Dog & cat fur ban

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – U . S .
President Bill Clinton in early November
signed into law an omnibus trade bill including
the key parts of bills introduced in late
1999 by Senator William Roth (RDelaware)
and Representative Jerry Kleczka
(D-Wisconsin) which would ban the import
of either dog or cat fur. Importers of items
made from dog or cat fur may now be fined
up to $10,000 per violation. The new law
also requires the U.S. Customs Service to
certify laboratories which are capable of distinguishing
dog and cat fur from other kinds

Apartheid and three caracal kittens

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

by Chris Mercer & Beverly Pervan

Our Kalahari Raptor Centre is the only registered wildlife rehabilitation centre in the Northern Cape province of South Africa–– almost a third of the country.

On October 14, 2000, we advised the department of Nature Conservation of the Northern Cape Province in Kimberley that:

“Further to our previous application for permits to provide sanctuary to predators, we were called by a farmer who stated that he had captured three young caracals after trap – ping and killing their mother. I drove more than a thousand kilometres round-trip to fetch them. One of the three had a foreleg broken so severely as to require amputation.

Read more

LETTERS [Dec 2000]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

JoJo

I have just received a letter from Club Med informing me that they have decided to “assume a leadership role and eliminate waterskiing at Club Med Turkoise at the end of the current season (October 31, 2000). This is a true victory for JoJo, the friendly dolphin in the Turks and Caicos islands, who has been hurt at least 40 times by water skiers since 1992, as I described in my March 1992 letter to A N I M A L PEOPLE seeking help for him.

I want to thank each and every one of you who took an interest in this situation. The volume of letters you sent to Club Med and the Governor regarding JoJo was a great factor in determining the outcome of this campaign.

Our persistence with Club Med brought an assessment of JoJo and his environment by four highly qualified marine scientists. They suggested that the Government of the Turks and Caicos should ban water skiing from all of the coastal areas that JoJo frequents.

Read more

Editorial: Keeping P.T. Barnum at bay

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

Starting on page 13 is our 11th annual “Who gets the money?” feature, outlining in
statistical summary form where the lion’s share, the dog’s share, and much of the rest of the
money donated to animal protection goes, how it gets used, and who gets paid what amount
for making the major spending decisions.
The numbers help in comparing charities, but are not the whole story.
Consider a seemingly simple matter: trying to compare the needs of nine of the bestknown
care-for-life sanctuaries in the U.S. by measuring their budgets against the numbers of
animals they keep.
Best Friends has the most animals, at about 1,800, and may have the most dogs and
cats. But Best Friends does adoptions. DELTA Rescue, with about 1,400 animals, almost
certainly has more hard-case dogs and cats in lifetime care.
Both Best Friends and DELTA Rescue also have farm animals, but far fewer than
Farm Sanctuary, which in recent years has usually had about 1,000, divided among facilities
in New York and California.

Read more

Chimp Retirement Act runs afoul of NIH monkey-business

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Alleged
monkey-business involving the Florida vote
count in the November 7 U.S. presidential
election may have thwarted monkey-business
by amendment in the House of
Representatives to the Chimpanzee Health
Improvement, Maintenance and Protection
Act of 2000.
Called the “Chimp Retirement Act”
for short, the amended bill cleared the House
on October 24, but was deemed unlikely to
get Senate attention when it didn’t reach the
floor before the election recess.

Read more

Dog meat diplomacy wins Nobel

OSLO, Norway––An August 31
dog meat dinner for South Korean diplomats
hosted in the North Korean capital city of
Pyongyang by North Korean dictator Kim
Jong-il helped win the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
for South Korean president Kim Dae Jung.
Kim Dae Jung, 74, won the
$908,300 Nobel Peace Prize for taking the initiative
since 1997 in opening diplomatic relations
with North Korea. Kim Jong-il won a rare
honorable mention from Nobel Committee
chair Gunnar Berge for responding positively.
On June 13, 2000, following three
years of cautious overtures, Kim Dae Jung
flew to Pyongyang to negotiate directly with
Kim Jong-il.
The two leaders traded pairs of hunting
dogs, of breeds unique to their respective
sides of the boundary between the Koreas.

Read more

Rats, mice, birds, Bush and Gore

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Rats, mice, and birds were
not a U.S. federal election issue, yet the fate of millions may
hang on the outcome of the lawsuits and ballot recounts underway
in Florida.
If U.S. Vice President Albert Gore gains the lead in
electoral votes to go with the popular vote lead that he won on
November 7, Gore will succeed President Bill Clinton in January.
Senator Joseph Lieberman would become Vice President.
Gore led the White House defense of the Endangered
Species Act after wise-use Republicans gained majorities in both
the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1994.
Lieberman, who as Vice President would break tie
votes in the Senate, could be depended upon to vigorously protect
both the ESA and the Animal Welfare Act. According to the legislative
scorecards kept by the Fund for Animals, Friends of
Animals, and Humane Society of the U.S., Lieberman in two
terms as U.S. Senator from Connecticut had one of the best
records on animal issues of any member of Congress.

Read more

HUMAN OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

 

David Brower, 88, died on July 5
at his lifelong home in Berkeley, California.
Brower was a boyhood friend of longtime
San Francisco Zoo benefactor Carroll SooHoo.
After graduating from Berkeley High
School together in 1928 they remained in
touch until Soo-Hoo died in 1998. Joining
the Sierra Club in 1933, Brower was elected
to the board in 1941, and was hired as the
organization’s first executive director in
1952. By the time he resigned in 1969, he
had boosted the membership from 2,000 to
77,000, but was best known for activism in
the spirit of founder John Muir, 1838-1914.

Read more

ANIMAL OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

 

Sakhi, a 13-month-old tigress, was
tranquilized and skinned as the alleged climax
of a 108-day series of tantric rituals on the
night of October 5 at the Nehru Zoological
Park in Hyderabad, India. The crime coincided
with the last day of the annual festival of
Kali, the Hindu blood-goddess. Most Hindus
eschew animal sacrifice, but blood sacrifice is
central to Kali-worship. Indian prime minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee interrupted his recovery
from knee surgery to demand an investigation,
and contributed to a reward fund for apprehension
of the killers, who remained at large.

Read more

1 2