Wildlife

RICHARD J. LUPINSKY Age: 43. Lives: Relocating from Wilkes-Barre area. Family: Engaged. Adult son from previous marriage. New job: Wildlife conservation officer for Pennsylvania Game Commission in Philly. What he does: Helps cope with unruly wildlife; teaches safe hunting, wildlife appreciation. Challenges: "Too many deer"; says area parks need a controlled hunt. Smaller problems: woodchucks in yards, squirrels in attics. Danger to deer: Spikes on metal fences near Wissahickon.

On eastern Long Island, wild dogs keep chasing sightseers off a federal wildlife refuge. West of Boston, domesticated dogs last spring killed a day-and-half-old deer at a federal refuge. South of San Francisco, onetime pet cats - turned out, then turned wild - are tearing to death endangered-species birds on a federal refuge. And near Philadelphia International Airport, at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, dogs from neighboring homes are suspected of mauling young muskrats to death.

AVALON, N.J. - New Jersey environmental regulators say this Jersey Shore town may be doing something stinky in its effort to control skunks. Avalon officials have been capturing and moving skunks - about 80 of them in the last year - and the state Division of Fish and Wildlife wants to know where they are being taken. A permit is needed to move wildlife to another town because the animals could cause problems in their new homes, an agency spokesman told the Press of Atlantic City.

A survey in January counted 178 bald eagles in New Jersey, a record for modern times and another indication of the bird's population rebound, the state said yesterday. In releasing the results of the annual midwinter survey, Environmental Commissioner Bradley Campbell credited the protection of bald-eagle nests to the work of volunteers who monitor them for state wildlife biologists. "Despite its continued endangered status, the bald eagle is one of New Jersey's great success stories in endangered-species protection and management," Campbell said.

Although Mark Butler's May 13 article, in which he revealed the wholesale destruction of suburban wildlife under the guise of "pest control" raised my anger, once again The Inquirer has done us a service by exposing a dreadful situation. I am no longer civil to those who establish wildlife death zones. As for Wayne Buckley, the subject of the article, who "makes a tidy living" by killing more than 2,000 wild animals a year, words cannot express my revulsion. The fact is he is unwilling to travel a few miles to release the animals.

The Trenton alligator was snared yesterday. A check of traps set by New Jersey wildlife experts at a Stacy Park pond found the four-foot-long reptile, whose presence caused a children's fishing tournament to be canceled last weekend. Apparently, chicken legs and chicken livers did the trick - along with a bigger trap, said Darlene Yuhas, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Chicken wings - "without the sauce" - didn't work a couple of weeks ago, after the first sightings, she said.

Officials investigating the deaths of more than 1,700 Atlantic brant geese at the Jersey Shore since late fall said yesterday that they had determined only that whatever has killed them acts acutely, leaving otherwise "fat and healthy" birds dead on beaches and marshland. Beyond that, little is known about the deaths, which wildlife-management officials first noticed in November when more than 1,000 dead brants were collected in or near the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge in this rural section of Galloway Township, Atlantic County.

DEAR ABBY: My wife and I shop in an upscale shoe store. On the past two visits there, a middle-aged salesman kissed my wife's hand when we left. I was surprised but not offended, considering it to be nothing more than an old-fashioned expression of courtesy. The man is knowledgeable, helpful and honest. My wife, however, disagrees. She says that his gesture is forward and inappropriate and that I should resent it. Who's right? - T.R. in Houston DEAR T.R.: You are. The kiss-on-the-hand routine may be part of the man's sales technique.

William J. Kazmar, 79, a blue-collar worker who became a renowned wildlife artist and porcelain art sculptor, died of heart failure Tuesday at John F. Kennedy Hospital in Atlantis, Fla. Mr. Kazmar lived in Collingswood, N.J., and had been vacationing in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was born in South Philadelphia. He joined his father making and restoring furniture when he was a teenager. After high school, he worked as a steamfitter at several local shipyards during World War II. After the war, Mr. Kazmar worked briefly as a machinist for Boeing Vertol and then opened an antiques and furniture restoration business with his wife, Barbara Mae Neville Kazmar, in Collingswood, where they lived for 52 years.