Who invented no-kill?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Before there could be a successful no-kill movement, the
techniques of combating pet overpopulation without high-volume
killing had to be perfected.
The basic components were high-volume, low-cost dog and cat
sterilization; neuter/return, to help keep dogs and cats at large
from breeding back up to the carrying capacity of their habitat as
their numbers decline; and high-volume adoption, to find homes for
the animals who still come to shelters or can be removed from feral
colonies.
The standard dog and cat sterilization surgeries were
approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association in 1923, but
did not become affordable for most pet-keepers until Friends of
Animals in 1957 opened the first low-cost sterilization clinic in the
U.S., at Neptune, New Jersey.
Watching from across the Hudson River, the American SPCA in
1968 began sterilizing animals before adoption. Mercy Crusade, of
Los Angeles, in 1973 opened a similar clinic that a year later would
host the first city-subsidized sterilization program in the U.S.
Working for that clinic, Marvin Mackie, DVM, developed
high-volume sterilization.

Tactics

BOOKS: Intelligence in Nature

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge by Jeremy Narby
Tarcher/Penguin (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2005. 256
pages, hardback. $35.00.

Having been enthralled by Jeremy Narby’s The Cosmic Serpent
(1998), I was pleased when Narby’s second book Intelligence in
Nature came in the mail. It was not a disappointment.
Intelligence in Nature is more-or-less a sequel to The Cosmic
Serpent, continuing to illustrate the parallels between “primitive”
shamanic cultures and modern biology that Narby discovered in his
study of botany. But whereas The Cosmic Serpent dealt mainly with
molecular biology, particularly the structure of DNA, Intelligence
in Nature covers a much broader spectrum, dealing not only with
genetics but also with animal behavior and adaptation.
The ability of individuals to adapt to their environment,
found in even the most primitive of life-forms, is described by the
Japanese term Chi-Sei, meaning “to know.” Throughout the book Narby
uses Chi-Sei to describe the apparent intelligence of everything from
birds to slime molds.

Obituaries

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Beatrice “Betty” Eilers, 92, died recently in Mesa,
Arizona. Eilers was for most of her life associated with Animals’
Crusaders, a global advocacy network founded in Spokane in 1950 by
L. Constance M. Barton, with affiliates in New Zealand, Scotland,
and Canada. The network concept failed due to the cost and
difficulty of maintaining communications with pre-Internet
technology, but at least two regional groups descended from Animals’
Crusaders still exist. “Legally blind and handicapped, B.B. Eilers
was still active on behalf of animals,” recalled Lynn Fox, who
transcribed Eilers’ correspondence, including letters published in
several recent editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Elizabeth Blitch, 55, attorney and ex-Catholic school
teacher, recalled by the New Orleans Times-Picayune as “an avid
fundraiser for the Humane Society of Louisiana,” died on July 28,
2005 in New Orleans.

Iris Kay Call, 42, of Pewee Valley, Kentucky, was killed
in an August 1, 2005 housefire after re-entering her blazing home to
find her cat. The cat was also killed.

Obituaries

Animal obituaries

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Ginny, 17, a schnauzer/husky mix adopted in 1990 by former
steamfitter Philip Gonzalez, of Long Beach, New York, died on
August 25. Ginny led Gonzalez to the first of more than 800 cats
that she insisted he should rescue on their third day together. Her
determination to find and assist cats in distress compelled Gonzalez
to become a fulltime cat rescuer/caretaker, and brought him out of a
prolonged depression that followed a workplace accident. Gonzalez
and Leonore Fleischer chronicled Ginny’s exploits in a 1995
best-seller, The Dog Who Rescues Cats, and produced a sequel, The
Blessing of the Animals, in 1996. Gonzalez, 55, still feeds 320
feral cats in 19 colonies that Ginny found, and keeps 17 of her
rescues at home, along with two other dogs.

Meimei, 36, believed to have been the oldest living panda
bear, died on July 12 at the Guilin City Zoo in southern China.
Coco, 9, a harbor seal rescued from a Maine Beach in 1996,
kept at the Woods Hole Science Aquarium on Cape Cod since 1998, died
on July 30 after an inner ear infection spread to her brain.

Obituaries

No justice for horses in court or Congress

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., FORT WORTH, RENO–U.S. District Judge
Terry Means on August 25 ruled that the Beltex and Dallas Crown horse
slaughterhouses in Fort Worth and Kaufman may continue killing horses
despite a 1949 Texas law against selling horsemeat for human
consumption. Beltex and Dallas Crown are the two oldest and largest
horse slaughterhouses in the U.S.
Means found that federal law permitting horse slaughter supersedes
the state law, which has apparently never been enforced.
While the verdict was pending, the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice sold 53 horses to Dallas Crown, despite a 2002
opinion by former state attorney general John Cornyn that such
transactions would be illegal.
Cornyn, now a Republican U.S. Senator, has not been visibly
involved in Congressional efforts to save wild horses from slaughter.
Under an amendment to the 1971 Wild and Free Ranging Horse
and Burro Protection Act slipped through Congress as a last-minute
rider to the November 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act, the
Bureau of Land Management is now mandated to sell “without
limitation” any “excess” horse or burro who is more than 10 years of
age, or who has been offered for adoption three times without a
taker. “Excess” means any wild horse or burro who has been removed
from the range. The Bureau of Land Management has taken about 10,000
horses and burros from the range in nine western states in each of
the past three years, and plans to take 10,000 this year in 57
roundups.

What has no-kill accomplished?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

ANAHEIM–Another way to describe the “no-kill movement” might
be “the democratization of animal sheltering.”
The no-kill concept had already won the battle for public
opinion decades before no-kill sheltering existed on any significant
scale. Dogcatchers were a familiar film villain even before animated
cartoons and “talking pictures” were invented.
Fritz Frelang and rival Walt Disney merely revitalized the
stereotype in Dog-Pounded (1954), starring Sylvester the Cat, and
Lady & The Tramp (1955). More than half a century later,
bird-catching feral cats are still at imminent risk of landing in a
pound full of ferocious dogs, licensing is still advanced from many
directions as essential to end shelter killing, the public still
does not like dogcatchers, and animal control officers still don’t
like their image.
Winning over animal shelter management is a battle still
underway–but increasingly irrelevant to tens of thousands of
volunteer rescuers, donors, and upstart shelter founders, who have
taken the work of saving animals into their own hands.
After decades of railing at “irresponsible” pet-keepers,
animal control agencies and humane societies are facing activists who
are claiming responsible roles, whether or not they can fulfill them.

Flu threat spreads opposition to cockfighting, postal bird shipment

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

RALEIGH, MADISON, HONG KONG, HANOI–With the H5N1 strain
of avian influenza, potentially deadly to humans, striking
throughout Asia and threatening to hit Europe, North Carolina
Department of Agriculture food and drug safety administrator Joe
Reardon on August 18, 2005 warned a gathering of state and federal
officials that U.S. Postal Service regulations governing transport of
live birds “are inadequate and present great potential for
contamination of the poultry industry.”
Reardon estimated that each day between 1,000 and 3,000 game
birds, fighting cocks, and other fowl enter North Carolina via the
Postal Service. More than 70%, Reardon said, have not undergone
health inspection. The uninspected birds are often in proximity to
birds in transit to and from the 4,500 North Carolina poultry farms.
Birds involved in human food production are inspected, but may then
be exposed to disease before reaching their destination.
North Carolina agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler and
U.S. Representative Walter Jones (R-Farmville) pledged to pursue
legislation which would require all birds sent by mail to have a
health certificate.

Disasters driven by global warming hit animals from India to Alaska

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

DELHI, AHMEDABAD–Six months to the day
after the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated the
Indian east coast, monsoon flash floods on July
26, 2005 roared through Mumbai, western
Maharashtra state, and parts of Karnataka state.
Surging water, mud slides, broken power
lines, and collapsing houses killed more than
1,000 people and countless animals in Mumbai and
surrounding villages.
As after of the December 26, 2004
tsunami and the January 2001 Gujarat earthquake,
Wildlife SOS of Delhi and the Animal Help
Foundation of Ahmedabad were among the first
responders. They worked their way toward Mumbai
while People for Animals/ Mumbai pushed out to
meet them.
“We distributed fodder to poor villagers
to feed their cattle, wherever required, and
fed biscuits to all the stray dogs we found. We
also distributed free medicine to needy farmers,”
PFA/Mumbai managing trustee Dharmesh Solanki
reported.

What can we here do to prevent cruelty there?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

July 28, 2005–our July/August press date–was only two
minutes old when the U.S. House of Representatives ratified the
Central American Free Trade Agreement, a pact which may in time have
an enormous influence on animal welfare.
Explained Washington Post staff writers Paul Blustein and
Mike Allen, “The House vote was effectively the last hurdle–and by
far the steepest–facing CAFTA, which will tear down barriers to
trade and investment between the United States, Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and
Nicaragua.”
Like the General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs, brokered by
the United Nations through the World Trade Organization, and like
many other regional treaties arranged under GATT guidelines, CAFTA
expedites globalization of markets.
Such agreements also strongly encourage nations to adopt
uniform standards and policies on human rights, environmental
protection, and occupational health and safety.
International free trade agreements tend to be bitterly
opposed at introduction by trade unionists, environmentalists, and
some animal advocates, who often rightly fear that hard-won gains
made nation by nation will be lost.

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