Wildlife

I feel violated by a small percentage of our population (hunters and trappers) who behave as if they own all the wildlife and continue to "use" the animals for personal financial gain. Wildlife belongs to all people and it is everybody's right to speak out against the slaughter. The fur industry's defense is evident through its huge expenditures of money on advertisements. I believe the industry is aware that its time has come to stand accountable. The Pennsylvania Game Commission, in an attempt to justify the industry's actions, does so in the guise of "wildlife management.

You don't have to win the lottery to become a millionaire. With a talented hand, colorful imagination and a bit of luck, you can collect $1 million or more through winning the annual duck stamp contest sponsored by the Department of the Interior. This year's winner is Daniel Smith of Eden Prairie, Minn., whose acrylic painting depicts a lesser snow goose flying over a marsh at dawn. The painting will be reproduced on the 1988-89 Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation $10 stamp that goes on sale July 1. The duck stamp, as hunters call it, can earn its artist more than $1 million from royalties of limited-edition reprints.

I'm an amateur photographer of wildlife and nature, and I'm interested in a tour to wildlife parks. A lot of tours go to places like Yellowstone, which is excellent for wildlife photography, but they're not geared specifically for the photographer. Do you have any recommendations? Some companies specialize in tours and workshops for photographers, such as Wilderness Photography Workshops, Box 2605, Evergreen, Colo. 80439; phone 303-674-3009. The company offers one-week group trips to scenic regions of the country and favors wilderness areas over national parks, which can get crowded in peak season.

Environmental damage from the oil spill at Valdez, Alaska, is likely to last a decade, but most wildlife will recover if the cleanup efforts do not cause more lasting damage, experts said after studying the effects of other large oil spills. In two of the largest spills, animals and plants had largely recovered about a decade later, although the number of species changed somewhat. The largest oil spill in history occurred in the Gulf of Mexico when an offshore well blew out and dumped 155 million gallons of oil north of the Yucatan peninsula in 1979.

The idea of a wildlife preserve on the banks of the Delaware River here was hatched three years ago when the president of the local historical society met a naturalist who often went bird-watching in the area. Now the preserve is a little bit closer to becoming reality. After an exhaustive title search, the state Attorney General's Office has said most of the land in question belongs to the state, which eliminates the problem of securing permission from private citizens to use the land.

Rob Leslie, an avian wildlife artist, has spent many solitary hours hanging around marshes and mountain ponds, waiting for ducks and other waterfowl to swoop down so he could take snapshots that, with palette and brush, he would later turn into art. The Turnersville resident has paid loving tribute to those haunts in a collector's duck stamp and limited-edition poster that will be offered for sale by the Pennsylvania Game Commission in 1987, probably...

When Nancy Becker first moved to Towamencin Township 20 years ago, she could see from her kitchen window pheasants and other wildlife crossing the yard. These days, the view is mostly of sprawling suburbia, filled with more housing developments and strip malls than colorful birds. But Becker, a member of the township's open space committee, is trying to preserve some of the wildlife that once was plentiful in her neighborhood. To that end, last weekend she oversaw the release of about 30 pheasants into the township's Fischers Park, located on Bustard Road.

Tony Croasdale has been coming to this particular splotch of wetlands, woods and water since he was nine years old. Back then, he was told stories about how his grandfather had come to the spot during the hungry years of the Depression to trap muskrats. Now, it's the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum - both the most urbanized refuge in the nation and the largest wetland of its kind in Pennsylvania - and Croasdale comes to this South Philadelphia spot several times a month to check out the wildlife.

At the World Bank, nothing succeeds like failure. After two earlier disasters resulting from unwise development loans to Botswana, World Bank officials have decided to throw $17 million more at the problem. The bank's low-interest loan funds are underwritten mostly by U.S. taxpayers. World Bank brass insist that their multimillion-dollar loans to Third World countries are now being made only after careful consideration of environmental issues. Critics vehemently disagree. Bruce Rich, a staff attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, told our associate Donald Goldberg that "little has changed" in the three years since he and other critics began raising environmental concerns with bank officials.

Marie-Louise C. Shull, 67, a nationally accredited flower show judge and part of the garden club movement for more than two decades, died Friday at Presbyterian-University of Pennsylvania Medical Center after a long illness. She had lived in Drexel Hill for 33 years. As the daughter of a Navy captain, Mrs. Shull spent her childhood years in several cities across the country. She graduated from San Diego High School in 1937 and attended San Diego State College and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where she studied interior design.