Animals are among losers of War on Terror

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

 

 

 

Animals are among losers of " War on Terror "

 

 

BARSTOW, JACKSONVILLE-- Wars are lost by losing lives and

land. Thus whales, burros, pigs, and desert tortoises far from

any battlefield are among the losers of the War on Terror,

informally declared in 2001 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush.

The Barack Obama administration in March 2009 abandoned use

of the phrase " War on Terror " to describe what are now called

" overseas contingency operations, " and are no longer rhetorically

linked, in recognition that U.S. troops are fighting different foes

in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But changing terminology has not changed the issues. Even

before " War on Terror " was used to drum up support for the U.S.

invasion of Iraq, it was used to quell opposition to military

training exercises that harm animals and habitat. Military projects

harmful to animals that began or expanded in the name of the " War on

Terror " are still underway, often bigger than ever.

Most controversially and most directly related to the war

effort, the U.S. Marine Corps in July 2009 confirmed to Mark Walker

of the North County Times in Escondido, California that " 1,374 of

the 40,000 troops assigned to Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary

Force have undergone or will undergo 'live tissue training' involving

the wounding of anesthetized pigs who are later destroyed, " Walker

wrote.

" Representative Bob Filner, chair of the House Armed

Services Committee, signed a letter on July 9 asking the military to

stop using pigs in medical training, " added Walker. " The letter,

by Representative Henry Johnson of Georgia, was sent to Army

officials and says that use of medical simulators and placing troops

in hospital emergency rooms can readily replace the current practice,

employed at various sites around the country since 2006. "

" What our soldiers need is repeated practice on realistic

mannequins with the correct anatomy, " commented Humane Society of

the U.S. vice president for animal research Martin Stephens.

PETA in July 2008 campaigned against similar exercises

conducted by the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks,

Hawaii, and unsuccessfully sought a USDA investigation after at

least 13 pigs died during transport to Hawaii for use in live tissue

training. In mid-July 2009 PETA researcher Shalin Gala complained to

San Diego County planning director Eric Gibson that the exercises

violate the agricultural zoning of the 17-acre avocado grove where

they take place.

" The department determined that county regulations do not

prohibit this type of medical training, " Gibson responded.

Between the 2008 and 2009 PETA efforts, USA Today reporter

Tom Vanden Brook disclosed in April 2009 that, " Military researchers

have dressed live pigs in body armor and strapped them into Humvee

simulators that were then blown up with explosives to study the link

between roadside bomb blasts and brain injury. For an 11-month

period that ended in December, researchers subjected pigs and rats

to about 200 blasts. "

Blowing up pigs produced at least seven specific useful

findings, according to Army Colonel Mike Jaffee, director of the

Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, but New York Times

reporter Denise Grady on May 25, 2009 attributed similar findings to

brain scans and autopsies performed on the remains of more than 3,000

U.S. military personnel who were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Grady also described life-saving findings resulting from the scans

and autopsies which could not have resulted from examining the

remains of non-human experimental subjects.

 

Burros & tortoises

 

Wild Burro Rescue as the July/ August 2009 edition of ANIMAL

PEOPLE went to press hoped to rally last-minute opposition to a

Bureau of Land Management plan to remove 40 burros from Fort Irwin,

adjacent to Death Valley National Park. The BLM also plans to trap

40 to 60 burros at Owl Hole Springs, near the park.

" The burros will be kept at the BLM holding facility in

Ridgecrest, where they will be put up for adoption, " said Barstow

Desert Dispatch staff writer Eunice Lee.

Fort Irwin natural resources program manager Clarence Everly

told Lee that burros " roam through live fire training areas on the

installation, " interrupting operations.

Wild Burro Rescue founder Diana Chontos is skeptical of any

pretense that the roundup is for the benefit of burros. National

Park Service policy is to purge non-native species. The Park Service

has sought to keep burros out of the parts of Death Valley that it

controls since 1994. Removing burros from Fort Irwin and Owl Hole

Springs serves that end, Chontos told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Wild burros on BLM land are protected from killing by the

1971 Wild & Free Ranging Horse and Burro Protection Act, but have no

protection anywhere else.

Desert tortoises are an endangered species, protected

anywhere they occur. The Army has been vigorously evicting desert

tortoises from the same parts of Fort Irwin as burros, to expand

tank training. In early 2008 the Army moved 556 of the endangered

tortoises to other public land. More than 90 tortoises died soon

after being moved. Most were reportedly killed by coyotes.

" Draft environmental documents released by the BLM said that

drought, not relocation, was to blame, " wrote Daniel Danelski of

the Riverside Press-Enterprise. " Scarce water meant coyotes had

fewer rabbits and other normal prey. The coyotes apparently turned

to tortoises as a food of last resort. "

The Army now plans to move about 90 desert tortoises out of

Fort Irwin in September and October 2009, and then move as many as

1,100 in 2010.

 

Marine animals

 

The U.S. Navy on August 3, 2009 announced that it will

proceed as planned to build a 500-square-mile grid of cable-linked

transmitters and receivers on the sea floor off northern Florida and

southern South Carolina, to be used in anti-submarine warfare

training. The construction is expected to take five years.

" The northern Florida waters are considered the heart of the

right whale's winter breeding ground and are travelled by other

species, such as loggerhead sea turtles, " summarized Bo Peterson of

the Charleston Post & Courier. " Conservationists worry that sonar

and other man-made noises could be deafening and could frighten

whales into fatal beach strandings and rapid surfacing. "

The project was opposed in 2007 by South Carolina Natural

Resources environmental programs director Robert Duncan. " Intense

sound can damage fish's ears, reduce the viability of eggs, harm

larvae, and retard growth. Intense sound also can cause changes in

fish behavior, and disrupt fish navigation, communication, foraging

and schooling, " wrote Duncan.

Before the " War on Terror " started, the U.S. Navy

acknowledged that use of sonar might have had a part in causing

beaked whale strandings during training exercises held in 2000 in the

Bahamas.

" The Navy has since agreed to adopt some measures to protect

whales, such as having ships turn off their sonar when sailors spot

marine mammals nearby, " recounted Audrey McAvoy of Associated Press.

" But it has strongly resisted more stringent restrictions, saying

there is not enough scientific evidence to require them. The Navy is

pushing for more research, budgeting $26 million per year over the

next five years to understand how marine mammals hear and how sound

affects them. "

Some of the Navy money funded work by Cascadia Research

Collective marine biologist Robin Baird. Baird, founder of the

Marmam online information network for marine biologists, studied

Cuvier's and Blainville beaked whales off Hawaii and northern

bottlenose whales off Nova Scotia.

His findings, published in June 2009 in the journal

Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, " provide more evidence that

beaked whales found dead in association with naval sonar activities

are likely to be getting decompression sickness, " Baird told McAvoy.

At least 41 such incidents occurred between 1960 and 2006,

according to an inventory published by the Journal of Cetacean

Research & Management.

But even though the Navy paid for Baird's research, the Navy

paid little evident attention to Baird's conclusions.

Calling the Navy' decision " an obvious dodge of environmental

protections for right whales and commercially valuable marine life, "

Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Catherine Wannamaker

signaled that lawsuits against the anti-submarine warfare training

range may continue. Wannamaker previously fought the project for the

Natural Resources Defense Council.

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration director of

protected resources Jim Lecky defended the training range by pointing

out that " " Right whales rely on low frequencies " for their own

communications. " They're not as inhibited by high frequency sonar as

other species might be, " Lecky said.

Lecky noted that the major threat to right whales is from

ship strikes, and praised Navy efforts to avoid ramming whales.

 

 

 

--

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

 

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