trade regulation on the theory

that it could lead to global bans on whaling, sealing, and fur

trapping.

Having clashed often with the IRS, Wewer and Marquardt

might

have found an incentive to feign Wewer's demise in the IRS

Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. Better known as the " innocent

spouse act, " the law enables spouses whose absent or deceased

partners cheated on joint returns to escape responsibility for

resultant tax debts.

 

 

----------------------------

 

 

This came in on December 1, 1999 via the Cetacean Freedom

Network, founded by Rick Spill. The Cetacean Freedom Network folks

didn't know, at the time, that I got it.

 

>This message comes to you courtesy of the CFN-Views Maillist.

>---------------------------

>Cetaceans & WTO - News From the Front

>

>Through the tireless and occasionally heroic efforts of several CFN

members

>and dozens of volunteers, animals were put on the agenda of the

World Trade

>Organization which has been meeting this week in Seattle. Two

hundred and

>fifty demonstrators in sea turtle costumes and Mark Berman and his

>inflatable dolphin made sure of it!

>

>Animal groups' efforts were coordinated by Ben White of Animal

Welfare

>Institute and Lisa Wathne of the Humane Society of the U.S. Both

these

>individuals and their organizations should be praised for their

cooperation

>in this project and for the vast amount of resources that they

committed to

>this campaign. Other local, national and international groups sent

>representatives to help. As well, Rick Spill, founder of CFN, showed

up for

>several days of turtle construction and demonstrating.

 

-----------------------------

 

Bill Wewer and Kathleen Marquardt openly hated the WTO and

NAFTA, and attacked WTO and NAFTA with considerable vitriol in their

writings. The far right position is consistent with the position of

the demonstrators in Seattle, albeit for largely different reasons.

 

The next item, below, is a footnote from the December 1999

ANIMAL PEOPLE " Who Gets The Money? " feature on the budgets, assets,

and top salaries paid by animal protection groups, mailed earlier

this week. It more-or-less brings you up-to-date on the identity

issues involving Mr. Spill:

 

 

>The Humane Society of Ventura County was legally represented in

>1997-1998 by >Bill Wewer, of Helena, Montana. A report that he

>had died in San Francisco >was telephoned to the city medical

>examiner on April Fool's Day 1999. Founder >of the National

>Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, Wewer was >in

>1984-1985 investigated by Congress and reprimanded by the Justice

>Department >for his direct mailing practices. Leaving the NCPSSM,

>Wewer formed the Doris >Day Animal League in 1986, but left it in

>early 1990 to join the anti-animal >rights group Putting People

>First, begun by his wife Kathleen Marquardt in >1989. He largely

>dropped out of sight after ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt >Clifton

>exposed his history in April 1991. PPF became Putting Liberty

>First, >then merged with the American Policy Center. After Wewer

>boasted in early 1997 >that he was under deep cover within an animal

>protection group, we identified >a person whom we suspect was

>Wewer, employed as " Rick Spill " by the Animal >Welfare Institute

>since 1993. He had cofounded the Cetacean Freedom Network in >1995.

>The name " Rick Spill " was also used in 1986 by a spokesperson for

>a >conservative political group Wewer was associated with. " Spill "

>left AWI in >May 1997 and all but vanished. A rumor that he had

>resurfaced reached us in >mid-November 1999, but was not

>substantiated.

 

-----------------------------

 

 

I checked with the San Francisco medical examiner's office,

and got a copy of Wewer's death certificate. The medical examiner's

office never saw the body and never did any identification. The

telephoned death report supposedly came from a nurse Carolyn Schultz

and the death certificate was signed, possibly sight unseen, by a

Dr. Bernard Y. Tuan.

 

Schultz and Tuan did not respond to my request that they

identify the person who died from photos I sent them (assuming there

really is a Schultz. I have doubts.)

 

Wewer's alleged body was officially identified by Kathleen

Marquardt, who as well as being Wewer's wife is herself a career

wise-use wiseguy. The only published obituary was in the newsletter

of the outfit she works for, the Tom DeWeese Report--and the

obituary did not appear in the online edition of the DeWeese Report.

Neither has any mutual acquaintance been able to confirm having heard

of Wewer's death. We didn't have a whole lot of mutual

acquaintances, but there were a few whom I think would tell the

truth.

 

The April 1 death date for Wewer would be suspicious by

itself, but there is more: Rick Spill had a history of using dead

people's SSN. Wewer was intimately familiar with the SSN system via

his work with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and

Medicare. Changing identity when things got hot was/is a consistent

pattern with both of them.

 

Coming Home, the hospice where Wewer supposedly died, is a

nonprofit facility, and I was able to get a little bit of

information about it. It has a rather odd profile, combining

hospice care with legal and financial services, and is ridicuously

small, in normal hospice terms, in dollar volume coming and going.

Bluntly, it could be a false front set up expressly for the purpose

of facilitating I.D. changes--for example, either in connection with

criminality or the federal witness protection program. About all I

can say for certain is that I've looked at the financial profiles of

other nonprofit hospices, and this one stands out as different.

 

 

Possibilities, previously mentioned:

 

1) Wewer faked his own death somehow, switching I.D. with

someone else who died. He had a motive [tax evasion] in the recently

passed Innocent Spouse Act.

 

2) Spill is not Wewer, in which case there are a heck of a

lot of coincidences involving their personal quirks, appearance,

and whereabouts left to explain. Why have they never both been

visible at the same time? Why did Spill disappear and Wewer reappear

when we began investigating Spill? Why didn't either one of them

directly challenge my identification of one as the other? How does

it happen that they have virtually identical eating habits,

prejudices, hobbies, talents, and phobias?

 

 

Paranoid as ever,

 

 

Merritt Clifton, editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE.

 

U.S. Surgical CEO is not exactly retiring, despite sale

(July/August 1998.)

 

NORWALK, Ct.--U.S. Surgical Corporation founder and CEO

Leon

Hirsch, 70, on May 24 sold the firm to Tyco International Ltd., in

a deal expected to close in September. Whether the sale will reduce

the role of U.S. Surgical in anti-animal rights work is uncertain.

" We don't really anticipate any effect, " Americans for

Medical Progress director of public affairs Jacquie Calnan told

ANIMAL PEOPLE. U.S. Surgical personnel founded AMP, and in 1992

$980,000 of the $985,000 AMP budget came from U.S. Surgical, but

Calnan said that " Over the past few years, as AMP grew and developed

a broad base of support among the research community, U.S. Surgical

gradually reduced its financial backing. Today, " Calnan said, " AMP

has over 90 corporate and institutional partners, including U.S.

Surgical. But as of this year, " she added, " USSC is no longer the

majority, or even the largest, contributor among AMP's members. "

However, Calnan also said, " Under the terms of the sale,

Leon Hirsch will continue in his role and we look forward to

continuing our partnership with U.S. Surgical for many years to come. "

A longtime target of animal rights protest, for using dogs

in sales demonstrations of surgical products, Hirsch via U.S.

Surgical in 1987-1989 hired the now defunct private security firm

Perceptions International to spy on Friends of Animals and other

activist groups. One undercover Perceptions operative, Mary Lou

Sappone, was elected president of the Connecticut Animal Rights

Alliance, nominated by former CARA president Wayne Pacelle, who is

now a senior vice president for the Humane Society of the U.S.--even

though CARA cofounder Kim Bartlett, now ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher,

had already identified her as an informer.

In January 1988, Sappone tried unsuccessfully to interest

ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton in a plot to " blow up " Hirsch,

apparently unaware that Clifton was not an activist but a newspaper

reporter, who mistook her for a raving drunk, told her the bombing

plot was a " half-assed idiotic idea, " and told others present that

she was talking crazy.

In April 1988, Sappone met New York City dog rescuer Fran

Trutt, whom she encouraged and financially assisted in placing a

bomb in Hirsch's parking space at the U.S. Surgical headquarters in

Norwalk, Connecticut. In November 1988, Trutt was driven to the

scene, with the bomb, by another Perceptions undercover operative,

Marc Mead, who had arranged for her to be arrested in a police

ambush.

 

Spy vs. spy

 

Trutt served a year in prison. Sappone and Perceptions

International founding partner Jan Reber may still be involved in

surveillance and disruption of animal rights activity, under new

aliases. Their whereabouts as Sappone and Reber are not presently

known, but former associates have tentatively identified their

presence in photographs and covert video taken of marine

mammal-related activism during the past two years. Their possible

appearances have occurred in proximity to an individual whom ANIMAL

PEOPLE believes may be Bill Wewer, best known as legal counsel for

the anti-animal rights front Putting People First, which in 1997

renamed itself Putting Liberty First.

Responding in February 1997 to questions from ANIMAL PEOPLE,

Wewer said he had " moled into a movement organization using an

identity which, although assumed, does contain a humorous clue to

my real identity, if you know how to look for it. "

In archaic Germanic languages a " wewer " may be a weir, a

small stream or spillway, a pitcher or basin--or a werewolf.

An individual of self-professedly mysterious background in

military intelligence named Rick Spill, with physical resemblance to

Wewer, was marine mammal consultant for the Animal Welfare Institute

from 1993 until May 1997, when he left abruptly and was replaced by

longtime controversial marine mammal activist Ben White. Spill

denied being Wewer, supported by affidavits from Doris Day Animal

League president Holly Hazard, Animal Legal Defense Fund attorney

Valerie Stanley, and several Washington D.C. housemates.

One housemate later told EnviroWatch investigator Carroll

Cox, however, that contrary to the affidavit, Spill could not be

definitively placed at that address at a time when Wewer was making a

public appearance in Montana.

The Social Security number Spill used at AWI traced to three

different individuals, in various parts of the U.S.; public records

indicate no births of males within a week of his stated date and

place of birth; and he departed AWI, he told associates, to attend

to matters associated with the death of his 85-year-old mother in

Maine, but ANIMAL PEOPLE was unable to locate any record of anyone

female dying in Maine during the right several days who was in the

right age range to have been Spill's mother.

As ANIMAL PEOPLE pursued the investigation, Washington

state

marine mammal activist Athena McIntyre told Cox and affirmed in

writing that Spill in March 1997 solicited her help to arrange for

" police " he claimed to know to " rough up " ANIMAL PEOPLE editor

Clifton. McIntyre did not cooperate, and no such " roughing up "

occurred.

Wewer in a December 1992 letter to Mark Berman of Earth

Island Institute identified himself as representing Norwegian whalers

who belonged to PPF. Before joining his wife Kathleen Marquardt at

PPF in March 1990, Wewer did legal work, in association with

Valerie Stanley, for the 1990 March for the Animals; incorporated

the Doris Day Animal League in 1987, remaining on the payroll until

March 1990; and--with Marquardt and others--formed the National

Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which ran afoul

of two Congressional investigations and was reprimanded by the U.S.

Postal Service and the Justice Department in the mid-1980s for

allegedly misleading fundraising.

Hirsch may also have an indirect association with Norwegian

whalers and sealers, both through his political and philosophical

alignment with the so-called wise use movement, and via relatives of

his wife, Norwegian-born Turi Josefsen, whose investments in U.S.

Surgical have reputedly made her the highest-paid woman in history,

with annual income said to have exceeded $20 million several times.

Josefsen has long been rumored in animal rights circles to have come

from a whaling and/or sealing family, but unlike the flamboyant

Hirsch, she has rarely if ever discussed her background with media,

and ANIMAL PEOPLE has not been able to ascertain the substance of the

rumors.

Fixing for a fight of Leviathans

(From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998.)

 

NEAH BAY, Wash.; NEWPORT, Ore.--If the media drama

underway in the Pacific Northwest was a professional wrestling match,

it would be billed as the Makah Harpooners vs. Willy the Whale,

alias Killer Keiko, orca star of the hit films Free Willy!, Free

Willy II, and Free Willy III.

Scrapping for air time, they might make a show of enmity,

and their partisans might fall for it, but more cynical viewers

would suspect they were working for the same syndicate.

But who might own the syndicate-- Hollywood, or Japan?

Whoever wrote the " Keiko-vs.-Makah " script, literal or

figurative, seems to have worked for four years to bring about an

autumn battle of Leviathans. Captain Paul " The Pirate " Watson and

fellow voyagers of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will try to

put themselves between the Makah whalers and migrating gray whales.

The Free Willy/Keiko Foundation, led by David Phillips, also head of

Earth Island Institute, will meanwhile prepare Keiko to become the

first of his species ever returned to the ocean after prolonged

captivity.

The real struggle will come through your TV and mailbox, as

their causes vie for public interest and donations.

Promoting the Makah position from nearby Victoria, British

Columbia, the Japanese-backed World Council of Whalers almost

certainly hopes the prospective Willy/Keiko release will continue to

distract attention and money away from Neah Bay, where the first

Makah whale-killing in 70 years may set a global precedent for

permitting coastal whaling in the name of preserving cultural

tradition. Already Japan, Norway, Iceland, several Caribbean

nations, and 13 British Columbia coastal tribes are clamoring for

whaling quotas under the same pretext.

The three-year-old World Council of Whalers didn't invent

the

rivalry between the " Cetacean freedom " and " Save the whales "

factions, though. That dates back a decade, when Watson and

Dolphin Project founder Ric O'Barry first clashed over priorities.

Watson, observing that public concern for wild marine

mammals rose roughly parallel with exposure to marine mammals at

captive facilities, steered the Sea Shepherds away from captivity

issues. Pointing out that marine mammals in captivity number in the

hundreds worldwide, most of whom couldn't survive in the wild,

while whole whale species are endangered by fishing and whaling,

Watson eventually orchestrated a campaign against driftnetting with

substantial help from Steve Wynn, owner of The Mirage hotel,

casino, and dolphinarium in Las Vegas.

O'Barry called that a sellout. The rift was amplified by

dissident Sea Shepherds, led by former executive director Ben White,

who eventually resigned under pressure, along with several other

longtime crew members. Disagreements pertaining to marine mammal

captivity were only a few of many reasons cited for their departure.

Watson and Mirage executives told ANIMAL PEOPLE that White had even

solicited Mirage funding himself, a point White denied. White had

been associated with the Sea Shepherds since 1981, following and

somewhat overlapping approximately a decade of intermittant and

sometimes controversial involvement with Native American causes.

Whatever the truth of the Watson/White split, and their

relations with Wynn and the Mirage, lingering ill feeling simmered,

coming to center on captivity especially after the first Free Willy

film focused activist attention on Keiko in mid-1993. Keiko was then

kept at the substandard El Reino Aventura oceanarium in Mexico City.

A fast-rising campaign to relocate him eclipsed media note

that Norway unilaterally resumed commercial whaling. While Seattle

telecommunications magnate Craig McCaw contributed a reported $2

million via the McCaw Foundation to " free Willy, " and the public

tossed in millions more, the Sea Shepherds scuttled at least three

Norwegian whaling ships at dockside, clashed with the Norwegian

coast guard on the high seas, and struggled to find the funds to

keep going, all to virtual U.S. media silence.

By spring 1995, Norway had killed more than 600 minke

whales. U.S. vice president Al Gore at a White House meeting with

Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland had in effect traded

indifference by the Bill Clinton administration for completion of a

$261 million missile sale to Norway--as reported in the July/August

1994 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE but practically nowhere else until long

afterward.

 

Cult

 

Watson in a June 1995 ANIMAL PEOPLE guest column entitled

" The Cult of Animal Celebrity " challenged the growing activist

fixation on Keiko and other captivity cases. But his frustrations

were just beginning.

On May 25, 1995, soon after Interior Secretary Bruce

Babbitt declared that gray whales were no longer a threatened or

endangered species, and a week after Watson's column went to press,

the Makah announced their intent to begin killing gray whales in

1996, claiming a right to do so under an 1855 treaty.

The Sea Shepherds pledged to " directly intervene. " Mass

media again paid little attention.

As early as June 13, 1995, International Wildlife

Coalition

marine mammologist Jose Truda Palazzo warned from Brazil via the

MARMAM Internet bulletin board for marine scientists that the

Japanese might use the Makah whaling strategy as a precedent to

reopen commercial whaling under an argument of cultural

justification. But mass media and even the International Wildlife

Coalition itself made little of Truda Palazzo's suspicions, which he

reinforced by citing several precedents involving Japanese conduct as

regards international conservation agreements.

A few days later, Makah " minister of fisheries " Daniel

Green

killed a gray whale in a salmon net, and distributed the meat among

the tribe. Humans reportedly ate little of it. Most became dog

food, or just waste.

On June 19, 1995, the Sea Shepherds exposed federal and

state funding of a " protected marina complex from which Makah tribe

whaling boats will operate. "

 

Distraction

 

The sequence of incidents might have produced a furor.

Instead, International Wildlife Coalition president Daniel Morast

and much of the rest of the marine mammal activist community appeared

wholly preoccupied with infighting at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary.

Located at a former dolphin exhibition facility in the

Florida Keys, owned by the family of Lloyd Good III, Sugarloaf was

supposed to rehabilitate for eventual release two dolphins from a

private club, whose names were Bogie and Bacall, who arrived in

August 1994, and three ex-U.S. Navy dolphins, delivered on November

30. The dolphins were obtained after long campaigns led by Ric

O'Barry, Joe Roberts of the Dolphin Alliance, Russ Rector of the

Dolphin Freedom Foundation, and Rick Trout, who later founded the

Marine Mammal Conservancy.

The organization of Sugarloaf coincided with the arrival in

marine mammal acitivism of one Rick Spill, who signed the " S " in his

name as a dollar sign. Representing himself as a Vietnam veteran and

former naval intelligence operative, Spill was marine mammal

consultant for the Animal Welfare Institute from mid-1993 until May

1997. During the first year of this time he was also earning a

masters degree in marine science from the University of Miami, with

emphasis on maritime law--which gave him frequent reason to visit

south Florida. Spill organized an association of marine mammal

activists called The Gadfly Coalition, and was elected to the

Sugarloaf board of directors.

Two weeks after the Navy dolphins arrived, Spill had a

prominent role in forcing Rector, Trout, and Lynne Springer,

Trout's companion, out of Sugarloaf and the Gadfly Coalition, after

they clashed with O'Barry over training methods.

Having trained dolphins for the Navy before leaving and

denouncing the Navy dolphin program in 1989, Trout had already

become skeptical of Spill's purported naval background and war

stories.

From that point on, major incidents involving the

resumption

of the Atlantic Canada seal hunt in early 1995 after a 10-year

suspension, Norwegian whaling, Japanese " research " whaling, and/or

the Sea Shepherds usually seemed to coincide with public escallation

of the Sugarloaf hostilities. Usually the Sugarloaf trouble preceded

the incidents involving wild marine mammal killing by two or three

days.

On March 14, 1995, for instance, Roberts fired O'Barry,

who refused to accept the action--just as Watson and actor Martin

Sheen arrived at Iles-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, to protest the 1995

seal hunt. The Sugarloaf fracas usurped U.S. media notice, even

after sealers on March 16 stormed the hotel where the Sea Shepherds

were staying, beating Watson.

Immediately preceding the Makah announcement of intent to

whale, Spill and other off-site Sugarloaf board members, including

Mark Berman of Earth Island Institute, in late May 1995 moved to

close the sanctuary and take the dolphins away from O'Barry and Good,

who countered on June 16, 1995 with a lawsuit.

 

Veal

 

That's when O'Barry, quite upset, first suggested to

ANIMAL

PEOPLE that Spill might be worth investigating as " some sort of

infiltrator. "

Introduced to Spill by Ben White a year earlier, O'Barry

developed an intuition of something wrong, he explained, when he

noticed Spill was eating veal--produced by keeping calves in dark

crates which severely restrict their movement, and shunned by most

animal rights activists. O'Barry said he had confirmed it was veal

with the cook at the restaurant where they met. But O'Barry hadn't

taken the matter any farther, he added, because other activists

reminded him of the purported necessity of maintaining a united front

while negotiating to get the dolphins.

By mid-June 1995, O'Barry argued that trying to maintain

movement unity had only achieved a year of turmoil, delaying

releases which he and Rector agreed could have been accomplished

within a month or two of the dolphins' arrival--if the Gadfly

Coalition hadn't been involved.

Weighing O'Barry's intuition, and similar suspicions voiced

later by Rector and Trout, ANIMAL PEOPLE soon noted an apparent

strong physical resemblance between Spill and one Bill Wewer, an

attorney self-professedly fond of veal, who in 1990-1991 was leading

spokesperson for the anti-animal rights organization Putting People

First.

Renamed Putting Liberty First in 1997, PPF was founded in

September 1989 by Wewer's wife, Kathleen Marquardt. Together, they

had earlier been two of the four members of the board of directors of

the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare,

which Wewer founded. They left in 1986 after the NPSSM received

rebukes from the U.S. Postal Service and the Justice Department for

allegedly mailing misleading fundraising appeals, and twice came

under Congressional investigation.

Wewer subsequently incorporated the Doris Day Animal League

and drafted contracts for the 1990 March for the Animals, but jumped

from DDAL and the March to assume his PPF position on March 21,

1990. Rarely seen in public after mid-1991, Wewer in a December

1992 letter to Mark Berman identified himself as representing

Norwegian whalers who belonged to PPF.

Keeping an eye on Spill from mid-1995 on, ANIMAL PEOPLE

noted a continuing sequence of events, usually but not always

involving Spill and/or Ben White, which tended to refocus activist

attention on captivity issues any time either the Sea Shepherds, the

Makah whaling proposal, or the Atlantic Canada seal hunt seemed

about to take the spotlight.

 

Whales & jail

 

On August 29, 1995, two weeks before Watson was to go on

trial in St. Johns, Newfoundland, facing a potential life sentence

on charges resulting from a confrontation with the Cuban dragnetting

vessel Rio Las Casas in July 1993, White reputedly brokered a

settlement of crossfiled lawsuits between O'Barry vs. the Dolphin

Alliance and the Gadfly Coalition. Under the settlement, the

Dolphin Alliance took Bogie and Bacall to a sea pen on the Indian

River. O'Barry kept the Navy dolphins. Other parts of the deal were

in dispute again within 48 hours. Roberts had O'Barry jailed for

alleged trespassing. As that made headlines, the Watson trial drew

extensive note in Canada, but virtually none in the U.S. Convicted

of the least serious among four charges, Watson served a 60-day jail

term.

Keiko was finally moved from El Reino Aventura to the Oregon

Coast Aquarium, his home for the past 32 months, in January 1996.

Attention to his arrival predictably upstaged Sea Shepherd efforts

against the 1996 Canadian seal hunt.

As the Makah pursued permission to whale from the

International Whaling Commission in May 1996, they did draw

publicity. On May 17, 1996, however, an individual never caught

or identified by law enforcement clandestinely freed Bogie and

Bacall. O'Barry, fearing the National Marine Fisheries Service

would then reclaim the Navy dolphins, publicly freed two of them six

days later. They were soon recaptured--by Trout-- and were returned

to Navy custody .

The episode lured the TV cameras back to Florida, away from

the Makah, for most of a month.

Amid Internet buzzing over who was to blame for what,

Congressional pressure rallied by Rep. Jack Metcalf (R-Washington) at

request of the Sea Shepherds on June 26, 1996 obliged the U.S.

delegation to the International Whaling Commission to delay

presenting the Makah whaling quota application until 1997. It was

advanced again only after the Clinton administration and Republican

Congress, both sensitive about their environmental records, were

re-elected.

Ben White meanwhile took two Makah tribal elders to the IWC

meeting, and claimed their lobbying at the scene was responsible for

the postponement. Watson issued a conciliatory press release,

sharing the credit.

The upstaging continued. Notably, the August 20, 1997

announcement of the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation that Keiko had

finally learned to catch his own fish pre-empted mass media note that

on August 22, 1997 the National Marine Fisheries Service published a

required environmental assessment of the Makah whaling proposal,

which in effect gave it the go-ahead for presentation at the

International Whaling Commission meeting of October 1997.

As the IWC at last took up the Makah proposal, whatever

print space and air time might have been devoted to marine mammals

was diverted when a dispute erupted between the Free Willy/Keiko

Foundation and the Oregon Coast Aquarium over Keiko's care and

rehabilitation. The fracas reached media via the former Gadfly

Coaltion, renamed and much more formally constituted as the Cetacean

Freedom Network. On Friday, October 17, as the IWC delegates

arrived in Monaco for the meeting, the Washington Post Syndicate

distributed an extensive account of the latest turns in the Keiko

saga. It appeared in the Washington Post itself and in many other

major newspapers on Monday, October 20--the first day of the IWC

meeting--and was usually published with photographs, while IWC

coverage if published at all tended to be no more than a paragraph,

without illustration.

 

Whaling approved

 

Mass media did take note when the Makah whaling quota was

apparently approved, lumped together with purported subsistence

quotas for Siberian tribes.

Whether the IWC actually intended to approve Makah whaling

is

disputed by some activists, and may become the subject of legal

action. Since then, however, the Clinton/Gore administration and

the Makah have proceeded as if killing up to five whales in October

is a go.

Still the upstaging went on. As the World Council of

Whalers

met in Victoria during the first week of March 1998, and visited the

Makah, the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation announced it would move Keiko

to a sea pen in August. Activists were further diverted by protest,

led by Ben White, against U.S. Navy sonic experiments off Hawaii.

Seattle-area media reported on the whalers' visit a week

afterward--and even then tended to focus on Makah traditions, rather

than the possible precedent for other would-be whaling nations.

Friends of Animals had hired White in July 1994 as Pacific

Northwest representative and marine mammal consultant. Based first

in Port Townsend, Washington, and later in Friday Harbor, White

repeatedly clashed with the Sea Shepherds during the next two and a

half years over campaign tactics pertaining to both the Makah whaling

proposal and sea lion predation on endangered salmon runs. When the

Sea Shepherds offered to relocate sea lions caught eating salmon at

Ballard Locks, near Seattle, White occupied the cage set up by

fisheries officials to hold trapped sea lions. The cage was later

smashed and sunk by unknown vandals--which both the Sea Shepherds and

National Marine Fisheries Service officials told ANIMAL PEOPLE might

have brought the shootings of any sea lions who subsequently turned

up.

White was eventually reprimanded for making a telephone call

to the Sea Shepherd headquarters, caught on tape, in which he

threatened that FoA would destroy the Sea Shepherds because Watson

had not endorsed a campaign seeking to release or transfer the

Vancouver Aquarium whales.

FoA fired White in January 1997. A review of telephone

calls

White had billed to FoA since his hiring found that more than a third

were to numbers answered by Spill.

 

Spill

 

ANIMAL PEOPLE pursued investigation of Spill by seeking

Wewer. In February 1997 Wewer responded by fax to questions from

ANIMAL PEOPLE by boasting that he had " moled into a movement

organization using an identity which, although assumed, does

contain a humorous clue to my real identity, if you know how to look

for it. "

In archaic Germanic languages a " wewer " may be a weir, a

small stream or spillway, a pitcher or basin--or a werewolf.

ANIMAL PEOPLE had already picked up a hint, indirectly

leaked from Putting People First, that Animal Welfare Institute

moves pertaining to the eventually killed but then still pending

European Union ban on imports of trapped fur were perhaps known in

advance by fur trade lobbyists.

In March 1997 ANIMAL PEOPLE tipped Animal Welfare Institute

founder Christine Stevens and executive director Cathy Liss to the

possible presence of a spy on their payroll. Confronted, Spill

denied being Wewer, as ANIMAL PEOPLE reported in July/August 1998.

Spill gave Stevens and Liss affidavits that he was not

Wewer,

signed by Doris Day Animal League president Holly Hazard, Animal

Legal Defense Fund attorney Valerie Stanley, who was formerly

Hazard's law partner, and several Washington D.C. housemates.

But as ANIMAL PEOPLE also reported in July/August 1998, one

housemate later told EnviroWatch investigator Carroll Cox that

contrary to the affidavit, Spill could not be definitively placed at

that address at a time when Wewer was making a public appearance in

Montana. The Social Security number Spill used at AWI traced to

three different individuals, in various parts of the U.S.; public

records indicate no births of males within a week of his stated date

and place of birth; and he abruptly left AWI in May 1997, he told

associates, to attend to matters associated with the death of his

85-year-old mother in Maine, but ANIMAL PEOPLE was unable to locate

any record of anyone female dying in Maine during the right several

days who was in the right age range to have been Spill's mother.

There was more. ANIMAL PEOPLE and Cox compiled a long list

of quirks that Spill and Wewer seemed to share. Individuals using

the same SSN as Spill had rented premises close to several prominent

west coast marine mammal facilities. Another rented premises in

proximity to a subsequent series of alleged Animal Liberation Front

arsons and break-ins against fur farms and other animal use industry

targets, each of which didn't appear to lastingly harm the

enterprises in question, yet did produce negative public response.

Did it mean anything?

As ANIMAL PEOPLE and Enviro-Watch followed the trail,

Washington state marine mammal activist Athena McIntyre told Cox and

affirmed in writing that Spill in March 1997, apparently soon after

Liss and Stevens talked to him, solicited her help to arrange for

" police " he claimed to know to " rough up " ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merrit

Clifton. McIntyre did not cooperate; no such " roughing up " occurred.

API hired White in place of Spill. ANIMAL PEOPLE and

EnviroWatch continued to note coincidences, including Spill's

contact with individuals whom acquaintances repeatedly identified

from a variety of photographs and videos as Mary Lou Sappone and Jan

Reber. The person whom three sources identified as Sappone was said

by Spill to be a " girlfriend. " The person who appeared possibly to

be Reber was a supposed tourist who was photographed and videotaped

in the act of allegedly assaulting Spill during a 1997 demonstration

at Marine World Africa USA. The episode enhanced Spill's credibility

among the Cetacean Freedom Network, but Marine World Africa USA

witnesses told ANIMAL PEOPLE they suspected it might have been

choreographed. No charges were filed. Spill told other

demonstrators that he might sue Marine World Africa USA, but the

only subsequent legal action was apparently a demand from Ben White

that the facility refund the demonstrators' entrance fees. White

said this was done.

Reber, a decade earlier, was a partner in Perceptions

International, a private security firm hired by U.S. Surgical Inc.

to spy on animal rights activists. Sappone was a Perceptions

operative, who infiltrated Friends of Animals as a volunteer, was

elected president of the Connecticut Animal Rights Alliance, and

allegedly encouraged and financially assisted one Fran Trutt, of New

York City, in a November 1988 attempted bombing of the U.S. Surgical

parking lot. Sappone and Marc Mead, another Perceptions undercover

operative, also arranged for Trutt's arrest at the scene, much

publicized by U.S. Surgical. Trutt plea-bargained a year in prison.

Others of possible dual identity and conflicting values also

turned up near Spill.

 

Are we nuts?

 

Perhaps all the factional name-calling and coincidences of

timing and location amount to no more than the usual activist hoopla.

Perhaps we're paranoid, perhaps the reputedly wimpish Wewer is

really just Wewer, and perhaps the weightlifting, tough-talking

Spill never was anyone else.

In any event, if the ongoing confluences of events have all

been plotted, they would require the connivance of even

better-placed participants to go on as they have, long after Spill

and many of his apparent friends lowered their profiles.

Among the highlights, Free Willy/Keiko Foundation personnel

during the first week in March visited Iceland, Scotland, and

Ireland, inspecting potential sea pen sites for Keiko. Associated

Press reported their findings on March 14, one day before the

scheduled start of this year's seal hunt-- which was then delayed by

poor ice conditions.

On April 16, an Icelandic veterinary team assessed Keiko at

the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Coverage of their visit upstaged the Sea

Shepherds' April 22 disclosure that the Makah whale hunt is to begin

October 1.

On June 17, the same day the Japanese " research " whaler

Nisshin Maru unloaded 100 dead minke whales, the Free Willy/Keiko

Foundation announced that Icelandic prime minister David Oddsson

agreed back on June 9 that Keiko could be moved to a sea pen at

Klettsvik, Iceland. Iceland, a whaling nation, before this year

opposed any return of Keiko to Icelandic waters, where he was

captured in 1980. TV stations worldwide mostly aired footage of the

live Keiko, not the dead minkes.

On July 21, the Baffin Island Inuit killed a highly

endangered bowhead whale. The Sea Shepherds announced that their

flagship, the Sea Shepherd III, would pay a visit to Neah Bay two

days later to draw attention to Makah whaling. The U.S. Coast Guard

called a press conference to announce rules for on-the-water protest

during the Makah whaling. The Free Willy/Keiko Foundation again

pre-empted media notice, however, by announcing completion of the

sea pen.

On July 23, the Sea Shepherd III anchored in Neah Bay, but

even local media were more inclined to banner an annonymous death

threat against Keiko, reportedly received by Free Willy/Keiko

Foundation spokesperson Hallur Hallsson.

As ANIMAL PEOPLE goes to press, Keiko is to be flown from

the Oregon Coast Aquarium to Iceland on September 9. That should

insure a further barrage of attention to him coinciding with the

arrival of migrating gray whales within shooting range of the Makah.

Get yourself a ringside seat. --

M.C.

 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2006:

 

Ghosts of 9/11 & December 7 haunt animal advocacy

 

Then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that

December 7, 1941 was " A date which shall forever live in infamy, "

because on that morning a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor

brought the U.S. into World War II.

Unfortunately, as Americans belatedly responded to

totalitarian empire builders, who had already been invading their

neighbors since 1937, some Americans took advantage of the crisis to

behave much like the enemy, aided and augmented by some branches of

the U.S. government itself.

Nothing of note was done to overt Nazi sympathizers, including some

prominent industrialists, but U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were

interned in remote work camps, ostensibly for their own protection.

Conscientious objectors fared little better, including many

of the most prominent ethical vegetarians of their generation.

The excesses on the domestic front during World War II, and

more recent U.S. government abuse of dissidents during the so-called

McCarthy Era and the Vietnam War, resurfaced in public debate

shortly before December 7, 2005.

The George W. Bush administration found itself having

unexpected difficulty persuading Congress that all of the invasive

provisions of the so-called Patriot Act--rushed to passage after the

terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001--warranted reauthorization.

Hundreds of innocent Americans of Islamic background were wrongly

detained, thousands of lives were disrupted, and some victims of

mistaken identity were even kidnapped, flown to secret locations

abroad, and subjected to prolonged isolation and torture.

Having failed for five years to capture 9/11 architect Osama

bin Laden, despite repeated public pledges to " smoke him out, " the

Bush administration badly needed to bust some alleged terrorists.

Was it merely coincidence, then, or a matter of political timing,

that on December 7, 2005 the FBI and local law enforcement

prominently arrested six alleged domestic terrorists for acts claimed

between mid-1997 and mid-2001 in the names of the Animal Liberation

Front and Earth Liberation Front?

" Federal investigators seemed powerless to stop the fires

that were set with gasoline-filled five-gallon plastic buckets and

followed with calling cards from the ELF and ALF, " wrote Jeff

Barnard of Associated Press. " Then, after Muslim terrorists struck

New York and Washington, D.C., the fires set by extremists in the

Northwest stopped, " as if the attackers recognized that 9/11 would

change public attitudes toward violent acts of protest, and would

enable law enforcement to more vigorously pursue the perpetrators.

" In 2002, " Barnard continued, " investigators got a break

when one of the people involved in firebombing a logging company and

a gravel pit in 2001 told his girlfriend, and she told her dad, a

state fire marshal. Three people were convicted. The alleged

leader, Michael 'Tre Arrow' Scarpitti, is being held in Victoria,

British Columbia, on a shoplifting charge, fighting extradition. "

But, Barnard observed, " It would be three more years before

authorities moved, " to round up the rest of the alleged ALF/ELF gang.

Did the FBI merely continue to build their case against the

other alleged conspirators all this time, or--knowing that they had

given up violent tactics--keeping them in reserve, under

surveillance, for a time when producing quick, dramatic results

might be necessary?

 

Facing trial

 

Defendants Stanislas Gregory " Jack " Meyerhoff, 28, and

Daniel Gerard McGowan, 31, now face potential sentences of life in

prison for alleged arsons that did more than $1 million apiece at the

Superior Lumber Company in Glendale, Oregon, in January 2001, and

the Jefferson Poplar Farm in Clatskanie, Oregon, in May 2001.

Meyerhoff, a student at Piedmont Community College, was

arrested in Charlottesville, Virginia.

" Last spring Meyerhoff was an honor student at Central Oregon

Community College in Bend, Oregon, " reported Hal Benton of the

Seattle Times. " Public records indicate that in the late 1990s,

Meyerhoff lived in Eugene, which has been the scene of numerous

arsons and other actions linked to activists involved with--or on the

fringes of--the ELF. "

McGowan, 31, the youngest child of a retired New York City

transit police patrolman, was arrested in New York City. He worked

in Brooklyn for the Women's Law Initiative, a project formed to help

abuse victims.

Chelsea Dawn " Country Girl " Gerlach, 28, arrested in Portland,

Oregon, with her Canadian housemate Darren Thurston, 35, could get

25 years in prison for allegedly assisting two other defendants in a

December 30, 1999 attempt to topple a Bonneville Power Administration

transmission tower. Gerlach, a student at Lane Community College in

Portland, is also charged with involvement in firebombing the

Childers Meat Company in Eugene on Mother's Day, 1999, and in the

Jefferson Poplar Farm arson.

Assistant U.S. attorney Kirk Engdahl alleged at Gerlach's

arraignment that Thurston was living with her as an illegal alien.

Held on immigration charges in Tacoma, Thurston is a prime suspect

in five U.S. arsons. Engdahl reportedly cited an October 11, 1998

fire at the Bureau of Land Management wild horse corrals in Rock

Springs, Wyoming; the firebombing of a ski resort at Vail,

Colorado, eight days later, which did $12 million in damage; a

Christmas 1999 fire at the Boise Cascade office in Monmouth, Oregon;

the Jefferson Poplar Farm arson; and the May 21, 2001 firebombing

of a University of Washington horticultural research center, doing

$1.5 million in damage.

Gerlach was named but not charged as a suspect in the Vail arson.

Thurston carried a Social Security card identifying himself

as " Kevin Gregory Barske. " An individual by that name, who had no

connection to Thurston, was valedictorian of the Manitoba

Association of Radiologists graduating class in Winnipeg on September

24, 2005.

Thurston was the only one of the December 7, 2005 arrestees who

could be described as " well-known to police. "

Reputedly nicknamed " The Mad Bomber " in high school, Thurston was

convicted in 1992 of firebombing three trucks belonging to an

Edmonton fish dealer, and of a June 1992 break-in at the University

of Alberta, with David Barbarash, now 41. His criminal record

began with vandalism at the University of Toronto veterinary school

in 1986.

Thurston and Barbarash were jointly charged in March 1998

with allegedly mailing razor blade devices to furriers, hunting

guides, and hunting columnists.

Thurston and Barbarash were also accused of sending pipe

bombs to Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, of Toronto, and white

supremacist Charles Scott, of British Columbia. Both escaped

injury. The day before Scott received a bomb, however, a mail bomb

severely injured animal researcher Terry Mitenko, of Cochrane,

Alberta, in a case authorities and media believed was related.

Thurston and Barbarash were not charged with that offense.

The March 1998 charges against Thurston and Barbarash were

dropped, said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to avoid

jeopardizing another international investigation. More than seven

years later, the specifics of that investigation are still

unclear--but it predated all but one of the incidents involved in the

ELF/ALF arrests.

Also named but not charged in connection with the Vail arson

was William Courtney " Avalon " Rodgers, 40, a bookstore owner in

Prescott, Arizona. Law enforcement sources said Rodgers had

recently separated from his longtime partner Katie Rose Nelson, but

Nelson quickly emerged as a character witness for him.

Rodgers was charged with three other arsons, beginning with

the November 1997 burning of a Bureau of Land Management horse corral

at Burns, Oregon, that did $450,000 in damage. That was the fourth

action ever claimed by the ELF. No one has been accused yet of the

first three.

" In the first physical evidence disclosed in the case, the

inventory of a six-hour search of Rodgers' residence and bookstore

listed boxes of suspected bomb-making materials such as timers,

re-lighting birthday candles, and three guns. Police also found two

digital photos of nude prepubescent girls stored on a compact disc, "

wrote Nicole Frey of the Vail Daily.

Either very late on December 21 or early the next morning,

Rodgers used a clear plastic bag from the Flagstaff jail commissary

to suffocate himself. Gerlach was immediately placed on suicide

watch.

Kevin M. " Bob " Tubbs, 36, was arrested in Springfield,

Oregon. He faces 30 years in prison for allegedly firebombing 35

sport utility vehicles at Joe Romania Chevrolet in Eugene on March

30, 2001, and for burning a USDA research station in Olympia,

Washington, on June 21, 1998.

Two other individuals, Jeffrey Luers and Craig Marshall,

were convicted in 2001 of a separate firebombing at Joe Romania

Chevolet in June 2000 that destroyed three pickup trucks. Luers was

sentenced to 22 years, eight months; Marshall drew five and a half

years on a plea bargain. He is reportedly now free on parole.

Sarah Kendall Harvey, 28, also known as Kendall Tankersley,

was arrested in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she was an administrative

assistant at Northern Arizona University. Harvey/Tankersley lived in

Eugene from 1996 to 2000. She was charged with arson and attempted

arson in connection with a fire that did $500,000 worth of damage to

a U.S. Forest Industries office in Medford, Oregon, on December 28,

1998.

" A graduate of Humboldt State University in California with a

degree in molecular biology, Harvey pleaded guilty in 1997 to three

misdemeanors, " Associated Press reported, " after being arrested at

a nonviolent anti-logging protest. " Harvey/Tankersley also had a

1999 conviction for trespassing on railroad property.

The arrests brought top-of-the-news coverage both in the five

cities where suspects were caught, and in the nearest cities to the

crime scenes. The number of cities involved practically guaranteed

that the story would go national. Additional publicity boosts came

from two unrelated cases that also involved alleged ideological

terrorism.

Self-described ELF activist Christopher McIntosh, 23, on

December 15, 2005 drew eight years in prison for setting a January

20, 2003 predawn fire at a McDonald's restaurant near the Seattle

Space Needle.

Peter Daniel Young, 28, was charged on December 23, 2005

with third degree burglary, intentional damage to property and

" animal enterprise trespass " in Watertown, South Dakota, for

releasing mink from the now defunct Turbak Mink Ranch near Kransburg

in 1997. Young pleaded guilty to federal charges based on the same

incident in August 2005, and drew a two-year prison sentence.

Accomplice Justin Samuel, captured in Belgium in 1999, already

served a two-year term.

 

Domestic spying

 

Firebombings committed in the name of a cause are terrorism,

by any reasonable definition. Arresting terrorists, even if they

have not directly or intentionally threatened either human or animal

lives, is clearly necessary.

Probably no one will ever prove definitively that the Bush

administration manipulated the timing of the ALF/ELF busts to help

push the Patriot Act renewal through to passage.

But among the revelations during an ongoing series of

investigations, hearings, and panel reports about unauthorized Bush

administration spying on U.S. citizens were that activist groups

including PETA and Greenpeace were among the targets--and certainly

the Bush administration knew that this information would come out.

" After the attacks of September 11, 2001, " explained Eric

Lichtblau of The New York Times, " John Ashcroft, who was then

attorney general, loosened restrictions on the FBI's investigative

power. The FBI used that authority to investigate not only groups

with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups

suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

" One FBI document, " Lichtblau continued, citing materials

obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, " indicates that

agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a

'Vegan Community Project.' Another document indicates the bureau's

interest in determining the location of a PETA protest over llama fur.

" The documents indicate, " Lichtblau added, " that in some

cases the FBI has used employees, interns, and other confidential

informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on

potential criminal activity. "

If such infiltration had actually demonstrably contributed to

capturing ALF/ELF suspects, or other people who have actually been

charged with terrorism, the tactics might have been warranted.

" But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's

confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without

warrants, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the

government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts

of civil disobedience and lawful protest, " Lichtblau summarized.

In short, the espionage was literally unwarranted.

And, when persons who do not actually support a cause are inserted

into the cause as spies, there is the constant risk that they will

act as saboteurs and agents provocateur.

 

Agents provocateur

 

Infiltrators have at times in the past proved to be among the

hardest-working and most reliable members of activist groups, as

part of their cover. Such paradoxes make agents provocateur

especially difficult to detect and expose, and especially dangerous

to a cause.

Agents provocateur tend to be mistaken for super-activists:

those who do the most, take the greatest risks, donate the most

money, and espouse the most radical positions. They often are among

the protesters who are most often arrested, yet time and again win

release on technicalities, sometimes after spending time in jail

with someone else who gets a long sentence based on tips from

confidential informants.

Some agents provocateur are in fact super-activists, who

never realize that the admirers slipping them funding for disruptive

activities are not sympathizers but handlers, counting on the

unwitting agents provocateur to do things that backfire--like many of

the major actions claimed by the ELF.

The ELF name surfaced in 1996, John H. Cushman Jr. and

Evelyn Nieves of The New York Times reported in 1998, when it " was

spray-painted at the scene when someone damaged trucks at a Forest

Service ranger station; a few days later another ranger station in

the area was set afire. "

Those arsons contributed to the pretext for increased law

enforcement against opponents of old-growth logging.

The ELF apparently first linked itself to the ALF in claiming

a mink release at Mount Angel, Oregon, on May 31, 1997. The

remains of many mink allegedly trampled by the perpetrators were

displayed on TV.

The ELF and ALF next claimed to have jointly set a July 21, 1997

fire at the Cavel West horse killing plant in Redmond, Oregon.

During 1997-1998 ANIMAL PEOPLE learned--and reported in

November 1998--that a person using the same Social Security number as

individuals known as Bill Wewer and Rick Spill had rented premises

near Mount Angel, and near highways to the sites of other early ELF

actions.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has long suspected that Wewer and Spill were

the same man.

Wewer, an attorney and direct mail fundraiser, drafted the

incorporation of the Doris Day Animal League in 1986. In 1989-1990,

Wewer simultaneously represented both the " March for the Animals "

and the anti-animal rights group Putting People First, founded by

his wife Kathleen Marquardt.

PPF, now defunct, defended whalers, sealers, furriers, and the

Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus.

PPF also received donor lists and other materials stolen from

PETA and the Performing Animal Welfare Society by covert operators

working for a private security firm called Richlin Consultants,

according to information disclosed to PETA and PAWS by former Richlin

operative Steven Kendall.

Richlin Consultants was directed by Clair George, CIA deputy

director of operations from July 1984 to December 1997. Further

particulars about it may emerge in February 2006, when a PETA

lawsuit against Ringling for funding the infiltration is due to go to

trial.

Wewer later represented the Ventura County Humane Society,

until his reported death in San Francisco on April 1, 1999. ANIMAL

PEOPLE learned that the San Francisco coroner's office never actually

saw a body.

Rick Spill in 1993-1997 handled marine mammal issues for the

Animal Welfare Institute, and was instrumental in the 1994-1995

breakup of the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary, the largest-ever attempt

in the U.S. to rehabilitate captive dolphins for return to the wild.

Spill was apparently last seen within the animal cause at the

November 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.

ANIMAL PEOPLE continues to monitor the activities of an

individual of similar features, build, and habits who emerged as an

outspoken anti-animal rights activist in 1999.

Despite our suspicions, there is as yet no direct indication

of wise-use manipulation of the ELF, and no trace of wise-use

background among the arrested suspects, but many later ELF actions

contributed to wise-use political success.

Most notably, as a bill to slash funding for the USDA

Wildlife Services government extermination agency was before the

House of Representatives in June 1998, arsons allegedly committed by

the arrested suspects razed two Wildlife Services buildings. The

House approved the funding cut on the first vote, two days later,

but well-hyped backlash helped to reverse the cut the day after that.

The Vail ski lift arson, ostensibly set to protect lynx

habitat, came eight months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

on February 12, 1998 agreed to consider the lynx for Endangered

Species Act protection throughout the Lower 48 states. Protecting

lynx is bitterly opposed by loggers, hunters, trappers, and land

developers. The Vail fire helped to rally backlash that delayed the

first U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service critical habitat designation for

lynx until November 9, 2005.

At that, the designation is unlikely to take effect.

" Lori Nordstrom, a Fish & Wildlife Service wildlife

biologist in Helena, said the agency doubts the effectiveness of the

designation, but seeks to implement it to satisfy legal

requirements, " wrote Susan Gallagher of Associated Press.

Whether or not agents provocateur turn out to have been

directly behind anything the ELF did, at least two of the alleged

arsonists helped to set up the arrests of the others.

The case broke " with the cooperation of one key informant, "

reported Denver Post staff writers Alicia Caldwell, Joey Bunch, and

Steve Lipsher.

" Dubbed 'cooperating witness' by federal investigators, the alleged

Earth Liberation Front insider knew names and dates, and was willing

to wear a wire to record conversations with other members, "

Caldwell, Bunch, and Lipsher continued. " According to those

familiar with such investigations, prosecutors typically cultivate

an informant who will surreptitiously record conversations with

co-conspirators and then charge who they can. Federal prosecutors

also look for defendants, facing potentially long federal prison

terms, to begin flipping, or offering cooperation in exchange for

leniency. That opens the door for additional charges.

" One witness the government is relying on is Jacob Ferguson,

according to Gerlach's lawyer, Craig Weinerman, " Caldwell, Bunch,

and Lipsher wrote. " Ferguson, Weinerman contends, took part in the

arsons but has not been charged. Another witness is Meyerhoff, a

high school classmate of Gerlach's who has been charged but not for

every crime he admitted to participating in, according to court

pleadings. "

Predicted & predictable

None of this is any surprise at all to ANIMAL PEOPLE. Our

September 2001 edition predicted on pages 12-13 that the 9/11

terrorist attacks would provide animal use industries with the

security-conscious political climate they needed to obtain escalated

federal surveillance of animal advocacy. We mentioned the Joe

Romania Chevrolet arsons, the Vail ski lift fire, the

Ringling-funded infiltrations of PETA and PAWS, and many other

instances of espionage and agents provocateur disrupting animal

advocacy, all by way of warning.

We knew what would happen because throughout recorded history

the major animal use industries have repeatedly seized upon poorly

understood external threats to society as a pretext for persecuting

animal advocates.

Two thousand years ago, for example, the Jerusalem Temple

defended their control over the slaughter-and-sacrifice industry by

exploiting Roman fear of a Jewish revolt to persecute opponents of

the Temple's sacrifice-based economic system. Victims included John

the Baptist and Jesus.

Circa 700 years ago the Roman Catholic Church controlled most

of the farmland in Europe, and taxed the proceeds heavily to finance

the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Crusades, all waged within a 30-year

span to repel Islamic influence on the far side of the Mediterranean

Sea.

The Church simultaneously waged the Albigensian Crusade to

exterminate a vegan sect called the Cathari, who would not bear arms

even in their own defense. Mixing antecedents of Protestantism with

possible traces of Brahmin, Jain, or Buddhist teachings, the

Cathari emerged in eastern Europe, but developed enduring popular

support in southern France. The Cathari influenced the pro-animal

teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and Richard of Wyche, Bishop of

Chichester, who was an early British critic of the morality of

slaughter.

About 650 years ago, and again 340 years ago, fear of

bubonic plague enabled agribusiness, as it existed then, to condemn

widowed cat ladies as witches and seize their land. Some may have

been animal hoarders (see " U.S. Supreme Court endorses seizure of

hoarded animals, " page 1), but others were authentic animal lovers.

Civilization itself is widely depicted as having been enabled

by the advent of animal husbandry, though archaeological evidence

increasingly suggests that soil erosion resulting from the

domestication of goats actually brought the collapse of the first

agrarian city-states.

Nothing threatens the economic and cultural established order

more than the prospect of people turning away en masse from the use

of animals for meat, fur, and leather.

Accordingly, animal advocates can expect more paranoia and

persecution any time progress makes animal use industry leaders

nervous and something big scares the public.

Post-9/11 panic has subsided. Political opinion is at last

swinging away from allowing government agencies to commit excesses

against activists in the name of security. But history suggests that

it is in the interludes between intensive government surveillance

that infiltrators and agents provocateur directly sponsored by

industry are most active and dangerous.

A now 20-year-old Canadian government strategy paper called

Defence of the Fur Trade and a similar strategy outline produced a

year later by the American Medical Association both described the

tactic of neutralizing animal advocacy by associating it with

violence.

Simply answering that far more violence is done by trappers,

vivisectors, et al misses the point.

Accepting terrorism of any sort invites infiltration and

disruption, and ultimately retards the cause, no matter how much of

a vicarious feel-good frustrated activists may get from a transiently

successful " direct action. "

Critical to remember, as both Defence of the Fur Trade and

the AMA strategy pointed out, is that most of the public does not

approve of cruelty to animals, when they recognize it. Therefore,

if animal advocates do not commit self-discrediting acts of

terrorism, animal use industry covert operatives often will distract

the public by committing such acts in the name of animal advocacy.

Animal advocates should be aware that seven years before any

ALF or ELF suspect used a pipe bomb, a covert operator named Mary

Lou Sappone, hired by former U.S. Surgical Corporation owner Leon

Hirsch, in November 1988 set up a fringe activist to be caught in

the act of planting a pipe bomb in the U.S. Surgical parking lot.

Why?

Because when the public sees purported animal advocates

involved in violence, that violence becomes the story-- not the

violence going on out in the woods, inside the labs, and inside the

slaughterhouses.

The best defense animal advocates have against such

duplicitous tactics is to avoid any association with violence, so

that agents provocateur become conspicuous.

Convincing the world to treat animals with moral

consideration requires activists to keep the high ground, not from

fear of arrest, but from the likelihood that appearing to be

irrational or dangerous will obscure the message and lead to failure.

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

[Guest guest]

Dear Dr Wedderburn and AAPN members,

I am attaching some

information on the issue that you might find useful. There is a list of quotes

concerning

dolphin captivity and a paper given to me by the Progressive Animal

Welfare Society of Puget Sound on the logistics of releasing Lolita.

As the great marine biologist, Jacques Cousteau, once commented,

" There is as much educational value to be gained from observing

dolphins in captivity as there is in observing solitary human

prisoners languishing in jails. " I kept a very close track on the

Keiko project and thought it was worth it to attempt a release. Many

cetacean experts were of the opinion that he was indeed a very good

candidate for release.

Regarding journalism and activism, our zoo project(both the thesis as

well as the inquiry report that was previously on your website) was

and remains a combination of both. They have been peer reviewed by top

journalists of the BBC, Guardian, Independent, Panorama, 60 Minutes

and Granada Television and have received support from some quarters of

the progressive zoo

industry(Jersey Zoo has expressed support for the Indian Zoo Inquiry

project, informally though.) The project has been covered by the best

newspapers in India and no journalist worth his salt has claimed it to be

factually inaccurate.

The best journalists are doubtless social activists, with the best

examples being Martin Bell and John Pilger in Britain. In US, Seymour Hersch and

Charles Lewis.Journalists can and do make news. Did not Woodward and

Bernstein make news in US? I have seen Seymour Hersch on BBC

television speaking as an expert. If that is not making news, what is?

There are any number of journalists who have successfully combined

journalism with activism, indeed that is the bedrock of investigative

journalism. If you just take a look at the website of the Center For

Public Integrity(www.publicintegrity.org) or the Fund For Independence

in Journalism(www.tfij.org) you will see evidence to support this

view. ANIMAL UNDERWORLD, exposing the zoo industry in US, written by

Alan Green and published by the Center For Public Integrity is a

classic example of the welding of journalism and activism. An

amalgamation of journalism and activism has been and can be achieved.

Best wishes,

 

Yours sincerely,

 

http://www.pacificwhale.org/alerts/dolphin_quotes.html

Quotes to Ponder...

On Dolphins in Captivity

" No aquarium, no tank in a marineland, however spacious it may be, can

begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who

inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marinelands can be

considered normal.... It is certain that the study of human

psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also

lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations. "

-- Jacques Cousteau

 

" There probably was a real educational value in the '50s and '60s....

The educational value today is dramatically reduced, if it's present

at all. "

-- Dr. John Hall, former marine mammal biologist for Sea World

 

" Today, after more than three decades of experience with marine

mammals in captivity, we DO know better. Yet we continue to catch

them, confine them, and display them for profit. "

-- Jean-Michel Cousteau

 

" What's the educational value of seeing dolphins in a tank? In Osaka,

Japan, you can see dolphins in a tank, then walk next door to the

aquarium's giftshop and buy dolphin meat. How's that for educating

young visitors about wild dolphin populations and conservation

issues? "

-- Mark Berman, Asst. Director, International Marine Mammal Project

 

" To really understand dolphins, one must study them on their own

terms. For them, the sea is a realm whose vast spaces are defined

acoustically. Cetaceans communicate over hundreds of miles, making

theirs a truly global society. Surrounded by this universal conductor

of communication, marine mammals develop unusually strong bonds to one

another. Individuals depend heavily on their position within the

group, or " pod, " for their identity.

Dolphins in tanks are bombarded by a garble of their own

vocalizations, which may in fact be acutely painful. Because these are

sounds of communication as well as navigation, their world becomes a

maze of meaningless reverberations. Their entire societal structure,

so crucial for their well-being, is shattered. "

-- Jean-Michel Cousteau

 

" Comfining dolphins and whales for public display is unkind education

that lacks scientific value. Rescuing and releasing dolphins and

whales in distress is educationally kinder and scientifically superior

to exhibiting them in captivity. "

-- Rick Trout, Lead Rescuer, Marine Mammal Conservancy, Key Largo, FL

 

" While there has been increased success in captive breeding, the

bottlenose dolphin has not yet achieved self-sustaining status.

According to 1993 federal records, captive born Tursiops represent

about 30% of those in captivity; yet more than half of those reported

born in captivity have died. Therefore, captive breeding cannot be

accurately accessed unless facilities are required to report

stillbirths and infant mortalities. Industry officials have conceded

that successful captive breeding programs would still require

additional captures from the wild. "

-- The Fund for Animals

 

" Anytime that you're dealing with live animals it's a perishable

commodity and these things will happen. "

-- William Braker, then-Executive Director of the Shedd Aquarium in

Chicago, following the deaths of two beluga whales, 20 minutes after

they were given an injection of a deworming medicine by a Shedd

veterinarian

 

Lolita's Unprecedented Value to Science as an N of 1

By Samuel K. Wasser

Although Lolita is a single animal individual, there is a great deal

that be learned from her reintroduction into her natal waters. This is

largely because Lolita's natal group is still resident in the Puget

Sound and has been part of ongoing, protest 22 year study. Lolita's

history makes her most likely to join her extended family that is

already well known, habituated to humans and frequently encountered,

providing unprecendented opportunity to observe the progress of her

reintegration.

Lolita was taken from her pod nearly 30 years ago, at the

approximate age of 6 years old. Her reintroduction will tell us

whether she recognizes and preferentially associates with her natal

group and closest kin after 27 years in isolation. It will also tell

us whether a closed kin group will re-accept one of their long-lost

relatives. Genetic studies, collected through tissue biopsy samples or

noninvasively through feces can confirm family relationships. Lolita's

reintroduction should reveal the degree to which she has retained her

natal dialect and whether his facilitates her reintegration. Her

attachment to people could even enable researchers to temporarily

mount a camera on Lolita, if she cooperates and seems willing, to

observe wild orcas during the 90% of their time they spend out of our

view . Lolita's experience could also greatly advance the science of

reintroducing marine mammals.

Studies are usually done with as large a sample(N=sample size) as

possible. It is rare that a single individual can advance the science

of marine mammal ecology and reintroduction as does Lolita. Perhaps

even more importantly, Lolita's reintroduction should simultaneously

draw trememdous attention to the need to protect the marine

environment that is her native habitat.

 

Samuel K. Wasser, Ph.D is Assistant Professor, School Of Medicine and

School Of Forest Resources at the University Of Washington. He is also

an editor of ZOO BIOLOGY, and a member of the Board Of the Washington

Environmental Council.

[Guest guest]

Dear John and AAPNers

 

With regard to the question of whether zoos (not a million miles away from a

captive cetacean facility) serve an educational purpose, Dr Andrew Balmford

and colleague's paper 'Message received? Quantifying the impact of informal

conservation education on adults visiting UK zoos' may be useful.

 

I have pasted the abstract of the paper below, but please contact me if you

would like me to e-mail you a copy of the whole paper.

 

Balmford, A., N. Leader-Williams, G. Mace. A. Manica, O. Walter, C. West &

A. Zimmermann. In press. Message received? Quantifying the impact of

informal conservation education on adults visiting UK zoos. In Catalysts for

Conservation: a Direction for Zoos in the 21st Century (eds A. Zimmermann,

C. West, M. Hatchwell & R. Lattis), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

 

ABSTRACT

 

With at least 600 million visitors each year, the world's zoos have enormous

potential to educate the public about conservation. Yet to date very few

studies have attempted to quantify whether zoo visits change people's

conservation-related knowledge, attitudes, or behaviour, nor whether such

impacts vary across zoos. We used volunteers to conduct a

questionnaire-based survey of over 1300 adult visitors to six different UK

zoos and (for comparison) one nature reserve, with roughly half of the

visitors questioned early in their visit and half late in their visit.

Knowledge of conservation of species and habitats, concern about

conservation (measured as respondents' hypothetical allocation of money to

conservation versus other types of charities), and capacity to become

involved in conservation (measured as ability to name appropriate practical

activities to which they could contribute) all differed across sites, and

co-varied in consistent ways with visitors' age, sex, education, and general

interest in wildlife. However, despite using a range of statistical

techniques, we detected very few differences in the responses of arriving

and departing visitors, suggesting a single visit to a zoo (or reserve) has

little or no impact on adults' conservation knowledge, concern, or ability

to do something useful. This was not because our analyses lacked power - our

most robust method would have detected effects on response variables of as

little as 3-5%. We conclude instead that the impacts of individual informal

visits on adults may be far smaller than is often assumed, and thus very

hard to detect even in large surveys.

 

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Barbara

 

 

 

Dr Barbara Maas

 

Chief Executive

 

Care for the Wild International

 

The Granary, Tickfold Farm,

 

Kingsfold, West Sussex, RH12 3SE, UK

 

Tel: +44-(0)1306-627 900

 

Fax: +44-(0)1306-627 901

 

E-mail: bmaas

 

Web: <outbind://1/www.careforthewild.com> www.careforthewild.com

 

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

 

Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

 

 

Care for the Wild International is a Registered Charity - Charity number 288802,

Website: www.careforthewild.com