Exotic Animals in Okinawa EXCELLENT BOOK ON EXOTIC ANIMAL TRADE IN THE US

[Guest guest]

I'm coming to the conclusion that the exotic animal trade is ALIVE

AND WELL in Okinawa.... pet stores are loaded with unusual animals.

Who is going to stop this??

 

\

 

~Kim Petersen

Okinawa

 

 

 

aapn , " Ghosh "

<shubhobrotoghosh@r...> wrote:

> Following the Paper Trail: Exposing the Trade of Exotic Animals

> The Satya Interview with Alan Green

>

> Alan Green is a professional journalist who spent four years

researching and writing the extraordinary book Animal Underworld:

Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species published

last year by PublicAffairs. Green recently spoke with Catherine

Clyne explaining the intricacies of the animal trade—where they come

from and where they end up.

>

> How would you describe Animal Underworld to people who are not

familiar with the book?

> Animal Underworld is about the laundering of exotic species and I

mean that almost in the way that drug money is laundered from one

bank to another. What I learned and what I try to document in the

book is that exotic species are moved from place to place to place.

You can think of it as if they are relayed, being handed off from

one person to another, kind of shunted through this pipeline in

hopes of making them disappear. They start their lives in what we

think of as legitimate institutions—such as zoos or university

research laboratories—and when those animals are no longer necessary

or wanted, when there are too many in the collection, those so-

called " surplus " animals have to be moved out. And there's a system

that's been developed to move those animals out and sell them,

resell them, sell them again, move them on down the line; so

ultimately the paper trail disappears and everyone along the line

has deniability if it becomes known that an animal has ended up in a

bad place.

>

> If we see for example a canned hunt (or private hunting preserve)

and someone shooting exotic animals in a cage; if we see animals

ending up in a basement cage in horrendous conditions: everyone

along the line can say " well those weren't my animals, " and in most

cases no one will be able to prove where the animals came from.

Animal Underworld is an attempt to document how those animals are

indeed moved through a system—where they start their lives and where

they end up—and to show with real paperwork how this kind of don't-

ask-don't-tell system works and how everyone plays this game with a

wink and a nod: " Here take my animal, move it along down the line, "

so that ultimately no one will be able to point a finger and

say " Aha! You're doing bad things with your animals! "

>

> Can you give an example of a paper trail?

> Papers must be filed, typically in the state Department of

Agriculture, that chronicle the movement of animals from one state

to another. Let's say I run a roadside zoo in Virginia, and I get

animals in the spring and close in the fall because I'm a seasonal

operation. If I want to send animals to an auction, say, in Ohio, I

need to file paperwork with the Virginia Department of Agriculture

that shows I'm sending those animals out of state. So there is a

paper trail. The trick is to figure out whether people are indeed

filing the required paperwork and then to find it all. What we find

is that in perhaps 85 percent of cases people aren't in fact filing

those documents.

>

> So animals are moved in the middle of the night—iin trucks with no

documentation—aand people are selling animals behind the scenes

(perhaps at an auction) so there's no record of the transaction. But

in at least some cases records do exist and I try to follow the

trail from point A to B to C so that I can say with

certainty: " Here's where an animal started its life, here's where it

went to, here's where it was sold, and here's who was buying at

those auctions. " For the first time I'm able to reveal the system by

which all these animals are being moved from place to place.

>

> There are many levels of record keeping. They may be at different

federal agencies, for example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

state and local agencies, police agencies—it's all a matter of

getting and piecing them all together, hoping that you can figure

out the truth about individual animals as they move during their

lives from perhaps dozens of venues until, in many cases, a bad fate

awaits them at the end of their lives.

>

> Were you able to track the life of an individual animal?

> When I set out to do this project, my hope was that I'd be able to

chronicle the movement of one animal from its birth to its death.

Through all the paperwork I collected I was actually able to do that

in the case of a reindeer. He was born on a game farm in the Yukon

in Canada, then sold at an exotic animal auction in Missouri, and

was bought by an elderly couple who raised reindeer along with other

animals on their game farm in Iowa.

>

> The reindeer was named Honker by this couple. When the husband

died, caring for the animals became too hard for his wife so she

sold Honker and the other animals. She resold Honker at the same

auction in Missouri where he had been bought a few years earlier.

Honker was bought by a game farmer in Wisconsin. Ten days later a

client flew in from Indiana and shot Honker and, in the same day,

shot two other animals—a white tailed deer and a mule deer. The

records were falsified to make it look as if he shot three white

tailed deer. Honker was then brought to a local taxidermist.

>

> It turns out that the guy who shot Honker was an official

supporter of Safari Club International, an organization that claims

to abhor canned hunts because they don't encourage fair-chase

hunting. Ironically, Honker ended up as a trophy in this guy's house

in Indiana. That was what happened. But finding the records, linking

them to show that this was Honker was the proverbial needle in a

haystack.

>

> Do zoos have a role in the trade of exotic animals in the U.S.?

> If you look at the front-end of the pipeline through which animals

are sent, zoos are indeed there. Zoos have been among the greatest

providers of animals to the exotic animal trade. There are a huge

number of tigers in private hands in the U.S. being bred like

beagles by dealers who find ready places to sell them: That's the

legacy of zoos. They don't sell tigers anymore because they know

people are watching.

>

> So now we are seeing other species on the market instead. Zoos

have a huge so-called surplus problem. They have nowhere to send the

surplus animals so they dump them on dealers who re-sell them. So

zoos, even though they'll dispute it, are in fact at the head end of

the pipeline because they don't want to breed responsibly and are

always looking for new species to replace the ones that the public

has grown tired of. Zoos are creating ready markets for new batches

of animals that become big in the trade.

>

> What do you mean by " breeding responsibly " ?

> Giraffes, for example, are a big pull at zoos. Zoos have what they

refer to as " charismatic megafauna. " These are the flagship species,

the animals that are a great draw. People don't go to the zoo to see

the miniature hippo or the Père David's deer. They go to see the

panda and the giraffes and just about any kind of baby. Zoos are by

and large a baby factory because that's what brings people through

the door.

>

> Zoos have master plans for collections. A classic example is the

National Zoo, which has determined as part of its master plan that

they'll have three giraffes: two adults—a male and a female—and one

baby born every two years. Each time a baby giraffe is born every TV

station in Washington does a story, which in turn brings out the

public in huge numbers. But with the new baby, there are now four

giraffes because a baby was born two years earlier. All of a sudden

that two year old giraffe is shunted to the background. Two years

earlier an adoring public was standing there pointing at that

spindly-legged baby giraffe, but now what are they going to do with

it? The zoo will say " well we can't keep it. " If it's a male, daddy

is going to fight with it; if it's a female, daddy is going to want

to breed with it, so we better get that two year old out of here.

>

> I would call that irresponsible breeding because the zoo knows

that they will have to get rid of that giraffe and they know—because

history tells them so—that there is no good place to send it. At any

given moment, when they try to find a home for that unwanted

giraffe, there are probably going to be 50 or so AZA [American Zoo

and Aquarium Association—the self-regulating organization of

accredited zoos] zoos that are also looking for a home for their

unwanted giraffes. As an AZA accredited zoo they are saying: " We are

a cut above. We are members of an elite club. We trust other members

of this club to be good trading partners and so we can entrust our

animals to these zoos with great comfort. "

>

> But there are a lot of giraffes in search of homes and very few

zoos that are looking for them. Where are they going to send it?

There are no takers. That means that they're going to have to send a

giraffe outside of the club. If only accredited AZA members are good

guys, sending it outside the club more or less ensures that the

standards you believe are notable will not be met.

>

> This isn't pure speculation. Early in the 1990s the National Zoo

had a year old surplus giraffe named Michael whom they entrusted to

a dealer who brought him to an unaccredited roadside zoo in central

New Jersey. Michael was paired with an adult male giraffe—the very

scenario that the National Zoo wanted to avoid and the sort of thing

they claim they will never do, because Michael would be threatened

by daddy. The adult male kicked and broke Michael's neck, and killed

him.

>

> So the AZA zoos shirk their responsibility. It's expediency; we

don't want the animal, it's not part of our master plan, let's get

rid of it, let's send it to a dealer and cross our fingers that it

never comes back to haunt us.

>

> What would you say is the public's involvement in the continuation

of this trade of surplus animals?

> I would say that by and large, the public is in total ignorance.

When the public comes out to see a new-born, everyone is goo-goo

eyed over the baby, and I admit there is a great allure about baby

animals. Before I started doing this research I was just as

ignorant. If one day, the zoo has six zebras and next time you go

back there are five, who would know? No one counts. With the new

babies, people never ask: " where did the other animals go? " because

if you think about it, why should we?

>

> We have entrusted people who work at the zoo to do right by us;

they are the ones who care for the animals on a daily basis. When

you go to the zoo everything at least looks good; you don't see

abuse. Concrete and steel are changing to what looks like a natural

habitat. Certainly, fake trees are not the same as real trees in the

wild, but the illusion is powerful and we feel comforted that they

are trying to do right by the animals. If you talk to zoo keepers

they do indeed care about the welfare of the animals and work hard

to care for them.

>

> If we ever ask the question " Hey mister, wasn't there another

giraffe here? Where did it go? " , " It went to another zoo, " " Well,

OK, that sounds good enough to me. " Most AZA zoos are municipally

funded, certainly they are not taking our tax dollars and doing bad

things, are they? So there's a kind of trust going on. I would say

that once the public finds out about this phenomenon, if they don't

take steps to force the zoos to change, then the public is equally

culpable.

>

> The whole exotic animal trade is like a pyramid. At the top there

are a small number of institutions—for the most part reputable—that

have a lot of animals that flow to the bottom, to auctions, dealers,

canned hunts, roadside zoos, etc. If you cut off the flow from the

top of the pyramid, from AZA zoos and universities, you can cut off

the industry. If you cut off access to surplus animals, it will

reverse the trickle-down effect.

>

> The public can make that choice. If indeed the problem is that

it's a baby game and there is only room for a fixed number of

species, will the public be willing to put up with a birth every

four, six or eight years to ensure that the two year old doesn't get

sent to a bad place? Is the public willing to spend money for a

retirement facility for animals that are off exhibit? Is the public

going to decide they want some combination? " Well, we don't want to

pay more money, but we don't want the animals sent to bad places. "

So are we willing to approve humane euthanasia to ensure that

animals don't go to dealers and possibly end up in bad situations? A

lot of people can't deal with the idea of euthanasia.

>

> If zoos and other establishments are unwilling to change, the

public should demand disclosure of where surplus animals are going.

As a matter of public record, these institutions will be forced to

disclose what they are doing. Once you embarrass these institutions

by exposing their involvement in the trading of endangered animals—

when they know that everyone is watching—they won't be so cavalier.

>

> What was the greatest shock and/or disappointment that you had

while doing this project?

> The most troubling revelation was that I realized that no matter

who trumpets how much they care, they're all in it together. That

isn't to say that all AZA members don't care—some have taken steps

to change. But all reputable zoos are doing business with

disreputable zoos and dealers—which they ridicule. They are

hypocrites. If you look at the pipeline, as the animals move further

and further down there are any number of terrible places they can

end up.

>

> The greatest shock for me was to see how the animals become

product or fodder. At the auctions, for example, it's as if people

are selling carpets. No one knows anything about the animals. They

become nameless, walked anonymously through the display ring like

replaceable cogs in money-making ventures. Everyone seems to be

capitalizing.

>

> Even those who own exotic pets think that what they're doing

is " good " for endangered species—chaining a tiger to a pipe in the

basement. They think they're conservationists. But these animals

will never be repatriated into the wild and they're not doing them

any good. It's a pet-of-the-month club that is fueled by American

fickleness. We have not thought through the consequences.

>

>

> Baby Lions for Sale!

> The USDA, which enforces the federal Animal Welfare Act, has

nearly 17 pages of regulations pertaining to the handling and

transportation of dogs and cats, but the care of snow leopards and

other wild animals is dismissed in just seven pages. And the exotic

species are guaranteed much less protection: Domestic kittens, for

example, can't be sold in commerce until they're two months old and

fully weaned, but a day-old lion may be carted to an auction and

sold to the highest bidder. What's more, government prosecutors, as

a rule, have virtually no interest in protecting these animals.

Given a choice between pursuing a drug-trafficking case or an animal-

permit violation, prosecutors rarely opt for the latter.—From Animal

Underworld

>

>

> Canned Hunts: The Newest American " Sport?By Diana Norris, Norm

Phelps, and D. J. Schubert

>

> Adapted from Canned Hunts: Unfair at Any Price (The Fund for

Animals, 2001).

>

>

> In 1994, an investigator for the Humane Society of the United

States made an undercover video that opens with a Corsican ram

standing tall against the skyline, his head raised to catch the

breeze. Suddenly, a man dressed in camouflage rises into the picture

to launch an arrow from a compound bow that is all wheels and

pulleys. At the twang of the string, the ram jerks his head around

and a moment later the razor-sharp arrow slices into his flank.

Letting out a bellow of pain and terror, he lunges forward into the

wire fence that blocks his escape. The hunter, no more than twenty

yards away, reloads and shoots. Another strike in the flank and

another bellow as once again the ram hurls himself against the

fence. The hunter is deliberately aiming away from the head and

shoulders to avoid any risk of spoiling his trophy. " If you fall,?he

yells at the ram, " fall the right way. I don't want you bending my

arrow.?The slowly dying animal sinks to the ground and huddles

trembling against the bottom of the fence.

>

> This is the world of canned hunts, one of America's newest and

fastest-growing sports.

>

> No Kill, No Pay

> Canned hunt customers have little in common with the hunters of

American folklore and fantasy. Typically, they live in a city or

suburb, are part of a two-career family, enjoy professional or

managerial careers, and have more disposable income than free time.

Accustomed to trading money for time, they are willing to pay for

convenience, and they expect results. Canned hunts—variously known

as " game ranches,? " hunting preserves,?or " shooting preserves?give

them both. As North Dakota's Cedar Ridge Elk Ranch tells visitors to

its website, " If you don't have the 10 days to two weeks normally

needed to hunt for trophies with someone else, and you want ACTION,

and you want to `bring it home,?then Cedar Ridge Elk Ranch is the

place for you.?

> Although they may differ in other details, all canned hunts share

two defining traits. First, they are commercial hunts on private

property; customers pay for the privilege of stalking and killing

their victims. Secondly, the operators have stacked the deck against

the animals to the point that all who lay their money down are

virtually guaranteed success. Do you want the head of a record-class

markhor (a sheep native to the Middle East) to hang on the wall of

your den? For $12,500, the Triple Seven Ranch in Texas will arrange

for you to shoot one. If exotics are not to your taste,

Pennsylvania's Glen Savage Ranch will put a white-tailed buck with

world class antlers in your crosshairs for a mere $9,995. With this

kind of money at stake, canned hunt operators leave nothing to the

luck of the chase. Game ranchers are so confident that they

regularly ply potential customers with some variation on the canned

hunt's most popular theme: " No kill, no pay.? " You are guaranteed a

pig,?says the website of Idaho's European Wild Boar Hunt, " or your

money will be refunded.?

> Tipping the Balance

> Jim Posewitz spent 32 years as a biologist with the Montana

Department of Fish and Game. One of hunting's most passionate

defenders, he is much in demand as a speaker by hunting

organizations and state wildlife agencies. In Beyond Fair Chase

(Falcon Press, 1994), which is widely viewed in the hunting

community as the bible of ethical hunting, Posewitz makes this

statement, " Fundamental to ethical hunting is the idea of fair

chase. This concept addresses the balance between the hunter and the

hunted. It is a balance that allows hunters to occasionally succeed

while animals generally avoid being taken.?Canned hunts are

considered to be unethical by the standards of the hunting community

because they employ four techniques to tip Jim Posewitz's " balance?

to the point where the hunters always succeed and the animals never

avoid being killed.

>

> First—and this is key to the success of the other three techniques—

they employ full time guides. The guides know every inch of the

preserve; they know where the animals are at all times; they know

when and where the animals like to eat, drink, and bed down; and

they know all their hiding places. The victims may be able to run—at

least for a little ways—but they can't hide.

>

> Second, most hunting preserves are surrounded by " game proof?

fences. Canned hunt operators claim that if the fenced area is

larger than a few acres, the animals are " free-roaming?and the hunt

is no different than a traditional hunt conducted without a fence.

This is untrue. Prevented by the fence from evading the surveillance

of the guide, the animals are as much " sitting ducks?in a 500 acre

enclosure as in a five acre pasture. A canned hunt will take more

time and effort on 500 acres than on five, but the victim's chances

of escaping the hunter are about the same either way. All that the

larger enclosure accomplishes is to give the customers the illusion

that they are actually hunting an animal when in reality they are

simply slaughtering with a bow or a rifle instead of the captive

bolt pistol used in slaughterhouses. If this were not the case,

canned hunts would not be advertising " no kill, no pay.?

>

> The third technique hunting preserves use to turn wild animals

into easy targets is the feeding station. A guide places the victims?

favorite food in a trough at the same time every day. The animals

are not only conditioned to visit the feeding station on schedule—so

the customer isn't inconvenienced by having to wait—they also lose

much of their fear of the human who provides the food. Then one day

the provider shows up with a hunter in tow, and the animal is shot

while waiting patiently for dinner.

>

> Finally, many canned hunts offer exotic animals as victims,

including bobcats, elands, musk oxen, oryx, yaks, and zebras. Most

often these animals are bought from dealers, who in turn buy them

primarily from zoos. These former zoo animals have been hand-reared

and are habituated to humans. They see no reason to flee when the

hunter and guide approach. For all practical purposes, they are

tame.

>

> Municipal zoos depend heavily on baby animals to attract paying

customers. When these baby animals grow up, they are typically

disposed of to make room for the next crop who will draw in new

crowds of customers. Since the public would not tolerate the animals

simply being killed by the zoo, they are sold to dealers, who in

turn sell them to research laboratories, roadside petting zoos, and

canned hunts. In this way, the zoos can claim to have no

responsibility for the ultimate fate of their " surplus?animals. This

pivotal role of municipal zoos in the inhumane commerce in wildlife,

including wildlife destined to end up in canned hunts, has been

extensively documented by investigative journalist Alan Green in his

groundbreaking expos?Animal Underworld (Public Affairs, 1999; also

see interview in Satya, July, 2000).

>

> " Alternative Livestock?Criticism of canned hunts is growing—both

in the animal protection community and the hunting community—with

the result that several states have taken action to ban them, at

least partially. Often, however, these efforts are woefully

inadequate. New York, for example, bans the hunting of exotic

mammals in fenced enclosures of ten acres or less. Since the ban

does not cover native species, such as white tailed deer (the most

popular canned hunt victims), and allows canned hunts of exotics

within fenced enclosures of eleven acres or more, it is largely

cosmetic.

>

> The defense of canned hunts comes from an unexpected quarter:

state agriculture departments, which typically refer to the animals

as " alternative livestock?and view them as a way to increase the

profitability of farms and ranches. It is not coincidental that

America's first canned hunt was created on a cattle ranch (the Y.O.

Ranch outside of San Antonio); that Texas, America's premier cattle

ranching state, is home to more than 500 canned hunt operations, and

that canned hunt operators brag about using breeding, feeding, and

culling techniques perfected by the cattle industry. But if the

wildlife on hunting preserves are " alternative livestock,?doesn't

this mean that the customers are not hunters at all,

but " alternative butchers??And if the preserves are, in

reality, " alternative slaughterhouses,?shouldn't they be subject to

the federal Humane Slaughter Act, which requires that animals being

slaughtered be rendered instantly unconscious and not allowed to

suffer while they die? If the Act were applied to canned hunts, they

would all be shut down immediately, since there is no way to

preserve the illusion of hunting while complying with that standard.

>

> How You Can Help

> In Montana, a major hunting state, a successful voter initiative

on last November's ballot outlawed canned hunts. The Wyoming

legislature has banned the private ownership of " big game?animals,

thereby making most canned hunts illegal, and Oregon has achieved

the same end by banning the hunting of all " exotic mammals and game

mammals?that are privately owned. In this context, informed,

courteous ex-pressions of opinion from members of the general public

can have a real impact on state legislatures. Please write letters

to your representatives and send along a copy of The Fund for

Animals?report Canned Hunts: Unfair at Any Price (available from the

address below).

>

> Diana Norris is Grassroots Coordinator and Norm Phelps is

Spiritual Outreach Director of The Fund for Animals.

>

> D. J. Schubert is a wildlife biologist and president of Schubert

and Associates. To receive a free copy of the report from which this

article was adapted, contact Diana Norris, The Fund for Animals,

Ste. 301, 8121 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910, or email

dnorris@f...

>

> Animal underworld: Tracking the trades

> Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. The IRE Journal,

Jul/Aug 2000 by Green, Alan, Goldston, Linda

>

> Save a personal copy of this article and quickly find it again

with Furl.net. It's free! Save it.

> Seldom-reviewed records provide gold mine

>

> It all started as a two-week newspaper assignment - and turned

into a fouryear book project that involved following a pair of bear

cubs 500 miles, poring through hundreds of animal records and

tracking exotic animals with the help of everyone from federal

officials to family and friends.

>

> The result was Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market

for Rare and Exotic Species. It looks at the exotic-animal industry

and the laundering of unwanted zoo and research castoffs as they are

sold and resold until the paper trail goes cold.

>

> It began through my volunteering at the National Zoo in

Washington, D.C. Keepers there told me about questionable animal-

handling practices at Reston Animal Park, a roadside menagerie in

nearby Fairfax County, Va. While checking boxes of court records, I

found receipts showing that the National Zoo had supplied animals to

this petting zoo. Other records showed that some other zoos, such as

the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, also had sent " surplus " animals to

Reston Animal Park. I set out to discover if this was an anomaly or

standard operating practice among reputable zoos.

>

> Continue article

> Advertisement

> As I followed the paper trails to and from these zoos, I

maintained a focus on the Reston Animal Park - in particular, a pair

of bear cubs displayed there. Although officials of the animal park

were close-mouthed about the bears' origins, I unearthed documents

at the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

showing that the bears were owned by a Wisconsin animal dealer who,

a decade earlier, had pleaded guilty to such federal offenses as

illegally supplying bears to an exotic-meat broker. I hoped to learn

the fate of these two bears when the petting zoo closed for the

winter. I got my chance in a telephone conversation with a zoo

cashier: She offhandedly mentioned that the bears would be leaving

the zoo the following morning, heading back to the Wisconsin " zoo "

from which they had come. So I showed up at 5 a.m., hid nearby, then

followed a truck some 500 miles to its destination in northwest

Ohio.

>

> This journey, five months into the reporting project, was a major

turning point in the story. When I later set out to find records

detailing the bears' relocation, I realized state and federal

officials knew nothing of the animals' whereabouts. That experience

left me wondering how many exotic animals were similarly

disappearing in this country.

>

> Interstate moves

>

> At the heart of Animal Underworld are certifiGates of veterinary

inspection, commonly known as " health certificates. " These records

often have been overlooked as sources of information, but I believed

they could show subsequent transactions and expose the activities of

dealers, breeders, auction houses, hunting ranches, and others

engaged in the sale and resale of exotic creatures.

>

> But because animals are typically moved many times, only records

from virtually every state capital could provide the true means of

exposing the trafficking in these species. I visited 27 state

capitals and searched through more than 2 million health

certificates. I gathered records from four states via FOIA and hired

researchers (or enlisted the help of friends and family members) in

11 states. Interviews with agriculture officials helped determine

that some of the remaining states had virtually no exotic-animal

traffic, and so were bypassed.

>

> As I visited more states and added more transactions to the

databases created from these records, answers finally began to

emerge. For example, I found a document in Des Moines showing that

in September 1996, an Iowa woman sent six reindeer to a Missouri

auction. In Jefferson City, Mo., I found another document showing

one of these reindeer was sold at the auction to a Wisconsin man.

Working backward, I traced this 5-yearold reindeer to its birth in

the Yukon and its sale, years earlier, to the Iowa woman at another

auction. Working forward, I was able to identify the Wisconsin buyer

as the owner of a canned hunt. Via FOIA, I collected records showing

that in October 1996, a patron of the hunting preserve shot the

reindeer.

>

> Law enforcement records from the Wisconsin Department of Natural

Resources identified the hunter as William Backman, of Aurora, Ind.

Taxidermy records obtained by FOIA showed that Backman was a regular

patron of this canned hunt, and a year earlier had killed another

reindeer. A search of the Internet revealed more about Backman,

including his business and an appointment by the governor of Indiana

to the state's Natural Resources Foundation an organization

dedicated to conservation, and seemingly opposed to the sort of for-

pay hunting with which its secretary was involved. Further digging

revealed that Backman was also an official scorer for Safari Club

International, a pro-hunting organization whose code of ethics

opposes canned hunts. After repeated requests for comment, Backman

finally confirmed that he had in fact shot the reindeer in question.

>

> Some of the other documents I used included court records,

taxidermy records, and Internal Revenue Service 990 forms, which

detail the fiscal activities of not-for-profit organizations. I used

computerized records made available by state departments of fish and

game.

>

> Wide-ranging sources

>

> More than 350 people were interviewed for Animal Underworld. Many

of the interviews involved ongoing law enforcement proceedings, and

were off the record, as were many with state and federal wildlife

and animal care authorities. I also relied on a network of

bureaucratic tipsters, who became my eyes and ears in state and

federal offices. In some cases, these agency workers monitored the

daily flow of paperwork for those records that they knew would be

useful.

>

> In addition to the wildlife officials, sources included experts in

everything from disease transmission to the daily care of animals

rescued from laboratories to private citizens ill-equipped to

provide care to these animals. I also did fly-on-the-wall reporting

at venues such as exotic-animal auctions.

>

> Further, I set up the fact-checking procedure and supervised a

full-time Center for Public Integrity employee to ensure the

accuracy of each statement. Every person or organization mentioned

in the book was contacted for a follow-up interview. Every

transaction culled from documents was verified with those filing the

paperwork. In this way, zoo directors, animal dealers, safari-park

operators, university spokespersons, and others got an opportunity

to explain the revelations I unearthed from documents or learned in

other interviews. Some took the opportunity to speak, while others

asked for more time. Some were never heard from again.

>

> BY ALAN GREEN

>

> Alan Green has been a senior associate at the Center for Public

Integrity since 1997. His book won an IRE Award this year.

>

> Copyright Investigative Reporters & Editors Jul/Aug 2000

> Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights

Reserved

>

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