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![handle is hein.animal/awiqu0024 and id is 1 raw text is:
January, February, March, 1975
BLACKBIRD MASSACRE
Letters of Protest Needed
The United States Army, flouting advice from eminent
wildlife authorities, is pushing forward with plans to kill
up to 13 million blackbirds unnecessarily and
inhumanely. In the first attack, February 20th, the Army
killed half a million grackles, red-winged blackbirds,
cowbxirds and starlings at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The
starlings, however, appear to be more resistant than the
native American birds and were observed flying off in
arge numbers the following day, havirg suffered but
survived what had been designed as a major massacre of
mrilions of the four species in the roost.
The Army's battle plan against the birds calls for
repeated night aerial spraying of the compound Tergitol
during or just prior to a cold rainfall Protective oil
insulation on the birds' feathers is removed making it
impossible for theirn to fly or to maintain their body heat.
At Fort Campbell howcycr, the weather turned so cold
Febriary 20th that sonic of the birds were covered with a
sheath of ice. and those strong enough to endure were
protceted from the effects of the Tergitol by the ice that
formed after fire trucks doused them with water.
The stress these small inscctivorous birds were forced
to undergo is exemplified in the UPI photo of a frozen
blackbird still clinging in death to its icicle-covered pine
boueh.
'This approach to blackbirds is the opposite of
humaneness, charged wildlife specialist and blackbird
expert Dr. George W. Cornwell of Gainesville. Florida. in
an affidavit presented in Federal Court February 7th.
Noting that Tergiiol. manufactured by Union Carbide, is
known as a stressing agent, Dr. Cornwell stated,
Tcrgitol, in concert with cold temperatures and rain,
stresses these warm-blooded, highly organized creatures
unto death by chilling, Further, he observed.
Sometimes birds take more than a week to die.
Dr. Cornwell was Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecol-
agy at the University of Florida School of F'orest
Resources and Conservation, Assistant Professor and
Wildlife Extension Specialist at Virginia Polytechnic
Institute, and teaching assistant at the University of
Michigan where he obtained his doctorate in wildlife
biology. He is now president of Ecolmpact, an environ-
mental consultant firm.
Tlhe long. drawn-out death that Tergitol is capable of
inflictine was also enmohasized b one of the world's
foremost au thorities on blackbirds, Dr. Melvin Ivon Dyer
[Continued on page 5]
ANIMAL WELFARE NTITUTE
P.O. Boix 3650O, Washington, D.C. 2000 7
Vol. 24 No. 1
U.S. GOVERNMENT CHALLENGED IN
COURT ON DOLPHIN DECIMATION
In a last-ditch effort to save the dolphins from death in
the tuia purse seines, a group of conservation and
humane organizations have filed suit against the
Secretary of Commerce and the National Marine
Fisheries Service, charging that a number of provisions
of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1973 have been
disregarded in the promulgation of regulations and the
issuing of a general permit allowing the continued taking
of tens of thousands of dolphins in the course of seining
for yellow fin tuna.
Richard Gtiiting, attorney for the Ernvirronmenal
Defense Fund, is representing the Animal Welfare
Institute, National Parks and Conservation Association,
American Littoral Society, Animal Protection Institute.
Defenders of W'Idlife, Friends of the Earth., Environ-
mental Policy Center, Fund for Animals, International
Fund for Animal Welfare, U.S.A., Alix Jay, and the
Connecticut Cetacean Society.
The suit states in part under Count 5:
Defendants are required under sectiois 101 and 103
of the Marine Mammal Protection Act to prescribe
regulations which restrict the manner in which marine
mamrnals are taken so as to insure that any authorAcd
method of taking will involve the least possible degree of
pair and suffering practicable to the mammrrial involved
and will otherwise be accomplished in a humane manner.
Defendants breached the aforesaid sections by
prescribing regulationis providing for the taking of
mairne mammals in an inhumane manner,
Defen Iants will not promulgale sufficient regulations
for the protection of marine nonimals from the
rihumane activities of commercial fishermen and will
[Crmtinued on pag~e5
SCHWEITZER CENTENARY MEDAL
CEREMONY
On the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Albert
Schweitzer, Lee Talbot received the Schweitzer medail
from the hands of Russell Train. The Great flail of the
Smithsonian Institution's original building, generally
known as The Castle, was filled with adherents of the
Schweitzer philosophy and admirers of the Talbot
activism in his role as Senior Scientist in the Presideo's
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
Now Administritor of the Environmental Protection
Agency, Russell Train was the first Chairman of CFQ
and his expression of sincere admiration for the medallist
whose work he knows so well, made this ceremony
especially inemorable.
Dr. Talbot's acceptance speech is reprinted in fall
below, as requested by many of those in the audience who
believe it dleserves serious study by government and
private sector ecologists and limanilarians alike,
Address by Lee Merriam Talbot, Senior Scientist,
Council on Environmental Quality
I am deeply honored to receive this award, and deeply
grateful. It is particularly meaningful to me because
wildlife conservation has been such an important factor
in my life, and also, of course, because the award is
coming on this, the centennial of Dr. Schweitzer's birth.
I must also admit to a certain amount of gratification
as well as surprise when I was notified. Gratification, of
course, because wildlife conservation is a goal to which I
have devoted many of my efforts and on which I have
strong personal convictions; surprise, because unless one
is in a particularly prominent position, his endeavors are
rarely known, much less recognized. At least at my level
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