Posted on 08/29/2003 1:43:14 PM PDT by chance33_98
Federal Court to Hold Hearing on Whether Mute Swan Slaughter Can Go Forward; Fund for Animals Seeks to Stop MD from Killing Birds
8/29/03 4:16:00 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: State Desk, Environment and Legal reporters
Contact: Heidi Prescott, 301-585-2591, ext. 213; or Michael Markarian, 301-523-3179 (cell), both of The Fund for Animals
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Earlier this month a federal judge in U.S. District Court issued a reprieve for the hundreds of mute swans in Maryland. Officials were set to issue permits to kill up to 525 mute swans in the state this year, when U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan put a hold on the hunt in response to a lawsuit filed by The Fund for Animals. Now the swans will get their day in court on Tuesday, September 2, at 10:30 a.m., when Judge Sullivan holds a hearing on The Fund's request for a preliminary injunction to prevent the shootings from going forward while the case is pending.
The Fund for Animals, along with four citizen plaintiffs, filed a suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, charging that the decision to kill mute swans throughout the Atlantic Flyway violates the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The federal agency gave approval for eastern states to kill up to 31,000 birds in the Atlantic Flyway over the next ten years.
"The environmental impacts of such a huge slaughter have never been adequately studied," said Heidi Prescott, national director of The Fund for Animals. "Non-lethal alternatives, such as egg addling, have not been adequately considered."
The Maryland mute swan population has been targeted specifically as the cause of reduction in submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the Chesapeake Bay, whicfQhe Fund points out is misleading. The waste-runoff from the chickens raised in intensive confinement on the Eastern Shore, and the sewage treatment plants on the Chesapeake Bay, kill dramatically more vegetation than the tiny population of swans. Moreover, Maryland's small population of mute swans has been declining on its own without lethal control -- from approximately 4,000 birds in 1999 to 3,600 in 2002.
"The U.S. and Maryland wildlife agencies' entire case for wanting to massacre mute swans rests on the fact that they are not causing problems now, but they just might cause problems in the future," said Michael Markarian, President of The Fund for Animals. "Managing wildlife by trying to predict the future is unscientific, unjustified, and little more than voodoo management."
ROTFLMAO...
Global warming?????
No bias in that headline.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.