25 May 2003 Issue - Take Action Against Hunting - Committee to Abolish Sports Hunting - Letters to the Editor - hunting, sport hunting, sports hunting, C.A.S.H., CASH, wildlife, wildlife management, DNR, DEC, DEP, animals, animal rights, anti-hunting, ecology, environment,

A tentative date of June 12 has been scheduled for a hearing before the House Resources Committee's Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife, and Oceans, on HR1472 [Jim Moran (D-VA), Elton Gallegly (R-CA)], the bill to ban bear hunting with bait on federal land.

Hunters and trappers are organized and have come out in full force to kill this legislation because they want nothing to infringe upon their hobby of slaughtering animals by any means necessary.

A coalition of animal killing organizations has organized under the umbrella of the “National Bear Hunting Defense Task Force” and their mission is to kill HR1472.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Please contact the members of the Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife, and Oceans of the House Resources Committee and urge them to support HR1472.

Mr. Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland, Chairman (202) 225-5311

Mr. Frank Pallone, New Jersey, Ranking Democrat Member (202) 225-4671

Don Young, AK (202) 225-5765

W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, LA (202) 225-4031

Jim Saxton, NJ (202) 225-4765

Mark E. Souder, IN (202) 225-4436

Walter B. Jones, NC (202) 225-3415

Richard W. Pombo, CA, ex officio (202) 225-1947

Eni F. Faleomavaega, AS (202) 225-8577

Neil Abercrombie, HI (202) 225-2726

Solomon P. Ortiz, TX (202) 225-7742

Madeleine Z. Bordallo, GU (202) 225-1188

Nick J. Rahall, II, WV, ex officio (202) 225-3452

Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife, and Oceans
H2-188 Ford House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 226-0200
Fax: (202) 225-1542

Also, contact your members of congress and urge them to support HR1472. You can find your state Congressperson's contact information by visiting http://www.house.gov/

Write a letter to the editor of your local paper.

Send an e-mail alert on the subject to family and friends and ask them to actively support HR1472.

Points to make:

Eighty-percent of US states do not permit baiting bears for hunting and HR1472 would end the practice in the remaining twenty-percent.

The barbaric practice of baiting bears for hunting is not allowed in forty of the fifty states, and baiting takes away the element of “fair chase” that many hunters see as a requirement of an “ethical hunt.”

Please emphasize the point that because hunting is a dying sport, state game agencies will stoop at nothing to expand the bloodshed and spread their bloody hobby, because the salaries of state game agency employees are paid for through sale of hunting, fishing and trapping licenses.

Dove Hunting and Bear Hounding Defeated in Minnesota.

The Minnesota legislature was considering language that appeared in several bills to allow mourning doves to be hunted for the first time since 1946. Additionally, one of the House bills contained language that would have allow for the unethical and unfair practice of hunting bears with hounds.

The Minnesota Legislature adjourned its regular session at midnight on May 19 without approving either a dove hunting season or hunting bears with hounds.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Please thank the following senators, as well as your senator (if s/he opposed the hunt) for their opposition to dove hunting in Minnesota. This bill is sure to come up again next year, and this is an ideal opportunity to thank those who spoke up for the animals in this session.

Senator Dallas Sams
651-297-8063
sen.dallas.sams@senate.mn

Senator Linda Scheid
651-296-8869
sen.linda.scheid@senate.mn

Senator John Marty
651-296-5645
sen.john.marty@senate.mn

You can find out who your Senator is by calling the Minnesota switchboard at 651-296-0504 or by going to the Minnesota State Legislature web site at http://www.leg.state.mn.us/

Also, please contact your state Representative.

Points to make:

Background on doves:

Mention that recreational hunting of mourning doves serves no wildlife management purpose since Doves pose no threat to agricultural crops, homes, or anything else of value to people in Minnesota.

Doves are not overpopulated.

Dove hunting is inherently cruel. Statistics show that nearly 20% of doves shot by hunters are wounded and not retrieved.

Background on bear hounding:

Bear cubs are often killed. Hounding often involves the chasing, mauling, and killing of bear cubs; the "treeing" of frightened and exhausted bears; severe injuries to dogs who take part in the hounding; and the eventual targeting and shooting of a bear who is unable to escape from a tree.

Many other bear hunting states outlaw hounding. Four states have recently approved ballot initiatives to ban bear hunting with dogs-Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. Voters-hunters and non-hunters-find hound hunting to be cruel and unsportsmanlike. A post-election survey in Colorado revealed that half of the state's hunters supported the initiative.

Source: Humane Society of the United States 5/20/03

FYI

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is looking to kill 200,000 cormorants, an increase of more than 425%, to pacify fish factory-farmers and sport and commercial anglers. Fish factory-farmers kill the birds because they erroneously believe that doing so is necessary to protect their fish stocks. The scientific evidence belies their actions however, by revealing that cormorants have barely any impact on fish populations.

Under the proposed plan, the birds will be allowed to be killed by barbaric methods such as shooting, neck breaking, and gassing. The birds can be killed and their nests destroyed not just at the fish factory-farms, but also at their winter roosts, which may be miles away.

Source: Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals

Frederick and Rosanne Shuger plan to argue that Indiana's hunter harassment law is constitutionally vague and violates the right to free speech. The law is vague in that it does not clearly define what it means when it prohibits individuals from interfering, disturbing or engaging in activity that disturbs the legal taking of a game animal, said the shuger's attorney, Garry Weiss.

Northwest Indiana News 5/6/03

For the past 38 years, the Mangum Rattlesnake Association has bought hundreds of rattlesnakes from snake hunters who in Texas and Southwest Oklahoma. This year the association bought 3000 lbs of rattlesnakes from snake sellers.

Because "there were more snakes than anybody wanted," the derby organizers could only get $2.75 per pound from the snake sellers, an association spokesman said.

Decades of snake hunting have decimated the rattlesnake population in NW Oklahoma said a state game warden. "Snake hunters, to a man, will tell you there are not as many snakes as there used to be. It's due to overhunting."

One of the state's foremost snake experts thinks that thousands of rattlesnakes are being needlessly slaughtered because of the price tag on their heads. Rattlesnakes are important to the ecosystem because they keep rodent populations in check.

Source: Sunday Oklahoman 5/4/03

Federal trappers have responded to large timber companies by killing 122 bears a year on average from 1998 to 2001 in Western Oregon, and the government plans to continue the killing program to stop bears from damaging loggers' profits.

Environmentalists seek to end the slaughter by filing a lawsuit that contends Wildlife Services inflated the cost of black bear damage to timber, provided no evidence its trapping program actually controls damage and did not fully explain how it decides to kill bears.

In reality, bears don't always kill trees, but often slow their growth. In most cases, fewer than 10 trees an acre are damaged.

Trappers use leg snares to catch bears and then kill captured bears by shooting them in the head. They also kill any cubs found with adult bears.

Wildlife Services and sport hunters and trappers kill roughly 6 percent of western Oregon's bears each year, with the American public paying for 16 percent of the cost of the trapping program.

Groups filing the lawsuit are Umpqua Watersheds, Predator Defense, Siskiyou Regional Education Project, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Animal Protection Institute, Humane Society of the United States and Sinapu.

Source: The Oregonian 05/07/03

Hunter Len Kullas of Buckley, WA., has seen the Department of Fish and Wildlife's Eastern Washington pheasant-release program in action. His most recent experience occurred on the day before Thanksgiving.

"About 2 in the afternoon, we started to hear a lot of shooting toward the road, so we headed up that way to see what was going on... The first thing we see is the (hatchery) truck heading down the road with what I assume were empty bird cages on the back," he said. "...as we got closer it looked like in no greater than a 200-square-yard area there were probably 25 to 40 hunters. I don't know how many birds were shot. We decided we didn't want any further part of that and we headed back to the parking lot, and quit."

Crowds of hunters follow the hatchery trucks because the division of Fish and Wildlife is "releasing birds during the middle of hunting hours."

Kullas says what he saw was dangerous and unsportsmanlike. "If this is where our money's going, then we ought to reconsider what we're doing," he said.

Matt Monda is wildlife program manager for the Department of Fish and Wildlife says of the program "You drive down the street in an agency truck with pheasants on the back, and you know what? People see you," he said. "So we have a clientele that's following us."

"We try to go behind locked gates where we can, or behind the signs that say 'no unauthorized vehicles,' so we can at least release the birds and have them hit the ground before somebody puts them up," he said. "I have had birds ... and before they even hit the ground somebody shot them."

Source: The Tacoma News Tribune 5/7/03