Unlikely Foes Clash Over the Protection of Animals

Conservationists, accustomed to fighting dam builders, housing developers and loggers to save endangered species, now are facing a new and equally formidable adversary from unexpected quarters: animal rights activists.

“The real battle in the environmental world now is between animal rights people and mainline, traditional conservationists,” said Lloyd Kiff, acting curator of ornithology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and leader of the California condor recovery team.

The friction between the two camps stems from differing philosophies about animals. While conservationists tend to look at animals in the context of populations, species and ecosystems, animal rights activists fret about the welfare of the individual animal.

When an animal rights group challenged the rules for duck and geese hunting in California this year, a major conservation group joined hunters in expressing horror. The National Audubon Society complained that a moratorium on waterfowl hunting would jeopardize 60% of the Central Valley’s wetlands, which are owned and maintained by hunting groups.

“It was nonsense to have a moratorium on a waterfowl hunting season,” said John Borneman, western regional representative of the Audubon Society. “If you are concerned about a population, you don’t eliminate their habitat . . . because you don’t like the idea of people shooting ducks and geese.”

Cleveland Amory, president of Fund for Animals, said the national animal rights group will work to end California’s migratory bird hunting altogether, despite the Audubon Society’s concerns.

“I don’t want the killers to provide the habitat,” said Amory, author of best-selling animal books.

In many cases, the battle lines have been drawn over attempts to save endangered species by killing destructive non-native animals. Environmental organizations, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have on various occasions resorted to killing the offenders.

“To preserve an ecosystem, we do believe there are situations (where a) species that is intrusive may have to be killed,” said Carl Pope, conservation director of the Sierra Club.

Animal rights activists look at it differently. “We operate in the sense that every animal has got an even right,” Amory said.

Some conservationists worry that Amory’s view may become the public’s as society grows more urban and experience with wildlife is limited to television episodes of “Flipper” and “Gentle Ben.”

A poll taken by supporters of a June ballot measure that banned mountain lion hunting in California found that people reacted more negatively to the lions when told that they regularly killed deer than when informed that lions had mauled a couple of children.

Joseph Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, speculated that respondents may have viewed the maulings as isolated incidents whereas deer killings are regular occurrences.

At the same time, Edmiston acknowledged, “there was a real Bambi constituency out there.”

“The alienation of urban society from nature creates unrealistic expectations. . . . We see things taken out of their natural context and essentially as aesthetic objects. In their natural context, there is all this interaction (predation), and this is what is exciting and dynamic and important about nature.”

Focusing on that discrepancy, Audubon, the Audubon Society’s bimonthly magazine, touched off a furor in November with a biting article criticizing the animal rights movement’s fight against the fur trade. “Animal Rights: Ignorance About Nature,” read the teaser on the cover. A flood of letters followed, defending animal activists by a 2-1 margin.

“The animal rights groups are very vocal,” said Les Line, editor of Audubon. “Their protests seem to be well organized. They get a lot of press, and the conflict between them and traditional conservation groups is certainly bound to increase.”

Some animal activists were not surprised by the article, pointing out that Line is a hunter.

“Audubon himself was a tremendous assassinator of animals,” said Amory, referring to naturalist John James Audubon, who painted and hunted birds.

The animosity belies many shared positions between conservationists and animal rights groups.

Both factions defend the federal Endangered Species Act and lobby for better wildlife habitat protection. Both favor a ban on ivory imports to save elephants--conservationists because of their concern about dwindling numbers; animal rights activists in part because they want to protect the elephants from pain. In many instances, memberships in both kinds of organizations overlap.

When it comes to killing animals to protect an endangered species, the two camps part ways.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to trap and kill red foxes that are preying on the endangered California clapper rail in San Francisco Bay marshes. Rick Coleman, refuge manger of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge complex, said the number of California clapper rails dwindled from 4,000 to 6,000 in the 1970s to 500 as of last year because of the voracious appetite of red foxes.

The fox, which is believed to have been introduced in California at the turn of the century by furriers, preys on the birds and their eggs. A fox family of two adults and five weaned pups consumes 317 pounds of prey during a 12-week period, according to Coleman.

“The challenge we face is that the red fox is always portrayed as a warm fuzzy (animal) with a smile on his face,” Coleman said. “We’re taking on the cover girl of the nouveau wildlife set. You should see it covered with mud and soaking wet. They are not that cute.”

Joan Priest, wildlife director for the Humane Society of Santa Clara Valley, said the organization may file suit to stop the trapping. She noted that other animals, including raccoons and skunks, also would be snared.

Priest favors relocating the foxes to a Texas preserve, or, only as a last resort, to finish them off with sharpshooters rather than capturing them in leg-hold traps.

“They are calling the red fox an alien, the bad guy, using him as the front to reintroduce an animal damage control program, which means they want an open hand to kill any or all predators they feel are a problem,” Priest said.

A group called the Animal Lovers Volunteer Assn. filed suit in 1986 to stop a similar trapping program at the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, where red foxes were preying on two types of endangered birds.

The lawsuit, filed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to require an environmental impact report, is pending. Meanwhile, the courts have permitted the government agency to kill foxes through trapping and lethal injection.

Wildlife officials credit the killing of an estimated 280 foxes in the last few years with the recovery of the endangered least tern and the light-footed clapper rail.

In 1985, least terns on the marsh produced only three fledgings, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Peter H. Hsiao, who is defending the wildlife agency. This year, 150 were counted. The clapper rail has rebounded from five breeding pairs in 1986 to 16 in 1990. Hsiao said mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, have been supportive of the trapping program.

Despite the continuing recovery of the birds, some wildlife officials remain bitter.

“I think about the amount of money that has been spent on this and think about what could have been done for the birds with that same amount of money,” said Dick Zembal, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

Animal rights activists contend that there is always an alternative to killing. Often, they recommend fencing off an area to protect a species, giving the predators birth control drugs or relocating them.

Wildlife biologists counter that these steps are often impractical and costly. They point to opposition by wildlife officials in other states to accepting red foxes from California and to cases where deer, relocated by animal rights groups, died of stress and other factors.

“You don’t take an animal out of the place it has been born and raised in without totally impacting the animal and the environment where you have moved it to,” said David Maehr, wildlife biologist for the state of Florida. “Eventually, animals are going to die, either the ones you moved or the ones that were already there.”

It is in Maehr’s state that animal rights activists are at odds with some conservationists over the future of the endangered Florida panther, whose population is estimated at between 30 and 50.

State and federal wildlife officials have proposed taking some animals in from the wild for breeding to ensure the survival of a genetically diverse population. “We have no choice,” said Sierra Club activist Judy Hancock. “It’s either that or lose the panther, and we still may lose it. But we have to try.”

Fund for Animals, like several other animal rights groups, wants the panthers left in the wild. The group complains that wildlife authorities are doing too little to preserve and expand panther habitats. The activists also are annoyed that deer hunting is allowed on panther habitats even though panthers feed on deer.

“Putting them in cages and breeding them simply is not going to solve the problem,” said D.J. Schubert, director of investigations for Fund for Animals. “I personally do not think healthy wild animals should be kept in captivity for any reason.”

A decision on whether to allow captive breeding is expected to be made soon by the Fish and Wildlife Service. Opponents have threatened to file a lawsuit if the breeding program is authorized.

Whatever the outcome in Florida, conflicts between conservation groups and animal rights activists are bound to arise as government agencies grapple with how to save a growing number of endangered species. Last year, the Humane Society intervened when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a program of shooting and poisoning ravens that were feasting on endangered young desert tortoises in California.

Kiff, the Museum of Natural History ornithologist, says that domesticated animals that have become wild are responsible for most bird extinctions on islands, and attempts to eradicate them increasingly attract opposition from animal rights groups.

Hunters hired by the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy recently killed about 2,000 goats in an effort to protect that island’s native vegetation. In the mid-1980s, Navy sharpshooters planned to kill goats for similar reasons on San Clemente Island, but Fund for Animals intervened, moving the goats to mainland ranches.

“Do goats and pigs have equal rights legally with the native populations?” asked Kiff. “If they do, then the net results of our behavior as a society is going to reduce the numbers and kinds of plants and animals on our planet.”

ENDANGERED SPECIES The three endangered birds below are threatened not only by habitat loss but by their predator, the red fox: CALIFORNIA CLAPPER RAIL A crow-sized, brown bird with a whitish throat found in the marshlands of San Francisco Bay as well as freshwater marshes and mudflats. It normally stays hidden in marsh vegetation; occasionally it ventures out on mudflats at low tide or when flooded out of marshes by very high winter tides. LIGHT-FOOTED CLAPPER RAIL A coot-sized marsh bird, brown with long legs and bill and a short, upturned tail. It populates coastal marshlands from Santa Barbara to San Diego. In 1988, the state Department of Fish and Game estimated only 180 pairs of these birds still survived. LEAST TERN A robin-sized bird usually found near beaches or river sand bars. When flying, it sometimes has a distinctive hunchbacked appearance. It has largely been eliminated by man from its natural nesting habitat along the California coast. Other threatened species include: FLORIDA PANTHER Considered by biologists to be the most endangered mammal in North America, perhaps 30 to 50 of these large, brown cats survive in the hardwood swamps of the Florida Everglades. Hunted by man for sport and threatened by urban growth, traditional conservationists and animal rights activists argue now over whether captive breeding techniques can help this species survive. DESERT TORTOISE This land species is found in the Mojave Desert and the eastern side of California’s Salton basin It constructs burrows in firm ground such as the banks of washes because it needs adequate ground moisture for the survival of its eggs and young, and grass, cactus or other low growth for food. This tortoise is threatened not only by habitat loss but by the desert raven which preys on its young. Source: National Audubon Society; Field Guide to Western Reptiles and Amphibians; Times news files.