Rescuers send lion to canned hunt supplier

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

BUCHAREST, CAPE TOWN–Romania is not
usually regarded as a lion-exporting nation,
South Africa is rarely if ever thought of as a
lion importer, and the animal advocacy groups
Born Free Foundation and Vier Pfoten are unlikely
canned hunt suppliers, but recent lion rescues
have taken some very strange twists.
First, in mid-2004 a young African lion
named Lutu was “found starving to death in a
squalid cage in Romania,” according to Mark
Townsend of the London Observer. Actress Amanda
Holden raised $250,000 to enable the Born Free
Foundation to send Lutu to the Shamwari private
wildlife viewing reserve in South Africa.
Instead, in August 2004, days before Lutu was
to be moved, he disappeared.
“All that is currently undisputed
regarding the fate of Lutu,” Townsend wrote two
months later, “is that his owner broke an
agreement with the Born Free Foundation by
selling Lutu to a mystery buyer for an unknown
sum.”

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Brenda Barnette leaves Tony LaRussa’s ARF

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Brenda Barnette, executive director of Tony LaRussa’s Animal
Rescue Foundation in Walnut Creek, California since mid-2003,
resigned suddenly at the end of January 2006 after the death of her
mother. Previously development director for the San Francisco SPCA
and executive director of Pets In Need in Redwood City, California,
Barnette at Tony LaRussa’s doubled program spending, halved
overhead, and reduced the remaining debt owing for a $16 million new
shelter from $6 million to $3 million. Adoptions during her tenure
increased from 456 before the new shelter opened to more than 1,800
in 2005.

Parrot diversity in greater NYC area

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Monk parakeets are not the only feral parrots in the greater
New York area– just the most abundant.
Mitred conures have been reported at large in New York City
since 1984. A pair of mitred conures in 1988 nested in the eves of a
house in the Rosedale section of Queens, New York. They had four
surviving offspring, and the flock had increased to 30 by 1994,
Marc Morrone of Parrots of the World told Long Island Newsday then.
“People think they are going to freeze to death, somebody
lost them, or that they have gold in their trees,” Morrone said,
advising that the birds should be left alone.
Though still few, the mitred conures now seem to be
permanent residents.
A cockatiel, either feral or an escapee, had the dubious
distinction of being the first New Jersey bird known to be infected
with the mosquito-born West Nile virus–which in North America has
most often hit crows. Caught alive in Middletown, New Jersey, in
July 2000, the cockatiel died later at a Staten Island veterinary
clinic.

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$36 million to Mozambique

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Jay Knott, USAid director for Mozambique, on January 27,
2006 announced a 30-year, $36 million plan to restore Gorongosa
National Park, whose large wildlife was poached to the verge of
extirpation during 11 years of occupation by Renamo rebels,
1981-1992.
The Massachusetts-based Gregory C. Carr Foundation is to
“fund conservation services, create a wildlife sanctuary, and set
up the mechanisms to reintroduce Gorongosa as a tourist destination,”
said the Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique, in Maputo.
Gorongosa Nat-ional Park director of tourism development
Vasco Galante mentioned “two main immediate objectives for the
park–to secure its biodiversity, and to work with the communities
who are living within the park boundaries.”
This resembled the rhetoric that USAid long used in support
of the Zimbabwean CAMPFIRE program [see page 12], which USAid also
introduced to Mozambique, but while anticipating that tourists might
start arriving as early as 2007, neither Knott nor Galante appears
to have mentioned hunting.

$1.2 million for wrongful dismissal

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

HOUSTON–The Texas 1st Court of Appeals in mid-February 2006
upheld a $1.2 million state district court jury award for wrongful
dismissal made to former Houston city veterinarian Sam Levingston,
DVM, 75.
“The case began when Levingston, who worked for the city for
eight years, sued the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care after he
was fired in May 2000,” wrote Alexis Grant of the Houston Chronicle.
“He said he was fired for complaining that employees were not
properly caring for animals. The city said Levingston was fired
because a dog and her puppies died while in his care.”
Houston city attorney’s office division chief Connie Acosta
said the city would seek a rehearing.

Jail time for cruelty in Croatia

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

ZAGREB–A Croatian court for the first time jailed an animal
abuser, Animal Friends Croatia e-mailed on January 27, 2006, after
Judge Jasna Zoretic gave Ostoja Babi five months, one month less
than the maximum, for severely beating his dog in December 2004. A
police officer shot the dog to end her suffering.
“Animal Friends Croatia staged a demonstration in front of
Babic’s house and collected more than 2,400 petition signatures in
less than a week,” demanding the prosecution, the AFC e-mail said.
Animal Friends Croatia is now seeking to increase the
Croatian penalties for extreme animal abuse, and bar persons
convicted of extreme abuse from ever again keeping animals.

Film star gets year in prison for poaching

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

JODHPUR–Indian film star Salman Khan, 40, on February 17,
2006 was sentenced to serve a year in prison and was fined an amount
equal to about $125 U.S. for poaching two chinkara deer on the nights
of September 26-27, 1998.
This was the first of four poaching cases pending against
Khan, who is also fighting vehicular manslaughter charges in Mumbai
for killing a man in a 2002 traffic accident.
Jodhpur Chief Judicial Magistrate B.K. Jain acquitted seven
others accused in the 1998 chinkara poaching case, including
comedian Satish Shah.
Among the stars-of-the-month depicted in the 1999 World
Wildlife Fund-India calendar, Salman Khan often led illegal shooting
parities into the Rajasthan desert during fall 1998, witnesses
testified, but repeated complaints to police and wildlife officials
failed to bring him to justice.

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Lousiana Supreme Court allows local cockfighting ban

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

NEW ORLEANS–Cockfighting is legal in Louisiana because no
state law says it isn’t. However, since no law expressly authorizes
it either, Caddo Parish has the right to ban it, the Louisiana
Supreme Court ruled on January 19.
“The decision overturned a district court order which kept
Sheriff Steve Prator from enforcing the parish animal cruelty
ordinance,” wrote Janet McConnaughey of Associated Press. “The
parish ban was passed in 1987, but Prator said it had never been
enforced until numerous complaints about cockfights at the Piney
Woods Game Club and the Ark-La-Tex Game Club Inc. prompted him to
look into the parish laws.”
The clubs sued, arguing that parrots and canaries are the
only birds covered by the state anti-cruelty law. Ark-La-Tex
secretary Drena Nix told McConnaughey that she expects to sue again,
since her club was given a business license when opened in 1997.

Zoo, conservationists buy out hunting rights

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

PITTSBURGH, VANCOUVER –The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium and
the British Columbia-based Raincoast Conserv-ation Foundation have
each taken sizeable habitats away from trophy hunters with recent
land acquisitions.
The Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium announced on January 9 that it
is spending $2.5 million to buy the 615-acre Glen Savage Ranch from
Jerry and Iris Leydig of Fairhope, Pennsylvania.
“The ranch now offers hunting of whitetail deer, elk, red
stags, wild boar, buffalo and black bear. That will end,” wrote
Bill Zlatos of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Instead, the ranch
will become “an education and conservation center for breeding
elephants and other animals,” Zlatos said.
The Raincoast Conservation Found-ation on December 12, 2005
disclosed that a month earlier it paid $1.35 million Canadian (about
$1 million U.S.) to acquire the guiding and outfitting rights to more
than 20,000 square kilometers of B.C. coastal habitat stretching from
northern Vancouver Island to Princess Royal Island.
“Raincoast, with the six first nations that occupy the
territory, intends to put an immediate end to commercial hunting in
the area,” wrote Nicholas Read of the Vancouver Sun. “No one from
outside B.C. will be permitted to kill animals in the region for
sport. B.C. residents, who operate under different regulations,
may continue to hunt in the area, but members of the first nations
hope to see an end to that early next year.”

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