OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Mollie Beatty, 49, died of brain
cancer on June 27 in Townsend, Vermont,
three weeks after resigning as U.S. Interior
Secretary due to her illness. Appointed in
1993, Beatty was the first female Interior
Secretary, and the first non-hunter. Only
weakly backed by the White House, Beatty
nonetheless vigorously defended the Marine
Mammal Protection Act, Endangered
Species Act, and Yellowstone wolf reintroduction
against a hostile Congress, taking
time out to personally rub cool water on one
hot wolf’s belly. “Any day I can touch a
wild wolf is a good day,” she said

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REVIEWS: Snowy Egret

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Snowy Egret
Spring/Autumn 1995, Spring 1996
$12/year, POB 9, Bowling Green, IN 47833

Still a quiet good read for naturelovers,
after 74 years, and one of the bestkept
secrets in nature writing, the single
1995 edition of Snowy Egret features
Arkansas sheep rancher Jayn Steidl
Thibodeau on learning to appreciate and live
with coyotes. In Spring 1996, Bill Embly
observes a doomed drone bee’s will to live,
while poet James Magorian asks, “What failures,
unhealings, great emptiness / of heart
would bring a person / into this bright land to
shoot animals?” Both editions are illustrated
with linocuts, wood engravings, and lithographs
by Ladislav Hanka.

BOOKS: Track of the Coyote

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Track of the Coyote
by Todd Wilkinson
with photos by Michael H. Francis
NorthWord Press Inc.
(POB 1360, Minocqua, WI 54548),
1995. 140 pages; $14.95, paperback.

The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour
gets just one thing about coyotes right: someone
is always gunning for them. Todd
Wilkinson’s Track of the Coyote draws heavily
upon biologist Robert Crabtree’s recent
five-year study of the coyotes of the Lamar
Valley in Yellowstone National Park, now
extirpated by the reintroduction of wolves.

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BOOKS: China’s Threatened Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

China’s Threatened Wildlife
by Liz and Keith Laidler
Blandford, distributed by Sterling
Publishing (387 Park Avenue South,
New York, NY 10016-8810),
192 pages, 50 color illustrations, $24.95.

Most of us are semi-familiar with the
giant panda, perhaps the red panda, the
Yangtse dolphin, Chinese alligator, and Pere
David’s deer, but these are just a handful of
the unique, little-known, fast-vanishing wild
inhabitants of the most populous and longest
settled nation on earth, which nonetheless has
surprisingly many corners seldom explored or
exploited––until now, when increasing affulence
has in turn stimulated demand for costly
folk medicines whose ingredients are valued to
the degree that they are scarce, and are scarce
to the degree that the species from which they
come are endangered.

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Greyhound racing goes to the dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Opened in November 1995, the
Shoreline Star greyhound track i n
Bridgeport, Connecticut filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy on July 16, six days after owner
A. Robert Zeff asked a federal judge to rule
that audio tapes were illegally seized in a
June 25 police raid on his Westport home. A
state police task force is reportedly probing
allegations that Zeff bribed former Connecticut
gaming policy board chair Francis Muska
and possibly other officials, seeking to avoid
questions about his financing. Zeff was
charged on June 27 with destroying evidence
and interfering with the search.

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No case in Texas probe of wild horse program

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

SAN ANTONIO––The Del Rio,
Texas grand jury probe of alleged illegal sales
of wild horses to slaughter has apparently
ended without issuing criminal charges.
Acting on the advice of Charles
Brooks, trial attorney for the Environment and
Natural Resources Division of the Department
of Justice, U.S. attorney James William Blagg
and John E. Murphy, first assistant U.S. attorney,
criminal division, on July 5 recommended
to the Department of the Interior that “the
investigation within the Western District of
Texas into the incident involving Don
Galloway and the 36 horses placed on a ranch
in Terrell County, Texas should be closed.”

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Liability-and-animal care rulings

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

MADISON, Wisconsin––In a ruling
of import to shelter staff, the Wisconsin
Supreme Court by 4-3 decision on June 27
reversed a Milwaukee County Circuit Court
jury award of $81,445 to part-time worker
Cheryl Armstrong, of Thistlerose Kennels in
Greendale, who was bitten by a Siberian
husky belonging to John and Ann Mack in
January 1991. Armstrong sued the Macks
and Milwaukee Mutual Insurance. Writing
for the majority, Justice Janine Geske argued
that Wisconsin law defines a dog owner as
anyone who owns, harbors, or keeps a dog.
In boarding the Macks’ dog, Thistlerose
became the dog’s owner for legal purposes;
Armstrong became the owner’s agent.
The ownership statute “is rendered
meaningless,” said Geske, “if one who in the
course of employment exercises control over
and provides care for a dog is not found to be
that dog’s keeper.”

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Humane enforcement

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

The Coulston Foundation announ-
ced June 20 that it will pay the USDA a civil
penalty of $20,000 and make $20,000 in
improvements to the Primate Biomedial
Research Center Laboratory, which it manages
at Holloman Air Force Base in New
Mexico, to settle charges resulting from the
1993 overheating deaths of three chimpanzees.
Arnim John Kudinow of Lake
Oswego, Oregon, in June drew 112 years in
prison for ramming a police car with his pickup,
throwing a knife at police, and killing a
Dutch Malinois police dog named Ronnie with
a septic bite to the nose––for which Kudinow
also was ordered to pay $595 and serve two
years on probation if he ever gets out.

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