TROUBLE AT HSUS-SPONSORED SANCTUARY IN SOUTHERN INDIA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI– –ANIMAL PEOPLE learned at press time
that the scheduled January 2 hearing of a legal action seeking to
remove Deanna Krantz of Global Communications for Conservation
from the management of the Nilgiris Animal Welfare Society was
delayed to February.
NAWS, a 52-acre facility in the Nilgiri Hills region of
southern India, a popular vacation area, was founded in 1954 by
Dorothy Dean, an English immigrant, and run after her death for
some years by an Australian couple. After they retired, Krantz,
wife of Humane Society of the U.S. vice president Michael Fox,
assumed direction of NAWS in 1996. She apparently received
funding from the Dean estate, the GCC-India Project for Nature,
and Humane Society International, an HSUS subsidiary. Warmly
welcomed by Indian animal rights activists and prominent Jains,
Krantz issued glowing reports about her improvements of facilities
and animal rescues, and her work was profiled–– from afar––by at
least two U.S. animal protection publications. When she ran into
trouble with local people, including a March 1997 physical altercation
with a female neighbor, she claimed it was over her opposition
to cruelty. When major Indian humane societies investigated,

Compassion Unlimited Plus Action of Bangalore took her side, but
others, initially supportive, became quite skeptical. Michael Fox,
scheduled to address the Animal Welfare Board of India’s recent
National Seminar, withdrew when it declined to get involved.
In a telephone discussion and one long fax, Krantz told
ANIMAL PEOPLE she didn’t care about the ouster move,
brought by others involved with NAWS in what she called a conspiracy.
She said she was founding her own separate sanctuary.