Suchergebnisse

Treatment of wild horses and burros has improved remarkably over the last fifty years. In the mid-twentieth century, free-ranging horses and burros suffered horribly at the hands of "mustangers" who captured them at will and whim, sometimes using the most brutal of techniques, including aerial pursuit and shooting or crippling key herd members. The horses were packed into livestock trucks hurt, bleeding, and exhausted, and shipped to slaughter without stopping for rest or watering (Ryden 1999). Unprotected by law, only the good will of a few ranchers protected these abused animals. Public awareness of the plight of the wild horses began to grow in the late 1950s, in large part because of the efforts of Velma Johnston, better known as "Wild Horse Annie," a Nevada- born rancher who witnessed, documented, and publicized the cruelties of the mustangers. First shocked to action after following a blood trail from a truck transporting mustangs to slaughter, Johnston roused the American public, and especially schoolchildren, to demand action from Congress (Ryden 1999). Congress first responded with the "Wild Horse Annie" Act of 1959 (P.L. 86- 234), which banned pursuit of unbranded horses on federal land by aircraft or motor vehicle. Later Congress enacted the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 (P.L. 92- 195). One of the great success stories of animal protection, the 1971 act declared it to be federal policy that "wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands" (16 U.S.C. §1331). (The "public lands" are defined as federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management [BLM] and the U.S. Forest Service, which therefore excludes national parks and national wildlife refuges.) The act charged the BLM with locating, inventorying, and managing these animals. Regrettably, the BLM—which truly is a land management ...

The changing needs of the company and the workforce have supplanted the tax code as the primary driving force in benefits design.

The purpose of this note is to examine the present tax treatment of the three most popular income splitting devices used to avoid taxes: the family partnership, multiple trusts, and multiple corporations. In Part II, the various congressional and judicial limits and sanctions imposed upon these devices will be discussed along with recently proposed regulatory legislation. Part III will consist of an evaluation of the suggested limitations upon the use of income splitting devices. The ultimate concern of this note is to arrive at some conclusions as to the general approach and the specific methods best suited (1) to regulate what are often deemed "sham" devices to split income and thus avoid taxes, and at the same time (2) to reduce the great amount of uncertainty and confusion which now exists in this field.

In North America, dense populations of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in suburbs, cities and towns have stimulated a search for new population-management tools. Most research on deer contraception has focused on the safety and efficacy of immunocontraceptive vaccines, but few studies have examined population-level effects. We report here results from two long-term studies of population effects of the porcine zona pellucida (PZP) immunocontraceptive vaccine, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA, and at Fire Island National Seashore (FIIS), New York, USA. Annual population change at NIST was strongly correlated with population fertility (rP = 0.82, P = 0.001); when population fertility at NIST dropped below 0.40 fawns per female, the population declined. Contraceptive treatments at NIST were associated with a 27% decline in population between 1997 and 2002, and fluctuated thereafter with the effectiveness of contraceptive treatments. In the most intensively treated segment of FIIS, deer population density declined by ~58% between 1997 and 2006. These studies demonstrate that, in principle, contraception can significantly reduce population size. Its usefulness as a management tool will depend on vaccine effectiveness, accessibility of deer for treatment, and site-specific birth, death, immigration, and emigration rates.