Month: October 1998

DELIVERED TO SAFETY!

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas– – Fifty-
five stumptail macaques arrived on
September 2 at the Wildlife Animal
Orphanage, after a 35-hour ride from the
Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin.
Native to Thailand, the stumptail colony is
descended from animals used to breed
research subjects for use by the late Harry
Harlow in his notorious infant deprivation
experiments, conducted from 1936 to 1971.
Remaining property of the University of
Wisconsin Regional Primate Research
Center, the stumptails and two breeding
groups of rhesus macaques had been housed
at the Vilas Zoo since 1963.
The stumptail colony still includes
a 37-year-old female who was among those
transferred out of Harlow’s direct custody.
The arrangement predated a clause of the
American Zoo Association code of ethics,
adopted in 1986, which discourages zoos
from providing animals for research not related
to conserving their own species.

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Let them eat crow, say commissioners

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

The Nevada Board of Wildlife
Commissioners, which in March authorized
hunters to kill up to 10 crows a day
during spring and fall seasons, on
September 26 voted 8-1 not to open a bear
season, due to lack of bears everywhere but
in the Carson Range, east of Lake Tahoe.
Coinciding with the start of
hunting season, the Vermont Office of
Child Support in mid-August placed newspaper
ads warning that parents who don’t
make child support payments on time could
lose their hunting and fishing licenses. The
threat of license suspension has helped drive
collection of unpaid child support up from
$12 million in 1991 to $40 million in 1997.
According to the National
Advertising Council, the top 10 ad categories
in Hunter magazine during 1997, by
page count, were firearms; alcoholic
drinks; electronic devices; tobacco; job
opportunities; bladder control; off-road
vehicles and pickup trucks; hair restoration;
underwear; and pro wrestling.

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Beers for the road at U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

James Beers, former chief of
wildlife refuge operations for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and now USFWS liaison to
state wildlife agencies, recently told August
Gribbin of The Washington Times that USFWS
has attempted to oust him because he accepted
the National Trappers Association’s
“Conservationist of the Year” award for his
role in killing a European Union attempt to ban
imports of leghold-trapped fur.
This, Beers claimed, offended
USFWS brass who wish to cozy up with animal
rights activists. He didn’t name names.
He is reportedly now trying to press a whistleblower
complaint against higher-ups for transfering
him from Washington D.C. to
Massachusetts.

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Four thousand acres––and 600 emus

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

ELK CREEK, Calif.––”Our object
in obtaining this land,” explained Humane
Farming Association Founder and president
Brad Miller, greeting the first outside visitors
to the 4,000-acre Suwanna Ranch after the
1998 No-Kill Conference, “was to see how
long we could maintain our policy of never
turning away a farm animal who had been
involved in a cruelty case, who had been
referred to us by a humane society, animal
control department, police department, fire
department, or county sheriff’s office.”
HFA guarantees farm animals who
have endured prosecutable cruelty a caring
home for life in a semi-natural environment.
But, Miller continues, “After many years of
doing this, our original HFA Farm Animal
Refuge in Fairfield,” just north of San
Francisco, “was becoming a little crowded.
We think, with this extra space, we’ll now be
able to keep going for quite a long time.”

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Animals in laboratories

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Bert and Ernie, the first two pigs
whom Pennsylvania State University professor
Stan Curtis taught to play computer
games and adjust their own room temperature
with a joy stick, whose achievements were
described on page one of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, arrived on August 5 at
PIGS: A Sanctuary, in Charles Town,
West Virginia. Learning that Curtis had
replaced Bert and Ernie in his experiments
with two pigs of a smaller breed, Dale Riffle
and Jim Brewer wondered if the “retired”
pigs might be sent to slaughter or be used in
other research––so they asked, offered them
a home for life, and won approval from the
Penn State Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee. “Bert and Ernie are true ambassadors
for advancing the humane treatment of
animals typically used for food,” said Riffle.
“They have contributed greatly to educating
the world that pigs are not stupid.”

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Wearing the black hat well

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

GREENSBORO, N.C.––Sheriff B.J. Barnes
of Guilford County, North Carolina, on September 10
relievedly turned the county animal shelter over to the
United Animal Coalition, a consortium of 13 local
organizations including both the Guilford County
Humane Society and the Greensboro SPCA.
Forced to run the shelter temporarily through
the summer, when no one else wanted the contract,
Barnes on August 7 jolted viewers of his weekly
“Sheriff’s Beat” cable TV program with a 35-second
clip of himself killing a homeless dog.
Over the next six weeks, the Guilford
County adoption rate jumped 300%, and the UAC
formed in response to public outcry.

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ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Newly appointed City of Los
Angeles Animal Services chief Dan
Knapp in September opted against retaining
Animal Foundation International t o
provide low-cost neutering under a city
contract. AFI opened a neutering clinic by
agreement with L.A. Animal Services in
November 1997, modeled after the AFI
clinic in Las Vegas, which has fixed more
than 100,000 animals since 1989. After
complaints about the quality of care at the
Los Angeles branch surfaced in May 1998,
amplified by local activists, AFI president
Mary Herro shut the clinic and dismissed
the whole staff––although clinic statistics
indicated the AFI clinic had no higher a rate
of post-operative complications than the
average (4%) for all U.S. veterinary hospitals.

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Still no injectable birth control for dogs and cats

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Hopes for an inexpensive injection
sterilant for dogs and cats were prematurely
raised worldwide in early September by a
CNN report about an experimental contraceptive
vaccine for female rodents developed by
California researcher Jeff Bleil.
In theory, the Bleil vaccine could
work in dogs and cats, as CNN noted, but
Bleil so far has tested it only in mice and rats,
and he is reportedly still at least two years
from being able to market it for laboratory
mouse population control, his first objective.
He apparently hasn’t begun work yet to adapt
the product for use with other animals.
Zonagen Inc., of Massachusetts,
announced in 1990, 1991 and 1994 that it had
almost perfected a similar contraceptive vaccine,
called Zonavax, for female dogs and
cats, but there has been no further word of it.

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RABIES UPDATES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Afflicting the Atlantic seaboard
and New England since 1976, the midAtlantic
raccoon rabies pandemic shows signs
of containment through the escalating use of
Raboral, an oral vaccine developed by the
Wistar Institute of Philadelphia. Used successfuly
against fox rabies in Europe for more
than 20 years, Raboral has kept Cape Cod
free of rabies since 1993, Alison Robbins,
DVM, of the Tufts University School of
Veterinary Medicine announced in late
August. Earlier, Texas officials credited
Raboral with stopping the only recorded mass
outbreak of rabies in coyotes. The Tufts program
is now expanding to vaccinate the raccoons
of Plymouth, Wareham, and Carver,
and as funding becomes available, Massa –
chusetts Department of Public Health

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