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National Wildlife "Refuges" have become playgrounds for hunters, trappers, off-road vehicle operation, jet skis, water skiers and snowmobiles despite the fact over 80% of Americans are opposed to killing and disturbing wildlife there.

The Ocean Futures Society headed by Jean Michel Cousteau is exploring the sea around the Northwestern Hawaian Islands archipelago ending in Kure in collaboration with native Polynesians and a variety of marine scientists. The region is proposed as the 14th National Marine Sanctuary. If established, the sanctuary would be 5 times larger than the existing 13 marine refuges combined. Its 340,000 square miles contain 85% of the coral reefs under U.S. jurisdiction. The islands provide nesting grounds for green sea turtles, monk seals and millions of seabirds. An estimated 100,000 albatrosses and petrels die every year because of the commercial long line fishing industry. The effect of increasing amount of plastic debris from ocean dumping on these birds is of particular concern.

Court sides with sea turtles. A federal appeals court has overturned a lower-court ruling and ordered the NMFS to assess the impact of California's long-line fishing fleet on birds and endangered sea turtles, especially the critically imperiled leatherback, before allowing fishers to continue using lines of baited hooks up to 20 miles long. Most of the long-line fishing fleet used to operate out of Hawaii but was "shut down a few years ago" when a similar lawsuit led to a review that found the practice "too destructive" to the sea turtles and birds. "Scientists fear that leatherback turtles will go extinct in the Pacific within 10 to 30 years unless long-line practices are changed."

Judge overturns Bush permissive LFA sonar policy. Within a week of the National Marine Fisheries Service authorizing a one-year deployment of two Navy ships equipped with the controversial Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System - Low Frequency Active Sonar, federal judge Elizabeth LaPorte ruled that the "new high-intensity sonar system violates numerous federal environmental laws and could endanger whales, porpoises and fish" and "irreparably harm" marine life in general. The decision blocks LFA deployment until the Navy negotiates "limits on its use" with conservation groups like NRDC and HSUS which sued over the planned deployment. According to NRDC, the ruling "recognizes that during peacetime, even the military must comply with our environmental laws" and is "a reprieve not just for whales, porpoises, and fish but ultimately for all of us who depend for our survival on healthy oceans." In another suit, the navy said it did not plan to use LFA in the event of hostilities.

Improved TEDs: NOAA Fisheries has instituted new rules to protect endangered and threatened sea turtles by ruling that shrimp boats in the Gulf Mexico must use "larger turtle excluder device (TED) openings in their nets". The present TED openings are too small to allow mature sea turtles to escape. The new TEDs are expected to reduce the number of annual deaths of leatherback sea turtles by 97% loggerhead mortality due to shrimp trawling by 94%. Oceana reports that shrimpers in Georgia have used the larger TEDs "for years with minimal shrimp loss." Of 8,000 public comments on the new rule "93% supported greater protection for the sea turtles."

Hippo war victims: One of the world's largest hippo populations, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Virunga National Park has dropped from 29,000 to 1,300 in less than three decades as "poachers and armed factions kill them for their meat and teeth" says Planet Ark, Reuters 9/2//03. Conservationists hope that a recent peace agreement ending the nation's four-year civil war will allow the government to better "protect the rare mountain gorilla also found in the park, and halt the slaughter of hippos 'in shocking numbers' as demand for their teeth increased in the illegal ivory trade."

Poachers wipe out Kamchatka grizzlies. Firing from a helicopter, poachers killed all of the 20 to 40 grizzly bears on Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula ending the study conducted by the Canadian team of Maureen Enns and Charlie Russell who had been studying the bears since 1995. Poachers had previously killed all the tigers in the region and continue to poach sturgeon and salmon. The research is documented in a PBS documentary: Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia and the book Grizzly Heart: Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears of Kamchatka.

Conservation = killing. "Despite dry habitat conditions and a warm winter in 2002 that may have contributed to a reduced harvest, it is encouraging that the total number of waterfowl hunting days remained strong," said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Williams. "We will continue to work with states and flyway councils to provide migratory bird hunting opportunities as part of our conservation (sic!) mission.

Mute swan killing stopped by Fund for Animals lawsuit. Permits to kill thousands of non-native mute swans have been rescinded. The swans were blamed for destroying aquatic vegetation, which the Fund claimed was instead being harmed by industrial wastes, particularly effluent from chicken factory farms.

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Alaska resumes cruel aerial chasing and shooting of wolves. Overriding the wishes of Alaskans who have twice voted to ban land-and-shoot gunning of wolves, Governor Frank Murkowski and the Alaska Board of Game plan to use aircraft to chase down and kill every single wolf in an interior 1700 square mile and to kill 80% of the wolves in another area east of Anchorage.

Governor Frank Murkowski PO box 110001 Juneau AK 99811 Phone 907 465 3500 Fax 907 465 3532

Wolf recovery lawsuit filed: A coalition of 17 conservation and animal protection groups are suing the Bush administration over "plans to change the endangered status of wolves in the U.S., lessening protections in most regions and sharply limiting the areas where wolves will be protected during recovery" says Defenders of Wildlife Oct. 1. According to Defenders, the plan's ultimate goal is to remove ESA protection and undo reintroduction efforts that have "made such a tremendous start toward, real, sustainable wolf recovery." The groups maintain that the ongoing effort to undermine wolf protection is premature and will turn wolf management over to states which intend to "initiate aggressive wolf killing programs" or, in the case of a resolution passed by the Idaho legislature, eliminate wolves from the state "by any means necessary."

Report belies drilling promises: Amid a renewed push to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy development, a new GAO report finds that "the government's record of protecting wildlife refuges from environmentally damaging effects of oil and gas drilling has been spotty" says the Washington Post Sept. 24. According to the report a quarter of the 575 wildlife refuges have been opened to oil and gas production. While the impact on some has been "negligible," at others there have been
"large scale spills, disruption of wildlife habitat, abandoned infrastructure and equipment, soil and groundwater contamination, and other ecological damage." The USFWS, which manages the refuges, doesn't even know the number of oil spills that have occurred, has never assessed cumulative impacts and does not have the resources or technical expertise to "properly oversee oil and gas activities."

Bison hunt scheduled: The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission has given tentative approval for hunting bison that migrate out of Yellowstone N.P. says SFGate.com, AP Sept.12. The state legislature approved the hunt earlier this year and after formal rules are developed and approved by the Board of Livestock the hunt could begin in the fall of 2004. Currently, at the instigation of the cattle industry, bison that wander out of the park are hazed back in or killed. This despite the fact that grazing permits in the Horse Butte area have not been renewed.

Addendum: The first bison this year has been killed, deliberately shot as he

was making his way back into park. As bulls neither get nor carry brucellosis,

there was no reason for this.

Federal court nixes pheasant hunting on Cape Cod On the eve of "National Hunting and Fishing Day," the U.S. District Court in Boston ruled in favor of wildlife protection advocates (who included The Fund for Animals, The HSUS, Massachusetts SPCA, and several Cape Cod residents) in their lawsuit challenging the sport hunting programs on the Cape Cod National Seashore. In her ruling, Judge Patti B. Saris ordered the National Park Service (NPS) to conduct an environmental assessment on all of the seashore's sport hunting programs, including an annual pheasant hunt, for which thousands of non-native pheasants are released in the area. The ruling halted the stocking of pheasants and the six-week pheasant hunting season, which had been slated to begin on October 18. The pheasants (who are native to Asia) are raised on intensive bird farms, where
farmers put "blinders" on the birds and cut off part of their beaks; releasing them contradicts the NPS' own policies prohibiting the intentional release of exotic wildlife.

Canada geese face slaughter: After bringing about a non-migratory population of Canada geese, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that there are too many Canada geese in the U.S. Its solution: to kill up to 8.5 million of them so the population will be a third smaller. The USFWS is moving ahead to implement its plan first outlined in a "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" released early last year. Recently proposed regulations will turn over management of resident Canada geese to overtaxed state wildlife agencies and encourage as many as 480,000 to 852,000 geese to be killed each year for ten years. Birds may be shot outright, or, even worse, they may be rounded up and gassed or sent to slaughterhouses. This archaic mindset of killing ignores the humane methods that many communities have adopted to deal with conflicts between Canada geese and people. Programs integrating humane methods, including for example a form of birth control via "egg oiling"-coating the eggs of geese in corn oil to prevent them from hatching and frightening geese away with trained dogs, are solving goose conflicts.

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