March 10, 1969 
Mr. John Seago 
Mr. D, A. Parkinson 
c/o Barclay's Bank 
Box 30011 
Nairobi, Kenya 
Dear John and Tony: 
Thank you very much for your letter of February 26th. Glad that 
you enjoyed the information on the nets. I felt that when I see things 
crossing my desk that you might be interested in, I send you a copy. 
Not that I expect you to do anything about it -- it's just for your infor- 
mation. I believe there was an article sent to you on Don Hunt 
(‘Bwana Don") and also an article from the Natural History Magazine 
relative to the need for a browser as a meat animal in the southwest 
United States. 
The letter which you sent me from the "ad hoc committee" of the | 
pet shop dealers was very useful. It seers that the endangered animal 
bill is being introduced into Congress once again. As you recall, this 
bill was to prohibit the importation into the United States of animals or 
parts thereof (meaning hides, trophies, horns, etc.) which the Secretary 
of the Interior deemed to be in danger of extinction. This, of course, 
in practice means that if Kenya declared that an animal was threatened with 
extinction and put protection laws on it, we would take punitive steps “ 
against anybody who brought an animal of that nature in without the proper 
licensing, etc. Also if the IUCN declared an animal in danger of 
extinction we would not permit its importation into the United States. 
The pet shops are just absolutely livid over this, and this particular man 
who sent out the letter that you received a copy of made a perfect fool 
of himself in front of the committee. There was another letter which he 
sent out to all pet shops which was much more intemperate than the one 
that you received. Somehow or other my name is on the list of pet 
shops so we automatically received a copy of this letter which somehow 
found its way into the hands of the committee chairman. 5o0 that when 
the pet shop people appeared in front of the committee they were really 
raked over the coals for their intemperate language and so forth -- 
about as miserable treatment as I have ever seen a man get from the 
hands of a Congressional committee. By comparison, my testimony 
in favor of the bill was a perfect love feast. Needless to say, your 
letter which you sent to me is moving through channels and lam sure 
it will end up in a very auspicious place which will do the most good 
and make sure that this bill gets passed and that the various dealers 
are not given carte blanche to bring animals in. Actually this does not 
