AR-NEWS Digest 623

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) (US) Spy in the Henhouse "The Washington Post"
     by Wackko8281 
  2) Factory farming proving a sick way to make money
     by Barry Kent MacKay 
  3) Award for Korean animal activists + Korean economic crisis
  affects animals
     by Vadivu Govind 
  4) (US) Oklahoma Outdoor Woman's Workshop
     by JanaWilson 
  5) (US) Oklahoma Weekly Hunting News
     by JanaWilson 
  6) (US) Oklahoma Snow Geese Problems
     by JanaWilson 
  7) Info request
     by Marilyn Halpern 
  8) Hello.  I didn't know if you got GREENLines, so I copied this to you.
     by LexAnima 
  9) (US) NY Post: "Fur-ociously Fashionable Coats"
     by Marisul 
 10) (US) Cattlemen Sue Oprah Over Comments
     by allen schubert 
 11) Dog eating in Korea
     by jwed 
 12) U.S. - Everglades National Park
     by jeanlee 
 13) Dog eating in Korea - reposted because of an error in a Link -
  apologies to all 
     by jwed 
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 02:54:00 EST
From: Wackko8281 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (US) Spy in the Henhouse "The Washington Post"
Message-ID: 
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Spy in the Henhouse
Michele Rokke's Undercover Life For Animal Rights 

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 3, 1998; Page C01 

She's talking about her glasses, the ones with the tiny video camera built
into them. "Some of our equipment is pretty sophisticated," she says. Suddenly
she stops.

"I have to keep in mind the settlement order -- what I can say and what I
can't say," Michele Rokke says. "I honestly have no idea if this goes outside
the bounds of the settlement of this case. Do you mind if I check this with
the counsel?"

She leaves the conference room, walks down the hall, confers with an attorney.
She returns to report that she can talk about the glasses. "They're horrible,"
she says. "They're huge and horrible and they look silly."

She disappears down the hall again and comes back with a black carrying case.
She opens it and removes the glasses. They are huge and horrible and they do
look silly. They're ugly spectacles with thick black frames. They look like
Barry Goldwater's glasses on steroids.

"Drew Carey has sort of popularized this look," she says, smiling. 

Her co-workers, the people she was secretly videotaping, laughed out loud at
these glasses. They never noticed the tiny pinhole between the eyes. Behind
that hole was the lens that was photographing them.

Rokke reaches into the box and pulls out more equipment -- two batteries, each
about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and a video recorder twice as big.
These are the tools of her trade. Michele Rokke is a spy. Not for the FBI, CIA
or KGB: She's a spy for PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

For nearly four years, she traveled across America -- from California to New
Jersey, from North Dakota to Mississippi -- talking her way into horse farms,
chicken farms, a research hospital, a toxicology laboratory. Once inside, she
secretly photographed and videotaped animals and their keepers, gathering
material for PETA's controversial animal rights protest campaigns. Like a good
spy, she remained completely anonymous -- until her cover was blown last
summer.

By then she'd spent eight months as a technician at Huntingdon Life Sciences,
a product-testing lab in New Jersey. In May, she quit that job, smuggling out
8,000 pages of documents she had secretly photocopied and 50 hours of
videotape she'd shot with those geek glasses. In June, PETA opened fire on
Huntingdon, accusing the company of cruelty to lab monkeys, convincing several
of Huntingdon's customers, including Procter & Gamble, to suspend their
dealings with the lab. Irate, Huntingdon counterattacked by suing PETA under
the federal anti-racketeering statute, charging that PETA's long history of
infiltrating, exposing and attacking various companies constituted a campaign
"to defraud and extort businesses." 

The case was called Huntingdon v. Rokke et al. It promised to be the long-
awaited legal showdown between PETA and the animal-testing industry. For PETA,
the stakes were enormous: A loss could have been a crippling blow to its
reputation and -- because losers must pay triple damages and their opponent's
legal bills -- to its bank account as well. Rokke spent a good bit of the
summer and fall answering questions from lawyers, friendly and otherwise.

Then, shortly before Christmas, Huntingdon abruptly agreed to drop the suit in
return for a promise by PETA not to infiltrate the company again for at least
five years or to publicize its charges against it. PETA claimed victory and
Paul McCartney, a longtime PETA supporter, sent a congratulatory bouquet.

"They were suing us for several million dollars and we didn't have to pay them
a single dime," Rokke says. "Clearly, it's a victory for the animals."

She's sitting in the conference room in PETA's headquarters in Norfolk. She
has green eyes and sandy hair that falls across her slender shoulders. Her shy
smile makes her seem younger than her 31 years. She doesn't look like a spy.
She says she doesn't feel like one, either.

"Honestly, I don't think of myself as a spy," she says. "I think of myself as
a hairdresser from Minnesota."



Death and Dyeing

She was a hairdresser in Rochester, Minn., when she got the phone call that
led to her life as an undercover agent.

It was 1993. A woman called to make an appointment to get her hair dyed. She
said she wanted to look more glamorous in the mink coat her husband had just
bought for her. Rokke booked the appointment, but her conscience began to
bother her.

"I called her back and said, `I'm sorry, I can't do your hair because I think
it's wrong that you want to look more beautiful in a fur coat. I think it's
wrong to wear fur.' I just sort of gave her a brief, polite education on what
fur-bearing animals go through."

But when Rokke hung up, her conscience was still bothering her. Throughout her
"Norman Rockwell childhood" as the daughter of a Rochester IBM worker, she'd
always had a sensitive conscience about animals. At 12, like many adolescent
girls, she stopped eating meat. Unlike most of them, she never started again.
At 18, she was reading PETA publications and writing protest letters to
companies that tested their products on animals. In her early twenties, she
drove to Pennsylvania to join a PETA protest against a small town's annual
Labor Day pigeon hunt. And now she wondered if her refusal to color the mink
owner's hair was too pathetically small a gesture.

"I kept thinking, `I have another client who I enjoy doing but I know she has
a fur coat, too. Should I tell her not to come in? Then I have clients whose
husbands kill dogs at the Mayo Clinic' . . . I thought, `This is crazy. I
can't be in this business any more because soon I won't want to talk to people
who come in and tell me their chicken recipes.' So I felt it was time to take
the next step."

The next step came that fall. Rokke spent her two-week vacation doing an
unpaid internship at PETA's headquarters, then located in Rockville. The work
wasn't particularly challenging -- stuffing envelopes and similar chores --
but she was impressed with the people. They were vegetarians who refused to
wear leather, idealists dedicated to making the world safe for animals.

"It felt nice to be able to eat with somebody who wasn't waving flesh in my
face to goad me," she says. "It felt comfortable. The people at PETA were
working for something good, not just to put a buck in their pockets."

Back among the flesh-eaters of Rochester, and not too happy about it, she
wrote to PETA, applying for a job as an investigator. It's the toughest job at
PETA but an essential one. PETA was built on undercover work. Investigators
provide the evidence that fuels the group's protests and publicity campaigns
-- and, not coincidentally, attracts new recruits and contributions to the
600,000-member organization. 

In March 1994, Mary Beth Sweetland, the head of PETA's Research,
Investigations and Rescue department, called Rokke to offer her a job tryout:
Would she go to North Dakota to investigate ranches where the urine from
pregnant mares is collected and sold to a company that uses it to make an
estrogen-replacement drug called Premarin?

"I didn't think twice," Rokke recalls. "I said sure."

She drove to North Dakota and found Dallas Moore's ranch. She told Moore she
was on her way to see her boyfriend, who was working on a ranch in Montana.
She said she wanted to learn about horses before she got there. It was a lot
of baloney but Moore fell for it. He let her hang around for a few days. When
he wasn't looking, she took a picture of a male horse with an ugly wound on
his hindquarters. Later, PETA's Animal Times magazine published an article
denouncing the alleged mistreatment of pregnant mares. Illustrating it was
Rokke's photo of the injured stallion -- cleverly cropped so that readers
couldn't tell that it wasn't a mare, pregnant or otherwise.

Rokke had passed the test. She was hired as a PETA investigator. The job paid
$23,000 -- a third less than she was making as a hairdresser, she says. Her
first assignment was investigating chicken farms. She spent that summer
driving from the Carolinas to California, sleeping in her tent or cheap
motels, checking out chickens. She told the farmers she was doing a study of
chronic leg problems in broiler chickens. She didn't say that the study was
for PETA. Not surprisingly, she found that the life a broiler chicken is
nasty, brutish and short. 

Many humans get sentimental about horses or cats or dogs. Few can get worked
up about poultry. But Rokke did. In her diary, which was published in Animal
Times, she writes of kneeling down to comfort sickly chickens: "It was like a
nightmare, where I come across an accident and there are so many people badly
injured, I just go from body to body."

In the spring of 1995, Sweetland sent Rokke to Omaha to get a job at Boys Town
National Research Hospital. Boys Town specializes in treating children with
hearing problems. It also sponsors some hearing-related research -- Sweetland
wanted Rokke to investigate a neurological study that Edward Walsh and his
wife, JoAnn McGee, were performing on cats, an experiment funded by a grant
from the National Institutes of Health. 

Rokke managed to get a job as a housekeeper in the hospital, but the work took
her nowhere near the cat experiment. "I didn't have much access to the place
where the animals were kept," she says. "Basically, I scrubbed toilets and
vacuumed rugs."

She scrubbed and vacuumed for seven frustrating months, hoping to transfer
into the lab. She never did, but another PETA spy, Matt Rossell, landed a job
as a security guard and began secretly videotaping kittens that had undergone
neurological surgery in the experiment. They looked sad with surgical scars on
their heads and they meowed forlornly in Rossell's videos.

In February 1996, PETA pounced on Boys Town, using Rossell's videos as
ammunition in an aggressive media campaign against the experiments. Soon, PETA
activists were handcuffing themselves to the furniture in the office of the
hospital's director, and a PETA member dressed as the Devil climbed onto the
hospital's roof with a sign that read "Satan Loves Boys Town Cat Experiments."



The Spy Life

"It's very frustrating to live this life," Rokke says. She's sitting in PETA's
conference room, talking about undercover work. "I couldn't say to a fur
wearer, `Shame on you,' because I was living an undercover life." 

Working undercover, she says, meant hiding the aspects of her personality that
were most important to her. She kept quiet about animal rights. She hid her
vegetarianism, skipping lunch or just eating popcorn. She tried to blend into
the background, seldom talking about herself, avoiding her co-workers'
attempts at friendship.

"I found I can't let myself get close to anyone," she says.

In Omaha, she was sharing a house with Rossell, but they pretended not to know
each other at work and they never went out together in public. That was
difficult, but at least she had someone to talk to; she was alone during her
eight-month stint at Huntingdon..

"It's tiring," she says. "You definitely have to find an avenue to vent
because it's not possible to even talk to friends. It's not like I can call my
friends at home and say, `You should see what they're doing.' I can't do that.
It's confidential."

Instead, she would call Sweetland, her boss at PETA. "I remember several phone
calls when Michele had seen more than she could bear to see," Sweetland
recalls. "But there weren't that many calls because she's stoic. That, to me,
is her overriding characteristic. Perhaps she's too stoic. She has to bottle
too much inside."

Rokke doesn't emote much and she doesn't spend a lot of time in introspection.
She'd rather talk about animals than analyze her motivations. She has trouble
explaining why a woman who is so horrified at cruelty to animals would spend
years trying to uncover it. 

"People come up to me all the time and say, `How can you do what you do?' "
She shrugs. "You just do it. You decide what's important and worth spending
time on and you just do it."

Sweetland suggests another reason Rokke volunteered for the life of a spy. "I
really do think she likes the action and the excitement and the
unpredictability," she says. "She prefers life on the road to life in the
office. Office work is too staid and boring for her."



A Twitching Monkey

Rokke slips the video into the VCR and fiddles with the remote, punching
button after button, trying unsuccessfully to get a picture on the TV screen. 

"I laugh that I do undercover work with video cameras and I can't set up my
own VCR," she says.

Finally, she gets a picture: Lab technicians are strapping a monkey down on an
operating table. This is the video that PETA released in June, part of its
media campaign against Huntingdon. It's nine minutes long, edited down from
the 50 hours of videotape that Rokke shot with the camera in her glasses. The
court settlement forbids PETA to distribute the video, but if somebody else
provides a copy, Rokke is permitted to comment on it.

"The technician is antagonizing the monkey to get him all riled up," she says.

On the screen, the monkey is strapped down, ready for an electrocardiogram. A
technician yells, "Don't you bite my friend!" He squirts some of the gel used
to make the EKG connections into the monkey's snarling mouth. 

"Nobody's supervising these characters," Rokke says as she watches. "They're
just doing whatever the hell they want."

The video continues. The technicians yell at monkeys, toss them into cages,
put rubber hoses into their noses to test a nasal decongestant product. It
doesn't look particularly pleasant, but it doesn't seem all that brutal
either.

"There are more humane ways to do this," Rokke says.

Now comes the most controversial scene on the tape. A technician is cutting up
a monkey, who twitches with each slice of the scalpel. Alan Staple, the
president of Huntingdon, says the monkey was already dead, that PETA edited
out the section of the videotape that shows the monkey being given a lethal
injection. Rokke claims that the technician had botched the lethal injection,
that the monkey was still alive when the autopsy began.

On screen, the technician slices into the monkey's chest. The monkey shivers.
"This guy could be out a little bit more," the technician grumbles.

"When I was standing there," Rokke says, "I was thinking, `He's going to stop
and give this animal a little more" of the lethal injection. "But he just kept
on doing it."

Perhaps that is what Rokke was thinking during the operation, but it isn't
what she said. She never urged the technician to re-inject the monkey.
Instead, she asked him how she could get a job performing animal autopsies.

"I don't have a degree or anything but it fascinates me," she says on the tape
as the technician calmly cuts up the twitching monkey. "I like the surgery
part and stuff. I don't know, every time there's lights on in this room, I'm
drawn to it."

"I cringe when I hear my inane comments on the tape," she says later. "But a
lot of it is: You're on autopilot. You sort of react as other people in the
room are reacting. You're trying to keep track of what's going on in the room
in case the video fails. It's an exhausting process."



Judgment Day

"Ms. Rokke here was an investigator for PETA," Judge Robert G. Doumar said in
federal court in Norfolk in July. "She certainly presents a very appealing
demeanor and I believe is a very dedicated individual who is clearly immersed
in her work and feels strongly for animals."

That was nice. But then the judge announced that he did not believe Rokke's
testimony. 

The previous day, Rokke and several Huntingdon employees had testified in a
pretrial hearing related to Huntingdon's racketeering suit. A Huntingdon
personnel clerk testified that she watched Rokke sign a confidentiality
agreement on her first day of work. The clerk identified Rokke's signature on
the document. But Rokke testified that the form she'd signed contained no
confidentiality agreement.

The judge didn't believe her. "Clearly, Ms. Rokke executed that document . . .
To that extent, I have to reject completely the testimony of Ms. Rokke."

Rokke had also testified that she didn't know she was violating any rules by
photocopying company documents and smuggling them out of the lab. Doumar
didn't believe that, either. "Clearly, she knew the documents did not belong
to her," he said in court. "She has so convinced herself that she had the
absolute right to take anything and everything that was in the plaintiff's
facility that she actually believes it."

Rokke still swears that she told the truth in her court testimony. But Doumar
is not alone in challenging her veracity -- and that of PETA itself. Dallas
Moore, the North Dakota rancher who let Rokke spend three days with his
horses, says she lied about why she was there and then falsely accused him of
mistreating the animals. Alan Staple, president of Huntingdon, says Rokke and
PETA "deliberately falsified" their descriptions of conditions in his lab. And
Edward Walsh, the Boys Town researcher, says PETA's allegations of cruelty to
animals in his lab were bogus: "They distorted our research and distorted the
truth tremendously."

Charges and countercharges begin to blur in the mind and one longs for a
neutral judgment. In the case of Boys Town, there was one. At PETA's request,
the Department of Agriculture conducted several investigations of the Boys
Town lab. The inspectors found some expired drugs in the lab and some evidence
of sloppy record-keeping but, as the department informed PETA, "none of these
had resulted in a direct impact on the animals" and all of them "were promptly
corrected." 

But those reports received far less publicity than PETA's accusations. And
they did not stop the hate mail and the threatening phone calls that keep
coming to Walsh and his wife. "We Will Kill You And Every Member of Your
Family In The Exact Same Way You Killed the Cats," read one, signed by the
"Human Brain Research Centers." Far more frightening was a sympathy card that
referred to their 7-year-old son. "So sorry to hear about the tragic death of
your son," it read. "At least now, he's in God's good hands with all the
beautiful kittens from the living hell you both created at Boys Town."



Moving On

"That's terrible," Michele Rokke says when she hears about the death threats.
"I think they are alarming. But we don't know who they're written by. They
could be written by crazy people on either side. I certainly would not want
anybody to write anything like that, ever. But I can't take responsibility for
what other people do. If there's something egregiously wrong going on in a
laboratory, it's my responsibility to bring out the truth."

She's speaking from a phone booth on the Ohio Turnpike. It's Christmas Eve and
she's headed home to Minnesota. She has quit PETA and abandoned the undercover
life, at least for a while. She says the investigations and the racketeering
suit have left her exhausted. She says she needs a break. 

But she also says she won't abandon the cause. "I'll just work in a different
avenue," she says. "I'm really interested right now in grass-roots activism.
Stuff on a local level. People are afraid to be the first one to picket a fur
store in their town and I guess I feel right now that's something I want to
do."



⌐ Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company 





******************************************************************************
               Animal Defense League of New York City/Long Island
                                           PO Box 33 
                                   Huntington, NY 11743
                                        1-800-459-3109
                                  ADL-NYC-LI@juno.com
                    http://members.aol.com/adlnycli/home.htm

   The Animal Defense League is a nationally active grassroots organization 
   working to inform the public about animal exploitation and abuse. Through 
     community ourtreach, networking, legislation, public education, vocal 
      demonstrations and civil disobedience, we speak for those who cannot
                                  speak for themselves.

              "It is better to light one candle than to add to the darkness."
******************************************************************************
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 12:43:31 -0800
From: Barry Kent MacKay 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Factory farming proving a sick way to make money
Message-ID: <34AFF473.10C5@sympatico.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Factory farming proving a sick way to make money
Nature Trail, by Barry Kent MacKay
The Toronto Star, Sunday, January 4, 1998

We're trying to ignore an important message --- crammed living
conditions in factory farms can lead to disaster in the form of new
diseases.

When disease affects "merely" fish or fowl, humans are concerned only
for their wallets.  But if the new disease spreads to us, we panic. 
It's becoming a predictable and unnecessary scenario.

Take, for example, a newly named infection deadly to Atlantic salmon.

First detected in caged salmon in the summer of 1996, the infection,
called hemmorrhagic kidney syndrome, can cause fish losses of up to 1
per cent per day.  Fish that die from it are found to have kidney
hemorrhages and may also show bloody discharge around the fins, eyes and
belly.

So far, the disease seems confined to salmon caged in salt water.  It
poses no risk to human health.  But what about our native, free-swimming
salmon?

At the 59th annual Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference, held in
Milwaukee last month, I listened to a representative of the catfish
farming industry talk glowingly of aquaculture replacing wild fish in
fulfilment of the public's "demand" for seafood.

No matter that excessive fishing by huge multinationals has wiped out so
much of our once ubelievalbe abundance of fish stocks; we'll stick fish
in cages or impoundments to produce maximum returns.

But whenever animals of any species (including human) are jammed
together, waste concentrations and risk of disease increase to dangerous
levels.  My fear about aquaculture is that the artificially concentrated
fish numbers, in the absence of natural predator removal of the infirm,
will lead to the proliferation of diseases that can then infect what
remains of our natural wild fish stocks.

The point is illustrated by the so-called "bird flu" of hong Kong.  It
led to the recent destruction of more than a million chickens and other
fowl living in densely packed conditions, in an effort to stem the
spread of a disease hitherto harmless to people, but now deadly.

Closer to home, a United States senate study recently reported that the
amount of farm animal manure produced in the U.S. is 130 times greater
than the amount of human waste produced in the same time frame.  The
study concluded that 60 per cent of the nation's rivers are "impaired"
by pollution, most of it agricultural runoff.  Yet, in western Canada,
there is no stopping plans to bring in more massive factory pig farms. 
They will, of course, make money.

Last year, in only three states --- Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri ---
more than 40 animal waste spills destroyed 670,000 fish.  Hog farm waste
led to the proliferation of Pfiesteria dinoflagellates, which are
mirco-organisms that kill off sea life and can cause serious human
health problems, including permanent loss of memory.

No matter how big the cages are made, or how much farmland is flooded or
how densely imprisoned are the fish or other livestock, we cannot
replace the sheer volume of living resources we have so recklessly
squandered.

Although these diseases may originate as a function of such artificially
huge concentrations of animals, they can proliferate into already
depleted wild populations of the same or related species.  Already the
warning is out to Asian bird banders that wild migrant birds may be
carrying the influenza strain popularly known as bird flu.

When will we ever learn?

-30-

Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 01:36:09 +0800 (SST)
From: Vadivu Govind 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Award for Korean animal activists + Korean economic crisis
  affects animals
Message-ID: <199801041736.BAA13197@eastgate.cyberway.com.sg>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"


From:

#2 Winter 97 Newsletter,
International Aid for Korean Animals and Korea Animal Protection Society

On December 3rd 1997, Sunnan Kum and Kyenan Kum received the sculpture award
from Prince Laurent of Belgium.  The Prince is the honorary chairman of
Prince Laurent Animal Welfare Foundation. We could not be there to receive
this great honor, but the sculpture is on its way to Sunnan in Korea.  While
in Korea for three months as the commissioner of the World Expo, the
honorary Senator Roland Gillet of Belgium observed our activities and
visited our sanctuary.  He recommended us to Prince Laurent for our hard
work despite very difficult circumstances. Senator Gillet is the President
of the Environment Council of Belgium and he has had a very active role in
protesting the consumption of dogs and cats in Korea.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Appeal from Sunnan and Kyenan Kum as in #2 Winter 97 Newsletter (edited):

"As you may know, Korea is in the middle of a serious economic crisis at
this time; it is causing very real difficulties for the country as a whole,
as well as for our society and its sanctuary. Support from our Korean
members has become much reduced, and even more disheartening, the price of
goods has drastically risen.  This is a particular hardship since many of
our animal supplies are imported. Some of you probably know, for example,
the cat food, litter, and medicine is not produced in Korea (cats are not
considered pets so there is no market for such production), so we must
import these things alomg with most of the dog food.  The Korean exchange
rate for a dollar is twice as high as it was just few months ago, and the
economic crisis is not likely to recover in the near future.  Imported goods
are becoming very scarce because there is not enough foreign currency.  Tha
cats in our sancturay had been eating a very poor quality dog food until the
emrgency shipment of cat food finally arrived, and this shipment is enough
for only two months.

Please help us feed our animals. We need to buy and ship animal food, litter
and medicine to Korea immediately. Please give your love to these poor
animals and don't let them go hungry. We do not receive any aid or grants
from the government, nor from any international animal welfare organization.
Your personal checks from England, Australia, Canada and other countries can
be deposted in our US IAKA account without a bank fee. You do not need to
make any special bank draft checks. Because the Korean banks charge such a
high fee, please send your check donations to IAKA, P.O.Box 20600, Oakland, CA
94620-0600, USA. IAKA is a registered charitable organization and your
contribution is tax deductible."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

Address of IAKA
P.O.Box 20600
Oakland, CA
94620-0600
USA
Tel: 1510-271-6795
Fax: 1510-451-0643
Email 

Address of KAPS
1593-19 Daemyoung 10-dong
Nam-ku, Taegu City
South Korea 705-040
Tel: 82-53-629-6143
Fax: 82-53-628-6860

Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:58:49 EST
From: JanaWilson 
To: Ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (US) Oklahoma Outdoor Woman's Workshop
Message-ID: 
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit


A/w Oklahoma hunting news:

A one-day Outdoors Woman Workshop will be held on Feb. 7 at
the Oxley Nature Center in Tulsa, Okla.  This workshop is designed
to provide women with the basic outdoor recreation skills that will help
them "better enjoy Oklahoma's great outdoors."
The workshop is from 8 am to 4:30 pm and is open to anyone 18 
years or older who wants to learn new skills or improve exisiting ones.
Topics include map and compass skills, birding for beginners,
attracting wildlife, fly-tying basics, dutch oven skills, winter botany
and tanning hides (huh?).
Registration is limited to 60 women and the cost is $25 for the full-day
session (lunch provided), or $15 for a half-day session (lunch 
provided).  For additional information or registration specifics
please call Oxley Nature Center at (918) 669-6644.

                                                  For the Animals,

                                                  Jana, OKC
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:58:55 EST
From: JanaWilson 
To: Ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (US) Oklahoma Weekly Hunting News
Message-ID: <1dc54a24.34afcde1@aol.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit


A/w local Okla. City hunting news:

Oklahoma's 924,149 adult anglers spent more than $490 million
last year on fishing trips and equipment, according to economic
statistics compiled by the American Sportfishing Association.
The study indicates that the total economic impact of fishing
expenditures in Okla. was $1.1 billion.  The study also indicates
that sportfishing in Okla. during 1996 created:
  * the equivalent of 14,797 jobs
  * $258,906,659 in wages
  * $27,556,597 in state tax revenue
  * $24,252,897 in federal tax revenue
The study also indicated that anglers spent 14,673,615 days fishing
in Okla.'s waters for a variety of game fish.

The Oklahoma Wildlife Dept has issued a New Year's statement
thanking sportsmen for their continued financial support.
A/w Mr. Greg Duffy, dept. director, "The department is responsible
for managing all fo the state's fish and wildlife resources, but
we do not receive any general state tax revenues to do so.  The
majority of our funding comes from hunting and fishing license sales
and special federal taxes on hunting and fishing equipment."
(Note: we also pay a small fee for car license tags renewals.)
Duffy also said that with license sales being such a critical
component of the department's operating income, he was
specially appreciative of the many sportsmen and women who 
regularly buy the necessary licenses and permits to "enjoy" (?)
Oklahoma's wildlife.
Duffy added "When compared to a tank of gas or a box of
ammunition, a hunting or fishing license is really a bargain.
Even so, we want to let our constituents know that we value 
their financial support, and are working hard to provide them
the best outdoor recreation opportunity possible."
Annual hunting and fishing licenses, which expire each year on
31 Dec., cost $12.50 each.  Separate permits are required for
hunting deer, turkey and other species.  All license requirements
and costs are outlined in Oklahoma's Hunting and Fishing
Regulations are available at all sporting good stores and
Walmarts thruout the state.

                                                       For the Animals,

                                                       Jana, OKC
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 13:24:52 EST
From: JanaWilson 
To: Ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (US) Oklahoma Snow Geese Problems
Message-ID: <330379d3.34afd3f6@aol.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit


A/w local Okla. City Sunday hunting news:

Snow geese are eating themselves out of house and home.
Mr. Paul Schmidt, chief of the US Fish and Wildlife Service's
office of migratory bird management, knew about the damage the
snow geese were inflicting on breeding grounds in many subartic
areas.  But it wasn't until he made a trip to Churchhill, Manitoba,
last year that saw the damage.  "Without a doubt, it was an eye-
opening experience.  Seeing was believing," a/w Schmidt.
Schmidt saw snow geese literally consuming their own habitat.
That means they are also destroying habitat for other species by
breaking open the turf and uprooting plants, especially grasses and
sedges, leading to erosion and increased soil salinity.
"It's an ecosystem in peril," said Schmidt.
That's bad news for the US, especially farmers on the prairies in
east Arkansas, where a flock of 50,000 snow geese can turn a field
into a hog slop, destroying cover crops planted to prevent erosion,
flattening levees and raiding duck habitat.
Hoping to encourage more snow goose harvest, the Oklahoma Wildlife
Dept. has adopted liberal regulations for the species.  Despite a daily
limit of 10 birds, however, few waterfowlers pursue the snows.
For one thing they are not as plentiful as Canadas, and they tend to
fly in very large flocks, which are harder to decoy.  They're found
in large nos. in the eastern part of the state, but they're usually making
use of the state's waterfowl refuges.
It's the damage they do in the breeding grounds of the subartic regions
that must be corrected, biologists say.  Schmidt and his group were
invited to Churchill  by the Artic Goose Habitat Working group, whose
17 members represent state and federal biologists, university profs,
and conservation organizations.
"Everybody on this tour were just stunned at what they saw," said
Dr. Bruce Batt, chief biologist for Ducks Unlimited and chairman
of the the study group.
Batt also added  "If we don't do something soon, the ecosystem these
birds are living in will be effectively destroyed.  Not just for snow geese
but other species, such as Canada geese and ducks.  Everything that
lives there will be affected."
Among the proposals being considered:
  1.  Allowing more efficient hunting methods such as electronic-
       calling devices, baiting, live decoys, sneaking and shooting
       from vehicles, and permitting different types of firearms and
       more shells.
  2.  Killing birds outside the normal hunting dates.
  3.  Taking eggs.
  4.  Providing additional hunting on refuges.

                                                  For the Animals,

                                                  Jana, OKC

Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 13:57:49 -0500
From: Marilyn Halpern 
To: AR-news 
Subject: Info request
Message-ID: <34AFDBAD.5660@earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Does anyone have info on Shaw Brothers in Sayre, PA in the Poconos? 
They rent out donkeys for donkey basketball games. Thanks. Marilyn
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 16:36:33 EST
From: LexAnima 
To: AR-News@envirolink.org
Subject: Hello.  I didn't know if you got GREENLines, so I copied this to you.
Message-ID: <7bde69c5.34b000e4@aol.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Most of you who are receiving this post are probably already signed up to
GREENLines, however if you are not, you probably haven't heard the excellent
news regarding the "no surprizes" provisions of the Endangered Species Act.
[GREENLines comes to you everyday to keep you up to the minute on
environmental news.  To subscribe go to Green Home Page:
www.defenders.org/grnhome.html and sign in.]  You wouldn't be on-line if you
didn't believe that the best way to save the planet is through the timely
exchange of information.  Why not forward this message on to a sister or
fellow activist to get them into the loop?

______________________________

VICTORY FOR THE ESA!

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: AP reported 12/30 the Clinton Administration granted a
temporary victory for environmentalists by suspending a program allowing
timber companies to protect fish and wildlife on their land voluntarily
instead of following rules laid out in the Endangered Species Act, a program
known as "no surprises." The administration imposed the two-month moratorium
in response to a lawsuit that says the Interior Department never formally
adopted the "no surprises" policy and therefore can't legally enforce it. The
"no surprises" provision is a component of the Senate endangered species bill,
S. 1180, introduced by Senator Dirk Kempthorne (R-ID) and endorsed by the
administration. "Making century-long assurances to developers and timber
companiesàis ecologically unrealistic," said Leona Klippstein of Spirit of the
Sage, one of the suit's plaintiffs. 

WOLVES PRESENCE FELT: The 12/30 New York Times, reporting on the impact of
wolves on the Yellowstone ecosystem two years after reintroduction, said
overall biodiversity has increased because of the wolves. Research on how a
large ecosystem responds to the return of a major predator is unparalleled
because officials knew in advance that wolves were coming back and began
assembling data on the ecosystem. "It's exciting," said Dr. Robert Crabtree of
Yellowstone Ecosystem studies, a private nonprofit research institute
conducting a 15-year study on the effects of wolves on Yellowstone. "This is
one of the great ecological experiments of this century." 

FLAT-TAILED LIZARD SUIT: A 12/30 Defenders of Wildlife press release reported
several national and local conservation groups filed a civil complaint against
the Department of Interior and USFWS charging the agencies refused to
adequately protect the imperiled flat-tailed horned lizard. The suit charges
the FWS illegally refused to list the lizard under the ESA and did not follow
science-based procedures for listing species. "The plight of the flat-tailed
horned lizard represents not only the ecological dangers facing the Sonoran
Desert ecosystem, but the integrity of the ESA as well," said Defenders legal
director William Snape. "àwe should remember that biological short-cuts only
lead to more extinctions and greater costs to society." 

EVERGLADES LOSES JOHNSON: The 12/23 Miami Herald reported the departure of
Craig Johnson of US Fish and Wildlife, who resigned last week under fire as
supervisor of the FWS Everglades ecosystem office. Johnson and colleagues
working on the restoration of the Everglades ecosystem wrote to the Army Corps
of Engineers in October that restoration planning was focusing too much on
providing flood protection and water supplies for farms and cities at the
expense of reviving damaged natural resources. "I learned from the start that
I had a choice: To be externally focused and do right by the resource or make
people within the agency happy," said Johnson. "I chose the resource." 

________________________________

D'Arcy Kemnitz
Midwest Region Coordinator,
Endangered Species Coalition
GREEN (Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network)
415 West Johnson Street, #101
Madison, Wisconsin 53703
LexAnima@aol.com
(608) 286-5952
Green Home Page:  www.defenders.org/grnhome.html

National Office:
GrassRoots Environmental Effectiveness Network
1101 Fourteenth St NW, Suite 1400
Washington, DC  20005
Tel: (202) 682-9400 x 236
Fax: (202) 682-1331

  /\_/\    
 ( o.o )    Humans aren't the only species on Earth.
  >   <     We just act like it.
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 18:26:10 EST
From: Marisul 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (US) NY Post: "Fur-ociously Fashionable Coats"
Message-ID: <433f154e.34b01a95@aol.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

>From the New York Post, Sunday, January 4, 1998, p. 40

"Fur-ociously Fashionable Coats"

by Libby Callaway

     Much to PETA's chagrin and fashion magazine editors' great delight, fur
is back in style in a big way this season.  But it's not head-to-toe rabbit,
mink and fox coats that are getting all the attention.  Fur cuffs and collars
are the very height of winter outerwear fashion. They're also a great way to
keep warm.
     New York City sidewalks were jammed this holiday shopping season with
women boasting coats and jackets with full, fluffy lapels and wrist-tickling
trims made of fur.
     And even if you can't bear to wear the real thing, you can always go the
animal-friendly route by trimming your topper with fur that's faux.
--------------------------
The e-mail address for the Post is letters@nypost.com
Snail mail is The Editor, New York Post, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, New York,
NY  10036.
Letters must include name, address and daytime phone number.
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 19:26:56 -0500
From: allen schubert 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: (US) Cattlemen Sue Oprah Over Comments
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19980104192653.0073a580@pop3.clark.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

from Associated Press http://wire.ap.org
----------------------------------------------------------
 01/04/1998 18:59 EST

 Cattlemen Sue Oprah Over Comments

 By CLIFF EDWARDS
 AP Business Writer

 CHICAGO (AP) -- Although mad cow disease has never been documented in the
 United States, Oprah Winfrey says she had every right to speculate on her
 show about the possibility of an outbreak here.

 Texas cattlemen disagree, and on Tuesday pretrial hearings begin in a
 lawsuit charging that Ms. Winfrey defamed an entire industry when the
 disease was made fodder for her talk show.

 Cattlemen claim they lost millions of dollars because of the show. Oprah,
 her Harpo Productions Inc. and distributor King World Productions say the
 show was only keeping the public informed.

 ``I maintain my right to ask questions and to hold a public debate on
 issues that impact the general public and my audience,'' Ms. Winfrey said
 in a statement shortly after the show aired.

 Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a
 brain-destroying disease that has ravaged cattle in Britain since the
 late 1980s.

 It is believed to have been spread by cattle feed containing ground-up
 sheep parts, but it was not until 1996 that British scientists announced
 that humans may have contracted the disease by eating diseased beef.

 Enter Oprah.

 During an ``Oprah Winfrey Show'' broadcast in April 1996, a guest said
 that feeding ground-up animal parts to cattle, which was being done at
 the time, could spread the disease to humans in the United States.

 To applause from the studio audience, Ms. Winfrey exclaimed: ``It has
 just stopped me from eating another burger!''

 Cattle prices began to fall the day of the show and fell for two weeks
 before rising again.

 Amarillo cattle feeder Paul Engler was livid.

 No case has ever been reported in the United States, although eating meat
 from cattle tainted by the disease is believed to have killed at least 20
 people overseas, mostly in Britain.

 Engler, who said he lost $6.7 million because of the show, sued along
 with a dozen cattlemen under a 1995 Texas law that protects agricultural
 products from slander.

 The federal lawsuit appears to be the biggest test yet of so-called
 ``veggie libel'' laws, which sprouted after a ``60 Minutes'' report in
 1989 on the growth regulator Alar sent apple prices plummeting. Since
 then, 13 states have passed laws against falsely disparaging products.

 Ms. Winfrey's show came at a time when drought, high feed prices and
 oversupply were crippling cattlemen.

 England and Europe have been dealing with mad cow disease for several
 years, and the United States has been keeping an eye on the situation.

 In 1989, the United States banned imports of beef products from England
 because of the disease, but meat imports from continental Europe were
 allowed to continue.

 Last June the United States banned the feeding of most animal parts to
 cattle, and in December imports of cattle and sheep from Europe were
 banned.

 But slaughtered animal parts can still be fed to pigs, chicken, fish,
 pets and other animals in the United States, and those animals in turn
 can be processed into feed for cows.

 Dairy producer Bruce Krug of upstate New York believes the government and
 the beef industry need to stop the practice.

 ``We've got a potential disaster on our hands if we continue feeding
 animals back to animals,'' said Krug, who keeps 120 head of cattle in
 Constableville, about 40 miles north of Utica.
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 09:21:45 +0000
From: jwed 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Dog eating in Korea
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980105092145.007a7480@pop.hkstar.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

EarthCare Newsletter - January 1998 - by Dr John Wedderburn

Kyongdong Market, Seoul
     This market is one of many such in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. It
is near the Chongnyangni subway station and covers about 230,000 square
metres.áThe first thing that struck me was the abundance and variety of the
vegetables and fruit that were for sale - and this in mid-winter.á Surely
man could be content with this profligacy of nature without having to abuse
sentient beings for either nourishment or pleasure!á Unfortunately, a few
steps into the market and I came across the first of many stalls with the
dreaded 7H - the Korean character for dog.

     For scale and variety of animal fare, this market hardly compares with the
notorious Qingping market in Guangzhou (China).á But nevertheless there is
plenty to choose from - cat soup, four seasons dog stew, rabbit, goat and
all kinds of poultry.á I did not witness any active cruelty being inflicted
on the animals but I could see their terror and cringing when a human went
near.á The stall holders had obviously had bad experiences with foreigners
and it was made clear to me that I was not welcome - especially with my
camera. It would therefore be impossible for me to take pictures of the
slaughter methods - the story is that the dogs are hanged from the bars of
their cages and when nearly dead are taken down to have their fur
blowtorched off.á I did observe poultry being blowtorched.
     
     There seems to be some difference of opinion on the current legality of
dog eating in Korea. It was banned at the time of the Seoul Olympics in
1988.á The Government seems to be moving towards making a distinction
between "food dogs" and "pet dogs".áá Whatever the legal position, the
industry is obviously thrivingá without any serious attempt at control. á
Personally I see no logic in banning dog eating and not pig eating.á The
need is for enforceable legislation to cover holding and slaughter methods
for all animals. á And for the encouragement of vegetarianism. This will be
an uphill battle in Korea - my hosts had read about vegetarians but had
never met one before!

     It was pointed out to me that the association of a prostitution areaá with
the dog meat area is usual throughout the country.á Apparently men
congregate and drink snake soup and alcohol and eat dog to increase their
stamina and then choose a woman from the goldfish-bowl shops. Adjacent to
the Kyongdong market lies the "588" (oh-pal-pal) brothel district. 

What you can do:
The only Korean organisation that seems to be on the animals' side is the
Korean Animal Protection Society (KAPS) - it has an international arm, á
International Aid for Korean Animals (IAKA).
So please contact Ms Kyenan Kum:
email:á ifkaps@msn.com
P.O Box 20600
Oakland, CA
94620-0600
USA
Tel: + 1 510 271 6795
Fax: + 1 510 451 0643

Also please read these sites:
http://www.earth.org.hk/Seoul.html   (photographs to illustrate the above
article)
http://www.paws.org/korea/index.htm
http://www.fl.net.au/users/dan/
http://korea.emb.washington.dc.us/guestbook/gbform.htm
There is a wealth of information here on Korea and more suggestions as to
what you can do to help.
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 21:47:07 -0500
From: jeanlee 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: U.S. - Everglades National Park
Message-ID: <34B049AB.19B5@concentric.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi All-

The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management
District plan to flood the breeding ground of the few remaining
"Goldilocks" Cape Sable seaside sparrows in Everglades National Park. 
This endangered songbird lives only in the park.  Several days after
their annoucement, Craig Johnson, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
supervisor, has "resigned under fire."  He championed the cause of
wildlife and questioned the direction that the Everglades restoration
project is taking.

It's a disgrace that agencies charged with protecting wildlife will be
the cause of the extinction of this little songbird and are silencing
employees who are doing their jobs.

This is about a national park, so we can all make a couple calls. 
Please call the Water Management District at 1-800-432-2045 and the
Corps of Engineers at 1-904-232-2234 and tell them to protect, not
destroy, the Goldilocks sparrow.

Jeanlee
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 12:01:28 +0000
From: jwed 
To: ar-news@envirolink.org
Subject: Dog eating in Korea - reposted because of an error in a Link -
  apologies to all 
Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980105120128.007bf400@pop.hkstar.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

EarthCare Newsletter - January 1998 - by Dr John Wedderburn

Kyongdong Market, Seoul
     This market is one of many such in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. It
is near the Chongnyangni subway station and covers about 230,000 square
metres.áThe first thing that struck me was the abundance and variety of the
vegetables and fruit that were for sale - and this in mid-winter.á Surely
man could be content with this profligacy of nature without having to abuse
sentient beings for either nourishment or pleasure!á Unfortunately, a few
steps into the market and I came across the first of many stalls with the
dreaded 7H - the Korean character for dog.

     For scale and variety of animal fare, this market hardly compares with the
notorious Qingping market in Guangzhou (China).á But nevertheless there is
plenty to choose from - cat soup, four seasons dog stew, rabbit, goat and
all kinds of poultry.á I did not witness any active cruelty being inflicted
on the animals but I could see their terror and cringing when a human went
near.á The stall holders had obviously had bad experiences with foreigners
and it was made clear to me that I was not welcome - especially with my
camera. It would therefore be impossible for me to take pictures of the
slaughter methods - the story is that the dogs are hanged from the bars of
their cages and when nearly dead are taken down to have their fur
blowtorched off.á I did observe poultry being blowtorched.
     
     There seems to be some difference of opinion on the current legality of
dog eating in Korea. It was banned at the time of the Seoul Olympics in
1988.á The Government seems to be moving towards making a distinction
between "food dogs" and "pet dogs".áá Whatever the legal position, the
industry is obviously thrivingá without any serious attempt at control. á
Personally I see no logic in banning dog eating and not pig eating.á The
need is for enforceable legislation to cover holding and slaughter methods
for all animals. á And for the encouragement of vegetarianism. This will be
an uphill battle in Korea - my hosts had read about vegetarians but had
never met one before!

     It was pointed out to me that the association of a prostitution areaá with
the dog meat area is usual throughout the country.á Apparently men
congregate and drink snake soup and alcohol and eat dog to increase their
stamina and then choose a woman from the goldfish-bowl shops. Adjacent to
the Kyongdong market lies the "588" (oh-pal-pal) brothel district. 

What you can do:
The only Korean organisation that seems to be on the animals' side is the
Korean Animal Protection Society (KAPS) - it has an international arm, á
International Aid for Korean Animals (IAKA).
So please contact Ms Kyenan Kum:
email:á ifkaps@msn.com
P.O Box 20600
Oakland, CA
94620-0600
USA
Tel: + 1 510 271 6795
Fax: + 1 510 451 0643

Also please read these sites:
http://www.earth.org.hk/Seoul.html   (photographs to illustrate the above
article)
http://www.paws.org/korea/index.htm
http://www.f1.net.au/users/dan/
http://korea.emb.washington.dc.us/guestbook/gbform.htm
There is a wealth of information here on Korea and more suggestions as to
what you can do to help.