People & Projects

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Animal rescue information was scarce after December floods and mudslides that killed at least 30,000 people in Venezuela––but Reuters reported from Tanaguarena on December 23 that one Ricardo Rodrieguez had turned to rescuing animals upon finding no people left alive, and had freed about 80 dogs plus miscellaneous cats, parrots, monkeys, and other species from the muck and rubble. “The animals are given food and water he has hoarded in an abandoned house,” said Reuters. “He gives them to relief teams and soldiers leaving the disaster area, “so they can start a new life.”

Attorneys Katharine Meyer and Eric Glitzenstein, who won Endangered Species Act protection for grizzly bears, Canada lynx, and the Queen Charlotte goshawk in cases funded by various national advocacy groups, have formed their own nonprofit advocacy front, the Wildlife Advocacy Project. Named WAP director was D’arcy Kemnitz, formerly coordinator for the Alliance for Animals and midwest regional coordinator for the Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network, sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife.

Aldemaro Romero, Ph.D. , who with fellow ecology professor Ignacio Agudo exposed Venezuelan dolphinkilling in 1993 and subsequently fled Venezuela to evade a death squad, is editor-in-chief of Environ, a new peerreviewed electronic journal published by Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. The journal is online at >>www.macalester.edu/~envirost/<<.

Tim Lane, of Midway, Georgia, is petitioning to ban rattlesnake roundups in Georgia, which with Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, and California is among the five states where they continue. “One of Georgia’s most famous roundups, held since 1966,” reported Associated Press, “is in Claxton, a small town also famous for its fruitcakes.”

Turtle rehabilitator Angelika Byorth, 46, of Lincoln, Nebraska, who emigrated from Germany in 1972, has applied to change her legal name to “Angelika Turtle Lady Byorth” in anticipation of running for the Nebraska legislature as a Democrat next fall. Byorth in 1993 won passage of a state law discouraging turtle exports.

Brewster Bartlett, environmental science teacher at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, since 1972, has been reassigned to teach physics beginning next fall, and is restructuring his seven-year-old Dr. Splatt roadkill study project from analyzing which animals are hit, when, to studying “the physics of roadkill,” or how they get hit, a step toward prevention.

Actor Alex Baldwin, 41, in December asked World Bank president James Wolfensohn to veto a $200 million loan to China which was allegedly made to teach Chinese farmers to recycle chicken manure as fodder for cattle. Wolfensohn ignored Baldwin’s appeal. American and Canadian cattle growers have fattened steers for slaughter for decades on a mixture of three parts chicken manure to one part grain.

Print Friendly

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.