May 2005 pdf - animal people news

May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 1
Jury acquits activist who put pork in water to try
to halt live sheep shipment to Kuwait (page 16)
Weaning zoos
from elephants
(Kim Bartlett)
What happened to the hippos?
K A M P A L A––Did anthrax kill
the hippos, or was it poison? What became
of their teeth? Who was responsible?
“We have lost 287 hippos since
July 2004,” Uganda Wildlife Authority veterinary coordinator Patrick Atimnedi told
fellow members of the International Society
for Infectious Diseases in March 2005.
“So far, we have lost about 11%
of the hippo population.
“August 2004 was the peak of
mortality,” Atimnedi continued, “declining
toward December. We were surprised with
a resurgence from January 2005.
“So far the source of infection is
unclear,” Atimnedi admitted. “[Mass]
hippo mortalities have occurred in this park
in the last 50 years, usually in 10-year
cycles. These, however, would affect at
most not more than 30 hippos, and were
mainly associated with drought.”
Atimnedi is certain that anthrax is
the lethal agent. “All cases are actually
being investigated,” Atimnedi emphasized,
mentioning visits by foreign experts and
samples sent to laboratories outside Uganda
to confirm his observations.
“The samples are mainly from
hippos,” Atimnedi said, “but there are also
samples from waterbucks, kobs, buffalo,
and one warthog. We continue to investi-
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gate cases as they occur.
“Carcass disposal is done as soon
as dead animals are sighted,” Atimnedi
explained. “Both marine and terrestrial surveillance teams are sent out every morning
and evening. The hippo carcasses are
immediately buried under lime, while other
species, especially buffalo, are burned on
site. Ring vaccination of livestock, coupled
with intense community awareness education, continues in high-risk areas.”
Atimnedi offered a textbook
description of how to fight an anthrax out(continued on page 8)
BANGALORE, NAIROBI, SALT
LAKE CITY, CHICAGO, DETROIT,
SAN FRANCISCO–– “In a jumbo victory for
Bangalore animal activists, Lord Ganesha has
showered his benediction on Veda, a 6-yearold baby elephant at the Bannerghatta
Biological Park in Karnataka, India. Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has decided that
Veda will not be sent as a diplomatic gift to the
Yerevan Zoo in Armenia,” announced
Compassion Unlimited Plus Action founder
Suparna Ganguly on April 29.
“Karnataka State got their official letter today from the prime minister’s office that
the decision to send the baby elephant has been
cancelled,” Ganguly elaborated to ANIMAL
PEOPLE. “We had a Thanksgiving with the
elephants at Bannerghatta.”
Confirmed Govind D. Belgaumkar of
The Hindu, “Bangaloreans––schoolchildren
and parents, as well as other animal lovers––on
Friday celebrated the government decision to
leave Veda with her mother Vanita, grandmother Suvarna, brother Gokula, and little sister
Gowri. People distributed sweets, touched
ANIMAL
––Kim Bartlett
Veda, and prayed for her long life.”
That was one week after the Nairobi
newspaper The Nation hinted that Youth for
Conservation might have won a parallel struggle to block the export of as many as 318 ele(continued on page 17)
PEOPLE
News For People Who Care
About Animals
May 2005
Volume XIV, #4
BLM suspends wild horse sales
after 41 are resold to slaughter
R E N O––U.S. Bureau of Land
Management director Kathleen Clarke on
April 25, 2005 suspended all wild horse and
burro transactions.
“In response to two recent incidents
involving the commercial processing of horses
who had been resold or traded after being
bought from the BLM, the Bureau is reviewing
its sales procedures,” said the terse BLM
announcement.
Clarke acted one week after Cavel
International Inc. slaughtered six wild horses
purchased for $50 each in Canon City,
Colorado, by former rodeo clown Dustin
Herbert, of Meeker, Oklahoma.
“Herbert claimed that the horses
would be used for a church youth program,
and would not be sold for slaughter. Less than
three days after he purchased the animals, all
six were slaughtered so that their meat could
end up on foreign dinner tables,” posted the
American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign,
of Lompoc, California.
“Six wild horses’ blood was spilled,
but it could easily have been 60 or 200,”
American Horse Defense Fund president Trina
Bellak told Scott Sonner of Associated Press.
Virtually any and all of the wild horses sold
recently under the Conrad Burns sale authority
amendment [to the 1971 Wild & Free
Roaming Horse & Burro Protection Act] are
in jeopardy,” Bellak said.
Bellak’s warning was affirmed when
Cavel International on April 25 slaughtered 35
more wild horses.
“The horses came from a broker who
obtained them from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe,”
reported John Helperin of Associated Press.
“The tribe traded 87 of the 105 aging horses it
bought from the government for younger ones.
BLM officials, tipped off by Agriculture
Department inspectors, persuaded the plant
managers to stop,” before all of the first lot of
51 horses were killed.
“That saved the lives of 16 mustangs,” Helperin continued. “The plant
agreed to give the horses food and water until
the BLM could pick them up. BLM officials
also intervened to save 36 mustangs in
Nebraska who were on their way to Cavel.”
The Ford Motor Company, makers
of the Mustang automobile line, donated
$19,000 toward the transportation and care of
the horses who were to have been killed.
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, of South
Dakota, bought 208 wild horses, and the
Three Affiliated Tribes, of North Dakota,
bought 250, at just $1.00 apiece.
“We just wanted to help,” Rosebud
Sioux executive secretary Todd Fast Horse
told Ryan Slattery of Indian Country Today.
Added Richard Mayer, CEO for the
Three Affiliated Tribes, “We wanted to play
a role in preserving these wild mustangs.
They are part of our heritage and are really
holy to us. They deserve to be protected.”
The Three Affiliated Tribes are the
Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara.
After the resale to slaughter came to
light, Indian Country Today reported that,
“The tribe specified that it wanted to receive
(continued on page 15)
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Minke whale breaches. (Kim Bartlett)
Japan looks to South Korea for help
in restarting commercial whaling
ULSAN, South Korea––Japanese
whalers expect a home town edge when the
57th meeting of the International Whaling
Commission convenes June 20-24 in Ulsan,
South Korea.
The IWC meeting will start 10 days
after the end of a 12-day series of preliminary
meetings on scientific issues.
“Ulsan is opening a $6-million
whale museum this month on an otherwise
dilapidated wharf across from a shabby strip
of whale restaurants,” Los Angeles Times
staff writer Barbara Demick reported on May
2. On an adjacent lot, groundbreaking is
expected soon on a site for a whale research
center, which is to include a processing facility for whale meat.”
“Dozens of speciality restaurants
along the waterfront of South Korea’s selfproclaimed whale capital” sell whale meat,
Demick explained.
Retired whaler Son Nam Su, 69,
told Demick that hunting and eating whales is
a cultural legacy of the Japanese occupation of
Korea, 1910-1945, and that at peak the South
Korean whaling fleet killed about 1,000
whales per year.
Annual South Korean consumption
is now about 150 tons of whale meat, taken
from about 80 whales, Demick wrote.
But because South Korea joined the
IWC moratorium on commercial whaling in
1986, Demick added, “the only whales who
can be legally consumed are those accidentally killed in fishing nets. Before the whales are
butchered, maritime police inspect the carcasses to enure there is no sign of foul play.”
At prices reportedly reaching
$120,000 per whale, fishers have considerable incentive to encourage “accidents.”
“In a petition drive led largely by
old-timers in Ulsan, many of them nostalgic
for the city’s past,” Demick continued, “the
South Korean government is being asked to
ease the IWC moratorium on commercial
whaling to allow the capture of 100 whales
per year. Those in favor of whaling argue that
a whaling revival would boost the local economy and burnish the image of an industrial
city where the noxious fumes of petrochemical plants drown out any whiff of sea air.”
Japan is expected to unilaterally
announce in Ulsan that it will increase from
(continued on page 7)
May 2005
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Page 2
2 - AN IM AL PEOPLE,
May 2005
cer.
May 2005
Fellow Lover of Animals,
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Years ago, I was a movie actor living with three cats in
Hollywood. Then in March 1979, I began having these
strange dreams about a dog who was going to change my life.
As the dreams continued, I’d find myself looking
around my bedroom when I woke up, feeling this dog’s presence.
Then April rolled in. I had promised my best friend that
I would visit his family in Bakersfield . . . .
As the highway cut through a section of the Angeles
National Forest, I gasped! Off to the right, slowly plodding
his way along a ridge, was a black Doberman . . . the dog in
my dream!
I jammed on my brakes and pulled onto the soft
shoulder. Then I ran over to the edge of the road and called
to the dog. He spotted me right away and he began walking
toward me. Those last ten yards, he ran toward me, whimpering. He was magnificent . . . but very tired and thin.
I took off my belt and slipped it over
his head and walked him to my car.
As I headed for Bakersfield, the dog
lay on the front seat and he put his head in
my lap. I held his head the rest of the way.
Someone had abandoned this sensitive, loving dog . . . in the forest . . . far away from
food or water.
I named him “Delta.”
Back in Hollywood, Delta had to
sleep in my car at first, because pets were
not allowed in my apartment . . . where I
already had three “illegal” cats!
So for months, I took Delta everywhere, like a proud father takes his son. I
took him to Marina Del Rey for a strawberry ice cream cone
every day, and to Venice Beach where he loved to swim.
Seven days and evenings a week, we were always together.
And my only wish was to have a house where Delta could
sleep on my bed at night.
We also hiked in the forest a lot . . . and sometimes
Delta chose hills that were so steep, I’d wrap his 30 foot lead
around my waist and he’d pull me up with him!
It was on one of those wilderness hikes that Delta and I
found 35 more dogs . . . each one starving and abandoned . . .
. . . they were so hungry they knocked over garbage
cans full of picnic trash . . . trying to find a morsel of food . . .
. . . they even ate paper sandwich wrappers.
I was so shaken by this that Delta and I drove to the city
and bought four large fifty pound bags of dog food. Back in
the forest, I spread them over the ground.
These dogs dove into the food piles up to their elbows
and started munching loudly . . . and while they ate, they
smiled at Delta and me . . . thanking us for helping them.
Moved to tears, I vowed I’d never leave them. We
were even together in the cold winter rains when they were
sick with pneumonia . . . and I put medicine in their food to
help get them through it.
I remember feeling so helpless that I couldn’t do more
for them . . . Delta’s new best friends were homeless . . .
. . . living on the cold ground . . . trying to sleep through
the pounding storms . . . in puddles of cold water, rain beating
constantly on their naked heads.
It took a full year to get them all out of the forest, but I
did . . . before the next winter’s rains. I found loving homes
for a few, but most I kept myself . . .
. . . I was too much in love with them to see them go,
and they were deathly afraid of other people.
We did find a house to rent, and Delta loved his yard,
and all his new friends. You could tell, he was their “leader.”
All the other dogs looked up to Delta.
And because the landlord allowed pets, Delta finally
got to sleep on my bed . . .
. . . for about a year.
Then when he was only seven, Delta developed a can-
We still went for walks every morning, though he could
only go short distances.
Then one morning, in 1982, while I was typing a letter
on the kitchen table, I heard a whimper in the bedroom. I ran
in to see if Delta needed anything . . . he had just passed away.
And I never got to say good-bye.
I’ve rescued many thousands of abandoned dogs and
cats since Delta found me . . . and I even founded this organization in his name, to honor him as the dog whose love
changed my life forever.
And I promised him that whenever I found an abandoned
animal in the wilderness, that I would help him in Delta’s memory.
But it has haunted me for 20 years that I never got to say
good-bye to my son . . . my beloved Delta.
Then, a few weeks ago, I realized that Delta chose to
cross over while I was in the other room, working, for a reason
. . . he didn’t want me to ever say good-bye to him. His last
wish, I’m sure now, was that I simply not forget him.
So it is with great sadness, and yet with great joy, that I
ask you to plant forget-me-not seeds on this anniversary of
Delta’s last wish. Please call me at 661-269-4010 and I will
send you the packet of forget-me-not flower seeds for free.
Please . . . plant them somewhere so they can grow wild
and multiply year after year. And when you look at them in the
years to come, remember my beloved Delta to whomever you
are with.
Today, thanks to Delta, we are home to over 1,500
abandoned cats and dogs.
We’re here for these animals . . . 7 days a week, 24
hours a day. And no matter what else I’m doing, the animals
always come first.
Each of our dogs
is neutered and then
“married” to another
rescued dog of the
opposite sex.
And then the
couple lives in a huge
yard with their own
straw bale adobe dog
house, which I
invented after years
of trying to find out
what dogs like best!
Our over
500 cats live in
three
dozen
indoor/outdoor
catteries and
they each enjoy
three meals a
day.
They are
safe and nobody
will ever hurt
them
again.
They will never
go hungry, and
we have two hospitals to keep them in good health.
With your gift, we can continue to feed these animals,
rescue them . . . and shower them with love . . . at our spacious 94-acre mountain-top sanctuary.
For the animals,
Leo Grillo, founder
P. S . : Please call 661-269-4010 today and request
your FREE packet of Forget-Me-Nots to honor my beloved
dog Delta. It was because of him that I have devoted my
life to rescuing abandoned animals. Wherever these flowers
grow, the spirit of Delta will shine through.
D.E.L.T.A. Rescue
PO Box 9, Dept AP, Glendale, CA 91209
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May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 3
Editorial feature
A N I M AL P E O P L E,
May 2 005 - 3
Lessons from finding the ivory-billed woodpecker
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At least one ivory-billed woodpecker still inhabits the Big Woods region of
Arkansas, the world learned on April 28, 2005. Yet, 60 years after the brightly colored big
bird was believed to have been hunted to extinction, it is almost certainly still on the brink.
Gene Sparling, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, first saw the officially rediscovered
ivory-billed woodpecker on February 2, 2004 in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, a
relatively dense and impenetrable swamp, not far from U.S. I-40, which runs in an almost
straight line from Memphis southwest to Little Rock.
Ornithologists Tim Gallagher of Cornell University and Bobby Harrison of Oakwood
College in Huntsville, Alabama, confirmed the Sparling sighting after accompanying him to
the vicinity. David Luneau, of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, on April 25, 2004
videotaped the ivory-billed woodpecker taking off from the trunk of a tree.
Before announcing the find, the scientists enlisted the help of The Nature
Conservancy to purchase more habitat.
No more than one ivory-billed woodpecker has been seen at a time, and all of the
confirmed sightings were of a male––although turkey hunter, forestry student, and National
Rifle Association intern David Kelivan, 21, claimed to have seen a pair in the Pearl River
Wildlife Management Area of Louisiana, well to the south, on April 1, 1999. That location
is comparably dense swamp, not far from the junction of U.S. I-10, I-12, and I-59. Kelivan’s
account, apparently not an April Fool, convinced enough experts that teams of biologists
repeatedly searched the area for three years seeking confirmation. Their hopes were dashed
when rapping sounds recorded by remote listening devices turned out to be distant gunfire.
No definite ivory-billed woodpecker nests have been discovered. Yet a breeding
population almost certainly existed not long ago, since the maximum lifespan of an ivorybilled woodpecker is believed to be no more than 15 years. Even the oldest wild bird on
record, a Manx shearwater banded in Britain in 1953, believed to be still alive, would not be
old enough to be a remnant from 1939, when 22 ivory-billed woodpeckers were seen at the
Singer Tract in Louisiana, after they were twice before believed to have been extinct, or
1944, when the last nesting was reported, or 1946, when the last bird was seen, other than
unverified reports from Georgia and the Florida Panhandle in the early 1950s.
The Singer Tract was clear-cut in 1948. Believed to have ended any hope that the
ivory-billed woodpecker might ever be seen again, that act of ecological vandalism helped to
impel the 1950 formation of The Nature Conservancy, now the biggest of all animal-and-habitat-related charities.
The Nature Conservancy was rightly quick to claim credit for preserving the Big
Woods habitat––but dead wrong in citing the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in
defense of its policy of attempting to eradicate non-native species by any means possible,
including fire-setting and inundations with herbicides and pesticides.
The April 2005 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE detailed, beginning on page1, thirtyodd years of effort by the Nature Conservancy and National Park Service to kill feral pigs and
other hooved stock on Santa Cruz Island, off the southern California coast. This effort accelerated in January 2005 with the commitment of $5 million to an all-out attempt to purge the
last pigs within 18 months.
Had the Nature Conservancy attempted to kill feral razorback hogs around the Cache
River National Wildlife Refuge with the same zeal and same methods used to “protect” the
habitat now incorporated into Channel Islands National Park, the last ivory-billed woodpeckers might have been among the casualties––just as the now endangered Channel Islands fox is
among the victims rather than the beneficiaries of the Santa Cruz Island killing.
First the fox population boomed, feasting on dead animals. The foxes were joined at
the carrion piles by golden eagles who flew in from the mainland. Then, as the carrion disappeared, the eagles turned on the foxes, as well as the young of the surviving pigs. Now the
official line is that eradicating the pigs will send the eagles elsewhere, but they might eat the
last foxes––other than those in a captive breeding program––before they go.
The habitat where an ivory-billed woodpecker was found survived not because it was
“managed” to preserve native species, nor because it was remote wilderness, but because it
was mostly left alone, being mostly too wet and full of insects to either “manage” or exploit.
Partisans in the perennial battle over how best to preserve endangered species quickly claimed the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker as a victory for their positions,
regardless of contrary evidence.
The White House pointed out that finding the ivory-billed woodpecker illustrates the
importance of privately funded conservation. Yet nothing the George W. Bush administration
has done so far has encouraged private conservation, except by default, as public lands have
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ANIMAL PEOPLE
News for People Who Care About Animals
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been opened or re-opened at an unprecedented pace to hunting, trapping, fishing, logging,
mining, grazing, oil and gas drilling, off-road vehicles, and military training.
The ivory-billed woodpecker may still be just a mindless shotgun blast or chainsawing of a nesting snag from eternal oblivion.
The only real contribution the Bush administration has made to protecting either the
habitat or the welfare of animals has been by showing that whatever is saved through politics
can be lost the same way. This has encouraged people who are serious about protecting animals and habitat to get serious about developing cause-specific bipartisan political clout.
Interior Secretary Gail Norton promised a $10 million federal effort to promote the
recovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker, long listed as an endangered species but without a
recovery plan or critical habitat designation. There have been no heated political battles since
1948 over what should be done to save it. It was nearly relisted as extinct in 1997.
While the Endangered Species Act is now the front line of legal defense for the
ivory-billed woodpecker, it was first protected by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This is
still the only protection for most migratory birds in the U.S.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act was amended in November 2004, at request of The
Nature Conservancy and other hunter/conservationist organizations, to exempt from protection any human-introduced “non-native” migratory species deemed problematic by the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service. The Fish & Wildlife Service at the time anticipated issuing a “hit
list” of 94 species. In January 2005, the Fish & Wildlife Service published an expanded list of
113 species that might be extirpated, with a preface promising that more might be added.
Technically, that could allow the deliberate extirpation of the Cuban ivory-billed
woodpecker, last photographed in 1956 but rediscovered in 1988, if restoration biologists had
actually followed through with a hypothetical scheme to reintroduce ivory-billed woodpeckers
to the U.S. by using the Cuban ivory-billed woodpeckers as seed stock.
This idea remained hypothetical because Cuban biologists doubted that enough
woodpeckers remained to spare any. None have been seen, in fact, since 1995. In addition,
so little is known of either the Cuban or the U.S. ivory-billed woodpeckers that their exact
relationship is anyone’s guess. Some ornithologists believe they are genetically identical
except for normal family variation. Some say the Cuban woodpeckers are slightly smaller.
Currently they are classed as related subspecies rather than the same bird in different
habitats. Possibly the only hope for maintaining enough genetic diversity to save either population may be to introduce the remnants somehow and hope they “hybridize,” but this might
also be species purists’ worst nightmare.
Many conservationists have yet to recover from the shock of discovering through
DNA evidence that the last red wolves, who shared most of the historic range of the ivorybilled woodpecker, were in fact wolf/coyote hybrids. The “pure” red wolf either never existed
or was long ago subsumed by coyotes, who expanded into the wolves’ range after humans
hunted the wolves to virtual extinction.
Just 14 red wolves remained, all captive, when in 1987 the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service started a breeding program at Bulls Island, South Carolina. From Bulls Island came
26 pups who were the progenitors of about 300 red wolves alive today, including 55 pups
born just this spring at the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.
The red wolf restoration effort survived wise-users’ lawsuits contending that hybrid
animals cannot be considered endangered species, but lost political support as the coyote
ancestry became recognized. In March 2005 the Fish & Wildlife Service removed the last
three red wolves at Bulls Island to save $15,000.
The message all along should have been not that red wolves should be preserved as a
“pure” and therefore supposedly superior lineage, but rather that predators including both
wolves and coyotes are essential to a healthy ecosystem. If they hybridize in their effort to
adapt to changing survival requirements, the emerging new line is as worthy of appreciation
and protection, and as needed by nature, as the ancestors who contributed to the gene pool.
Biodiversity
It is simplistic to argue, as some commentators have, that the rediscovery of the
ivory-billed woodpecker refutes the belief that the earth is undergoing an “extinction crisis.”
The existence or non-existence of one specimen of a single species makes no strong point on
either side of the debate––though it is to be noted that species discoveries and rediscoveries
continue to exceed reported extinctions by approximately 37-to-1, not including microbes, as
ANIMAL PEOPLE editorially noted in November 2002.
The rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker does underscore other points that
ANIMAL PEOPLE has made repeatedly over the years.
First is that while the visibility of various species has shifted, coinciding with
human-induced habitat change, the abundance of species relative to each other has no inherent
relationship to either biodiversity or the overall health of ecosystems. Neither are “wilderness”
and “optimum wildlife habitat” to be confused.
One may find high native biodiversity in ecologically fragile “wilderness” habitats
like the Peruvian Amazon, where hardly anything survives in abundance, non-native species
rarely endure the conditions, and almost every large species is endangered because of human
exploitation, including “sustainable” use by the present gun-wielding “indigenous” residents.
Conversely, one may also find high native biodiversity in older U.S. suburbs, featuring mature tree canopies, ornamental fruit trees and berry bushes, and lawns that are at
least nocturnally accessible to grazing and burrowing animals. Along with the native biodiversity will be abundant non-native species, filling vacant niches and expanding the web of life.
The newly rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker is in what might be described as
fragmented habitat, from which it may be unable to expand and recover. Yet the ivory-billed
woodpecker might recover quite well as more of the wetland woodlots alongside interstate
highways mature into old growth, forming corridors that are gradually reconnecting habitat
fragments into a meandering greenbelt ecosystem. Already these largely unplanned greenbelt
corridors have helped opossums, coyotes, and whitetailed deer to extend their range. Grass
divider strips have helped nonmigratory Canada geese to find their way from sites where they
were introduced to be hunted to suburbs, where they are now considered common lawn pests.
The ivory-billed woodpecker was Exhibit A for an “extinction crisis,” because as
recently as 150 years ago it was occasionally seen throughout the Southeast. Unlike the
Carolina parakeet, which vanished during the same decades for the same reasons, the ivorybilled woodpecker was not narrowly confined to one habitat. Yet unlike the passenger pigeon,
once the most abundant and broadly ranging of all lost North American species, the ivorybilled woodpecker was rare even according to early 19th century observers Alexander Wilson
and John James Audubon.
The ivory-billed woodpecker might be best compared to the California condor,
another widely ranging bird who is memorably spectacular but has always been scarce. After
23 years of captive breeding, the last 22 California condors have become a population of 240,
about half living in the wild, soaring over five western states and northern Mexico.
Reintroduction has succeeded largely because of increased human tolerance, not only of spectacular wild megafauna but also of common “nuisance” species, both native and non-native,
whose remains form much of the condors’ diet.
The chief lesson taught by both the partial recovery of the California condor and the
rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker ought to be to appreciate wildlife of every variety.
Neither species exists today because something else was massacred to save it. Both exist as a
bonus for allowing other animals of many different kinds the space and opportunity to thrive.
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Page 4
4 - ANI MAL P E O P LE,
M a y 2005
A model for helping overseas animal charities
Nancy Janes. (Kim Bartlett)
LIVERMORE, Calif.––Nancy Janes
fell into founding Romania Animal Rescue by
accident, she often testifies.
Just five years ago she knew little about
Romania, and less about the dogs there.
Now Dana Costin, cofounder with
Rolando Cepraga of the ROLDA shelter in Galati,
Romania, says Janes “represents, from my point
of view, a model for everyone who wants to help
animal charities abroad.”
Costin asked ANIMAL PEOPLE t o
profile Janes because she believes many other
U.S. animal advocates could adopt overseas animal charities, much as Romania Animal Rescue
has adopted ROLDA.
ROLDA is the chief beneficiary of
Romania Animal Rescue, and Romania Animal
Rescue is in effect a support group for ROLDA.
But Romania Animal Rescue was not formed
specifically to help ROLDA. Instead, it developed that mission as the most efficient way Janes
could find to fulfill her charitable goals.
Romania Animal Rescue is now the
largest single source of support for the rapidly
expanding ROLDA program, which includes
advocacy, humane education, street dog and cat
sterilization, feeding and medicating the dogs at
two overcrowded and underfunded municipal
shelters, and operating the ROLDA shelter as a
model of how sheltering ought to be done.
Among 22 shelters that ANIMAL PEOPLE has
visited in Romania and five neighboring nations,
the ROLDA shelter is the only one that would
currently exceed a score of 80 by the strictest
application of ANIMAL PEOPLE’s own 100point evaluation scale. (The Oregon Humane
Society recently scored a rare 100––see page 20.)
Romania Animal Rescue raised nearly
$44,000 for ROLDA in 2004, with overhead
expenses of about $12,000 (21%, about as efficient as charities ever are while still growing and
not subsidized by interest from endowments).
ROLDA has had other major funders.
Greyhound Action International, of Britain,
Remembering writer Andre Norton
LETTERS
SEA Lab
+
I’m contacting you on
behalf of the SEA Lab, a program of
the Los Angeles Conservation
Corps. While most aquariums
acquire animals through purchase,
trade, or capture, we go to power
plants throughout Southern California and rescue animals who come
in through the saltwater intake cooling systems. We rescue and rehabilitate thousands of animals each year,
including rays, octopi, moon jellies,
sharks, and eels. We use the animals to educate children about
marine life and the environment.
About 90% of our rescued animals
are returned to the wild.
The SEA Lab is a handson coastal science education center
in Redondo Beach that offers free
and low cost programs for children
of all ages. College-aged students
trained by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps lead the activities,
including beach explorations, touch
tank tours and interactive classroom
programs. The SEA Lab extends its
programs into the community
through summer camps, community
service projects (including beach
clean-ups) and the Traveling Tide
Pool mobile exhibit.
The SEA Lab also conducts marine-related research and is
replanting coastal bluffs with native
plants.
The Los Angeles Conservation Corps, the largest nonprofit
youth corps in the nation, received
initial funding to operate the SEA
Lab from Southern California
Edison. With that support scheduled
to end in 2006, LACC is striving to
develop a broader funding base.
––Mike Mena
SEA Lab
628 S Catalina Avenue #14
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Phone: 310 316-9892
<[email protected]>
<www.lacorps.org>
Hit them with
a 2-by-4!
More than 30,000
people who care about
animals will read
this 2-by-4" ad.
We'll let you have it
for just $68––or $153
for three issues––
or $456 for a year.
Then you can let
them have it.
It's the only 2-by-4 to use in
the battle for public opinion.
ANIMAL PEOPLE
360-579-2505
made the grant in 2001 that enabled ROLDA to
expand from animal rights advocacy to sheltering.
A DELTA Rescue grant to help ROLDA feed and
medicate the Galati pound dogs was the biggest
that ROLDA has ever received. At least six individual readers of ANIMAL PEOPLE also substantially aid ROLDA, many of them since reading a June 2004 profile of the organization.
The difference between Romania
Animal Rescue and the other ROLDA funders is
that Romania Animal Rescue extends a range of
other support services. Nancy Janes has become
both an efficient self-taught fundraiser and a capable publicist, who in only three years has helped
ROLDA to become probably the Roman-ian animal charity best-known to U.S. donors.
Janes also brings Romanian dogs to the
U.S. and finds homes for them, with recent help
from Tony LaRussa’s Animal Rescue Foundation
executive director Brenda Barnette.
In addition, Janes helps to recruit and
(continued on page 6)
––Wolf
Clifton
CHANNEL ISLANDS
KHARKOV SPCA
We would like to express
our thanks to you for sending us
ANIMAL PEOPLE. Such publications are rare in the Ukraine, and we
are glad to receive useful information from foreign sources.
––Oleg Bondarenko
& Olga Marchenko
Kharkov Regional SPA
Ul. Podlesnaya 30-A
Kharkov 310050, Ukraine
Phone: 380-572-441-445
Concerning your April
2005 cover article “Channel Islands
National Park ex-chief hits cruelty of
killing “invasive species,” we’re
grateful that you are wise to the
deception of “restoration.” Even
many animal rights people get duped
by it. We also appreciate your
wealth of knowledge on the subject.
––Scarlet Newton
Channel Islands Protection Assn.
P.O. Box 60132
Santa Barbara, CA 93160
Phone: 805-882-2008
<[email protected]>
<www.chiapa.org>
Something told me in the
past few days that I would experience a loss, and I held off opening
the April 2005 edition of ANIMAL
PEOPLE for a day, not knowing
why. Today, I found the answer
to both mysteries: a lifelong
favorite writer, inspiration, and
mentor of sorts, though we never
met, has passed.
I have read Ms. Andre
Norton’s prolific and progressive
work since childhood, and having
somehow found her address several
years back, sent her a letter of
thanks and admiration, to which
she responded personally. Since
that time, we sent one another
cards at the winter holidays. She
also enclosed a photo of one of her
lovely Himalayan cats with her first
correspondence, which I have in
one of my photo albums.
I did not receive a reply
to my last card, and thought she
might be ill or even passed. How
much I feel the loss of this wonderful, imaginative, compassionate
writer! I am glad she no longer suffers, and she did live to a great age,
but I am one of many, I am sure,
who will mourn her not being
among us any longer. How I will
miss her cards! I have, of course,
kept the ones she sent to me. They
will always be treasures to me.
––Jamaka N. Petzak
Los Angeles, Calif.
<[email protected]>
GIR FOREST ASIATIC LION COUNT USED LIVE BAIT ANIMALS,
Through the efforts of
People for Animals founder Maneka
Gandi and other animal rights
activists, the 2001 Gir Forest census of Asiatic lions was the first such
census done without using baits. It
was decided that all future lion censuses should not use baits.
However, the lion census
done during April 2005, under
supervision of chief wildlife warden
Pradeep Khanna and Gir conservator
of forests Bharat Pathak, did use
illegal baiting. We learned that on
April 23, near Babariya village in
the Gir West Division, buffalo were
used as bait, and the officers and
photographers on duty enjoyed the
lion show as in the old days.
We also came to know that
two buffalo who died from disease
were taken inside the sanctuary near
Babariya, and were used to locate
and hold lion prides.
Earlier, on April 22 near
Barda Bandhara, a buffalo and a
goat were showed to a pride of lions,
and a lioness killed the buffalo. This
episode was documented by field
staff. The same kind of baiting was
repeated the next day at the same
place, using the goat who survived,
in the presence of senior forestry
officials and news media.
We immediately informed
"THEY HAVE
NO VOICE THEY HAVE
NO CHOICE"
Mrs. Gandhi, and asked the Forest
Minister of Gujarat to probe the matter and do the needful as early as
possible. Due to their investigation,
forest department staff were alert
throughout the night, removing evidence from the locations. This may
result in lion prides moving from
those areas to others, causing duplication in the lion count.
We are informed that lions
are baited throughout the year for the
entertainment of forestry officers’
personal guests at many locations.
Baiting incidents have increased
immensely since the appointment of
Bharat Pathak five years ago.
We decided to file a complaint under the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals Act in our authority as Honorary Animal Welfare
Officers of the Government of India.
––Amit B. Jethava
President
Gir Nature Youth Club
Khamba, Amreli
Gujarat, India
Phone: 02797-26012-260-182
Editor’s note:
Confirmed Himanshu
Kaushik of the Times of India News
Network, “When the Times of India
team reached the field of one
Nirmaldas Mahant in Babariya vil Isolation is the worst cruelty
to a dog. Thousands of
dogs endure lives not worth
living, on the ends of chains,
in pens, in sheds, garages
and basements. Who is
doing something about this?
Animal Advocates
is!
See how at
www.animaladvocates.com.
Sign the petition. Join our
cause. Read our "Happy
Endings" stories of dogs
rescued from lives of misery,
and the laws we've had
passed. Copy and use our
ground-breaking report into
the harm that isolation does
lage on the edge of the Gir
Sanctuary, at 11:30 pm on April 23,
four lions were feasting on three buf faloe. On Sunday morning, howev er, burnt remains of the bait were
found on the field along with blood stained parts of the carcass.”
The Gujarat High Court
ruled against the use of live bait in
2000. A Gujarat government plea to
the Indian Board for Wildlife to be
allowed to use buffalo during the
lion census was refused in 2001.
“A forest official said this
year baits were used in two ranges:
Jamwala, where Babariya is, and
Akoli,” wrote Kaushik. “Live bait
was also used in the Ghodavadi area
of Jasadhar range. Sources said
that four buffaloes were used as bait
in the Ankolvadi range too, which is
situated right in Gir National Park.”
Chief forestry minister
Narendra Modi told the Indo-Asian
This little one will
never face laboratory
research or isolation or
the beatings and stress
of training to perform
as “entertainment.”
She has found safe
haven at Primarily
Primates, among
nearly 600 other
rescued primates and
400 birds. We give
them sanctuary for the
rest of their lives.
Please help us
to help them!
SAY WITNESSES
News Service that the count found
359 lions, an increase of 32 lions
since 2001. The Gir Forest is the
last wild habitat of the Asiatic lion,
which roamed all of the Asian main land 2,000 years ago, but by 1950
was reduced to just the estimated
217-227 then in Gir. By 1968 even
the Gir count was just 177.
Indian wildlife officials
have been under intense scrutiny
since the February 2005 confirma tion that tigers have officially not
been seen in the Sariska Tiger
Reserve, of Rajasthan, since November 2004, and according to some
villagers who cut grass and graze
cattle inside the reserve, were actu ally last seen in 2003.
The tiger population of
Ranthambore, the most famous
Indian tiger reserve, has meanwhile
reportedly been poached to 20 or
fewer. The 2004 count was 31.
+
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 5
AN IM AL PEOPLE,
May 2 005 - 5
May 2005
3/22/13
6 -
6:32 PM
Page 6
ANIMAL P E O P L E,
M a y 2005
A model for helping overseas animal charities (from page 4)
screen volunteers who visit ROLDA on working vacations. While helping ROLDA, the
volunteers may stay at a cottage on the
ROLDA grounds, offering a spectacular vista
of the surrounding hills, including traditional
gypsy camps across a deep valley.
By the separate testimony of both
women, Janes has become almost an elder sister to Costin, as gentle and patient as Costin is
sometimes impatient and temperamental.
They often dream and brainstorm together via
the Internet.
“Dana and I are always looking for
new and innovative solutions. Our donors regularly give suggestions, which we encourage,”
says Janes. “In my opinion, animal welfare is
still a learning experience. If we knew all the
answers, we would not have the problem!”
Janes was not looking for any such
relationship, or a new avocation, when five
years ago she ran a Google web search for
information about “Romania Dogs.”
Born in Milwaukee, Janes spent
much of her childhood in Lake Bluff, Illinois;
spent her teen years in Santa Fe, New Mexico;
worked for two years as a bank teller and five
years as an American Airlines flight attendant;
then for 20 years kept the books for her husband Rory Janes’ two horse equipment shops
in the east San Francisco Bay area.
Janes’ experience in nonprofit work
was limited to leading hikes for the Sierra Club
for about six years and staffing information
booths on behalf of the Greenbelt Alliance.
Animal advocacy was among her
concerns in both activities––“I have always
viewed helping the environment as the best
way to help wild animals,” she says––but she
did not work with any animal groups.
In 2001 Janes and two friends joined
a Sierra Club hiking tour of the Carpathian
mountains in Transylvania. They discovered
the most abundant street dog population in
Europe, and some of the most backward and
brutal animal control methods.
“I tried to work with established
groups, but with no luck,” Janes recalls. “No
one wanted to take on Romania, especially
after what happened to Brigitte Bardot,” who
made a huge investment in street dog sterilization in Bucharest only to see mayor Traian
Basescu (now president of Romania) unleash
one of the most ruthlessly vicious dog
pogroms of recent times.
“My thought was, ‘Well, the dogs
are still suffering, and something needs to be
done. If no one helps me, I’ll try to do it
myself,’” Janes remembers.
Janes began using the Internet to
intervew potential project partners.
“I was ready to set up a place in
Romania on my own,” Janes admits. “What a
mistake that would have been! Dana enlightened me on how to deal with the Romanian
authorities. Dana,” a law student, “works
diligently and cautiously with the authorities,
and has taught me the rules to follow and how
to be patient.
“I think it is important to understand
how the country you are trying to help works,”
Janes emphasizes, “whether you agree or not.
You are definitely not going to change their
ways overnight!”
Janes also emphasizes the importance of personally meeting potential partners.
“You must meet the people you are
going to work with and check out what they do
in person,” Janes states. “Do not believe
everything you read on the Internet!”
E-mail persuaded Nancy and Rory
Janes to help ROLDA buy a truck, urgently
needed to haul materials, supplies, and dogs
from central Galati to the shelter site. They
Groundbreaking Books
on Religion & Animal Rights
by Norm Phelps
THE DOMINION OF LOVE:
Animal Rights
According to the Bible
(Lantern Books, $15)
THE GREAT COMPASSION:
Buddhism & Animal Rights
(Lantern Books, $16)
Available from
www.lanternbooks.com
and Amazon.Com worldwide
then flew to Romania in 2003 to see what had
been done with the investment. Two weeks of
volunteer work at ROLDA convinced them to
make it the focal project of Romania Animal
Rescue Inc., which received U.S. charitable
status in August 2003.
“I found Dana to be determined and
bold,” Janes recalls. “She’s tough, and has
made perfectly clear that she can handle herself without my help. I like that in her!”
Nancy and Rory Janes also spent
working vacations at ROLDA in 2004 and
2005, and brought Costin to the 2004 Conference on Homeless Animal Management and
Policy, in Orlando, partly as a training opportunity, partly to help her expand the ROLDA
support network.
While in the U.S., Costin visited and
personally thanked as many high donors as she
could. She will return to the U.S. for the 2005
CHAMP conference, in Anaheim, co-sponsored by Romanian Animal Rescue and ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Site visits are A must
“Regular site visits are a must,”
Nancy Janes says. “Donors must feel confident about you, and you need to feel confident about the work being done. Each donation is important to each donor, and therefore
needs to be supervised. Supervision is the job
of the sponsor.”
Janes does not confuse supervision
with direct management.
Traditionally, charities in donor
nations support projects in less affluent parts
of the world either by starting foreign outposts,
or by making grants on a project-by-project
basis. Either traditional approach permits the
trustees of donor charities to keep close control
of the money. Unfortunately, both traditional
approaches also inhibit program success.
Missionary projects often become
permanent expatriate enclaves, making little
progress toward penetrating and changing the
cultures surrounding them. All ideas and initiative come from the parent organization.
Locals are just hired help, seldom acquiring
deep understanding of the work.
Giving grants on a project-by-project basis frequently
achieves even less. Recipient organizations often lurch from new
activity to new activity, unable to
sustain even their most successful
initiatives, and are limited to pursuing goals on a part-time basis
because grant-givers rarely fund
operating costs or salaries.
Few grant-givers want to
help existing programs. Frequently
a grant-giver will fund the acquisition of a building or a vehicle, but
not the ongoing expense of using or
maintaining it. The result is that in
the name of avoiding waste, grantgiving foundations in all branches
of charity have littered the world
with half-finished construction and
lightly used junk prominently bearing their nameplates.
“Romania Animal Rescue
has not only changed my life, it has
become my life,” Janes admits. “It
is all I think of, not because I have
to, but because I want to.
“It has been a real challenge for us financially,” Janes
acknowledges. “Rory and I never
argued about money. Now we do.”
Among Rory Janes’ contributions,
beyond cash, business savvy, and patience, is
organizing an annual fundraising golf tournament at the Clayton Valley Country Club. The
second tournament was promoted by KOIT
radio and <www.Sfgate.com>, the news web
site jointly sponsored by the San Francisco
Chronicle and Examiner. Prizes were donated
by many prominent San Francisco Bay area
businesses. It netted $7,000, quite a decent
take for a still young charity.
Old friends “have been openly critical of my choice to help Romania,” Nancy
Janes says. “Needless to say, the hardest part
is raising funds. I hate asking good people for
money––they should not have to sacrifice for
the abuses of others. Unfortunately this is not
the way the world works,” Janes laments.
“The people I would like to make
pay huge amounts to animal welfare are the
abusers. The SIDEX steel factory in Galati,
for instance, should have to pay for poisoning
as many as 3,000 dogs this winter,” Janes
opines. “They are evil, and must be punished.
This is black-and-white as far as I am concerned. But I guess if the good people were
the most powerful, animals would not be in a
crisis in the first place.
“People are suspicious as to what
they are funding,” Janes continues, “and they
just don’t have an idea of what it is really like
for the dogs in Romania. They ask, ‘Why help
dogs in Romania? Dogs need help in the
USA!’ and ‘What about the children?’
“I knew this would be hard to do, as
a U.S. person helping in Romania, and it is a
constant challenge. How do I c o n v i n c e
another person that there is a crisis requiring
help, especially if the potential donor does not
even know me?” Janes asks. “Others are helping with other very worthy charities. All I can
hope for is to see in Romania the progress that
western countries have made for dogs.
“I wish I had known how much time
and money this would take,” Janes concedes.
“I wish I had known that who you know is
probably the most important thing in fundraising. No matter how good we are, how hon-
Nancy Janes rescues a Romanian dog.
(Kim Bartlett)
est, and how hard we work, recognition
seems to come only when we become connected with the right person or people. Not being
comfortable around people has made this difficult for me. I am always nervous at conferences and meetings, but I am working on that!
“Animals and I seem to naturally
bond together,” Janes confesses, “and before
starting Romania Animal Rescue I would
avoid human contact. I did not know there
were so many good people out there,” as now
assist her in helping Romanian dogs.
“This experience has not only
enriched the lives of the dogs, but mine as
well,” Janes concludes.
––Merritt Clifton
[Contact Romania Animal Rescue c/o 8000 Morgan Territory Road,
Livermore, CA 94551; 925-672-5908;
<[email protected]>;
<www.romaniaanimalrescue.go.ro>.]
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 7
A N IM AL PEOPLE,
Japan looks to South Korea for help in restarting commercial whaling
440 to 800 or more the number of minke
whales that it kills each year for “scientific”
purposes inside the unenforced boundaries of
the Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary, surrounding Antarctica.
Japan is also expected to announce
that it will kill humpback and fin whales inside
the Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary. The
World Conservation Union includes both
humpbacks and fin whales on its Red List of
Threatened Species. In addition, Japan may
expand “scientific” whaling in the northwestern Pacific, where in 2004 it killed 220
minkes, 50 Bryde’s whales, 50 sei whales,
and 10 sperm whales.
Agence France-Press reported on
May 6 that Yoshimasa Hayashi, chair of the
Japan House of Councillors special committee
on foreign affairs and defense, delivered a
personal warning to U.S. Assistant Secretary
of State for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs John Turner that
Japan will withdraw from the IWC if there is
“no progress” this year toward reopening commercial whaling.
The IWC put the commercial whaling moratorium in place in 1986. At the time,
all whales larger than minkes were officially
considered endangered. Since then, only the
western grey whale is generally believed to
have recovered to pre-whaling abundance.
Hayashi told Agence France-Presse
that he expects at least half of the 61 IWC
members to back the Japanese position,
including China, Russia, and South Korea.
Hayashi did not mention Kiribati and
Mali, the latest of many small nations that
Japan has encouraged to join the IWC by dangling foreign aid. Mali is a landlocked nation
in sub-Saharan Africa.
Opponents of whaling have countered this year by recruiting the Czech
Republic and Slovakia. The anti-whaling faction otherwise consists chiefly of nations with
Seal hunt ends with “thin ice” incidents
HALIFAX, ST. JOHNS––Sealers
on the Labrador Front were expected to complete their 2005 quota of 319,500 seal pelts,
the most in 50 years, in early May. The first
phase of the 2005 Atlantic Canada seal hunt,
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, killed 107,000.
Another 103,000 were killed along the
Labrador Front by April 18.
The Sea Shepherd flagship, the
Farley Mowat, tried to monitor the Labrador
Front killing, but was pushed away from the
ice by a storm that delayed the opening of the
second phase of the hunt for three days, and
was obliged to give up the pursuit on April 15.
Confused by the delay, the Boston
Globe on April 12 published a fabricated article about the Labrador Front opening by freelance Barbara Stewart. Following an extensive
apology and retraction, the Globe published a
long pro-sealing commentary by indigenous
sealing industry spokespersons Kirt Ejesiak
and Maureen Flynn-Burhoe.
Earlier, the Sea Shepherds videotaped the Gulf of St. Lawrence killing. On
April 1, six Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society crew members were beaten by sealers,
while 11 Sea Shepherd crew were arrested for
allegedly being too close to the sealers.
Among the injured and arrested was
Sea Shepherd board member Jerry Vlasak,
M.D., of Los Angeles. Vlasak was removed
from the board by a vote of the other members
on April 21. Amid controversy about remarks
he made in 2003 that seemed to endorse killing
vivisectors, Vlasak allegedly said similar
about sealers in an interview with CBC radio.
Then, reported the CBC, “The Sea
Shepherds were involved in a torrent of death
threats that were delivered by phone this
month against Newfoundlander sealer Ren
Genge,” whose crew attacked Vlasak and the
other Sea Shepherds. “An April 2 posting on a
blog on the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society's website identified Genge's name,
mailing address, phone number and even the
name of his wife.”
Watson had the information removed
from the society's website.
big shares of the $273-million-a-year whalewatching industry, including Australia, New
Zealand, and Britain.
The U.S. has generally opposed the
resumption of commercial whaling, but not
when military considerations have been
involved. The U.S. delegation, headed by
then-Vice President Albert Gore, favored the
Revised Management Scheme in 1994 while
Gore was also brokering the sale of $261 million worth of surface-to-air missiles to
Norway. A similar compromise is expected
this year, because the U.S. is relying on Japan,
South Korea, and China to help contain the
threat from North Korean nuclear weapons.
“I think that the US position is continuing to change,” Hayashi said.
“Pro-whaling countries may have a
voting majority for the first time since whaling
was banned in 1986,” conceded Whalewatch,
a coalition of 140 animal welfare organizations
from 55 nations coordinated by the World
Society for the Protection of Animals.
Lifting the whaling moratorium
would require winning a 75% majority, but
with a simple majority Japan could try to abolish the supermajority requirement.
The Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary, which Japan has pushed to abolish, was
declared by the IWC in 1994. The declaration
enabled conservationists to claim a paper victory, after the U.S. pushed through the
Revised Management Scheme, which set up a
framework for resuming commercial whaling.
Together with the older Indian
Ocean Whale Sanctuary and the Australian
Whale Sanctuary, declared by the government
of Australia in 1999, the Southern Oceans
Whale Sanctuary nominally puts most of the
southern hemisphere off limits to whaling, but
no effective mechanism exists for bringing
violators to justice.
The Revised Management Scheme
meanwhile could put Japan just one winning
ballot round away from breaking the commercial whaling moratorium––not that Japan has
ever strictly observed the moratorium, having
signed on late, and having begun “scientific”
whaling in 1987. Selling the carcasses of
May 2005 - 7
(from page 1)
whales killed for “science” is now a $52 million-a-year industry
The intensity of the Japanese effort
to resume whaling is sustained less by demand
for whale meat than by concern that regulating
whaling creates a precedent for regulating fishing. The Japanese whaling fleet is owned by
subsidiaries of the biggest Japanese commercial fishing companies. They are racing
against time to reopen commercial whaling
before the potential market disappears.
The post-World War II generation
grew up eating whale meat in school lunches,
but whale meat became too expensive to be a
staple food as whale populations dwindled in
the 1970s and 1980s. Most Japanese who have
grown up since the whaling moratorium started in 1986 are not whale-eaters.
Trying to rebuild Japanese support
for whaling, the whaling industry is now subsidizing the reintroduction of whale meat to
school lunches in the Wakayama region,
where the whaling industry is based. About
57,900 Wakayama children have been served
whale meat, Wakayama education official
Tetsuji Sawada told Agence France-Presse.
WHALING NOTES
The Norwegian coastal whaling
season opened on April 18 with a self-set
quota of 796 minke whales, the biggest yet.
Norway resumed coastal commercial whaling
in 1993, in defiance of the IWC. Said
Aftenposten, of Oslo, “Whaling was for years
a key part of the national heritage, especially
in northern Norway, but it is questionable
whether there is a market for the whales.
Whale meat earlier was a staple in the Norwegian diet, but has lost much popularity.”
A 16-foot walrus-skin whaling
canoe capsized near St. Lawrence Island,
Alaska, on April 27, after the occupants participated in harpooning a 44-foot bowhead
whale. Killed were Gambell mayor Jason
Nowpakahok, 38, his daughter Yolanda, 11,
his nephew Leonard Nowpakahok, 11, and
whaling crew member James Uglowook, 20.
Gambell is among 10 Alaskan villages that
hold aboriginal subsistence whaling quotas.
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 8
8 - ANI MAL P E O P LE,
M a y 2005
What happened to the hippos?
break, but then there was the issue raised on April 20 by
Gerald Tenywa of the Kampala New Vision.
“Many of the hippos were buried without teeth,”
Tenywa wrote. “This has prompted civil society sources to say
some of them were poisoned. Other sources say a Japanese
trader based in Dubai, who wants five tons of hippo teeth,
could have fueled the killing of the hippos. Hippo teeth,” a
substitute for elephant tusk ivory, “are used for making bangles, bracelets and necklaces that are in high demand in Asia.”
Posing as a trader, Tenywa visited the scene, he
wrote. “Some fishers were keeping the teeth,” Tenywa found,
“and an unnamed trader had already bought some of them from
Katungulu village.”
The volume of hippo teeth on the market had apparently driven the going price down by about 10%. Large numbers of teeth could be obtained from various intermediaries in
villages throughout the area. “The largest stocks were in
Katungulu and Kasenyi, on the fringes of Lake George, within
Queen Elizabeth Park,” Tenywa reported.
Acting Uganda Wildlife Authority executive director
Moses Mapesa pointed out that “The teeth from the hippos
were contaminated with bacteria, and there is no way we can
allow anybody to deal in such trophies.” Mapesa showed
Tenwya a letter from wildlife trader Ewa Smith Maku, who
offered to buy the hippo teeth at the outset of the anthrax outbreak. The Uganda Wildlife Authority turned him down.
“Maku dismissed allegations that he was behind the
death of some of the hippos, and instead implicated other
traders dealing in hippo teeth,” Tenywa wrote. “He declined to
disclose where he was intending to export the teeth and also
denied being in contact with the Japanese trader” from Dubai.
“Vincent Odworu, a councillor in Kikorongo, Katwe
sub-county, said traders made frequent trips to the park at the
time when hippos were dying,” Tenywa concluded.
“He could not name the traders, but described one of
them as ‘of brown complexion.’ He said some fishers ate meat
from the carcasses, defying warnings from the UWA that they
could contract anthrax. ‘All those people ate the meat, and
they were not harmed,’” said Odworu, “adding that it was not
clear why they were not killed by the anthrax,” after removing
the teeth from the dead hippos with axes and acid.
Anthrax cover for poison?
+
One possibility might be that the hippo remains were
contaminated with anthrax after they were poisoned and their
teeth removed, to discourage close investigation.
Another hypothesis might be that the 2004 deaths
resulted from an authentic natural anthrax outbreak, which
“recurred” after locals discovered a strong market for hippo
teeth, and along the way became annoyed by hippo invasions
of crops––like the residents of Port Bell, much closer to the
capital city of Kampala, whose elected representatives raised a
ruckus about three marauding hippos at Christmas 2004.
Poisoning, meanwhile, is among the most common
yet hardest to detect of poaching methods, limited chiefly by
the risk of poison tainting the meat and other marketable parts
of the victim animals.
Nathan Etengu of New Vision on May 10, 2005 disclosed that Mount Elgon National Park chief ecosystem warden
Joseph Serugo and Pian-Upe Wildlife Sanctuary assistant warden David Abaho on April 24 discovered that wardens from the
Namalu government prison farm, Ugandan soldiers, and various others had mixed the pesticide diamacrone with white gin
to kill more than 80 storks. “They disposed of the intestines
and ate the meat,” Abaho said. Poison accumulated in the discarded intestines brought the case to light, after dogs and
chickens ate the intestines and died.
In South Africa the next day, National SPCA wildlife
unit manager Rick Allan described to the Johannesburg Star
how poachers poisoned a water hole at the Lumpepe-Nwanedi
Nature Reserve with the insecticide aldicarb, sold as Temik.
The poisoning killed five endangered white rhinos, two zebras,
three blue wildebeest, three impalas, 10 nyalas, seven
warthogs, and numerous birds and baboons,” the Star said.
“The horn of one of the white rhinos was removed.”
Well-known to South African criminals, aldicarb has
been extensively used by burglars to poison guard dogs.
In Cameroon, far to the west of Uganda, wildlife
authorities hinted that there might be an association of anxthrax
with the bushmeat traffic.
Two chimpanzees and two gorillas found dead in the
Dja Game Reserve during late 2004 marked “the first time that
anthrax––an acute and potentially fatal disease usually found in
cattle, sheep and goats––has been detected in gorillas and
chimps in Cameroon,” Reuters reported.
Officially the anthrax killed them, and did not merely
infest their bodies, but “We cannot deny that these highly valued species of animals are being poached,” Cameroon national
director of wildlife Stephen Tarkang Ebai said, warning citizens against scavenging the remains of animals found dead.
Whatever happened to the Queen Elizabeth Park hippos, the Uganda Wildlife Authority has become testy about
further reports of anthrax. On May 4, for instance, Isaac
Kalembe of New Vision quoted tourism minister Jovino Akaki
Ayumu and Damian Akanwasa, one of the UWA directors,
about anthrax allegedly recurring in Lake Mburo National Park.
“We have lost some 40 zebras since May 2002,”
Ayumu testified to the parliamentary tourism, trade and industry committee. “Tests established the cause as anthrax.”
Sound as the New Vision report seemed, the UWA
denied it the next day through the rival Kampala Monitor.
“UWA management wishes to make categorically clear that the
mandate to declare any animal disease outbreak, or any emerging animal disease, lies with the Commissioner of Livestock,
Health and Entomology in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal
(from page 1)
Industry and Fisheries,” the UWA declared.
Translation: reports of anthrax occurring among
hooved stock could play hell with Ugandan livestock exports.
Longterm vision needed
Despite the recent rise in lethal wildlife exploitation,
two-time former Kenya Wildlife Service chief Richard Leakey
warned at an early May 2005 seminar at the State University of
New York at Stony Brook that climate change is a bigger
threat to elephants, tigers, and rhinos than poaching. As habitat becomes stressed, wildlife reserve neighbors are driven by
thirst and hunger to encroach upon the reserves. Wildlife is
more inclined to wander outside protected limits. Crop failures
due to drought tend to escalate reactions against crop-raiding
and stimulate poaching.
Current examples include parts of Zambia, South
Luanga Conservation Society chief executive officer Rachel
McRobb told Sandra Lombe of the Lusaka Post on May 4.
“Due to the partial drought and crops being
destroyed, there will be an increase in poaching this year,”
McRobb warned. “A number of elephants have been shot.
Some people are using muzzle loaders,” McRobb said.
The Wildlife Conservation Society “has reformed
32,000 people from being dependent on poaching to living on
agriculture,” in Eastern Province, Zambia, wrote Stephen
Kapambwe in the May 2 edition of the Times of Zambia, but
drought may reverse the gains if food security slumps.
“Are there new land use regimes that could be put in
place which would extend the possibility of ecosystems getting
through a climate change era?” Leakey asked. “Are there
things that could be done artificially that would make it less
likely that we would see extinction? Should we visit the whole
issue of ex-situ as opposed to in-situ conservation?
“There are an awful lot of people around the world
who have lots of ideas on this,” Leakey said, “but nobody
seems to be addressing this in a co-ordinated way.”
Leaders seek quick returns
Discussion of longterm reform of African wildlife
and habitat management tends to be swiftly sidetracked into
get-rich-quick schemes.
Threats to wildlife in Kenya come from both the rural
poor, as everywhere else, and private landholders who are
anxious to cash in on the perceived profit potential in trophy
hunting before the boom fades along with the Baby Boom generation of European and American hunters.
Five months after Kenya President Emilio Mwai
Kibaki vetoed a bill by legislator G.G. Kariuki that nearly
repealed the 1977 national ban on sport hunting, Kariuki has
reintroduced a similar measure, again disguised as a bill to
compensate neighbors of wildlife reserves for animal damage.
The boom has waned already, with probably more
money changing hands now in speculative traffic in animals to
be shot than in actual revenue from hunters, but the effect is
disguised––temporarily––by the collapse of trophy hunting in
Zimbabwe. Invasions of farms and private game ranches by
landless supporters of the Robert Mugabe regime have compounded the effects of drought, driving most of the hunters
who patronized Zimbabwe in the 1990s to other nations.
With no hunters coming, “President Robert
Mugabe’s regime has directed officials to kill animals in conservation areas to feed hungry peasants––a move that could
wipe out what remains of impalas, kudus, giraffes, elephants
and other species,” wrote Basildon Peta of the Pretoria News
on April 27, 2005. “National Parks officials said the recent
shootings of 10 elephants for barbecue meat to mark
Zimbabwe’s 25 years of independence had been carried out in
the broad context of this directive,” Peta added. “The 10 elephants were killed by National Park rangers. Four were reportedly shot in full view of tourists near Lake Kariba.”
The hot-button wildlife issue for animal advocates in South Africa is a new set of
rules for the captive lion hunting industry, to
take effect on July 1, 2005. Former Kalahari
Raptor Centre operators Chris and Bev Mercer
in February 2005 published Canned Lion
Hunting: A National Disgrace, a book-length
critique of the rules, including submissions
from many other leading South African
wildlife defenders.
Focused on the philosophy of South
African wildlife management, the Mercers
acknowledge that their critique will probably
not receive serious consideration from the powers-that-be. But the demographics and economics of the trophy hunting industry suggest
that hunting captive-reared lions will not be a
very profitable business for most of the present
participants anyhow within less than 10 years.
The prestige of game ranchers is
already sinking. In late March 2005, for
instance, South African Environmental Affairs
and Tourism Minister Marthinus van
Schalkwyk ordered the South African National
Park Service (SANParks) to investigate allegations that the Timbavati Private Nature
Reserve, adjacent to Kruger National Park, is
exploiting wildlife from Kruger by promoting
“hunting in the buffer zones, where fences
have been dropped.”
About 71% of the revenue from
If you know someone else who might
like to read ANIMAL PEOPLE,
please ask us to send a free sample.
Fish boycott to save seals
NEW YORK CITY––Legal Seafoods, a 31restaurant chain with anchor franchises in New York City
and Boston, on May 9 joined Tavern-on-the-Green in
Central Park and the 168-store Whole Foods Market chain in
endorsing a boycott of Atlantic Canada seafood called by the
Humane Society of the U.S. in protest against the Atlantic
Canadian seal hunt (see page 7).
The boycott targets snow crabs, lobsters. shrimp,
mussels, and ground fish.
The Legal Seafoods announcement coincided with
the arrival in New York City of Canadian ambassador Frank
McKenna, who was to make several prominent appearances.
While HSUS is promoting the boycott through a
media strategy, Anthony Marr of Vancouver, British
Columbia, on May 13 set out on a 90-day “Terminate the
Seal Hunt Campaign Tour” of the western U.S. and Canada.
Pushing the boycott through personal persuasion and petitioning, Marr said he had 35 speaking engagements already
booked, with about 20 more still being finalized.
“Carmen Crosland, age 14, president of Youth
Against Animal Abuse, will display a web page at
<www.YAAAonline.org> of all the seafood merchants” who
join the boycott, Mar said. Mar will also post the list at his
own campaign web site, <www.HOPE-CARE.org>, and
welcomes pledges and inquiries about his itinerary at either
<[email protected]> or 604-222-1169.
Timbavati comes from hunting.
Van Schalkwyk indicated that game ranchers operating in buffer zones is a problem at other parks, as well.
The most notorious recent incident involving a game
farmer was the April 27 murder conviction of Mark Scott
Crossley, 37, who operated a construction business from his
brother’s Engedi Game Farm, near Hoedspruit.
On January 31, 2004 Crossley and employees Simon
Mathebula, Richard Mathebula, and Robert Mnisi allegedly
tied former employee Nelson Chisale, 41, to a tree and severely beat him, then threw him to the lions at the Mokwalo White
Lion Project, 12 miles away. Mokwalo co-owner Albert
“Mossie” Mostert figured prominently in a 1997 expose of
South African canned lion hunting, produced by Roger Cook
of The Cook Report, a British TV magazine show.
Simon Mathebula was convicted with Crossley,
Richard Mathebula will stand trial after recovering from tuberculosis, and Mnisi turned state witness to avoid prosecution.
A case with similar racial overtones erupted in Kenya
as the Crossley trial was underway. Tom Gilbert Patrick
Cholmondeley, 37, was charged on April 28 with murdering
Kenya Wildlife Service ranger Samson ole Sisina.
“Sisina and three wardens were investigating a suspected game meat syndicate operating between Naivasha and
Nairobi,” reported Antony Gitonga of the East African
Standard. “The KWS staff allegedly spotted ranch workers
carrying a buffalo carcass in a Land Rover. They followed the
workers to the Soysamba ranch, where they allegedly found
them skinning the buffalo. Naivasha police boss Simon Kiragu
said the officers identified themselves and arrested 16 workers.
He said Cholmondeley rushed to the ranch slaughterhouse
when he learned of the arrests and confronted the KWS officials, leading to a scuffle in which Sisima was shot. The workers also allegedly beat up the other KWS staff.”
Added Daniel Howden of the London Independent,
“The accused’s grandfather, Hugh Cholmondeley, the third
Baron Delamere, was prominent in establishing Britain’s colonial presence in Kenya. He fell in love with the country during
a 1895 hunting expedition, and set up the beef and dairy interests his grandson now runs.”
Noted Francis Ngige of the East African Standard,
“Several [of the Cholmondeley ranches], including Soysamba,
have numerous buffalo, giraffe, impala and warthogs.”
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May 2005
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Page 9
ANI MAL P E O P LE,
M a y 2005 - 9
May 2005
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Page 10
10 - A N I M A L PEOP L E,
May 2005
Petting zoos can make children sick
PLANT CITY, Florida––At least
six lawsuits filed against Ag-Venture Farms
and the Florida Strawberry Festival, both of
Plant City, may hasten the demise of petting
zoos. Two sheep, two cows, and a goat
exhibited by Ag-Venture Farms at the Florida
Strawberry Festival, the Florida State Fair
near Tampa, and the Central Florida fair in
Orlando allegedly infected 30 to 80 visitors
with an often disabling and sometimes deadly
form of e-coli bacteria during March and April
2005, said the Florida Health Department.
The bacterium attacks the kidneys of
victims, causing hemolytic uremic syndrome,
a severely painful condition that in early stages
is often mistaken for a stomach flu. Many victims are incapacitated for life.
About 90% of the ill petting zoo
patrons were children. How many will suffer
longterm effects is uncertain. There were no
verified fatalities. Tests failed to confirm a
suspected link to the March 2005 death of
Kayla Nicole Sutter, 12, of Wesley Chapel,
who visited the Florida Strawberry Festival.
All 37 Ag-Venture Animals “will be
quarantined for the rest of their lives,” health
officials told Saundra Amrhein of the S t .
Petersburg Times.
The first petting zoo to close as
result of ensuing public concern was Barnyard
Friends, of Samsula, near Daytona Beach––a
non-traveling menagerie of about 200 animals
founded in 1995 by International Speedway
Corporation director of community affairs
Donna Sue Sanders.
“There were no reports of anyone
getting sick after visiting Barnyard Friends.
Hand-washing and cleanliness were always top
priorities,” wrote Kevin P. Connolly of the
Orlando Sentinel. But Barnyard Friends was
unable to withstand the many field trip cancellations that followed the e-coli outbreak.
“Most of the animals will go with
Sanders when she moves from Samsula to a
13-acre parcel where she and husband are
building a home near Lake Ashby in Osteen,”
Connolly reported.
At least three other petting zoos
were struggling, Connelly indicated.
The Florida e-coli outbreak was the
second linked to a petting zoo in under six
months. Lawsuits are pending against the
Crossroads Farm petting zoo in Bear Creek,
North Carolina, identified as the source of an
e-coli outbreak that hit 108 visitors to the 2004
North Carolina State Fair in West Raleigh.
“Twenty-four outbreaks have been
linked to fairs and petting zoos since 1995,”
said plaintiffs’ attorney William Marler, of
Marler Clark, a Seattle firm that specializes in
e-coli contamination cases.
The North Carolina Department of
Agriculture on April 21 announced new rules
that will minimize animal contact with visitors
during the 2005 state far. “The petting zoos
this year will be nearly wallpapered with signs
warning that contact with animals can spread
disease––especially to young children, the
elderly, pregnant women and sick people––
and encouraging patrons to wash their hands
before leaving,” summarized Raleigh News &
Observer staff writer Kristin Collins.
But the new rules are not binding
upon private organizations that operate on private property, Collins noted.
The Centers for Disease Control &
Prevention published non-binding guidelines
for traveling animal shows in April 2002, after
tracing e-coli outbreaks that occurred in 2000
to a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and a petting
zoo in Washington state.
An outbreak of another potentially
deadly bacterial infection, cryptospiridium, in
March and April 2005 afflicted 104 people
who had either recently visited the Auchingarrich Wildlife Centre near Comrie, Scotland,
or were members of visitors’ families.
The CDCP warned in early May that
small mammals acquired as “pocket pets” have
recently infected at least 30 people in 10 states
with an antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonellosis. The outbreak was believed to be carried
by hamsters, mice, rats, and possibly gerbils,
guinea pigs, ferrets, and rabbits.
This followed an April warning that
nine people in five states developed salmonellosis after handling Easter chicks. Six cases
were traced to a single hatchery in New Mexico. Children were infected in New Mexico,
Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Traveling petting zoos often feature
rabbits and chicks around Easter, but whether
there was a petting zoo connection to the salmonellosis outbreaks was unclear.
Events
+
May 26-27: L e t - L i v e
Canada 2005, W i n d s o r ,
Ontario. Info: <[email protected]>.
May 28-30: Live & Let
Live Farm horse rescue
plant sale, C h i c h e s t e r ,
N.H. Info: 603-7985615; <www.l ive andletlivefarm.org>.
June 4: Intl. Dog Film
Festival, P h i l a d e l p h i a .
Info: <[email protected]>.
June 11: Animal Guardian Volunteer Day,. Info:
<www.guardiancampaign.com/guardian_da
y.htm>.
June 11:
Fur Ball,
Canton, Georgia. Info:
770-517-8210, x990.
June 11: Animal Place
children’s farm tour,
Vacaville, Calif. Info:
707-449-4814; <www.animalplace.org>.
June 18: West Chester
Dog Fest. West Chester,
Ohio. Info: <www.middletownpaws.org>.
June 22-24: Asia for
Animals conference,
Singapore.
Info:
<[email protected]>.
June 25: Animal Place
summer farm tour, Vacaville, Calif. Info: 707449-4814; <www.animalplace.org>.
July 7-11:
Animal
Rights 2005 conference,
Los Angeles.
In f o:
<www.AR2005.org>.
Please make the
most generous gift
you can to help
ANIMAL PEOPLE
shine the bright
light on cruelty
and greed! Your
generous gift of
$25, $50, $100,
$500 or more helps
to build a world
where caring
counts. Please
send your check
to:
ANIMAL
PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton, WA
98236
(Donations
+
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 11
A N I M AL PEO P L E,
May 2 005 - 11
Greyhound racing in New England staggers after two big tracks shut down
PLAINFIELD, Ct., BELMONT,
N.H.––The last big bet on greyhound racing in
New England may be whether it survives at
all, after two of the five top tracks in the
region closed within two weeks of each other
in April and May 2005.
The Plainfield Greyhound Park in
Plainfield, Connecticut, opened in 1976,
closed at least temporarily on May 14, after
rushing through the 100 racing days it had to
offer in 2005 to keep a gambling license.
New England Raceway developer
Gene Arganese, of Trumbull, Connecticut,
acquired an option to buy the dog track in
2004. Arganese closed the track, he said, in
order to proceed with a $343 million plan that
would use the site for a 140,000-seat auto race
track, a convention center, a 700-room hotel,
and an 800,000-square-foot shopping center.
But Arganese is hedging his bets.
“We’re hoping to have dog racing
back by the end of 2006,” he said.
Susan Netboy, president of the
California-based Greyhound Protection
League, touched off an Internet frenzy on
April 29 when Hartford Courant staff writer
Steven Goode paraphrased her warning that as
many as 1,500 greyhounds might be homeless
when the Plainfield kennels close.
“About a thousand dogs need to be
moved,” amplified New York Times w r i t e r
William Yardley a week later. Yardley noted
that since Plainfield was by reputation a slow
track, few of the dogs would be likely to have
even a brief future racing elsewhere.
“The track has been struggling for
years,” employing just 100 people, down
from 350 at peak, “and the big racers have
left. If you have more than 500 dogs in the
kennel, I’d be surprised,” said Plainfield animal control officer Terry Foss.
Responded Greyhound Pets of
America executive secretary Liz Ardell, representing the greyhound industry, “Greyhound
Pets of America, the American Greyhound
Track Owners Association, the American
Greyhound Council, and the National
Greyhound Association have a plan in place to
contact reputable adoption groups and get
retired greyhounds transported to them.”
“They’re counting on everyone else
to solve their problems,” said Animal Rescue
League of Boston spokesperson Tom Adams.
The Lakes Region Greyhound Park
in Belmont, New Hampshire, closed probably
for the last time on April 30, 2005. The owners surrendered their racing license, avoiding a
scheduled May 3 revocation hearing, Associated Press reported, and “are negotiating to
sell the track to a developer.”
Former Lakes Region Greyhound
Park general manager Richard Hart and assistant general manager Jonathan Broome were
among 17 people indicted in January 2005 for
allegedly running a five-state illegal betting
ring. Indicted with Hart and Broome were
three alleged Gambino crime family figures.
At least six members of the Hart
family, some now suing each other, were
involved in running the Lakes Region
Greyhound Park. The Hart family bought the
track in 1991, three years after Richard Hart
and his brother Kenneth were convicted of illegal gambling in Massachusetts.
The Lakes Region betting handle fell
from $1.4 million during the week before the
indictments to just $262,000 in the week
before the track shut down.
Along with the Lakes Region and
Plainfield greyhounds, rescuers are still seeking homes for dogs displaced by the December
2004 closing of the Multnomah Greyhound
Park in Portland, Oregon––the last greyhound
track on the west coast.
“We’re taking in as many dogs as we
can, as quickly as we can,” Greyhound
Friends founder Louise Coleman told Sweet.
Two other New England greyhound
tracks closed briefly while the Lakes Region
and Plainfield shutdowns were underway.
“Both Raynham-Taunton Greyhound
Park and Revere’s Wonderland dog track have
been forced to close periodically over the past
few weeks as greyhounds have fallen ill,”
explained Boston Herald reporter Scott Van
Voorhis on April 29. About 280 of the 1,400
dogs housed at Raynham/Taunton fell ill, the
track acknowledged.
Greyhound industry spokespersons
called the outbreaks “kennel cough.” Grey2K
USA cofounder Carey Theil said it was a more
serious disease that had occurred at tracks else-
where in the U.S.
In January 2005 the Tucson Greyhound Park was quarantined due to an outbreak that the Arizona Department of Racing
called “kennel cough.” At least three dogs
died during a 10-day outbreak in February at
the Daytona Beach Kennel Club. Racing was
interrupted due to “kennel cough” in April at
the Gulf Greyhound Park in La Marque,
Texas, and was suspended on May 6 at
Dairyland in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
By May 7, Van Voorhis updated,
“Rhode Island’s Lincoln Park has seen six
greyhounds die in less than two weeks from
what may be a form of canine influenza.”
The disease issue heated up in New
England just after the Massachusetts Board of
Registration in Veterinary Medicine declared
that the treatment of five dogs by National
Greyhound Association board member Paul F.
Kippenberger, DVM, “falls below the accepted standards in the veterinary profession.” The
board revoked Kippenberger’s license to practice veterinary medicine, including at the
Raynham/Taunton and Revere tracks.
Division of Professional Licensure
executive director Anne Collins told Raphael
Lewis of the Boston Globe that Kippenberger’s
case was “the worst veterinary case we have
ever seen.” Kippenberger prominently defended the greyhound industry during the unsuccessful 2000 Grey 2K effortt to ban greyhound
racing in Massachusetts. The initiative lost by
just 2% of the statewide vote.
More events
+
July 9-10: Friends of
Animals conf., NYC. Info:
2 0 3 - 6 5 6 - 1 5 2 2 ;
<www.friendsofanimals.org
/ t h e - f o un d a t i on s- of - a movement/-index.html>.
(continued on page 11)
July 16-20: 28th World
Veterinary
Congress/
142nd AVMA Annual Convention, Minneapolis. Info:
<www.wvc2005.org>.
August 21-25: 5th World
Congress on Alternatives
& Animal Use in Life Sci.,
Berlin, Germany. Inf o:
<www.ctwcongress.de/act
2005>.
Sept. 8-10: Conf. on Homeless Animal Management &
P o l i c y, Anaheim. Inf o:
<www.champconference.org>.
Oct. 1-4: Frontiers of Wolf
R e c o v e r y , Colo. Springs.
Info: <www.wolf.org>.
October 1-7: E u r o p e a n
Vegetarian Union Congress, Riccione, Italy. Info:
<www.european-vegetarian.org>.
Oct. 1-8: T e n n e s s e e ’ s
Week For The Animals.
Info:
901 - 454 - 08 07;
< w w w . T h e AnimalWorld.org>.
Oct. 7-9: 20th Annual
Compassionate Living
Festival, Raleigh/Durham,
N.C. Info: <www.animalsandsociety.org>.
Oct. 15: Natl. Feral Cat
Summit, Philadelphia. Info:
<[email protected]>.
Oct. 18-19: Intl. Companion
Animal Welfare Conference,
Dubrovnik, Croatia. Info:
<www.icawc.org/>.
Nov. 3-6: Southern Regional S/N Leadership Conf.,
Atlanta. Info: Julie Becker,
504-931-5156; <[email protected]
>.
Nov. 4: Animal Welfare
Conf. 2005, Lansing, Mich.
Info: 866-M-HUMANE o r
<www.michiganhumane.or
g>.
––––––––––––––––––––
IF YOUR GROUP IS
HOLDING AN EVENT,
please let us know––
we’ll be happy to announce
it here, and we’ll be happy
to send free samples of
ANIMAL PEOPLE
for your guests.
Maddie’s Fund® to GiveTuscaloosa,
Alabama, $2 Million
Maddie’s Fund®, the Pet Rescue Foundation (www.maddiesfund.org), has awarded $123,449 to
support the first year of Maddie’s Pet Rescue and Maddie’s Spay/Neuter Project in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
As goals are achieved, Maddie’s Fund will provide Tuscaloosa animal welfare groups and veterinarians
with up to $2 million to end the killing of healthy and treatable shelter dogs and cats within ten years.
Working together towards one common goal, the lifesaving projects in Tuscaloosa are comprised of
two different programs operating under separate Maddie’s Fund grants:
Maddie’s Pet Rescue Project is a coalition of three animal rescue organizations and one traditional shelter.
They are T-Town Paws, the Humane Society of West Alabama, West Alabama Animal Rescue, and
Tuscaloosa Metro Animal Shelter. The first year grant of $93,449 is to increase adoptions by 369 over
the previous year’s baseline and to decrease the number of dogs and cats euthanized in the Tuscaloosa
Animal Shelter by 369.
Maddie’s Spay/Neuter Project is administered by the Alabama Veterinary Medical Association
(ALVMA). The ALVMA has been awarded a first year grant of $30,000. Surgeries will be preformed
by private practice veterinarians in Tuscaloosa County. This program is for pets of people who receive
Medicaid assistance and who reside in Tuscaloosa County.
To follow the progress of Maddie’s Pet Rescue Project in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, go to:
www.maddiesfund.org/projects/tuscaloosa.html
The Pet Rescue
Maddie’s Fund® The Pet Rescue Foundation (www.maddiesfund.org) is a family foundation endowed through
the generosity of Cheryl and Dave Duffield, PeopleSoft Founder and Board Chairman. The foundation is helping to
fund the creation of a no-kill nation. The first step is to help create programs that guarantee loving homes for all healthy
shelter dogs and cats through collaborations with rescue groups, traditional shelters, animal control agencies and veterinarians. The next step will be to save the sick and injured pets in animal shelters nationwide. Maddie’s Fund is named
after the family’s beloved Miniature Schnauzer who passed away in 1997.
Maddie’s Fund, 2223 Santa Clara Ave, Suite B, Alameda, CA 94501
510-337-8989, [email protected], www.maddiesfund.org
+
May 2005
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6:32 PM
Page 12
ANIMAL P E O P L E,
May 2 00 5
The
Watchdog
Jailed because she spoke out for dolphins
+
CANCUN, Mexico––Dolphin defender
Araceli Dominguez, chair of Grupo Ecologista del
Mayab (GEMA), was released from jail without
charges on April 28, 2005, five days after she was
detained on a libel writ filed by Bernardo Zambrano,
owner of the Atlantida dolphinarium and Parc Nizuc
Wet N’ Wild swim-with-dolphins attraction.
Zambrano, son of CEMEX cement company
chair Lorenzo Zambrano, claimed Dominguez
defamed him by reporting that a dolphin recently died
at one of his facilities.
Dominguez “was released in the early morning hours, just after a representative of the Governor
of the State of Quintana Roo went around midnight
personally to the prison,” e-mailed Ntailan Lolkoki of
Ecoterra International.
“Zambrano was forced to drop all criminal
charges against Dominguez [and co-defendants] Sara
Rincon, head of the Association to Protect Animals of
Cancun, Cecilia Navarro from Greenpeace Mexico,
Ben White of the Animal Welfare Institute, five local
reporters, and Yolanda Alaniz from Comarino,” the
Ecoterra announcement continued.
Comarino is pursuing parallel civil and criminal cases against Parc Nizuc in connection with the
allegedly illegal July 2003 import of 28 dolphins who
were captured in the Solomon Islands and flown to
Mexico during a time of civil unrest. Six dolphins who
were part of the transaction are believed to have died.
Dominguez and GEMA “filed a complaint in
the first week of April with the Federal Environmental
Protection Prosecutor’s branch in the state of Quintana
Roo that suspended the building of a proposed dolphin
tank adjacent to the Casa Maya resort in Cancun’s hotel
zone,” reported Talli Nauman, cofounder and codirector of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness. JREA is a Mexican-based project funded by the
MacArthur Foundation.
Also active on behalf of other animals,
Dominguez was among the half dozen correspondents
in four nations whose research informed the April 2005
ANIMAL PEOPLE front page article “Demolition,
eviction, & good deeds that save animal shelters.” At
request of ANIMAL PEOPLE, Dominguez investigated the February 5 pre-dawn partial demolition of the
Asociaciòn Provida Animal, A.C. shelter in Cancun by
the construction firm Opresa S.A. de C.V., which
intends to build a shopping plaza on the site.
ANIMAL PEOPLE was among numerous
organizations that objected to Dominguez’ arrest in emails to Vicente Fox, President of Mexico.
44 dolphins still held
The Zambrano action against Dominguez
revived attention not only to the plight of the dolphins
in Cancun, but also to the reportedly deteriorating circumstances of 44 dolphins, captured at the same time,
who remain in a sea pen in the Solomons. The captures
were organized by Waves Consulting, formed by
Christopher Porter, 35, a Canadian whose wife is
reportedly a Solomon Islander. Porter previously handled marine mammals at Sealand of the Pacific in
Victoria, British Columbia, now defunct; the
Vancouver Aquarium; and the Aquario di Genova in
Italy. He is believed to be seeking funding to build a
swm-with-dolphins facility in the Solomons.
The government of the Solomons in late 2004
forbade further dolphin exports, reportedly blocking
transactions that Porter had arranged with buyers in Fiji
and Panama. The World Society for the Protection of
Animals and Earth Island Institute each claimed credit
for winning the export ban.
Ric O’Barry, who originally investigated the
Solomons captures for WSPA and now represents One
Voice, of France, told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the
key was that “Earth Island Institute put word out to the
international canned tuna market, asking everyone to
not import Solomon Islands product until they banned
dolphin captures and transports. The canning companies were about to lose 1000 jobs. Two thousand fishers were about to be laid off. This got their undivided
attention. During a recent meeting, Tione Bugotla,
permanent secretary of Fisheries for the Solomon
Islands, told me and Mark Berman of Earth Island
Institute that, ‘The ban will not be lifted, and it can
not be reversed.’”
O’Barry also credited Berman with possibly
saving his life by discovering him unconscious and running a dangerously high temperature on the floor of a
Brisbane hotel room en route to the Solomons.
O’Barry, who had been incapacitated with a fever for
several days, was diagnosed as having pneumonia,
and was hospitalized overnight, but fled the hospital
against medical advice to complete the mission.
Join the No More Homeless Pets Forum
Join us to spend a week with some of the leaders of this lifesaving movement. They will share an inside
view of their thoughts and work and answer your questions about topics near and dear to their hearts.
Coming topics––
May 16-20: Statewide Spay/Neuter, Step by Step
Targeted spay/neuter programs are proven to reduce the number of animals entering shelters.
Sharon Secovich of Spay Maine will answer your questions about launching a publicly funded
spay/neuter program.
May 23-27: When Dogs Fail Temperament Tests
Shannon Cummings of ShelterWorks and Sherry Woodard of Best Friends assess temperament
assessments, gauge if a pooch can be rehabilitated, and offer advice on training “problem dogs.”
May 30-June 3: Getting Together for Animal Welfare
How can you start a local network or coalition? Linda Young of Syracuse Onondaga Cat Council
and Michelle Buckalew of Save our Shelter Animals will offer their advice.
June 6-10: Reuniting Companions
Sometimes beloved animals get lost and have a tough time finding their way back. Pet detective Kat
Albrecht will provide tips and advice on how to find lost pets and reunite animals with their families.
June 13-17: What Inspired Us to Help Animals
This week YOU are the forum guest! How did you get started helping homeless animals? Have you
found creative ways to inspire new potential volunteers?
June 20-24: All About News Releases
Lynne Ouchida of Humane Society of Central Oregon and John Van Zante of Helen Woodward
Animal Center will answer your questions about how to get your news out to the media and in print!
Submit one of your news releases for editing.
June 27-July 1: Focus on Fundraising
Can raising money to help the animals really be fun and easy? Danielle Hamilton and Elizabeth
Tolson of HumaneFundraising help you raise funds for your work.
To join, visit the Best Friends website:
www.bestfriends.org/nmhp/forum.html
OR send a blank e-mail message to: [email protected]
Best Friends Animal Society
Phone: 435-644-2001
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.bestfriends.org
The Watchdog monitors
fundraising, spending, and
political activity in the name
of animal and habitat protec tion—both pro and con. His
empty bowl stands for all the
bowls left empty when some
take more than they need.
Charges against Univ. of Nevada
laboratory whistleblower dropped
R E N O––University of
Nevada at Reno president John Lilley
on April 29 informed animal nutrition professor Hussein S. Hussein by
letter that Lilley has accepted the recommendations of a hearing officer
and three-member university panel
that misconduct charges filed against
Hussein should be dropped, university spokesperson Jane Tors announced
on May 2.
“After a seven-hour evidentiary hearing on April 19, the
panel and former Carson City District
Judge Michael E. Fondi found the
charges groundless,” reported Scott
Sonner of Associated Press.
“Lilley said in the April 29
letter to Hussein that he was accepting their recommendations even
though he still believes Hussein acted
inappropriately” in seeking veterinary help during May and June 2004
for 10 boars that he found inexplicably placed in the same barn as his
own research animals,” said Sonner.
Hussein testified that the
boars “were copiously foaming at the
mouth, including one who broke out
of a pen and chased two of his graduate students, and he thought they
might be rabid or have other diseases,” wrote Frank X. Mullen Jr. of
the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“Hussein told the disciplinary panel that administrators at
UNR’s College of Agriculture would
not explain why the pigs were housed
in his research facility or who had
responsibility for them,” Mullen
continued.
“In August, Hussein complained to the USDA about unexplained deaths and alleged abuse of
UNR farm animals. He also has filed
two federal lawsuits against UNR,
Lilley, agriculture dean David
Thawley, researcher Esmail Zanjani,
and others, accusing them of retaliating against him for reporting UNR to
the USDA,” said Mullen.
Steve Damonte, DVM,
and cellular and microbiology Ph.D.
candidate Laurie Bollinger testified
in support of Hussein. Bollinger has
also sued UNR for allegedly retaliating against her for backing Hussein’s
claims. Bollinger and two other
graduate students contend that some
of their lab work was sabotaged.
Lilley remained critical of
Hussein. “The report indicates that
you did, in fact, engage in activities
that involved another researcher’s
animals,” Lilley wrote to Hussein.
“It is the responsibility of all members of our institution to respect the
sanctity of each and every research
project at the university. Henceforth,
I trust that you will accord the same
respect to the research animals of
others as you expect them to respect
your research materials and animals.”
Responded Hussein, “We
spent huge amounts of taxpayer dollars and huge amounts of my own
money for a hearing that showed the
charges were groundless. Instead of
giving a simple dismissal as the panel
recommended, Lilley is giving me a
letter of warning––a censure.”
Lilley on April 1 appointed
a panel chaired by Nevada State
Board of Agriculture president Benny
Romero to investigate further allegations of UNR abuse and neglect of
farm animals used in research,
brought to light by Mullen of the
Reno Gazette-Journal.
Other panel members
include Nevada Cattlemen’s Association vice president Boyd Spratling,
Nevada Woolgrowers Association
president Pete Paris, Nevada Farm
Bureau executive director Doug
Busselman, and rancher and state
senator Dean Rhoads. Their findings
are to be reviewed by University of
California at Davis vet Dale Brooks.
Mullen reported on March
30 that from 2002 until 2004, UNR
sent about 200 female sheep who had
been injected with human stem cells,
and whose lambs contained human
DNA, to a research ranch east of
Reno for use in weed eradication.
More than 80% were killed
by pumas or coyotes, were shot due
to injury by predators, or drowned in
the Truckee River while being chased
by wild dogs, said former UNR staff
interviewed by Mullen.
“UNR College of Agriculture officials denied that the ewes
used in the stem-cell experiments
were sent to the ranch to die,”
Mullen wrote. “But the former ranch
manager and others who worked with
the ewes said college officials told
them that because the sheep had been
injected with human stem cells, they
couldn’t be eaten, bred, or sold, and
therefore had no economic value.
“The former employees
said UNR scientists told them the
ewes had human DNA in their bodies, but college officials said the
employees were told that ‘as an extra
precaution’ to make sure the animals
remained under UNR control,”
Mullen added.
UNR “had incinerated
sheep used in the project for 12 years
and didn’t officially change the
research animals’ status before sending them to the weed mitigation
experiment,” Mullen continued, but
most of the carcasses of the sheep
who died at the ranch were allegedly
left to rot. About 40 were reportedly
buried near the Truckee River.
(continued on page 16)
We have rescued many dogs and
cats, including this mother and her
kittens. Your donation to our
sanctuary fund will help us save many
more from the terrible cruelty of the
Korean dog and cat meat markets.
We have bought the land to build
Korea's first world-class animal
shelter and hospital. A donor paid
for the foundation with a promise to
put on the roof if we can raise the
money to build the middle.
true!
Mark your donation for KAPS Shelter Fund, and send to:
In t e r na t io nal Aid for Korean An imals / Ko r e a
Animal Protection Soc iety
POB 20600, Oakland, CA 94620
+
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 13
ANI MAL P E O P LE,
Whistleblower
(from page 12)
“Researchers have reverted to incinerating the animals’
remains for ‘bio-political’ reasons,
they said,” wrote Mullen.
New Iberia case
In a partially parallel case,
former New Iberia Research Center
staffer Narriman Fakier in February
2005 sued the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for alleged wrongful dismissal, after complaining to
the USDA about perceived violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
A response to the Fakier
lawsuit filed in late April by
Louisiana Special Assistant
Attorney General Steven Dupuis
argues that Fakier “resigned voluntarily after sending an e-mail to her
supervisor about the relocation of
chimpanzees and the threat it posed
to employee safety,” summarized
Jeff Moore of The Daily Iberian.
“Fakier’s suit,” continued
Moore, “said she had previously
protested the treatment of animals at
the facility, including an alleged
incident where an employee deliberately burned the hands of several
chimpanzees with a lighter and
threw a bucket of scalding water on
another. The USDA has launched
an investigation into her claims.”
M a y 2005 - 1 3
Denver pit bull terrier ban is reinstated by court & is again enforced
Colorado Attorney General Mike
Coffman on April 20, 2005 announced through
spokesperson Kristin Hubbell that his office will
not appeal an April 7 ruling by Judge Martin
Engelhoff that the Colorado state legislature had
no right under the state constitution to usurp the
authority of local governments to enact breed-specific animal control ordinances.
The verdict reinstated the Denver ban
on possessing pit bull terriers, in effect from 1989
until it was overturned by the legislature in May
2004. In the interim, Denver largely avoided the
eight-fold surge in pit bull terrier attacks and fourfold surge in animal shelter admissions of pit bulls
that has afflicted most of the rest of the U.S.
Engelhoff previously upheld the Denver
ordinance in December 2004, but city officials
did not resume enforcing the ordinance while it
was still under state appeal. Denver Animal
Control received six pit bulls as owner surrenders
and animal control officers picked up six on May
9, the first day of resumed enforcement. The
Table Mountain Animal Center in Golden and
the Humane Society of Colorado in Englewood
also reported receiving more pit bulls than usual.
April M. Washington of the R o c k y
Mountain News wrote that the April 7 ruling has
been appealed by the American Canine
Foundation, an organization based in Belfair,
Washington, that lobbies and litigates against
breed-specific legislation. Founder Glen Bui also
attempted in 1993 to overturn the Washington
state law requiring drivers to wear seat belts.
Australia, Connecticut, insurance industry look at breed-specific policies
Bob Carr, prime minister of New
South Wales state, Australia, announced on May
3, 2005 that his government will introduce
mandatory sterilization of all pit bull terriers,
American pit bulls, Japanese tosas, Fila
Brasieros, and Dogo Argentinos. “If you are
thinking of getting a pit bull, don’t,” commented
Royal SPCA of NSW chief executive B e r n i e
Murphy to Gerard Noonan and Bonnie Malkin
of the Sydney Morning Herald. “These are fighting dogs. They are totally inappropriate animals
to have in a residential community.”
The Connecticut House of Representatives on May 4, 2005 approved a bill to bar
insurers from refusing to cover specific breeds
of dog, 77-70––a surprising upset in “The Insurance State.” The state capitol in Hartford is within
blocks of the head offices of several of the largest
insurance firms in the world. “The bill does allow
insurers to use breed when underwriting a homeowner’s or renter’s policy,” explained S u s a n
H a i g h of Associated Press. “Insurers could
require owners of particular breeds to have their
dogs neutered or take them to obedience training.”
The Insurance Information Institute
estimates that U.S. dog attack liability claims in
2003 cost $321.6 million, at about $16,600 per
claim paid. The ANIMAL PEOPLE log of lifethreatening and fatal attacks by dogs kept as pets,
together with similar data on attacks by all dogs,
maintained by the Centers for Disease Control
& Prevention, indicates that pit bull terriers,
Rottweilers, and their close mixes, about 6% of
all dogs covered by homeowners and renters
insurance, appear to have accounted for about
$240 million (75%) of the damages.
LAB SHORTS
+
The debut edition of
Forward Focus: A P&G Update on
Innovation in Alternative Testing
and Care is available for free downloading at <www.pg.com/science/
animal_alt.jhtml>. The new quarterly bulletin details Procter & Gamble
progress in developing alternatives
to animal research.
The Vancouver (British
Columbia) school board on April
18, 2005 “recognized a student’s
right to refuse to participate in or
observe animal dissection, and
unanimously passed a student choice
policy,” according to Lesley Fox,
founder of the Vancouver-based
national anti-dissection network
<www.FrogsAreCool.com>. Fox
said that Vancouver is the first
Canadian city to adopt a student
choice policy, but added that a campaign seeking one “is currently
being initiated in Toronto.”
TRIBUTES
In honor of the Prophet Isaiah,
St. Martin de Porres,
and Empedocles.
––Brien Comerford
GREYHOUND
TALES
TRUE STORIES OF
RESCUE, COMPASSION
AND LOVE
edited by Nora Star,
with introduction by Susan Netboy.
Learn more about these animals
& how you can help them.
Send $15.95 to:
Nora Star
9728 Tenaya Way
Kelseyville, CA 95451
“I support ‘guardian’
language as a powerful shift
in the way we speak and
think about the companion
animals who share our lives.
By truly understanding what
it means to be a guardian,
more animals will be adopted
and rescued. The guardian
initiative is leading to a better
quality of life for animals as
individuals, not as property.”
Ed Boks, Executive Director,
NYC Animal Care & Control
+
May 2005
3/22/13
14 -
6:32 PM
Page 14
ANIMAL P E O P L E,
May 2 00 5
Wisconsin hunters, birders vote to shoot cats
+
M I L W A U K E E––A brown tabby named
Junior and three unidentified cats found shot on a
road near a Sheboygan cemetery on April 11 were
apparent early casualties of a Wisconsin Conservation
Congress proposal to allow hunters to shoot feral cats.
On April 11 the statewide Conservation Congress
caucuses ratified the proposal, 6,830 (57%) in favor,
5,201 (43%) against.
Junior, normally an indoor cat, escaped on
Easter Sunday, April 3, from the home of Kirk and
Liz Obear, and their daughters, ages 9 and 12. They
put up posters and searched for him. A neighbor
found his remains, and the remains of the other cats,
while walking her dog about a mile away.
Before shooting cats becomes legal in
Wisconsin, the proposal must be formally endorsed
by the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, which
was to consider it on May 13. The Wisconsin
Legislature would then have to pass it in the form of a
law. Governor Jim Doyle would have to sign the law.
“I don’t think Wisconsin should become
known as a state where we shoot cats,” Doyle said.
“State senator Scott Fitzgerald, co-chair of
the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee,
said he will ‘work against any proposed legislation to
legalize shooting feral cats,’” reported Ryan J. Foley
of Associated Press.
“It’s not the responsibility of the DNR to
regulate cats,” added Natural Resources and
Transportation Committee chair Neal Kedzie.
Any Wisconsin voter could attend the
Conservation Congress meetings and cast a ballot,
but cat lovers mobilized too late to overcome the
“home field” advantage of hunters and birders.
“Attendance at the Conservation Congress
hearings was 13,281, more than twice the number
who showed up last year,” reported Meg Jones of the
THE NEW POPE LOVES CATS
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, of
Regensburg, Germany, named Pope Benedict
XVI on April 19, 2005, was heralded in a New
York Times headline as “A lover of cats and
Mozart,” remembered by former neighbor Rupert
Hafbauer as adoring cats, and greeted by PETA as
a potential alley, based on a 2002 remark by
Ratzinger that, “Industrial use of creatures, so that
geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a
liver as possible, or hens live so packed together
that they become just caricatures of birds, this
degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems
to me to contradict the relationship of mutuality
that comes across in the Bible.”
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “The 20-year average is
about 7,000,” Jonwa wrote, “though more than
30,000 attended in 1999,” the year that the caucuses
voted to start a mourning dove hunting season.
Debate over hunting mourning doves threatened to split the traditional political alliance of
hunters and birders. Hard feelings and litigation lingered for more than a year after the dove season finally started in 2003. The proposal to declare an open
season on feral cats reunited the factions.
The cat-shooting proposal was put before
the Conservation Congress by Mark Smith of La
Crosse. Formally, the proposal was to designate feral
cats as an “unprotected” species. They are already
“unprotected” in Minnesota and South Dakota.
“I look at feral cats as an invasive species,
plain and simple,” Smith told Associated Press.
The Smith proposal was not formally
endorsed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources, but DNR staff in frequent media statements played up the alleged threat to wildlife from
feral cats, inflating estimates of cat predation on
birds in Wisconsin to between 47 million and 139
million per year.
Birders nationwide, and especially in
Wisconsin, have been inflamed against cats by excessive projections of cat predation on birds promoted
since 1996 by University of Wisconsin-Madison
wildlife biology professor Stanley A. Temple.
Temple argues that cats kill from 7.8 to 100 million
birds per year in Wisconsin alone, with 39 million a
“reasonable estimate.”
About 7.8 million is actually the upper end
of likelihood, based on the preponderance of data
from other sources.
Credible estimates of bird predation by cats
nationwide range from 100 million per year, projected in 2003 by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Migratory Bird Management Office biologist Al
Manville, to 134 million per year, projected in 2000
by Carol Fiore of the Wichita State University
Department of Biological Sciences.
About half of all pet cat keepers allow their
cats to go out, but surveys of cat-keepers indicate that
those whose cats stay in have about twice as many
cats, reflecting the greater longevity of indoor cats.
Estimates of cat predation on birds going
above the 100-134 million range tend to overestimate
both the number of pet cats who roam and the number
of feral cats, which is currently circa 5-10 million in
winter and about twice as high at the peak of “kitten
season”––half the level of 15 years ago, before
neuter/return came into widespread practice.
ANIMAL PEOPLE
thanks you for your generous support
Honoring the parable of the widow's mite––
in which a poor woman gives but one coin to charity,
yet that is all she possesses––we do not list our donors
by how much they give, but we greatly appreciate
large gifts that help us do more for animals.
Cecily Allmon, Angel's Gate Hospice & Rehab Center/Susan Marino, Lilly Arkenberg,
William Barina, Mary Beauchamp, Risa Beckham, Leonard Berger, Rochelle Bergian,
Donna Berriman, Louis Bertrand, Wendy Boman, Herman Brooks, William Brooks,
Marion Buzzard, Sam Calaby, John & June Caspersen, Barbara Castaneda, Patricia Chan,
Channel Islands Animal Protection Association/Scarlet Newton, Gale Cohen-Demarco,
Patty Coppola, Janice Croskey, Dave & Susana Crow, Marcia Davis, Odette Deleers, Betty Dole,
Teresa Draper, Eleanor Edmondson-Collins/Josephine Co. SPCA, La Rue Ewers, Barbara Ernst,
Russell Field, Carol Forehand, David & Carol Foster, Joel Freedman, Joanna Gardiner,
Margaret Gebhard, Elsie Gibbons, Sammye Gilley, Nell Giorgio, Ronald Graham, Clifford Hallock,
Beverley Henderson, Mary Herro, Virginia Hillger, Holly Hilton, Ken & Helen Hoge, Sharon Jaffe,
Jeanne Lovasich, Laurra Maddock, Marilyn McGinnis, Lola Merritt, Marilee Meyer, Marilyn Miller,
Steven Pagani, Natalie Pepper, PETsMART Charities, Damon Phillips, Carol Piligian, Jane Robins,
Sam Sanzeri, Robert & Nancy Schlosser, Ratilal Shah/Maharani, Nikki Sharp, Magda Simopoulos,
Glenn Slaybaugh, Elisabeth Smith, Lindy & Marvin Sobel, Edith Sullivan, Ann Tanner,
Mrs. Lawrence Tauro, Mirelle Vernimb, Josephine Wardle, Drs. Charles & Patricia Wentz,
Gloria Wilkins, Richard Wolber, Patricia Zajec
Record $45,480 award in loss of pet case
Seattle District Court Judge Barbara Linde on May 8 ordered dog
keeper Wallace Gray to pay $45,480 to neighbor Paula Roemer, 71, for the
February 2004 fatal mauling of her cat Yofi by Gray’s chow. Gray was not living
on the premises next door to Roemer at the time. The chow repeatedly broke
through the fence between the properties, Roemer testified, before the fatal attack
on Yofi and several other cats. Gray, who did not defend against the lawsuit, told
Seattle Times reporters Warren Cornwall and Craig Welch that he had already
served 21 days in jail and three months under house arrest for a related animal control violation. The award, including $30,000 for the loss of Yofi, whom Roemer
rescued on a 1992 visit to Israel, and $15,000 for emotional distress, is believed to
be the highest yet in a loss-of-pet case. Roemer was represented by Washington
State Bar Association animal law section founder Adam Karp.
MURDER-BY-DOG CONVICTION REINSTATED
SAN FRANCISCO––T h e
California First District Court of
Appeal on May 5, 2005 reinstated the
March 2002 second degree murder
conviction by jury of former San
Francisco attorney Marjorie Knoller,
49, for the January 2001 fatal mauling
of neighbor Diane Whipple, after
Knoller lost control of two Presa
Canario dogs in the hall of the apartment house where both lived. The jury
also convicted Knoller, and her husband and law partner Robert Noel, 63,
of involuntary manslaughter. Knoller
and Noel both drew four-year prison
sentences. Both are now out on parole.
Trial judge James Warren of
the San Francisco Superior Court,
threw out the second degree murder
conviction. The appellate court said he
erred. “Justice James Lambden, writing for a three-judge panel, said
Knoller knew that the dog who killed
Whipple was a ‘frightening and dangerous animal: huge, untrained, and
bred to fight,” summarized Associated
Press legal writer David Kravets.
“The ruling could send
Knoller to prison for 15 years to life,”
added San Francisco Chronicle staff
writer Bob Egelko––after all appeal
possibilities are exhausted.
Noted Kravets, “On [previous] appeal, both defendants argued
that the prosecution’s portrayal of
them as being white supremacist sympathizers prejudiced the jury, a claim
the appeals court rejected.”
Other dog-related crime
Robert Stevens, 64, of
Pittsville, Virginia, on April 21,
2005 was sentenced in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania federal court to serve 37
months in prison for selling videos of
dogfights, as the first person convicted
under a 1999 law against distributing
pornographic depictions of cruelty.
Circuit Judge Charles
G r a d d i c k of Mobile County, Alabama, on April 21 sentenced Walter
Tyrone Ware, 32, to serve six concurrent 20-year sentences for dogfighting, plus 20 years for illegal possession of steroids, and six more months
for violating probation on a convicton
for selling crack cocaine. Twentythree pit bull terriers, many of them
emaciated and severely injured, were
seized from Ware in December 2003.
THE NO KILL
SOLUTIONS CONFERENCE
October 1-2, 2005 in San Diego, California
You’ll get practical cost-effective answers to end
the killing of pets in your community, including:
· Building a no-kill community
· Getting animal control on board
· Adopting out hard-to-place animals
· Saving feral cats
· Getting the community to pay for it all
· And more!
Register online at: www.nokillsolutions.com
NATHAN J. WINOGRAD
Executive Director
P.O. Box 19269, San Diego, CA 92159 • 619-825-6219
+
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 15
ANI MAL P E O P LE,
BLM suspends wild horse sales after 41 go to slaughter
+
young horses from the BLM,” for use in a
tribal youth program, “but the horses who
arrived were in their mid-20s to mid-30s.”
Robert Moore, chief of staff for
Rosebud Sioux president Charles Colombe,
said “The tribe is saddened that the horses’
new [owner] chose to end the horses’ [lives].
A committee of the council found a broker,
Jack Gyer,” Moore explained, “and I have yet
to figure out how he came into the picture, but
he knew somebody who knew someone else.
I’m amazed at the interest and level of intensity that people have about this issue,” Moore
added, “considering we are one of the poorest
counties in the U.S.,” as if that excused a public breach of trust involving a pledge to respect
animal welfare.
“They seemingly ignore the human
needs,” Moore objected. “The council has to
address public safety and the health of the
tribe, and we saw the older horses as a matter
of public safety.”
“We unfortunately did not put a stipulation in [the deal with Gyer] that these horses
should not be sold to slaughter,” Fast Horse
told Las Vegas Review-Journal correspondent
Samantha Young. “We overlooked that.
We’re not going to authorize any more transfers,” Fast Horse promised.
Congress
The Burns amendment, passed as an
almost unnoticed rider to an omnibus budget
bill in November 2004, directed the BLM to
sell “without limitation” any horse who has
been removed from the range and is at least 10
years of age or has been offered for adoption
three times without being taken.
“What has transpired here is a wakeup call to the Congress,” said Representative
Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia), “and is evidence as to why immediate action should be
taken on my legislation to restore the ban on
the commercial sale for slaughter of our
nation’s wild horse heritage.”
Rahall, Representative Ed Whitfield
(R-Kentucky), and Senator Robert Byrd (DWest Virginia) are authors of proposed legislation to repeal the Burns amendment. The
Rahall/Whitfield bill has 50 co-sponsors so far,
not enough to assure it a good change of clearing the 435-member House of Representatives.
Whitfield and Representatives John
Sweeney (R-N.Y.) and John Spratt (D-S.C.)
have also reintroduced a bill to ban the sale of
horses for human consumption, on either the
U.S. or foreign market. A similar bill offered
in 2004 did not advance.
Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) has
pledged to introduce a companion bill.
According to John Lopez, deputy chief of
staff for Ensign, “Senator Ensign’s bill would
ensure there are no more outlets for slaughter.
It would shut down the slaughterhouses in the
U.S.”––but only if it passes into law.
The three remaining U.S. horse
slaughter plants––Cavel, Dallas Crown, and
Beltex Corporation––together
killed about 66,000 horses in
2004. Horses were also sold to
be slaughtered in Canada.
Days before the horse
slaughter incidents, the U.S.
Senate gave preliminary approval
to legislation by Ensign and fellow Nevada Republican Senator
Harry Reid (who co-sponsored
the Burns amendment), which
allocated $5 million toward the
estimated $9 million cost of
building a proposed privately operated wild
horse adoption and visitor center near Mound
Horse, Nevada. The allocation was attached
as a rider to an $80.7 billion appropriation to
support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On May 6 the rider was reportedly
dropped during negotiations to reconcile the
Senate and House versions of the bill.
No follow-up
Of about 8,400 impounded wild
horses who were mandated for sale by the
Burns amendment, the BLM through April 25
had delivered 992 to buyers and sold 950 more
who were awaiting delivery, BLM spokesperson Tom Gorey told Samantha Young.
Gorey said that the BLM had no
plans to contact buyers to verify what they
have done with horses already received.
“Those are no longer governmentprotected horses,” Gorey said. “They have
passed into private ownership. We have many
responsibilities as it is without adding a new
obligation to track a horse or burro.”
“We are still asking advocates to
encourage responsible groups to consider
acquiring sale authority horses [wild horses
M a y 2005 - 1 5
(from page 1)
eligible for sale] and to be prepared if and
when sales resume,” said Willis Lamm of
Kickin’ Back Ranch Wild Horses, as a
cofounder of the Alliance of Wild Horse
Advocates. “Hopefully any resumption of sale
authority will include additional safeguards for
the horses with respect to potential exploitation
by scam artists and get-rich-quick schemers.”
Beyond sales of horses to slaughter,
Lamm was outspokenly critical of the thinking
behind the Internet-distributed sales pitch for a
“Mustang Training Initiative Program” promoted by an entity calling itself the “Mustang
Heritage Foundation.” The IRS service contractor <www.Guidestar.org> lists no nonprofit organization by that name.
The “Mustang Training Initiative
Program” appears to be a project of horse
trainer John Lyons, publisher of Perfect Horse
magazine, but ANIMAL PEOPLE found no
mention of it on Lyons’ personal web site.
The sales pitch suggested that trainers certified by Lyons could earn “at least
$64,800 for an 18-month time frame and
beyond,” gentling and saddle-training at least
1,000 three-to-five-year-old wild horses who
will be offered for adoption by the BLM.
Campbell is into more than soup!
“Campbell
soup is
Oh so bad!”
The Campbell Soup Company through its subsidiary, Pace Foods, maker of Pace
Picante and Salsas, subsidizes the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association and individually sponsors steer roper Cash Meyers.
How brutal is steer roping? Nine dead or badly injured steers were dragged out of the
ring last November at the Steer Roping Finals in Amarillo, Texas.
Campbell claims everything it does is “Mmm, mmm, good!”
Tell Campbell that their sponsorship of rodeo animal abuse is “Oh so bad,” and that
you will not buy Campbell products until their ties with rodeo are broken:
Mr. Doug Conant
President and CEO
Campbell Soup Company
1 Campbell Place
Camden, NJ 08103
(856) 342-4800
<[email protected]>
Mr. Harvey Golub
Chairman of the Board
Campbell Soup Company
View video clips of some of the brutality Campbell sponsors at
www.CampbellCruelty.com
And please contribute to SHARK to help us end the cruelty of rodeos,
hunting, bullfighting and other violence against our nonhuman friends.
SHARK • PO Box 28 Geneva, IL 60134 • www.sharkonline.org
+
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 16
1 6 - A N I M AL PEO P L E,
May 2 0 0 5
Judges rap canned hunts Sheep export protester Hahnheuser is acquitted
The Tennessee Court of Appeals in Nashville on May
3 upheld the 1991 state ban on private possession of white-tailed
deer. Game ranchers first brought the law before the Tennessee
Court of Appeals in 1997, lost, and tried again with different
arguments in 1999 and 2004.
District Judge Dorothy McCarter, of Helena,
Montana, on May 2, 2005 ruled that Initiative 143, which in
2000 outlawed game farming, was not an illegal “taking” of private property. Her verdict paralleled the February 12 reasoning of
District Judge David Rice, of Havre, in a parallel case.
Deer rancher Russell G. Bellar, of Peru, Indiana, in
early May pleaded guilty to three of 38 federal charges filed
against him, including 35 counts of illegal interstate commerce in
wildlife. U.S. District Judge Allen Sharp assessed financial
penalties against Bellar totaling $570,000 in fines, restitution, and
court costs, and sentenced him to serve 366 days in prison.
“Clients would often pay thousands of dollars to shoot specific
deer, sometimes in smaller pens, sometimes over bait,” reported
Rebecca S. Green of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. “In some
cases, the deer had been drugged. Clients included Ronnie Dunn,
of the country music duo Brooks & Dunn, and E S P N h o s t
Jimmy Houston,” Green added.
Kris Kenneth Johnson, 44, of Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, in early May was assessed $8,535 in fines and restitution
by Michigan 93rd District Court Judge Mark Luoma for illegally keeping elk, exotic deer, and state-owned wild deer within
an unlicensed 10-acre fenced enclosure.
GEELONG, Australia– – A
Geelong County Court jury on May 6,
2005 acquitted Ralph Hahnheuser, 42,
of “contaminating feed to cause economic loss.”
Hahnheuser admitted adding
shredded pork to the water and feed
given to sheep at a feedlot in Portland,
South Australia, on November 19,
2003, as he immediately afterward
announced to news media. Hahnheuser
pleaded innocent by reason of having
committed the act to prevent cruelty to
the sheep, who were to have been
shipped to Kuwait the next day.
Islamic dietary law forbids
eating pork or having contact with it.
Hahnheuser hoped that the sheep would
not be exported if they were known to
have possibly consumed pork. The
shipment of about 70,000 sheep was
delayed for two weeks. Representatives of two sheep exporting firms
estimated that the action cost them $1.3
million (Australian funds).
The Hahnheuser acquittal
came three days after Australian agriculture minister Warren Truss signed
an agreement to resume shipping sheep
to Saudi Arabia. Livestock exports to
Saudi Arabia were suspended in
August 2003 after the Saudis refused to
accept a cargo of 57,000 allegedly diseased sheep transported by the Cormo
E x p r e s s. Australia argued to no avail
that the sheep were healthy. About
13,000 sheep died aboard the Cormo
Express during the next three months.
The 44,000 survivors were eventually
donated to Eritrea.
Truss said he had won a
pledge from Saudi Arabia that livestock
would be unloaded within 36 hours of
reaching the port of Jeddah, but could
not guarantee that the Saudis would
accept all livestock shipments.
The Hahnheuser verdict may
have encouraged the Australian
Woolgrowers Association to escalate
efforts to end a confrontation with
PETA over the practice of “mulesing”
without going to court.
“Mulesing, which involves
cutting skin folds from around a
sheep’s anus to prevent fly-strike, will
be banned from 2010 and has long been
Rosebud Sioux Tribe hog factory & Israeli foie gras cases
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe
has reached an out-of-court settlem e n t with the U.S. Department of
Interior that will limit the Sun Prairie
hog farming development on the reservation to just the two 24-barn farms
that are already operating, instead of
the 13 that the Bureau of Indian
A f f a i r s authorized on behalf of the
Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council i n
1998, reported David Melmer o f
Indian Country Today on May 9,
2005. In addition, the existing barns
may operate for only 20 years under
the current lease, not 50 years,
Melmer wrote. Approval of the settlement by U.S. District Judge Richard
Battey is anticipated. “The two existing farms have 24 barns that produce
2,000 hogs each per year and will continue to produce a combined 96,000
hogs per year,” summarized Melmer.
“Since the hog farm lease agreement
was announced, Concerned Rosebud
Area Citizens, the Humane Farming
Association, and the South Dakota
Peace & Justice Center have tried to
shut the project down. In 1999 a new
tribal council began trying to stop the
growth of the hog farm, and in 2003
the BIA was asked to close it. The
Department of Interior withdrew the
lease; Sun Prairie fought the tribe and
the federal government to keep the hog
farms open. Nearly two years ago,
Battey ruled that the lease termination
did not comply with due process and
found the lease to be valid.”
The Israeli Supreme Court
on March 31, 2005 rejected a petition
from the Ministry of Agriculture asking
that an 18-month phase-in of a ban on
producing foie gras be extended further. The court ruled on August 11,
2003 that force-feeding ducks and
geese violates Israeli law, but allowed
the phase-out. At the time, Israel
ranked fourth globally in foie gras
exports, the Israeli foie gras industry
was worth $16.5 million per year, it
employed 500 people, and it killed
about 700,000 ducks and geese per
year. The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, on January 3, 2005 reinforced
the 2003 court ruling with legislation
specifically forbidding foie gras production.
opposed by animal activists,” the
Melbourne Age summarized on May 9.
The AWA at an early May
meeting with Mark Pearson, chief
executive of Animal Liberation New
South Wales, “presented evidence that
a new analgesic spray could reduce by
85% the pain suffered by sheep who
undergo mulesing,” the A g e s a i d ,
adding that “Pearson welcomed the
analgesic spray trials as a ‘serious and
significant move forward.’”
Pearson “pledged to urge
PETA to lift an international boycott
against Australian wool on the condition the spray is used,” said the Age.
“It is unclear whether the
breakthrough will put an end to an
Australian Wool Innovations case
against PETA, presently in federal
court,” the Age added.
The court rejected the original case on March 21, but gave
Australian Wool Innovation until May
25 to refile an amended claim.
[Updates about the antilive export and mulesing campaigns
Welfare experts quit KFC posts
Animal welfare consultants Temple Grandin of
Colorado State University and Ian Duncan of the University of
Guelph, Ontario, Canada, resigned from positions as advisors to
the KFC fast food chain during the first week of May 2005, after
the parent firm, Yum Brands, asked them to sign a confidentiality
agreement that would have required them to refer all media
inquiries to the KFC corporate headquarters. “I resigned because
there is a document that I can’t sign,” Grandin told N i c h o l a
Groom of Reuters. “I feel very strongly that I [should be able to]
talk freely to the press.” Grandin has also advised McDonald’s,
Wendy’s International, and Burger King about animal welfare
matters, but told Groom that none of them ever asked her to sign
an agreement to not speak to the press. Added Duncan, “The way
that I read it, it wouldn’t allow me to talk in general terms about
animal welfare. If someone phoned and said ‘You are on the KFC
animal welfare committee,’ I was bound to say ‘No comment.”’
KFC spokesperson Bonnie Warschauer said the company would
try to work out a new confidentiality agreement with Grandin and
Duncan, who have each advised KFC for about three years.
Changings of the guard at Best Friends, Alley Cat Allies, Farm Sanctuary, Toledo Zoo, et al
Bonney Brown, founder of the
Neponset Valley Humane Society i n
Massachusetts in 1992, and outreach director
for the Best Friends Animal Society since
1998, has taken a similar post with Alley Cat
Allies. “Alley Cat Allies and Best Friends
have always had a strong working relationship.
We look forward to future collaboration,”
Brown said. Southern Animal Foundation
co-founder Paul Berry, with Best Friends
since 2001, will fill Brown’s former position.
Farm Sanctuary cofounder Lorri
Bauston, who left the organization in July
2004 and resigned from the board in March
2005, has announced that she will open a new
26-acre sanctuary called Peaceable Kingdom
in September 2005. Contact info: 5200
Escondido Canyon Road, Acton, CA 93510;
661-269-0986; <[email protected]>; <http://peaceablekingdomsanctuary.org>.
William Dennler, executive director of the Toledo Zoo since 1981, abruptly
retired on May 4, 2005. Dennler on February
28 fired Timothy Reichard, the chief zoo
veterinarian since 1982. Reichard alleged that
he was fired for speaking frankly to the USDA
about alleged management errors that killed
three giraffes, a hippo, and a pregnant bear
who starved to death after staff wrongly
believed she was hibernating. The Reichard
firing brought the March 18 appointment of a
14-member county task force to investigate the
zoo management. The task force is co-chaired
by Marty Skeldon, whose father and grandfather were both directors of the Toledo Zoo,
and whose brother Tom is longtime head of the
Toledo animal control department. Also on
March 18 the zoo dismissed management consultant Scott Warrick, who had conflicted
with Reichard.
The Animal Protective Association
of Missouri, located in St. Louis, on April
28, 2005 accepted the resignations of 10 of 16
employees, closed for a day, and reopened
with shorter hours, partially staffed by personnel borrowed from the Humane Society of
Missouri. Former Animal Protective Association executive director Katherine McGowan
resigned on February 8, and was not immediately replaced. Board president Bill Durham
denied claims by picketing ex-staff that the
APA planned to install a gas chamber and
close an on-site vet clinic.
Phil Morgan, who on March 31
resigned effective June 30 after seven years as
president of the Escondido Humane Society,
was relieved of his duties three weeks later by
the shelter board. He then took over as executive director at the Northern Arizona Second
Chance Center for Animals in Flagstaff.
Kate Rindy, 53, executive director
at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter & Humane
Society since 1995, announced in April that
she will retire when construction of a new
shelter is finished. Rindy previously resigned
in March 2003 during a dispute with the board
over the design and size of the new shelter,
but was persuaded to return. The new shelter,
3.5 times as big as the present shelter, is $1.4
million short of the $10 million needed for
completion. Rindy previously headed the
Grand Forks Humane Society, then for 20
years was director of pet overpopulation issues
for the Humane Society of the U.S.
Randy Keplinger, executive director of the Young-Williams Animal Center in
Knox County, Tennessee, since it opened in
December 2000, resigned on April 14.
Veterinarian Michelle Williams was named
interim director. The Young-Williams center
was created after the Humane Society of the
Tennessee Valley gave up Knoxville and Knox
County animal control duties to focus on sterilization and adoption. Keplinger formerly
headed the Oak Ridge animal control department. During his tenure the rate of shelter
killing in Knoxville rose from 20.9 in 2000 to
27.6 in 2004.
Responding to recurrent staff
complaints about alleged religious proselytizing on the job, the Montgomery County,
Texas commissioners in late April demoted
animal services director Kelli Copeland to
deputy director and announced that a new
director would be appointed.
Rebecca M. Stevens was on April
22 named executive director of the Hamilton
County Humane Society in Noblesville,
Indiana, after a year on the board of directors.
Stevens will oversee the construction of a new
county-funded animal control shelter, to be
managed by the humane society. She brings to
the job a background in franchise marketing
and telecommunications.
Compassion Over Killing continues
under longtime volunteer Erika Meier. COK
director Myun Park and cofounder P a u l
Shapiro on February 1, 2005 became director
of farm animal welfare and manager of the
new factory farming campaign at the Humane
Society of the U.S.
Gifts purchased at Aid For Animals
are truly "gifts of life" as 100% of the
net profit is donated for needy animals.
Shop and save lives at the same time
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www.aidforanimalsinc.com
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 17
ANI MAL P E O P LE,
M a y 2005 - 1 7
Weaning zoos from
elephants (from page 1)
phants, hippos, lions, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, and members of about 20 other species from Kenya to Thailand.
On March 12 and April 5, respectively, the last elephants left the San Francisco Zoo and the Detroit Zoo, en route
to retirement at the Ark 2000 refuge operated by the Performing
Animal Welfare Society sanctuary near San Andreas,
California, following nine months of negotiation among the
zoos, the city governments, the sanctuary, and the American
Zoo Association.
The public loves elephants as much as ever, but
knowing more about elephants than ever before, elephant
enthusiasts are increasingly skeptical that elephants can enjoy
the quality of life they deserve within the limited space that
zoos afford.
There is growing concern among zoo managers that
as elephants go, so go the crowds, the multi-million-dollar
projects, and the prestige that zoos now enjoy within the global
conservation community. Zoos without elephants, some feel,
might just as well be sanctuaries, still with an educational mission, but quiet homes for animals whom few people think
about, rather than institutions which often win priority support
over schools and libraries in municipal budgeting.
Of the 214 AZA zoos, only 78 have elephants. They
attract about two-thirds of the cumulative annual zoo audience
of about 140 million visitors.
“Elephants are probably the most enigmatic and
charismatic animals we have,” Brookfield Zoo director Stuart
Strahl recently told William Mullen and Jon Yates of the
Chicago Tribune. “People are drawn to them because of their
size. They are an animal everybody can relate to.”
Thus at least 40 AZA members are either rebuilding
or adding elephant facilities. In Ohio alone, according to John
C. Kuehner and Suzanne Hively of the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is planning an $18 million elephant habitat, the Toledo Zoo is spending $13 million to
expand its elephant-holding capacity from two to six, the
Cincinnati Zoo spent $6 million on a new elephant exhibit
opened in 2001, and hopes to expand it, and the Columbus
Zoo opened a $5 million elephant exhibit in 1996.
The Alaska Zoo has only one elephant, named
Maggie, who arrived in 1983 as a traumatized survivor from a
lethal cull at Kruger National Park in South Africa. Her companion, Annabelle, died in 1997. Maggie is among the
youngest wild-caught females in the U.S., and is considered
prime for breeding, but Alaska Zoo director Tex Edwards has
adamantly resisted pressure from the AZA and activist groups
to send her south. The zoo was built around Maggie and
Annabelle. Without an elephant, it might not survive for
long––so it is spending $500,000 to add a treadmill and other
improvements meant to keep Maggie fit and mentally occupied,
despite the absence of companions.
Following the mammoths
Increasing public skepticism of zoo elephant keeping
is whetted by frequent deaths among the aging zoo elephant
population. The trend is apparent around the world. The generation of zoo elephants imported before the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species took effect in 1972
is rapidly thinning, and there are few replacements on the global market.
Eleven African elephants imported from Swaziland in
August 2003 were the first wild-caught elephants to reach the
U.S. from abroad in 30 years. The San Diego Zoo received
Walt Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom elephant habitat. (Kim Bartlett)
seven of the Swaziland elephants. The Lowry Park Zoo in failed to produce a birth.
Tampa received the other four.
“Zoos think it’s their God-given right to have an eleThreatening to cull more than 1,000 elephants per phant,” zoo elephant management consultant Alan Roocroft
year, beginning in October 2005 and continuing until the recently told Chris Metinko of the Contra Costa Times, “but
Kruger National Park population is cut from circa 13,000 to elephants are not doing well in captivity. There are so many
less than half as many, the South African government would ailments they can get, and their surroundings are different.
like to export as many elephants as zoos are willing to take. They walk less. They are overweight. They get foot problems.
But most zoos are reluctant to engage in the bruising public It’s not unusual,” Roocroft pointed out, “for an elephant to die
relations battle with anti-captivity activists that typically in captivity, and, even after an autopsy, we don’t know why.”
accompanies applications for CITES import permits.
Such criticisms come often from animal rights
The least confrontational way for a zoo to get ele- activists and other critics of zoos, but Roocroft is the retired
phants is to breed them. Yet, of about 150 Asian and 150 longtime senior elephant keeper at the San Diego Zoo & Wild
African elephants still alive at AZA member zoos, fewer than Animal Park, and is among the most frequent targets in zoo
100 are believed to have reproductive potential.
management of activist attacks.
“If we don’t do better, in 30 years there won’t be elephants for exhibits,” warned Reid Park Zoo administrator
Susan Basford on March 1.
Under intensifying activist pressure, some zoos are
Basford told Joe Burchell of the Arizona Daily Star
that if the city of Tucson does not fund an $8 million expansion rethinking the wisdom of keeping elephants, for possibly the
of the present half-acre elephant facility to three acres, two of first time since elephant exhibitions began, and the success of
the three Reid Park elephants may need to be relocated in order early exhibitors inspired emulation.
The San Francisco Zoo and Detroit Zoo opted out of
to have room to breed.
Only 30 African elephants have been born in the U.S. elephant keeping more than five years after the Mesker Park
since the first one, in 1950. Asian elephants did not reproduce Zoo & Botanic Garden in Evansville, Indiana sent Bunny, the
in the U.S. until 1962, when Packy, 43, was born at the last elephant it had, to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald,
Oregon Zoo in Portland. Eighty-seven Asian elephants have Tennesee. But the Mesker Park Zoo, the first to voluntarily
been born at U.S. zoos since then, including 27 at the Oregon give up keeping elephants for stated humane reasons, had
Zoo. Many other zoos have had elephant births, but only 17 already lost AZA accreditation for selling macaques in violaAfrican elephant calves and 51 Asian elephant calves have sur- tion of the AZA animal relinquishment policy.
The San Francisco and Detroit Zoos are members in
vived their first year.
In one frustrating recent case, Bella, an eight-month- good standing––although the AZA initially threatened both
old African elephant calf, was bottle-fed at the Houston Zoo with loss of accreditation for allowing the elephants to leave the
after her mother refused to nurse her. Bella seemed to be past accredited zoo community. The Detroit Zoo elephants were
the most precarious part of her infancy, but on April 12, 2005 eventually waived outside the zoo system after the AZA offisuffered a severe femur fracture in a fall. She was euthanized cially learned that they had been exposed at one time to a
potentially fatal transmissible disease. The San Francisco Zoo
when three days of orthopedic treatment failed.
“It just wasn’t going to work,” Houston Zoo director is to undergo a status review in 2006.
The San Francisco Zoo actually divested of elephants
Rick Barongi told Salatheia Bryant of the Houston Chronicle.
“It wasn’t an easy break to fix. Everybody agreed that it was in two stages. Thai-born Tinkerbelle was trucked to San
Andreas on November 28, 2004. Lulu, an African elephant,
asking too much of this calf.”
followed four months later. Celebration of her arrival at San
Bella’s mother, Shanti, is again pregnant.
Barongi previously assembled the elephant collection Andreas was dampened when Tinkerbelle, long suffering from
at Walt Disney World’s Wild Animal Kingdom. Two of the chronic degenerative foot ailments, took a turn for the worse.
Disney elephants gave birth successfully, in May 2003 and On March 24 she collapsed and was euthanized.
“It’s a downhill slope once the foot is rotting away,”
July 2004, but on April 24 an unborn calf died there when the
mother, Ibala, 26, did not sustain labor. An induced labor
(continued on page 18)
Letting elephants go
Animal exhibitions in the Islamic world
Bear-baiting
“Punjab [Pakistan]
authorities have stopped an illegal bear baiting event from going
ahead for the first time in twenty
years,” World Society for the
Protection of Animals p u b l i c i s t
Jonathan Owen announced on
April 8, 2005. “The event, to
have climaxed a week-long fair at
Pir Mehal in March, famed for
bear baiting, was disbanded after
WSPA representatives warned
police and wildlife officials.
Mehmood Ahmed, Secretary of
Forests & Wildlife in Sindh state,
Pakistan, on March 7 announced
at a ceremony in Hyderabad honoring staff for successful actions
against bear baiting with dogs that
his department is seeking amendments to the Sindh Wildlife Ordinance that will ban bear baiting
entirely.
Mehmood Ahmed
thanked WSPA for “controlling
bear baiting up to 80%,” the
Pakistan Times reported. Representing WSPA, Animals’ Rights in
Islam author Fakhr-I-Abbas told
the gathering that while the wild
bear population of Pakistan is in
jeopardy, exhibitors of dancing
bears and promoters of bear baiting
hold as many as 850 bears captive.
In 2002 WSPA donated to the
Pakistani government a bear sanctuary at Kund Park in the North
West Frontier province that WSPA
built in 2000. After completion,
the sanctuary stood empty for several months, until exposes by the
Daily Mail and The Independent
led to the exits of the two WSPA
staff members who oversaw the
construction and management.
Marine mammals
Liz Sandeman, director of operations for the British
charity The Marine Connection,
on April 4, 2005 announced that
the Egyptian office of Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species m a n a g e m e n t
authority had provided “verbal
confirmation that Egypt will not
allow future imports of marine
mammals.” This came two months
after the El Salam Concorde
Hotel in Sharm el Sheikh allegedly
imported two male dolphins and a
sea lion. Added Sandeman, “Feel,
a female beluga currently held at
Merryland in Cairo who was confiscated from Dolphinella,” another Sharm el Sheikh attraction, “is
expected to return to Russia immi-
nently following the death of her
tank mate, Hook.” A month later,
seven months after the belugas
were confiscated, Feel remained at
Merryland.
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May 2005
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Page 18
18 - AN IM AL PEOP L E,
M a y 2005
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Weaning zoos from elephants instead of losing zoo elephant babies
In Defense of Animals president Elliot Katz told Patricia Yollin
of the San Francisco Chronicle. “Elephants’ feet were never
made to stand on unyielding surfaces like concrete. It takes
time, but it’s definitely a death sentence,” Katz said.
San Francisco Zoo director of animal care and conservation Bob Jenkins agreed. ”The condition she was suffering from probably started 38 years ago, when it was standard
to keep elephants on concrete,” Jenkins told Yollin. “Those
decisions were made by my forebears.”
The San Francisco Zoo, located at the present site
since 1922, had exhibited elephants since 1925, in rivalry with
the Oakland Zoo, which was founded in 1922.
Oakland Zoo founding curator Henry Snow reputedly
showed off baby elephants by hauling them to public events in
his open-topped town car. The Oakland Zoo developed a
nationally publicized bad reputation after a succession of young
African elephants died there, continuing to have incidents long
after Snow’s time.
In the 1980s, current Oakland Zoo general curator
Colleen Kinzley lost part of one hand to an accident involving a
rampaging elephant, and another keeper was killed by a bull
elephant in musth.
In June 1991 the Oakland Zoo became the first in the
U.S. to shift to the “protected contact” method of elephant handling, in which direct contact between elephants and keepers is
minimized. Protected contact rapidly swept the zoo world,
becoming the industry standard approach to elephant handling
by the late 1990s.
The AZA now requires all trainers at elephant-keeping accredited zoos to minimize contact with elephants by using
a restraint device when doing potentially dangerous care.
The Oakland Zoo elephant facilities are praised––if
elephants are to be kept by zoos at all––by Katz of IDA,
PAWS Ark 2000 founder Pat Derby, Elephant Sanctuary at
Hohenwald founder Carol Buckley, and other opponents of
elephant exhibition.
Last episode of Lota saga
At the PAWS Ark 2000 sanctuary, the former Detroit
Zoo elephants are reportedly mixing well with the Asian elephants who were already there. A live web camera is soon to
go online to make their activities visible.
Winky, 52, is more-or-less back home, having lived
at the Sacramento Zoo about 70 miles away until the Detroit
Zoo acquired her in 1991.
“Wanda, 48, had a rougher life,” wrote Detroit Free
Press reporter Hugh McDiarmid Jr., “working for the Disney
company on the Mickey Mouse Show, and moving to private
collections after that. She was given to the San Antonio Zoo,
where she was once pushed into a moat and injured during a
fight with another elephant. Then she went to the Fort Worth
Zoo and in 1994, to Detroit. During much of her life she was
chained and unable to move freely,” according to Detroit Zoo
director of conservation and animal welfare Scott Carter.
The Elephant Sanctuary would have been 600 miles
closer than PAWS Ark 2000, but Detroit Zoo director Ron
Kagen opted to send Winky and Wanda to Ark 2000, he said,
because the PAWS facilities are close to the veterinary school
at the University of California at Davis.
The Elephant Sanctuary was the retirement home of
Lota, 51, who died of tuberculosis on February 9, 2005.
“Lota was the single most important individual in
raising awareness of captive elephants, but she gave her life to
do it,” Elephant Sanctuary founder Carol Buckley told Jackie
Loohauis of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
A longtime resident of the Milwaukee County Zoo,
Lota was in 1990 transferred to the Hawthorn Corporation,
begun by then-traveling circus operator John Cuneo in 1957.
By 1990 Cuneo had long since discovered more profit in leasing animals to other circuses and boarding exotic animals.
A television camera caught Lota collapsing as she
(from page 17)
was loaded into a Hawthorn trailer to leave the zoo. Removing
Lota from Hawthorn became an activist cause celebre. The
Milwaukee County Zoo eventually tried unsuccessfully to
retrieve her. Cuneo declined an offer of $230,000 for Lota
from actor Kevin Nealon, who wanted to send her to the
Elephant Sanctuary, but in November 2004 finally let her go,
under pressure of an agreement with the USDA to divest of his
elephants in settlement of penalties for multiple Animal
Welfare Act violations.
Lota’s death was relatively little noticed amid the
furor erupting in Chicago after Peaches, 55, the oldest African
elephant in North America, collapsed at the Lincoln Park Zoo
early on January 17. She was euthanized that evening.
Peaches and two other female African elephants,
Tatima, 35, and Wankie, 36, were transferred from much
larger quarters at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in April
2003, against considerable opposition from activists who contended that they would have difficulty withstanding the cold
Chicago climate––even though the Lincoln Park Zoo had built
a $23 million habitat in which to keep the elephants.
“They’re saying Peaches died of old age, but she died
of the stress of living in Chicago,” former San Diego Wild
Animal Park elephant keeper Ray Ryan told Tara Burghart of
Associated Press.
Tatima died in October 2004 from Mycobacterium
s z u l g a i, a rare bacterial infection similar to tuberculosis.
PETA and In Defense of Animals then asked the Lincoln Park
Zoo to send Peaches and Wankie to The Elephant Sanctuary.
Following Peaches’ death, the request was renewed
on behalf of Wankie, who was unable to bear young and was
therefore not part of the AZA African elephant Species
Survival Plan.
Instead, Wankie was sent by truck on April 28 to join
African elephants named Hy Dari and Christy at a newly
opened $5.5 million elephant facility at the Hogle Zoo in Salt
Lake City, the centerpiece of a $10.2 million Hogle Zoo
remake. Although the move was announced ahead of time, the
exact date and time of departure were kept secret to avoid
demonstrations by PETA in Chicago and the Utah Animal
Rights Coalition in Salt Lake City.
On April 30, Wankie collapsed as the truck rolled
through Nebraska. She received emergency treatment, then
was hauled on to the Hogle Zoo. She was pronounced irrecoverable and euthanized at 3:30 a.m. on May 1. A post-mortem
did not immediately establish the exact cause of death, which
was believed to be related to chronic leg or foot ailments.
The USDA announced that it would investigate.
Chicago alderman George Cardenas introduced a resolution to
keep the Lincoln Park Zoo from acquiring more elephants.
Lincoln Park Zoo director Kevin Bell said that the
elephant habitat would be converted to house Bactrian camels,
pending completion of a longterm study of the feasibility of
keeping elephants healthy in a northern climate.
“For the foreseeable future,” Bell told Patricia Ward
Biederman of the Los Angeles Times, “we are not going to
bring elephants back.”
“I question whether elephants can be kept in any
northern zoos,” Amboseli Trust for Elephants founder Cynthia
Moss told Jeremy Manier and William Mullen of the Chicago
Tribune. Moss, who has studied elephants in Kenya for more
than 30 years, opined that no more than a dozen zoos in the
U.S. should keep elephants.
Three deaths helped Veda
The Roger Williams Zoo in Rhode Island opened one of the first new-style expanded elephant habitats in 1991,
but introduced it with an old-zoo style publicity stunt. (Roger Williams Zoo photo)
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Though Peaches, Tatima, and Wankie were African
elephants, their fate was noted in India as debate over the
intended exile of Veda to Armenia intensified. The perception
that a cold climate killed them may have saved Veda.
(continued on page 19
May 2005
3/22/13
6:32 PM
Page 19
A N I M AL P E O P L E, Ap ri l 2 005 - 19
Weaning zoos from elephants
Veda was to have joined a nine-year-old male elephant named Grandik at the Yerevan Zoo in December 2004,
in consummation of an “arranged marriage” brokered in 1999
by then-Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Veda was a last-minute substitution for the original
“bride,” Komala, age 8, of the Mysore Zoo. Komala was to
have departed for Armenia on October 14, 2004, but instead
died abruptly from symptoms resembling the August 2004 zinc
phosphide poisonings of two other elephants, Ganesha and
Roopa, and a lion-tailed macaque. All three elephants and the
macaque were believed to have been given rat poison by disgruntled zoo staff.
The “arranged marriage,” involving either Komala or
Veda, was opposed from the first by People for Animals
founder Maneka Gandhi, who was minister of state for animal
welfare at the time Komala was promised.
“The Yerevan Zoo has no elephants because each
time they get them, the elephants die,” Mrs. Gandhi told Prime
Minister Singh. “One elephant was shot dead when he escaped
in the early 1970s. One elephant, suffering from malnutrition
and hypothermia, slipped on ice and died in the early 1990s.
The Yerevan Zoo has no affiliations with any zoo associations
or federations and is therefore not required to follow any rules
or regulations,” Mrs. Gandhi asserted.
India proved to be much more accepting of arranged
marriages for humans than for elephants.
“India sends gift elephant to die in Armenian winter,”
headlined Kounteya Sinha in The Asian Age, of Delhi.
“This young elephant is being sent to a certain
death,” affirmed Ambika Shukla of People for Animals. “The
Yerevan Zoo lacks proper housing, grazing, and the space
needed to support an elephant. Worst is its climatic unsuitability. During the cold months the elephants are caged in heated
sheds with no opportunity to walk or exercise.”
Responded Yerevan zoo director Sahak Abovyan
“There are 50,000 elephants in India but the protesters do not
want to give us just one. They are very odd people.”
That won Abovyan few friends in India when amplified by Habib Beary of BBC News in Bangalore.
“The central government [in Delhi] has taken a decision. We are only following orders,” Karnataka state Principal
Conservator of Wildlife Ram Mohan Ray told Beary.
The Karnataka High Court ruled on March 4 against a
CUPA claim that sending Veda to Armenia would violate the
1972 Wildlife Act.
Despite winning in the court of law, the Indian
External Affairs Ministry lost in the court of public opinion.
Ganguly celebrated only briefly before beginning to
strategize on behalf of Grandik.
Also originally from India, Grandik “was gifted to
Moscow years ago,” wrote Belgaumkar. In 1999, shortly
before the deal to acquire Veda was made, “The authorities in
Moscow transferred him to Armenia.”
“He is all alone there. Maybe he should be brought
back to India,” said Ganguly.
Ganguly credited ANIMAL PEOPLE with introducing her to Armenian activists who helped to win cancellation of
the transfer of the elephant by documenting the conditions at
the Yerevan Zoo and demonstrating that Armenian public opinion did not favor acquiring an elephant who would suffer.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian reportedly
requested a female elephant as a companion for Grandik by
presenting to Vajpayee several drawings by Armenian children
depicting Grandik with a “wife.”
Enlisting the help of children has been a classic elephant acquisition ploy since 1955, when children donated pennies to help the San Francisco Zoo to buy an African elephant
after the previous resident elephant died. Penny, as the acquisition was named, lived at the zoo for 40 years.
But children from both India and Armenia, as well as
throughout Europe and the U.S., signed electronic petitions
against moving Veda.
Thai deals still pending
The proposed Thai acquisition of animals including
elephants from Kenya and a similar deal that would send Thai
elephants to Australia and New Zealand are still pending.
Elephants have reportedly never bred successfully in
(from page 18)
either Australia or New Zealand, but the Taronga Zoo in
Sydney and Melbourne Zoo in Australia and the Auckland Zoo
in New Zealand in 1998 formed an elephant breeding consortium with the Monarto Open Range Zoo and the Sunshine
Coast Australia Zoo. The latter is operated by C r o c o d i l e
Hunter TV series star Steve Irwin.
The consortium goal is to produce a self-sustaining
Australia/New Zealand zoo population of about 40 elephants.
After plans to acquire elephants from Indonesia fell through in
2002, the Taronga Zoo spent $40 million (Australian) and the
Melbourne Zoo spent $14 million (Australian) in preparation to
receive nine young Asian elephants from the Chiang Mai Night
Safari Zoo in Thailand in trade for two koalas.
“The project has become increasingly troubled since
elephants were selected from Thai tourist camps a year ago,”
reported Andrew Darby of the Melbourne Age on March 25,
2005. “The two proven breeders were lost to the group. One
died of snakebite. Another was rejected after she was found to
be age 40, not 20, according to Environment Department letters” obtained through document requests filed by the Royal
SPCA of Australia, Humane Society International, and
International Fund for Animal Welfare.
“The zoos refused to provide details of their application or say where the nine elephants eventually chosen were
being held,” continued Darby.
“According to non-government sources, they went
into pre-export quarantine in October 2004 at a rural campus of
Thailand’s Mahidol University. Scheduled to stay there for 90
days before a further three-month quarantine on the Cocos
Islands, the eight females and one male have been confined in
Thailand ever since.”
A hint as to how the elephants might have been kept
occupied came in February 2005, when The Nation reported
that the Chiang Mai Night Safari staff had trained an elephant
to use a flush toilet. “All seven elephants at the Palaad
Tawanron camp,” near the zoo, “are being potty-trained,”
wrote Atcha Piyatanang of The Nation. “After a mere couple
of days’ worth of training, Diew and one of his mates can
already do their business in a civilised manner.”
But this may not have been the same group of offexhibit Chiang Mai Night Safari elephants.
Thai opposition
While seeking to import African elephants from
Kenya, Thailand has long been the leading exporter of Asian
elephants––chiefly to zoos, although five Thai work elephants
and their mahouts were sent to Indonesia in 1997 under a 10year contract to help round up wild elephants displaced by illegal logging and forest fires.
An international incident ensued when the mahouts
returned to Thailand in June 1998, complaining that they had
not been paid. The elephants were finally repatriated, with
great public fanfare, on December 31, 1999.
Elephant exports have been a politically sensitive
subject in Thailand ever since.
The controversy grew hotter in 2004 when China
offered to buy 200 elephants. Of the first eight elephants sent
to China, two died.
Opposition to the Chiang Mai deal with the Australia/
New Zealand elephant-breeding consortium is as intense within
Thailand as within the would-be recipient nations. There are
about 2,000 domesticated elephants in Thailand, and 2,600 in
the wild––enough to be often perceived as a nuisance, but
barely half as many as a human generation ago.
“Exchanging rare animals for commercial purposes
is no longer acceptable. Many of our wild animals were maltreated and have died in such animal exchange projects,”
Wildlife Foundation of Thailand secretary-general Surapol
Duangkhae told Kultida Samabuddhi of The Bangkok Post.
“Even a light trade in elephants is not acceptable,”
echoed Friends of the Asian Elephant founder Soraida Salwala,
to Sydney Morning Herald Bangkok correspondent Walaiporn
Mekkreangkrai. “It encourages the trade. They [zoo animal
dealers] go into Laos and Myanmar to get more babies,”
Soraida alleged.
By law, Thailand dealers are only allowed to sell
domesticated elephants. In 1993, Soraida said, the going price
for a domesticated baby elephant was about $2,000. Now it is
(Sue Clark)
about $17,000, a significant temptation to people in a position
to take short-cuts.
Thai interim natural resources and environment minister Suvit Khunkitti responded to scrutiny of the Chiang Mai
deal by reportedly trying to expedite it.
“He also ordered officials to complete the koala shelter at the Night Safari zoo by April, as instructed by prime
minister Thaksin Shinawatra,” wrote Kultida Samabuddhi.
The elephants to be exported were already waiting in
a pre-quarantine facility, but Australian environment minister
Ian Campbell balked at issuing import permits.
As of early May, both the elephants-for-koalas swap
with the Australia/New Zealand consortium and the 300-animal
deal with Kenya were still pending––and Thai officials seemed
to be trying to slow down the Kenyan transaction.
“This issue cannot be hurried up,” Thai senator Mme
Pensak told The Nation, on a visit to Kenya. “We have no
memorandum of understanding on this at all,” Pensak said.
Whatever deal might eventually be worked out will
exclude elephants, reported Ecoterra International, a 10-nation
activist collaboration.
“No mahouts (elephant trainers) will be sent to Kenya
and the whole plan of training Kenyan elephants is off,”
Ecoterra claimed.
Suvit Khunkitti, who will be “left holding the bag” if
either international elephant deal fails, inherited responsibility
for completing the deals from his immediate predecessor,
Plodprasop Suraswadi, who is still reputedly a power behind
the scenes.
Plodprasop Suraswadi lost the Thai wildlife ministry
after a Thai senate panel in late 2004 found reason to believe
that he illegally issued permits allowing the Sri Racha Tiger
Zoo to sell 100 tigers to China. The panel concluded that the
tiger sale was a commercial transaction, not a legitimate
attempt to conserve the species.
Big money is also involved in the Chiang Mai Night
Safari Park attempt to buy elephants and other animals from
Kenya. The park management offered Kenya $1 million for the
animals, Agence France-Presse reported.
“The ‘donation’ was requested by acting tourism
minister Raphael Tuju during President Mwai Kibaki’s visit to
Thailand last October,” added Mugo Njeru of The Nation.
The role of elephants in establishing the status of
national leaders was already centuries old in India, Sri Lanka,
Thailand, and China circa 2,500 years ago, when an elephant
became the totem of Buddha. The idea might have spread west
with the Carthaginian general Hannibal, but apparently caught
on only after the Crusades opened trade routes to India,
enabling Indian animal trainers to venture into Europe.
In 1245 the emperor Frederick II traveled with an elephant while struggling to keep Germany, Austria, and Italy
united as the Holy Roman Empire.
Ten years later, in 1255, Henry III of England
brought an elephant across the English Channel to assist in trying to unite the eventual United Kingdom.
Frederick II learned, as Hannibal had 1,400 years
earlier, that elephants do not thrive on the cold side of the
Alps. Henry III found that giving his elephant wine to ward off
the winter chill caused the elephant to die from hypothermia.
Zoos are still assimilating these lessons.
––Merritt Clifton
Russian circus animals killed in fire during controversial visit to India
MUMBAI––Seven trained
Siberian huskies, seven cats, and
four sea lions belonging to the financially struggling Rosgoscirc circus
died in an April 5 fire at the
Chitrakut Grounds in the Mumbai
suburb of Andheri West.
Animal Welfare Board of
India representative Bhavin Gathani
alleged that the fire was an arson,
but that suspicion lifted after animal
caretaker Jasmin Shah and Chitrakut
Grounds manager Rajvir Dhillon
confirmed that the $200,000 insurance policy on the animals had
expired two days earlier. Dhillon
attributed the blaze to a short circuit.
Colonel J.C. Khanna of the
Animal Welfare Board of India and
Mumbai PETA representative
Anuradha Sawhney on February 5,
2005 won a stay on Rogoscirc performances with a petition to the
Bombay High Court alleging that the
circus was operating in violation of
Indian animal welfare laws.
In mid-March, wrote
Surojit Mahalanobis of the Times of
I n d i a News Network, “The court
accepted the Rosgoscirc plea that the
Indian laws for animal use in circus
shows apply only to Indian animals,
and not to foreign species.”
While Khanna and Sawhney contemplated an appeal, Plant
& Animal Welfare Society activist
Nilesh Bhanage leafleted against the
resumed circus performances. On
March 27 the circus closed, ostensibly for a two-week break.
“Mysteriously, the circus
organisers, an Assam-based event
management company called Choice
Events, disappeared after the shows
were discontinued,” the Times of
India reported. Choice Events repre-
sentatives Atif Ali and D.K. Kumar
reportedly owed more than $100,000
in connection with bringing the circus to Mumbai.
The Russian cast remained
with the animals.
“The animals were an
integral part of our troupe. We are
incomplete without them,” actor and
singer Almar Rajsur told the Times
of India.
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May 2005
3/22/13
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6:32 PM
Page 20
ANIMAL P E O P L E,
May 2 005
Spring 2005 Legislation
From outside, the Oregon Humane Society just looks exceptionally big. The exceptional design aspects are inside.
Oregon Humane Society New Shelter Project 2000
Skanska USA Building
Free downloadable PDF file: <www.oregonhumane.org/shelter.htm>
To review in May 2005 a
book published to commemorate the
opening of the new Oregon Humane
Society shelter in June 2000 might
appear to be revisiting old news, but
ANIMAL PEOPLE learned long
ago that shelters need time to age.
The Oregon Humane Society
shelter in April 2005 scored 100 on
the ANIMAL PEOPLE 100-point
scoring scale, explained in detail in
the June 2004 edition. Based upon
how well a shelter fulfills the “Five
Freedoms” articulated by the British
Farm Animal Welfare Advisory
Committee in 1967, with nine further considerations specific to dog
and cat sheltering, the A N I M A L
PEOPLE scale is designed to evaluate all types of shelter on an equal
footing, regardless of size, function, or budget.
New shelters tend to score
better because they incorporate better ideas, but the $8.3 million
investment put into the Oregon
Humane Society shelter has much
less to do with the perfect score than
the successful functioning of the
facilities, including a particularly
effective floor plan. Many more
expensive shelters fall short, sometimes scoring only in the 70-point
range, while thoughtfully designed
shelters built on a fraction of the
Oregon Humane budget have scored
above 90 points. Oregon Humane
handles more than twice as many
animals as any shelter previously
scoring 100.
ANIMAL PEOPLE d o e s
not score newly opened shelters.
Most shelters look good in architectural drawings, and are immaculate
at debut. Many do not stand up well
to hard use by stressed animals and
people. Five years after opening,
some of the most touted shelters are
already weary with stale air,
clogged drains, chipped floors, dim
lighting, demoralized staff, and a
rising din of barking attesting to the
failure of sound baffles and wallboard to compensate for obsolete
architecture. Shelter killing rates
plateau or even rise, while adoptions drop, reflecting the increasingly uninviting conditions.
The Oregon Humane Society
went the other way. Planning and
fundraising to replace the old shelter
built in 1939 by the Works Progress
Administration began in 1993.
Remembered by current
Oregon Humane Society executive
director Sharon Harmon as “A horrible place,” the 1939 shelter was
still nationally regarded as a good
example of shelter design as recently
as 1963, when it was favorably
mentoned in The Quality of Mercy,
the then-considered definitive history of the humane movement by
William Alan Swallow. The initial
design specifications called for it to
employ 12 workers, handling 4,000
animals per year, however. By
1973 the animal traffic approached
55,000 per year. Giving up the
Portland and Multnomah County
animal control contracts, held since
1916, gradually brought the volume
down to about 15,000 animals per
year, handled by 48 employees and
600 volunteers.
Ancrom Moisan Associated
Architects completed the initial
FREE
plans for an expanded shelter in
1995, but the building committee
was reconstituted in 1998, partly in
response to the 1994 opening of the
Oakland SPCA Adoption Atrium
and the February 1998 debut of
Maddie’s Adoption Center at the
San Francisco SPCA.
Both were largely funded by
the Duffield Family Foundation,
before it created Maddie’s Fund to
promote community-wide five-year
plans for converting to no-kill animal control. Both built upon ideas
pioneered by the North Shore
Animal League adoption center in
Port Washington, New York, and
the PETsMART Charities Luv-APet adoption boutiques, but took
their innovations a few steps farther.
Designed in the mid-1980s,
the North Shore adoption center represented the first big break from traditional kennel design toward customer friendliness. Today it has
been so widely emulated that relative newcomers to animal sheltering
may have difficulty imagining how
different the use of space, light, and
handling of air exchange and
drainage all seemed to be circa 1990.
The Luv-A-Pet adoption
boutiques fused some of the same
ideas with high-volume retail marketing. As the PETsMART chain
expanded to hundreds of sites, it
showed that high-volume adoption
could be done anywhere, and that
animals could be housed in facilities
that are neither noisy nor stinky.
If there was any doubt that
an attractive high-volume adoption
center could attract markedly more
adopters to a traditional full-service
shelter,
the Oakland SPCA
Adoption Atrium proved otherwise.
Maddie’s Adoption Center
completed the transition away from
traditional shelter design by showcasing animals for adoption in habitats more resembling living rooms
than kennels––albeit living rooms
engineered to resist animal damage.
Big job
The Oregon Humane Society
had a bigger job underway than any
of the other innovators, since it was
completely rebuilding one of the
busiest full-service shelters in the
U.S., on the site it had occupied
since 1918, without a shutdown.
That necessitated a modular
approach to construction. Work
began in February 1999. The new
dog housing was completed in
November 1999. The 1939 shelter
was then partially demolished while
the rest of the new shelter was built.
The last of the old shelter came
down after the new offices, cat
facilities, and euthanasia and receiving areas were completed.
While borrowing ideas from
many other sources, Harmon told
ANIMAL PEOPLE that she probably relied most upon Wisconsin
Humane Society executive director
Victoria Wellens. Wellens began
building the new Wisconsin Humane
Society premises in 1998, concurrent with the Oregon Humane
Society replannning. The Wisconsin
Humane Society shelter opened in
2001. Harmon said she and Wellens
were constantly in contact, exchanging the information each gathered
from wherever.
ANIMAL PEOPLE has not
yet visited the Wisconsin Humane
shelter, nor the new Richmond
SPCA shelter, which also drew
inspiration from Wisconsin Humane.
Both are, however, well regarded
by other critical visitors.
As all of the key ideas, floor
plans, photos, and history are
included in the free downloadable
PDF file Oregon Humane Society
New Shelter Project 2000, just a
point-and-click away for anyone
with a web browser, there is little
need to review the details of the
Oregon Humane design, except to
note that the importance of the floor
plan is understated.
The traffic flow moves
entirely from left to right, from separate receiving stations for dogs and
cats, through separate holding areas
for quarantined animals, animals
needing veterinary care, and holds
for rehoming. Never is there need to
take unfamiliar dogs and cats past
each other.
Animals pass the entrance to
the lightly used euthanasia room as
they leave the receiving area, on
their way to be housed in other
wings of the building. If they sense
the presence of the euthanasia room
at all, they sense that they are being
taken away from it. Animals arriving for euthanasia do not pass those
in care. Rarely is there need to take
animals to be euthanized back past
others still in care.
Animals offered for adoption rotate toward the lobby, enjoying ever more attractive and comfortable surroundings as they clear
health and behavioral checks. Those
at the shelter longest are displayed
most prominently, giving them the
best chance to be the next animals to
find homes. Possibly the most
active rabbit adoption center in the
U.S. is just off the lobby––and
access to it is arranged so that the
rabbits have little if any awareness
of proximity to cats and dogs.
Harmon admits that she
did not think of adding bird facilities
during the design process. The two
noteworthy design flaws surfacing
during the first five years of shelter
operation are the lack of aviary
space and an on-site sterilization
clinic. Sterilization surgery is contracted out to off-site clinics, but
will be done in-house when a soonto-begin expansion is completed.
The expansion will also more than
double the already spacious humane
education area.
Portland gains
The influence of the
Oregon Humane Society shelter on
the Portland and Multnomah County
dog and cat population is not easily
teased apart from other changes and
innovations in animal care and control, but is consistent with a 137year history at the forefront of
humane progress.
Founded by Dr. Thomas
Lamb Elliot on November 17, 1868,
though not formally incorporated
until 1880, the Oregon Humane
Society is only eight months
younger than the San Francisco
SPCA, which was the first in the
western U.S. Only the American
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The U.S. Virgin Islands on May 5 gained an anti-cruelty law,
after five years of negotiation and passage of two bills in nine months that
were vetoed by Governor Charles W. Turnbull, who favored weaker
penalties and fewer offenses, and opposed any restrictions on cockfighting
In final form, the bill exempts cockfighting, does not permit felony prosecution of cruelty, and eliminates jail time for neglect.
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has thus far into 2005
signed into law bills that require animal shelters to sterilize dogs and cats
before adoption, require rabies vaccination of dogs and cats using a threeyear vaccine, and prohibit “remote control” hunting, i.e. hunting with the
hunter and prey not at the same location.
Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is expected to sign
into law a bill permitting prosecution of animal neglect as a felony.
Unanimously approved by the state legislature, the bill was pushed by
Susan Michaels, who in 1992 cofounded the Pasado’s Safe Haven sanctuary in memory of a severely abused donkey whose tormenters recived only
misdemeanor penalties. Michaels in 1994 won passage of Pasado’s Law,
one of the first laws in the U.S. to allow prosecution of intentional cruelty
as a felony. Similar laws have now been enacted in most states.
Iowa Governor Governor Tom Vilsack is expected to sign into
law a bill mandating that hunting regulations be amended to reduce the
state deer herd by 25%. In the short run the bill may stimulate hunting. In
the long run, it accepts that falling participation in hunting is a longterm
trend. The bill cleared the Iowa House of Representatives 97-3, and was
unanimously passed by the Iowa Senate.
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has stated his intent to sign
into law a bill creating a state Dog & Cat Sterilization Fund, supported by
an income tax return checkoff. The bill was introduced by state representative Gene Maddox, DVM.
SPCA (1866) and Massachusetts
SPCA (1868) are older. The initial
mission of all four organizations was
protecting draft horses. Oregon
Humane added child protection services to the original mandate, and
was the official state child protection
agency from 1881 to 1933. Humane
education was put into the Oregon
Humane mission statement in 1882.
As of 1972, when Oregon
Humane opted out of animal control,
Portland and Multnomah County
were killing between 130 and 140
dogs and cats per 1,000 human residents, almost all of them by decompression. The national average was
then circa 115 per 1,000, but many
cities with lower killing rates did not
even try to pick up feral cats.
Portland soon followed
Berkeley (1972) and San Francisco
(1976) in abolishing decompression
killing. Pet sterilization was promoted successfully enough that by 1993
the Portland/Multnomah rate of shelter killing was down to 22.7. The
advent of early-age sterilization and
neuter/return of feral cats cut the
killing rate further, to 11.3, by the
time the new shelter opened in 2000.
Since then, the toll has
fallen further, to just 6.75 in 2004.
While the value of the
Oregon Humane Society shelter is
not easily quantified in isolation, it
can be said that it gives the fastgrowing Portland metropolitan area
the capacity to achieve no-kill animal control, in combination with the
feral cat sterilization efforts of Pet
Over-Population Prevention Advocates and other local coalitions.
Although San Francisco and
Ithaca, New York, have lowered
shelter killing per 1,000 humans to
circa 2.5, and New York City is
close, the effective threshold for nokill animal control in most cities is
about 5.0. After that, further reductions require ever-increasing investments in saving seriously sick,
injured, or dangerous animals.
The steepest drops in the
Portland toll have coincided with the
two tenures of current Multnomah
County animal control director Mike
Oswald, who during his first term of
service in the 1980s was among the
first shelter directors in the U.S. to
issue a public warning about increasing intakes of pit bull terriers and
other potentially dangerous dogs.
This is now the largest threat to
progress in Portland, as to the U.S.
shelter killing rate nationally.
In 1987, according to
Oswald’s records, 24.8% of the
dogs entering the Multnomah
County shelter were Labrador
retrievers, German shepherds, and
their close mixes, reflecting their
popularity. Just 6.3 were pit bull terriers, and 0.4% were Rottweilers.
In 2004, exactly 24% of
the incoming dogs were Labrador
retrievers, German shepherds, and
their close mixes: almost no change.
But 21% were pit bull terriers and
6.6% were Rottweilers.
Bites by Labrador retrievers and German shepherds were
exactly 30% of the bite investigation
caseload in both 1987 and 2004––
but the total bite caseload increased
42%. Bites by pit bulls increased
65%, from 13% of the total to 20%,
and bites by Rottweilers increased
more than five-fold, from 2% of the
total to 10.6%.
Despite the rising numbers
of potentially dangerous dogs
received, Oswald has achieved a
community-wide reduction of
approximately 30% in the numbers
of dogs killed in shelters, about 80%
of them killed by animal control.
––Merritt Clifton
May 2005
3/22/13
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Page 21
A N I M AL PEO P L E,
The Tipping Point: How little things can make a difference
May 2 005 - 21
by Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay Books (1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2002. 280 pages, paperback. $14.95.
“Listen! My children and you shall hear
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Twas the 18th of April in ‘75.
Hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.”
So begins William Wadsworth
Longfellow’s immortal poem about Paul
Revere’s ride, and so begins this profoundly
absorbing book by Malcolm Gladwell.
At the same time that Paul Revere
rode forth to “spread the alarm, to every
Middlesex village and farm, / for the country
folk to be up and to arm,” William Dawes set
out to carry the same message. Yet Dawes’
role is little remembered, whereas in Revere’s
case, “the sparks struck out by the steed in his
flight / kindled a nation to flame with its heat.”
Even less remembered is the third
rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott, who was actually
the first of the three men to reach Concord.
Gladwell suggests that Revere won
the most historical note through the combination of three fundamentals: the prestige of the
messenger, the importance of the message,
and the social context of the enterprise.
Revere had the strongest previous
association with the American independence
movement. Further, while Gladwell and
Prescott fulfilled their missions by stealth, riding as quietly and evasively to their assigned
destinations as possible, Revere alerted everyone he could along the way, enlisting the
entire countryside as fellow messengers. He
was eventually arrested, but only after amplifying the alarm in all directions.
The term “tipping point” refers to
the threshold in all trends, epidemics, enterprises, and social movements when whatever
is happening gains sufficient momentum that it
can no longer be suppressed. Gladwell argues
that often a trend needs only the smallest of
nudges to push it over the critical threshold.
Gladwell defines three categories of
people who have the necessary influence to
supply that nudge:
Connectors, who are influential people with a large network of relevant acquaintances; Mavens, knowledgeable people who
are repositories of relevant information and
intellectual capacity; and Salespeople, who
take that knowledge and present it in a way
that appeals to the relevant market.
In an afterword, Gladwell comments upon the conventional ways of spreading an important message, as well as the New
Economy methods such as the Internet, and
suggests that today, the information overload
is so great that people more and more rely
upon old-fashioned word of mouth for advice.
The relevant question for animal
advocates is how to move the animal rights
movement past the tipping point, so that the
goals achieve broad cultural acceptance.
Gladwell relates how the preacher
John Wesley established the Methodist
Church, riding thousands of miles a year to
establish the network of churches that eventually became the United Methodists.
Wesley, writes Gladwell, “was a
classic Connector. He was a super Paul
Revere. The difference is, though, that he
wasn’t one person with ties to many other people. He was one person with ties to many
groups, which is a small but critical distinction. Wesley realized that if you wanted to
bring about a fundamental change in people’s
beliefs and behavior, a change that would persist and serve as an example to others, you
needed to create a community around them,
where those new beliefs could be practiced and
expressed and nurtured.”
So rehabilitation centers and animal
shelters should be far more than mere facilities
for animals: they should become centers of
communities where AR beliefs can be “practiced and expressed and nurtured.”
To some extent animal welfare
groups have coalesced into communities. But
the failure of large animal welfare institutions
to reach the tipping point needed to carry the
concept of animal rights into the mainstream
may have something to do with what Gladwell
calls “the 150 rule.” This is the loss of cohesion and efficiency which mysteriously manifests itself in most social organisations and
businesses when the figure of 150 employees
is exceeded. In our own experience, the larger the animal welfare institution, the less
effective is the expenditure of funds.
So let us apply Gladwell’s three fundamentals to animal rights. There is widespread acceptance of the notion that ethical
people have a moral duty to avoid inflicting
suffering upon sentient beings, but even people who are sensitive to the needs of animals
are apathetic and need to be roused to action.
The social context of animal rights, meaning
how the issue is framed and perceived, is
often not conducive to the growth of the cause.
Mainstream support for animal
rights at present amounts mostly to an amorphous pool of goodwill which has yet to be
mobilized. Clearly what are needed are more
Connectors, Mavens, and Salespeople with
credibility and influence.
––Chris Mercer
<www.cannedlion.co.za>
Editor’s note:
William Dawes was as well-known
and well-respected around Boston in 1776 as
Paul Revere, but he did not have a memorable
dog. Paul Revere’s dog made the difference.
Paul Revere in his mem oirs wrote that when the
need arose for him to make
his famous ride, on April
18, 1775, he was caught
without his spurs, on the
wrong side of the British
troops. He sent his dog
home through the soldiers
with a note to his wife, and
back the dog came, the
spurs tied to her collar.
The dog then drove back
the redcoats when they
tried to seize Revere for
alleged drunken horseback
riding, and raced on
ahead to awaken Lexington
and Concord to hear
Revere’s alarm.
Revere was so grateful
for the rather small brown
dog’s help that he included
the dog in the foreground
of his famous engraving of
the Boston Massacre.
With all due respect to
the horses who carried
Dawes, Revere, and Prescott, the most remarkable
horse story involved in the
subsequent relay to spread
the word throughout the 13
Colonies was probably the
ride of of Sybil Ludington,
whose 16th birthday was
April 5, 1776.
“On April 26, 1777, a
messenger reached the
Ludington house with news
of Governor William
Tryon’s attack on Danbury, Connecticut, some
15 miles to the southeast,
where the munitions and
stores for the militia of the
entire region were stored.
Colonel Ludington began
immediately to organize
the local militia,” states
the web site <www.catskill.net/purple/sybil.htm>.
“The messenger and his
horse being exhausted,
Sybil volunteered to rouse
the countryside. Through
the night the 16-year-old
girl rode her horse nearly
40 miles on unfamiliar
roads around Putnam
county, spreading the
alarm.”
A 40-mile ride over icy,
muddy roads on a cold
New England spring night
would be an outstanding
feat of endurance for any
person and any horse,
even today.
Ludington’s life and
mission depended upon her
horse, and the horse
rewarded her confidence.
May 2005
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Page 22
ANIMAL P E O P L E,
May 2 00 5
MEMORIALS
HUMAN OBITUARIES
Elmina Brewster Sewall, 93,
died on April 7, 2005 in Kennebunk, Maine.
Among the first breeders of Sussex spaniel
show dogs in the U.S., Brewster Sewall
“between 1936 and 1940, imported some of
the best stock available in England,” and
“went on to breed seven litters over the next
six years,” wrote John Robert Lewis Jr. in
Sussex Spaniel, A Complete and Reliable
Handbook (1997). Brewster Sewall also
“bred and raised pugs, and was a familiar
figure at the Westminster Dog Show,”
recalled Katie Dolloff, program coordinator
for the Animal Welfare Society of Southern
Maine. But she had also become concerned
about pet overpopulation, and in the 1950s
allowed her line of Sussex spaniels to die out.
After several years of informal animal rescue,
Brewster Sewall and friends incorporated the
Animal Welfare Society in 1967. A longtime
AWS board member, Brewster Sewall was
also active in greyhound rescue, and assisted
other charities including Mainely Girls,
Friends of the Sea Otter, the Student
Conservation Association,
and the
Massachusetts SPCA. The AWS named the
Elmina B. Sewall Animal Shelter after her in
1990. It finds homes for more than 3,000
animals a year,” Dolloff said.
Paul G. Dye, 68, died on April 2.
“Dye was born in Ohio, but spent most of his
youth in New Jersey,” recalled the Everett
Herald. “By age 12, he had already started
raising waterfowl. After moving to the
Pacific Northwest, Dye purchased part of a
wetland near Lake Cassidy,” which became
the Northwest Wildfowl Farm, featuring “32
ponds, eight acres of grain fields, four miles
of trails, a salmon stream, and forestry
improvements for grouse and other woodland
species. Nesting sites have been installed for
wood ducks, flying squirrels, bats, chickadees and flickers,” along with an “enclosed
and heated wildlife observation blind and an
observation tower for visitors.” Dye and
Charles Pilling of Seattle were reputedly the
first to breed the endangered spectacled eider
in captivity, and helped to started a captive
breedng program for the eider on the North
Slope of Alaska.
+
Vicky Elizabeth Bartlett, 50, of
Kew, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne,
wife of sculptor Geoffrey Bartlett, was on
February 28 flipped into the air and trampled
by a hippo at Fisherman’s Camp on Lake
Naivasha, Kenya. Traveling with a group of
12 fellow tourists to the Masai Mara Game
Reserve, Bartlett was fascinated by a hippo
she saw the night before, tour guide John
Mwangi said, and apparently went off alone
to look for another one.
Bob Hunter, 63, died of prostate
cancer in Toronto on May 2, 2005. “Hunter,
a columnist for the Vancouver Sun in the
1960s, came to prominence in 1971 with the
launch of Greenpeace and its protests against
nuclear testing,” recalled Associated Press.
“Hunter, who coined the phrase ‘Don’t Make
a Wave,’ the original name of Greenpeace,
“boarded a small fishing boat dubbed the
Greenpeace in 1971 and set off to Alaska to
protest U.S. nuclear testing. ‘I thought I was
going to be a reporter, taking notes,’ Hunter
later said. ‘In reality, I wound up on first
watch.’ Hunter was elected the first president
of Greenpeace in 1973. “In 1974, Bob took
the embers of what we began with the 1971
voyage to Amchitka to oppose nuclear testing, and he fanned the dying sparks into the
flames that became the Greenpeace movement,” e-mailed Greenpeace cofounder and
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder
Paul Watson. “If there had been no Robert
Hunter, Greenpeace would simply be a footnote in the history books from the early seventies. In March of 1976, he and I stood on
the heaving ice floes off the coast of Labrador
as a large sealing ship bore down on us. The
ice cracked and split beneath our feet as I said
to Bob ‘When it splits, I’ll jump to the left
and you to the right.’ Bob looked straight
ahead and calmly said, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Because he stayed, I stayed, and we
brought that seal killing ship to a dead stop.
Bob participated in numerous campaigns with
the Sea Shepherds,” Watson added. “His last
campaign with us was off the coast of
Washington State in 1998–1999,” against
Makah tribe whaling. “It was my great privilege to have been his friend for 35 years.
With his passing the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society loses one of our most valued
Advisory Board members.” In recent years
Hunter was environmental news specialist for
CHUM Citytv and CP24 in Toronto. “He
was perhaps best known to Toronto viewers
for ‘Paper Cuts,’ a segment in which he wore
a bathrobe and commented on the stories in
the day’s news,” Associated Press said.
Arlin Resnicke, 48, died of cancer on April 7, 2005, in Bakersfield,
California. A motorcycle mechanic who
worked at home, Resnicke had kennels for
16 rescued Siberian huskies in his yard, and
in more than 15 years of helping huskies,
found homes for several hundred. “Everything was for the dogs,” fellow rescuer Nikki
Artiaga said. “The dogs were his life.” The
huskies left by his death were rehomed by
Siberian Referral of California.
Nancy Elizabeth Hand, 58, died
on March 3, 2005, in Hanover, Michigan,
remembered by the Jackson Citizen Patriot
for her love of animals and many animal
companions. “Her nurturing, compassionate
nature prompted her to serve as foster
guardian for many abused and homeless animals,” the Citizen Patriot noted.
CLASSIFIEDS––50¢ a word!
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We sponsor free veterinary camps twice a
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Dharma Donkey Sanctuary/ Ahimsa of
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________________________________________________
ST. FRANCIS DOG MEDALS are here!
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Your love for animals
can go on forever.
The last thing we want is to lose our
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(a 501(c)(3) charitable corporation,
federal ID# 14-1752216)
Animal People, Inc.,
PO Box 960, Clinton WA 98236
Ask for our free brochure
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ANIMAL OBITS
S p l a s h, 15, a 16-foot male orca
born at Marineland Canada in Niagara,
Ontario, sold to SeaWorld in 1992, died on
April 5 at SeaWorld San Diego. Splash suffered from a series of infections and illnesses
that apparently began after he seriously
scraped his face in a 1994 collision with the
side of his tank.
In memory of David Johnson's father.
––Arendse Bernth & Michael McCord
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
In memory of Butchie-Bingo,
loving dog of Gloria, George, and Maya,
departed January 4, 2005.
––Gloria Wilkins
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
In memory of Freddie (1987-1995).
Ten years have passed since you left us. You
are never forgotten. You are always loved.
––Lindy, Marvin & Melinda Sobel
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
In memory of Sherman (1988-2005),
our little patriarch. We would not have
missed a day with you.
––Lindy, Marvin & Melinda Sobel
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
In memory of Purr Box (12/3/87),
Prometheus (3/21/81), Friendl (10/30/87),
Lizzie (5/8/84), Boy Cat (12/26/85),
Miss Penrose (11/18/98), Duke (11/1/98),
Purr Box, Jr. (5/1/04) and Blackie (9/9/96).
Dare, 6, a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, died on March 10 at the Karen Beasley
Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center on
Topsail Island, North Carolina. Found as a
stranded one-year-old in Dare County in 1999,
Dare was emaciated and battered from collisions with boats. She was to be returned to the
sea in September 1999 when Hurricane Floyd
hit. Volunteers fleeing the rescue center took
her home with them, but then had to flee their
home as well. Flood water contaminated
Dare’s tank, and she never fully recovered.
Mumbali, 7, a gorilla who lived
her whole life at the Lincoln Park Zoo in
Chicago, was euthanized on April 28, after
three weeks of unsuccessful treatment, due to
acute kidey failure from an unknown cause.
Her 9-year-old sister Rollie fell ill first with
similar symptoms, but got better.
T r i x i e, 18, a polar bear born to
zoo-bred parents at the Bronx Zoo in 1987,
transferred to the Roger Williams Park Zoo in
Providence, Rhode Island in 1989, died under
sedation on April 29 as she was being prepared
for temporary relocation to the Indianapolis
Zoo while her habitat was rebuilt.
Big Red, four months, a Duroc pig
used by Randall’s High Diving Racers, a carnival show operated by Virgil and Velma
Randall of Arkansas, was electrocuted on
March 17 at the Star of Texas Fair & Rodeo,
after plunging four feet into a tank of water.
Another pig dived into the water seconds later
but was unharmed. The Randalls claimed it
was their first accident in 15 years.
Sitka, 10, a female Pacific walrus
who was captured under an aborignal subsistence hunting quota in 1995, residing at the
Indianapolis Zoo since May 1995, died during
surgery on April 7. The surgical team had just
removed a pine cone that blocked her
intestines and kept her from eating or drinking.
Tsavo, 14, a giraffe, was euthanized at the Columbus Zoo on April 23 after
his keepers found him lying in his cage and in
eight hours of effort were unable to get him up.
The previous day, two Columbus Zoo zebras
named Flora and Fauna panicked and broke
their necks by bolting into fence posts, after
being moved to a temporary holding area at
Darby Dan Farms. Two weeks earlier, a
giraffe namd Kenya died from heart failure
while under treatment for a chronic illness.
All four animals lived in a section of the zoo
that is to be replaced in five years with a $125
million African Savanna exhibit.
Buenos, 53, a black spider monkey
believed to have been the world’s oldest nonhuman primate other than great apes, died
from coronary trouble on March 26 at the
Japan Monkey Center in Aichi. “Just as we
were preparing to apply for the Guinness
Book, she passed away peacefully,” center
manager Akira Kato told Agence France Press.
“While lying on a bed, she always wanted to
hold our hands," Kato remembered, speculating that “Her calm and kind personality greatly
helped” her longevity. “Also,” Kato said,
“she started living with a young male monkey
10 years ago, which might have excited her.”
POB 96 0 , Clin t on , WA 98236 • 360-579-2505
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________________________________________________
SAVE LIVES, STERILIZE –– That’s the
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For more info, visit www.catwelfare.org,
e-mail [email protected] or write c/o
Orchard Rd., POB 65, Singapore 912303
________________________________________________
FREE SAMPLE COPY OF VEGNEWS
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www.animaltalk.net
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(415) 663-1247
________________________________________________
FREE TO HUMANE SOCIETIES AND
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"How to Build a Straw Bale Dog House"
video. Tapes and shipping free. Animal
charities and agencies may qualify for free
tapes for community distribution.
Call D.E.L.T.A. Rescue at 661-269-4010.
________________________________________________
There is no better way to
remember animals or
animal people than with an
ANIMAL PEOPLE
memorial. Send donations
(any amount), along with an
address for acknowledgement,
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P.O. Box 960
Clinton, WA 98236-0960
Never rescue a bat bare-handed.
Find help at WWW.BATWORLD.ORG
or call 940-325-3404
________________________________________________
ELEPHANTS, RHINOS, LIONS, AND
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Choose quick download ($14.95) or discussion board ($19.95). Info: go to
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________________________________________________
SEA TURTLE CONSERVATION VOLUNTEERS NEEDED in Visakhapatnam,
India. Field work January/June, documentation & awareness July/December. This is
an unfunded program made possible entirely
by volunteer contributions. Limited free
accommodation with cooking facilities
available at the Visakha SPCA.
Info: <[email protected]>
________________________________________________
JESUS: TOP SECRET
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________________________________________________
BAJA ANIMAL SANCTUARY
www.Bajadogs.org
________________________________________________
Take time to smell the flowers and to visit:
http://humanelink.org
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ANI MAL P E O P LE,
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ANIMAL P E O P L E,
May 2 00 5
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