Another fine mess

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

NOKESVILLE, Va.––Philip J.
Hirschkopf, attorney for the Humane Society of
Fairfax County since 1988, and board member
Beth Richelieu, a paralegal who works for
Hirschkopf, resigned in August and told The
Washington Post that they would ask the Fairfax
County commonwealth attorney and Virginia
state attorney general to investigate a pending
transaction in which HSFC would purchase the
34-acre Chestnut Crossing Farm from Heather
Kirby Viar, 28, for $800,000.

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Judge to decide which Frank is frank

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

KENOSHA, Wisc.––A year-long dispute
over custody of the Society of St. Francis,
one of the older no-kill shelters in the U.S.,
emerged into view on August 25 when a faction
aligned with cofounder Robert E. Frank allegedly
tried to take the donor lists and office keys from a
faction aligned with his son, Dennis Frank.
Each side accused the other of gross mismanagement.
Each claims to constitute the properly
elected board of directors.
Summoned to intervene, Kenosha
County sheriff’s deputies reportedly brokered a
brief truce. On September 4, agreed the factions
in separate communications with ANIMAL PEOPLE,
they reached an interim agreement over procedures
for running the Society pending resolution
of crossfiled lawsuits.

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Appointments

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Patricia Olsen, DVM, formerly
director of veterinary programs at
the American Humane Association, has
left to take a senior post at Guide Dogs
for the Blind.
Franklin Loew, DVM, former
dean of the veterinary schools at both
Tufts and Cornell, is new president of
Becker College in Massachusetts.
The United Animal Coalition,
taking over management of the Guilford
County Animal Shelter in Greensboro,
North Carolina, from Sheriff B.J.
Barnes, on September 25 named as shelter
director Sharon Harrison-Pope, a
10-year sheriff’s department staffer.

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The bloody British

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

The Countryside Alliance,
near collapse only six months after mustering
250,000 protesters in London to
oppose a ban on fox hunting, issued a
new eight-point mission statement on
September 10. The Alliance goals are
now stated as being to “preserve the freedoms
of country people and their way of
life; lead campaigns for country sports,
their related trades and activities, and the
countryside; and to cooperate closely
with other organizations to promote and
protect the rural way of life.” The
Alliance, depending for numbers upon
uniting small numbers of hunters with
large numbers of nonhunting rural residents,
has struggled from the start with
the conflict between defending hunters’
presumed right to trespass in pursuit of
wildlife and land owners’ wish to control
the activities of trespassers also including
hikers and birdwatchers.

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Sounds of silence

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Last Chance For Animals on August 17
set up a site called >>www.CoulstonKills
Chimps.com<<, to attack the U.S. Air Force decision
11 days earlier to leave 111 former NASA
chimpanzees in possession of the Coulston
Foundation, a research supplier, while sending
only 30 to the Primarily Primates sanctuary in San
Antonio and none to any other sanctuaries.
According to LCA spokesperson Roy Bodner, “The
president of the Coulston Foundation, Travis
Griffin, on August 19 threatened legal action
against LCA’s web provider if the site was not
removed immediately.” The provider refused, until
and unless advised that the site contained illegal content.
“On August 20 a frustrated Griffin contacted
LCA’s website server’s upstream provider,” Bodner
continued, “and by Griffin’s later admission,
‘objected to their hosting defamatory material,’”
threatening to sue the upstream provider. “That
threat,” Bodner said, “resulted in the website’s
entire server being abruptly removed from the
Internet.” LCA executive director Eric Mindel said
his organization was seeking to place the site with
another server, and was “consulting with our attorney
to examine possible legal action against the
Coulston Foundation.”

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Horse cases

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Renae Ferguson, 28, of Sylmar, California, and
her father, Edward Perry Reddeck, 56, were arraigned on
August 26 on multiple cruelty counts, while Ferguson’s
mother, Darlene Craig, 48, was arrested at the Los Angeles
courthouse for investigation of similar charges, after equestrian
Cathy Becker-Skaggs investigated the fate of a 15-yearold
mare she had donated to Ferguson for the “West Coast
Riding Academy”––which never existed. Police and
Chatsworth animal control officers said Ferguson and family
apparently got horses via ads soliciting donations for the fictitious
“nonprofit riding school,” then allegedly sold them,
often through ads in the same publications. Six neglected
horses were confiscated, including Becker-Skaggs’ horse,
Libertee, who is reportedly recovering well.
Carolyn and Christopher Carradine, of Santa
Barbara, California, are reportedly suing horse trainer Monty
Roberts, for $100,000 in veterinary costs and other material
damages, alleging that he ruined the health of a thoroughbred
of theirs named Big Red Fox by riding him “to the point of
extraordinary fatigue” in pursuit of an untamed mustang during
the making of a BBC documentary called “The Real Horse
Whisperer” on March 30, 1997. Roberts is author of a bestselling
autobiogrpahy, The Man Who Listens To Horses,
which includes a mention of the incident in an afterword. He
t o l d London Sunday Times reporter Christopher Goodwin
that the Carradines had sued “purely to extract money from
me.” The BBC denied that Big Red Fox had been mistreated.

Man’s companion & friend
Marie Dana, 32, former companion of the late
bathroom fixture maker Sydney Altman, on September 22
filed suit contesting Altman’s will. Altman, who died in
December 1994 at age 60, left his Beverly Hills home and
$350,000 to his dog Samantha, termed his “loving companion.”
Ms. Dana, called his “good friend,” was left a stipend
of $60,000 a year to be Samantha’s caretaker, plus $50,000
cash. Upon Samantha’s death, the will stipulated, “the
arrangement with Marie Dana is cancelled, and I wish the
house to be sold and the money distributed to” People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals and Last Chance for
Animals. Dana is reportedly seeking $2.7 million.

Lobbies
The lobbying group Teaching Animal Awareness
in Legislation, of Connecticut, has disbanded after three
years, unable to raise the funds to keep president Cherylann
H a a s on the job fulltime in the state capitol. Haas instead
has doubled as an assistant animal control officer in Fairfield.
Maine Republican state representative R o b e r t
Fisk and about 150 backers have formed Maine Friends of
A n i m a l s, a lobbying organization which is to seek betterfunded
animal shelters, better trained animal control personnel,
a felony anti-cruelty law, and a ban on leghold trapping.
Fisk’s term of office ends this year.

HUMANE ENFORCEMENT

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Reed Young, 46, of Fort Worth, chief cruelty officer for
the Humane Society of North Texas since 1991, and a deputy constable
for Tarrant County since 1993, was arrested the night of September
17 by Fort Worth city police, charged with staging two shooting incidents
during the preceding week, allegedly to draw attention to dogfighting.
On September 10, Young said, someone fired two shots into
the vacant passenger side of his truck as he drove into the humane society
parking lot. On September 14, Young said, he was responding to
a dogfighting complaint when someone shot twice into the driver’s side
of the truck, missing him but shattering his windshield. Flying glass
cut his forehead. Young said he shot back but didn’t hit a man he saw
running into a wooded area. Fellow HSNT investigator Debbie
Martin told Deanna Boyd of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she
and Young had investigated previous dogfighting complaints near
where the second shooting purportedly occurred, seized 15 pit bull terriers
in one raid there, and won conviction of an alleged dogfighter.
Fort Worth police sergeants T.J. Saye and Gerald Teague told Boyd
that ballistics and gunpowder residue tests showed the shots were all
fired from close range, with the same gun, and that the holes in
Young’s truck were not consistent with shots being fired at a moving
vehicle. Teague also said Young had admitted inventing the shooting
stories. Young was suspended by both the humane society and Tarrant
County, but attorney Don Feare, a Humane Society of North Texas
board member who is representing Young, told Veronica Alaniz of
the Dallas Morning News that Young did not confess and is not guilty.

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Fur farm raids, indictments, conviction

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

MADISON, Wisconsin ––Peter D. Young, 20, of Mercer Island, Washington, and Justin C. Samuel, 19, of Snohomish, Washington, were on September 22 indicted on six counts of engaging in anti-animal enter- prise terrorism and extortion, for allegedly releasing mink from four Wisconsin fur farms between October 24 and October 27, 1997, and allegedly attempting to use the threat of further releases to coerce fur farmers into quit- ting the business.

The indictment charges that Young and Samuel, both at large, caused a $200,000 loss to the Smieja Fur Farm of Independence, Wisconson, forcing it to cease operations.

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More nasty politics

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.– –
While most mass media political coverage
was preoccupied with disclosure
of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s
affair with former White House intern
Monica Lewinsky, U.S. Senator Dirk
Kempthorne (R-Idaho) tried repeatedly
to graft to appropriations bills his
four-year-old Endangered Species
Act “reauthorization” measure,
which would effectively dismantle
the ESA as it has existed since 1973.
The Kempthorne ESA
rewrite codifies the Clinton administration’s
“no surprises” policy, guaranteeing
landowners who sign habitat
conservation agreements that they
will not be hit later with more restrictions,
even if other endangered
species are found on the property or
knowledge increases about what is
necessary to protect a species. The
Kempthorne bill is accordingly supported
by Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt, author of “no more surprises,”
and apparently by Vice
President Al Gore.

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