Month: November 1998

Does NWF really want to save prairie dogs?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

VIENNA, Virginia––The National
Wildlife Federation, umbrella for 48 state
hunting clubs, doesn’t seem to want to
answer questions from ANIMAL PEOPLE
about the NWF position on protecting prairie
dogs. Yet NWF itself invited the questions.
One hundred twenty days before the
November edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE
went to press, an NWF press release
informed us that, “In what may become one
of the most controversial endangered species
issues of the decade, the National Wildlife
Federation today petitioned the federal government
to issue emergency regulations listing
the blacktailed prairie dog as a threatened
species throughout its range,” including
Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska,
New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma,
South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming.

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Maneka makes waves as animal welfare minister

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

NEW DELHI––Contrary to Press
Trust of India and New Zealand Press
Association reports of October 7, Indian minister
for social justice and empowerment
Maneka Gandhi did not ban animal experiments
in India effective on October 8––but she
did announce draft regulations to ban the use
of pound animals in biomedical research, and
on October 11 published a ban on certain uses
of animals in entertainment.
By October 31, Maneka had also
banned the import of dolphins and sea lions for
exhibition in India, after two bottlenose dolphins
brought from Bulgaria died suddenly at
the newly opened Dolphin City oceanarium,
India’s first, near Chennai; banned cattle
transport by train, hoping to end the export of
cattle to slaughter in West Bengal; and banned
the transport of poultry and other birds by
train, striking at the wild-caught bird traffic.

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ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Fixing the problem
Vancouver, British Columbia,
officially went to no-kill animal control
effective October 1, after killing only 74
dogs in 1997. The announcement brought
the surge of owner surrenders that typically
follows publicity about a no-kill policy,
causing crowding which pound director
Barbara Fellnermayr predicted would be
only temporary. The volunteer group
Animal Advocates has pledged to expand a
fostering program to handle the overflow.
Animal Advocates reportedly already has
about 50 active fostering families, who
have enabled the West Vancouver SPCA
to “virtually stop killing adoptable dogs,”
wrote Robert Sarti of the Vancouver Sun.
The Vancouver pound does not handle cats.

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Jeff Getty says he can’t eat bananas in public

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Jeff Getty, 41, subject of a failed
experimental bone marrow transplant from a
baboon in December 1995, and later a
spokesperson for animal use in biomedical
research, recently told New York Times
reporter Claudia Dreifus that he can’t eat a
banana in public because “People go ‘urk,
urk.’ They start laughing uncontrollably,
scratching their underarms, and making
embarrassing jokes like ‘How are your
friends at the zoo?’”
Asked Dreifus, “What exactly did
you do that makes people so uncomfortable
as to make banana jokes?”

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PAUL MCCARTNEY ON RESEARCH

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Composer and songwriter Paul
McCartney told BBC Radio 2 interviewer
Des Lynam during an October 23 broadcast
that his late wife Linda’s long struggle with
breast cancer and her death last April had
heightened his awareness of the moral dilemmas
associated with animal research.
Though Paul and Linda McCartney
were both vegetarians and animal rights campaigners
for more than 20 years, he said he
had not previously realized how much animal
experimentation is done, nor the extent to
which it is legally required.
“I suppose a limited thing is
unavoidable, but it is very difficult for me to
think like that,” he said, “because I favor the
rights of the animals. Linda and I are just
passionate about these poor creatures that we
often use so cruelly.”

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Near Neanderthal, past and present

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

The Ice Man, the 5,200-year-old
set of remains found in the Italian Alps in
1991, was a vegetarian, University of
V i r g i n i a professor of environmental science
Stephen A. Macko on October 26 told the
annual conference of the Geological Society
of America. “You are what you eat, and
clues to what people ate thousands of years
ago are in their hair,” Macko explained to the
Toronto gathering. Analyzing the Ice Man’s
hair, Macko found that contrary to the initial
theory that he was a hunter, “There is little
evidence he ate meat––and that was true for
some significant time, at least months if not
years before his death.”

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Monty Roberts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

A coroner’s inquest in Middlesbrough,
County Durham, United Kingdom,
ruled on October 20 that the March 2 death of
Middleton Equestian Centre stable girl
Alyson Carter, 19, was an accident. Contrary
to standard procedure, Carter removed the bridle
of a three-year-old stallion named Ski, then
tried to maneuver him into his stall by hitting
him on the neck, and when he wouldn’t go,
struck him on the rump with the bristle end of a
broken stable brush. Ski kicked her on the left
side of the face with both feet.

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Leakey cedes seat for KWS hot seat

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

NAIROBI––Richard Leakey, resuming
directorship of the Kenya Wildlife Service,
which he previously headed 1988-1994, has
surrendered his seat in Parliament.
“I would prefer that my successor
should be from the handicapped community,”
said Leakey, who lost both of his legs in a 1993
airplane crash. “I would prefer a female candidate,”
he added.
Credited with virtually halting poaching
in the Kenyan national parks and corruption
within the KWS during his previous stint,
Leakey resigned after clashing with politicians
close to Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, and
helped organize the opposition party Safina, but
Moi reappointed him after the KWS ran up an
$8 million deficit last year under David
Western. Within days of Leakey’s reappointment,
KWS received $2 million in U.S. aid.
Besides the deficit, resurgent corruption,
and renewed poaching, Leakey must contend
with tree poaching which according to
Musa Radoli of the Nairobi Nation has
destroyed much of the formerly protected
Kakamega Forest.

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COVERT INFILTRATION AGENCY?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

ANIMAL PEOPLE paranoia
about suspected infiltration, disruption, and
possible use of international animal protection
organizations as cover for Central
Intelligence Agency projects surged on
October 1 when Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch
shared a set of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Division of Law Enforcement conference
notes from a meeting of May 18-20, 1993,
in Reno, Nevada.
Cox obtained the notes through a
recent Freedom of Information Act request.
Twelve attendees, none below the
rank of assistant regional director for law
enforcement, were told that “CIA has
expressed an interest in working with the
Division at the national and international levels.
A CIA section chief,” they were told,
“will speak to the agents at this summer’s
undercover school and SABS.”

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