---

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000--


Court Calendar

A Faroe Islands court recently convicted Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society founder Paul Watson in absentia of alleged illegal entry into
Faroese waters, and ordered him to pay a fine of $37,000 or serve 60 days
in jail, Watson and the Sea Shepherds learned on September 27 from the
Ritzau news agency of Denmark. "Captain Watson has a clear defense for all
charges, but was not allowed to present it," said a Sea Shepherd release.
"Captain Watson did not choose to be tried in absentia," the release
continued, adding that Watson didn't even know he had been charged until
after the trial.

The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced in early
September that members of a Jacques Cousteau Society film crew will not be
charged with any offense in connection with a September 1999 incident in
which an amateur videographer appeared to have caught them racing their
boat into a pod of whales near Tadoussac, Quebec. The DFO revoked the
Cousteau Society's permit to film underwater, but decided after
"exhaustive analysis" of the video that the evidence was not strong enough
to obtain a conviction. "Obviously we never wanted to disturb the whales
in the St. Lawrence River," said Francine Cousteau, widow of Jacques
Cousteau and now head of the organization. "We love Quebec, and want to
continue our scientific research there."

Contending that the Arizona ban on cockfighting approved
overwhelmingly by voters in 1998 is unconstitutionally vague, cockfighting
enthusiasts won a delay of enforcement from Maricopa County Superior Court
Judge Joseph Howe, but it didn't last long, as the Arizona Court of
Appeals on September 5 unanimously agreed that as Appellate Judge Sheldon
Weisberg wrote, "A person of common intelligence would understand these
phrases to mean exactly what they say--that cockfighting is illegal in
Arizona, whether it be for profit or pleasure, whenever the perpetrator
knowingly causes gamecocks to fight or injure each other." The
cockfighters are now expected to appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Arizona blood sports enthusiasts won a round on September 12,
however, when the Governor's Regulatory Review Council unanimously and for
the second time overturned a ban on predator killing contests which had
been declared by the Arizona Game and Fish Commission.

Friends of Animals and the Animal Rights Front on September 26 won
a court order that the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection
must not accept bids on state land leased as trapping concessions pending a
hearing on the groups' contention that the DEP has acted improperly in
requiring that leaseholders must actually trap animals. Anti-trapping
activists bought the trapping rights on 47,000 acres in 1998, and then
forced the DEP to cancel the 1999 trapping season on state land by winning
a ruling that rules changes imposed to exclude them were illegal and
unfair.