Animal obits

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

Indy, a cattle dog belonging to Evan Levine, 17, of Flint
Township, Michigan, suffocated on February 3, 2008 when caught in
a Conibear trap that was illegally set in the garden of the Temple
Beth El synagogue, despite Evan’s father Pete Levine’s efforts to
force the trap open.

Trucker, 3, a Labrador/pit bull terrier mix kept by Holly
Grant of Anchor-age, Alaska, suffocated in January 2008 in a
Conibear trap set beside Powerline Pass Trail, despite Grant’s
efforts to free him.

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U.S. cockfighting busts reveal Philippine connection

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
HONOLULU–Alleged cockfighter Joseph Marty Toralba, 39, on
February 21, 2008 became one of the first persons indicted under the
May 2007 U.S. federal Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act,
prosecutor Ed Kubo told reporters. The act added felony provisions
to existing federal law against transporting animals for fighting or
animal fighting paraphernalia across state or U.S. national
boundaries.
U.S. Customs agents at the Honolulu airport on February 2,
2008 found 263 cockfighting gaffs in boxes imported from the
Philippines that Toralba said held gas stoves, prosecutor Ed Kubo
alleged. Toralba, of Colfax, Louisiana, keeps 650 gamecocks and
breeding hens, Kuba noted.

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Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
Tom Lantos, 80, died on February 11, 2008. A longtime
animal advocate, Lantos chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee in the
U.S. House of Representatives. For details of his life and deeds,
see the ANIMAL PEOPLE editorial for March 2008, Tom Lantos: a
Wilburforce for our time.

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BOOKS: The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA
by Norm Phelps
Lantern Books (1 Union Square West, Suite 201,
New York, NY 10003), 2007. 367 pages,
paperback. $20.00.

If anyone wrote a history of animal
advocacy before Noah built the ark, it missed
the boat. Histories of animal advocacy have
mostly missed the boat ever since.
Many have been plagued by the usual
vexations of historians: lost sources, missing
pieces of contextual understanding, and partisan
ax-grinding, sometimes by the authors, more
often by surviving sources who take the
opportunity to posture over the achievements and
failures of the deceased.
A complicating factor, not afflicting
most histories, is that the subjects of animal
advocacy not only cannot speak for themselves
here and now, but never could and never did.
Some narratives survive even from slaves and
victims of genocide, but there are no
clandestinely scribbled memoirs to be found from
the Little Brown Dog, the Silver Spring monkeys,
or any Atlantic Canadian harp seals.
The frustrating aspect of The Longest
Struggle is that Norm Phelps covers so much, so
well, that the errors and omissions are
especially glaring–and, one suspects, could
have been corrected with some well-informed
proofreading.
To Phelps’ credit, he acknowledges and
adequately covers the influence on animal
advocacy of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism,
which have been glaringly overlooked in most
previous histories of animal advocacy–at least
in the west. Unfortunately, after summarizing
these sources of ideas, Pythagoreanism, and the
major pro-animal teachings originating out of
Judaism, Phelps leaps 1,200 years, from Jesus
to St. Francis, in a mere two pages, with only
one passing mention of Islam, none of Mohammed,
and none of the Cathari.

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BOOKS: Dog Detectives: Train Your Dog to Find Lost Pets

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

Dog Detectives: Train Your Dog
to Find Lost Pets by Kat Albrecht
Dogwise Publishing (701-B Poplar, Wenatchee, WA 98807), 2008.
245 pages, $19.95.

Former police detective Kat Albrecht initially trained
sniffing dogs to assist in tracking suspects, finding lost people,
and finding cadavers. In 1997 Albrecht discovered that her dogs
could also help to find lost pets. After an occupationally related
disability prematurely ended Albrecht’s police career, she became a
fulltime pet detective. Of her first 99 searches, 68 discovered the
missing animal or the fate of the animal.
Eventually Albrecht founded an organization called Missing
Pet Partnership to promote and teach the use of dogs to find lost
pets, following the “Missing Animal Response” techniques she has
developed. Her initial template was the protocol for training the
Search And Rescue dogs deployed to find missing persons. Albrecht
then adapated the SAR approach to the peculiarities of finding lost
animals, whose behavior varies considerably from human behavior.

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Updates from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, & Bangladesh

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
A female suicide bomber killed 69 people and wounded 140 at
the al-Ghazl pet market in Baghdad on February 1, 2008–the fifth
attack on the market since June 2006. Half an hour later, a second
female suicide bomber killed 29 people and wounded 67 at the New
Baghdad pet market. Four of the al-Ghazl attacks appear to have been
the work of al-Qaida. A November 2007 attack was attributed to
Shiites, who feigned an al-Qaida attack to increase public support
for Shiite militias.

Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar, Afghanistan,
attributed to the Taliban a February 17, 2008 bombing that killed at
least 80 spectators at a dogfight and wounded 90 more. The Taliban
suppressed dogfighting, but it has regained popularity since the
U.S. ended Taliban rule in late 2001.

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South Africa may resume culling elephants by May 1, says minister

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
JOHANNESBURG–South Africa could resume
culling elephants as early as May 1, 2008,
ending a 13-year moratorium, environment
minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk announced on
February 25.
Van Schalkwyk said his department had
“taken steps to ensure that this will be the
option of last resort, acceptable only under
strict conditions.”
Offering a concession to animal
advocates, Van Schalkwyk added that capturing
wild elephants for commercial purposes would be
forbidden effective on May 1.

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BOOKS: Williams/DeMello, Smith/Dauncey, Mouras

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

Animals Matter: the case for animal protection
by Erin E. Williams & Margo DeMello
Promytheus Books (59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 14228), 2007.
420 pages, paperback. $20.00.

Building An Ark: 101 solutions to animal suffering
by Ethan Smith with Guy Dauncey
New Society Publishers (P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, British
Columbia V0R 1X0, Canada),
2007. 270 pages, paperback, $24.95.

I Care About Animals by Belton P. Mouras * A.S. Barnes & Co.,
1977. 254 pages, paperback. Out of print.

Written as introductions to animal advocacy, Animals Matter
and Building An Ark will not contain much news for ANIMAL PEOPLE
readers; but they may be timely, useful, and appropriate gifts for
young friends who care about animals, and would like to become more
involved on their behalf. Either would be suitable for people from
high school age to recent university graduates.

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Could the Giza Zoo become a rescue center?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
CAIRO–Little changed in 117 years, the
Giza Zoo is either the best of zoos or the worst
of zoos, according to many noisy authorities,
and may actually be a bit of both.
The animal collection is distinctly
idiosyncratic and of little value from a
conservation perspective, since most of the
examples of rare species represent inbred genetic
lines.
Yet the zoo does include enough lions,
elephants, hippos, zebras, giraffes, and
monkeys to satisfy most visitors. The animal
care attracts far more complaints than the
variety.

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