Animal advocates lead in preventing hot car deaths

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

ATLANTA–The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
reported on July 3, 2002 that at least 78 children died in accidents
associated with parked cars during 2000 and 2001, more than a third
of whom died from heat trauma.
The CDCP data indicates that animal advocates are doing a
much more effective job of communicating the risk of leaving pets
alone in cars than child protection agencies are accomplishing in
reaching parents.
The dangers to either animals or small children are the same:
heat trauma is the most common cause of death or injury, followed by
accidents when a child or animal accidentally puts the car in gear,
accidents in which the child or animal escapes from the vehicle, and
cases of kidnapping or pet theft.

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Down Under bioxenophobia intensifies– Aliens in their native land

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

LEURA, New South Wales, Australia–Twenty-six years after
convening the first meeting of Animal Liberation Australia, 12 years
after venturing to India, Christine Townend has returned home. She
and her retired lawyer husband Jeremy Townend are back more-or-less
to stay–while making frequent visits to India to supervise their
ongoing humane projects.
Yet Townend admits she often feels like an alien. She senses
a meanness of spirit in Australia now that she did not
previously recognize, in her past
careers as activist, teacher, poet, short story writer, and
investigative author, whose 1985 book Pulling The Wool remains the
classic expose of the Down Under sheep trade.
Then, Townend believed, rough Australian treatment of
animals was mainly from ignorance. Behind the Aussie swagger and
bluster, she believed, were good hearts, who could be brought
around to treating all animals with kindness. She has become less
optimistic.

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Women’s Health Initiative warning on estrogen therapy may help horses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

ATLANTA, WASHINGTON D.C., WINNIPEG–The beginning of the
end of keeping pregnant mares standing from October to March of each
year on urine production lines, and auctioning their foals to
slaughter, may have come with a July 9 scientific warning that, on
balance, estrogen supplements made from pregnant mare’s urine do
menopausal women more harm than good.
The Women’s Health Initiative, an unprecedentedly large
scientific investigation of the effects of taking hormonal
supplements, monitored the health of 16,000 women for nine years,
beginning in 1993.

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Maneka Gandhi of India loses animal welfare ministry, keeps lab oversight

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

NEW DELHI–“What I expected has finally happened. I have
lost the MInistry today,” People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi
e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on July 2, nearly four years after
becoming the first Minister for Animal Welfare in the cabinet of any
nation.
Elected as an independent member of the parliament of India,
Mrs. Gandhi asked Prime Minister A.P. Vajpayee to create the animal
welfare ministry for her in 1998 as the price of her joining the
ruling coalition led by the Hindu nationalist Bharitya Janata Party.
Vajpayee complied by making animal welfare part of the mandate of the
Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment, the portfolio Mrs.
Gandhi held from August 1998 until early 2001.

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Human obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

Jayne Paulette, 84, died on June 5 from cardiac arrest in
St. Louis, Missouri, where she was born and lived for most of her
life. “Jayne served for many years as secretary of the Simian
Society of America and was among the first to advocate that Simian
Society members should not acquire individual monkeys as pets, while
still helping primates in private hands,” recalled Primarily
Primates president Wally Swett. “She was a staunch supporter of
Primarily Primates,” Swett added, “for all of its existence, and
served as Primarily Primates vice president for several years
preceding her death.”

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Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

Qi Qi, 25, a male Yangtze River dolphin who was the only
member of his species ever kept successfully in captivity, died from
conditions of age on July 14 at the Wuhan Institute of Hydrology in
China, his home for 22 years. Three attempts to provide a mate for
him failed, when all three females died soon after capture. Fewer
than 100 Yangtze River dolphins are believed to remain in the wild.

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BOOKS: The Ghosts of Tsavo, Ivory Markets, Wild Orphans, and Tarra

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

The Ghosts of Tsavo
by Philip Caputo
Adventure Press (c/o National Geographic Society,
1145 17th St. NW, Washington, DC 20036), 2002. 275 pages,
hardcover. $27.00.

The South & South East Asian Ivory Markets
by Esmond Martin & Daniel Stiles
Save the Elephants (c/o Ambrose Appelbe, 7 New Square, Lincoln’s
Inn, London WC2A 3RA, U.K.)
88 pages, paperback. No listed price.

Wild Orphans
by Gerry Ellis
Welcome Books (588 Broadway, New York, NY 10012), 2002. 136
pages, illust., hardcover. $24.95.

Travels With Tarra
by Carol Buckley
Tilbury House Publishers (2 Mechanic Street #3, Gardiner, ME 04345), 2002.
40 pages, illustrated, hardcover. $16.95.

Save The Elephants ivory trade investigators Esmond Martin
and Daniel Stiles, circus elephant trainer turned sanctuarian Carol
Buckley, and Daphne Sheldrick, whose elephant orphanage in Nairobi
National Park, Kenya, is subject of photojournalist Gerry Ellis’
Wild Orphans, each grasp and have devoted much of their lives to
addressing different parts of the mystique of elephants–and the
dilemma of how best to save them from extinction and abuse.
Ellis recently joined them by forming the Foundation for
Global Biodiversity Education for Children, Globio for short.
Globio assists six animal orphanages on five continents, including
the Sheldrick orphanage.

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“Invasive” means any species that somebody hates

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Australia and New Zealand may be the most
bioxenophobic of nations, with Britain (page 9) not far behind, but
environmental eugenics have a strong following in the U.S. as well.
Attempting to eradicate non-native species from land holdings
is in fact official policy of the U.S. National Park Service, The
Nature Conservancy, and many other government agencies and
non-governmental organizations involved in conservation.
Paradoxically, some government agencies and nonprofit
hunting clubs are still translocating and introducing populations of
the same species that others are attempting to get rid of. Even as
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moves to reclassify nonmigratory
giant Canada geese in the Great Lakes region as an “invasive” pest
species, for instance, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources
translocated 4,100 of the geese from the Detroit area to Chelsea,
Iowa, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources translocated
262 geese from Horicon to Black River Falls.

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Are Chinese “walking catfish” positioned to invade D.C.?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

WASHINGTON D.C., BALTIMORE–The U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service on July 26, 2002 proposed a permanent rule against the
importation and interstate transport of and species of snakeheads,
also known as “walking catfish.”
A scientific panel on the same day advised Maryland
Department of Natural Resources secretary J. Charles Fox to authorize
exterminating a small local snakehead population immediately, even
at cost of killing their whole habitat.

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