Nepalese royals misused National Trust for Nature Conservation, says audit report

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:

 

KATHMANDU–A three-member audit committee on March 26, 2008
confirmed years of rumors that the Nepalese royal family had
extensively misused the King Mahendra National Trust for Nature
Conservation.
Examining financial records from 2000-2006, the audit
committee reported that, “Millions [in Nepalese rupees] were spent on
travels abroad and lavish parties,” summarized the Nepal Horizons
News Service, in an account also internationally distributed
verbatim by the Indo-Asian News Service.

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Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
Charlton Heston, 84, died at home in Beverly Hills,
California, on April 6, 2008. Heston had disclosed in 2002 that he
had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. An avid hunter in
boyhood, Heston from 1941 until late in life was chiefly an actor,
except during service in the Army Air Force, 1943-1947. Except for
several late-career cameo appearances, Heston played mostly starring
roles in 126 feature films made between 1941 and 2001, including Ben
Hur, The Ten Commandments, El Cid, Planet of the Apes,
Earthquake, and A Touch of Evil. Heston became involved in civil
rights activism in the 1950s, and later served as president of the
Screen Actors Guild and chair of the American Film Institute, but
had his biggest influence on public affairs as president of the
National Rifle Association, 1998-2003. Heston personally led the
aggressive NRA campaign against Democratic U.S. presidential
candidate Al Gore in 2000, after Gore expressed support for gun
control. Wrote Calvin Woodward of Associated Press, “As he had once
lifted Moses’ staff in The Ten Commandments, Heston held a musket
above his head and dared Gore from afar to pry it ‘from my cold dead
hands.’ Gore lost blue-collar votes to Bush in an election so close
any setback was perilous. The key finding: About half of voters
were from gun-owning households, and they voted for George W. Bush,
61% to 36%. Voters from households without guns backed Gore 58-39.
Ever since, Democrats in presidential and many Congress-ional and
governors’ races have scrambled to establish their bona fides as
hunters, if they can, or as admirers of firearms or the Second
Amendment if they can’t.”

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Books on global warming

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:

The Hot Topic:
What We Can Do About Global Warming
by Gabrielle Walker
& Sir David King
Harcourt (6277 Sea Harbor Drive,
Orlando, FL 32887-6777), 2008.
256 pages, paperback. $13.00.

Six degrees:
Our Future On A Hotter Planet
by Mark Lynas
National Geographic Books
National Geographic Society (1145 17th St. NW, Washington, DC 20036), 20
08.
335 pages, hardcover. $26.00.

“Agriculture accounts for about 13% of
global greenhouse gas emissions, approximately
the same amount as transport,” Gabrielle Walker
and Sir David King acknowledge on page 105 of The
Hot Topic, in their first and only more than
fleeting mention of the contribution of animal
husbandry to global warming.

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Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
Windchill, 9 months, a mix of Appaloosa and Tennessee
Walking Horse, died on February 29, 2008, 20 days after he was
found suffering from starvation, dehydration, and hypothermia in
the barn of Pam Javenkoski, of South Range, Minnesota. He was
discovered by Theresa Farmer of South Range, who had boarded him
with Javenkoski since September 1997 as part of a deal by which
Javenkoski was to acquire another horse from Farmer. Rated only a 1%
chance of survival by the first veterinarian who examined him after
his rescue, Windchill was taken to Kathi Davis and Jeff Tucker of
Raindance Farms. Tucker told Duluth News Tribune reporter Will
Ashenmacher that a blog about Windchill’s effort to survive had drawn
2.9 million hits in two weeks, plus 40,000 more after his death.
Javenkoski, 47, and Shane Edward Javenkoski, 33, identified as
her ex-husband, on March 10 pleaded not guilty to failing to feed a
confined animal. Equine Allies, a Duluth group that collected
donations for Windchill, but split with Davis and Tucker over the
treatment protocol, told Aschenmacher that the money would be
returned to the donors.

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Columbia River sea lion removals are delayed by HSUS appeal

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:

PORTLAND, Oregon– The National Marine Fisheries Service and
the Oregon and Washington state governments on April 1, 2008 agreed
to postpone killing or capturing California sea lions downstream from
the Bonne-ville Dam on the Columbia River, pending a U.S. District
Court ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction against the
proposed removals, filed on March 28 by the Humane Society of the
U.S.
“State officials have put out the message to zoos, aquariums
and theme parks that they need homes for sea lions,” reported
Michael Milstein of the Oregonian.

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Lab care techs’ stress studied

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
CARDIFF–Lab animal care technicians feel job stresses
similar to those of shelter workers, Cardiff University animal
facilities director Keith Davies recently told fellow members of the
United Kingdom Institute of Animal Technology.
Davies interviewed six focus groups of lab techs in 2007,
including a total of 31 techs, to gather perspectives and data,
wrote Andy Coghlan in the March 2008 edition of New Scientist.
Previous studies have been done of the psychology of
researchers, but Davies’ study may have been the first to examine
issues such as sorrow and guilt among lab animal care workers.

Snowmobiles hit dogs in All Alaska Sweepstakes and Iditarod

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
NOME–A hit-and-run snowmobiler at midnight on March 28,
2008 ended Lance Mackey’s effort to become the first winner of the
Triple Crown of Alaskan sled dog racing, severely injuring his
already ailing stud dog Zorro, 9, injuring several other dogs less
seriously, and wrecking his $3,000 sled.
Mackey, 38, was in third place, 20 miles from finishing
the 408-mile All Alaska Sweepstakes, and had just passed a
checkpoint at the town of Safety, he told Associated Press, when
two snowmobiles overtook him. One of them plowed into his sled and
team. “Three or four dogs were sucked underneath and Zorro,” who
was being carried, “was trapped in the sled bag,” Mackey recounted.
Mackey had Zorro flown first to Anchorage and then to Seattle
for more advanced care than is available in Nome, and took the
opportunity to plead for better traffic control along sled racing
routes. “I almost got hit on the way into Nome during Iditarod and
then was almost hit half an hour later,” Mackey said.

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U.S. patent ruling just before Easter favors rabbits

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
JENKINTOWN, Pa.– The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office just
before Easter 2008 rejected a patent claim by a Japanese-owned
company called Biochemical and Pharmacological Laboratories, Inc.
which had attempted to patent rabbits whose eyes had been
deliberately damaged.
The claim was challenged by the American Anti-Vivisection
Society, the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation, and
the PatentWatch project of the International Center for Technology
Assessment.

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Four sealers drown at start of 2008 Atlantic Canada hunt

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
ILES-DE-LA-MADELEINE, Quebec; St. Pierre, Miquelon–
Treacherous ice conditions for the second consecutive year inhibited
the opening of the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt.
Sixteen vessels carrying approximately 100 sealers left
Iles-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec, on March 28, heading toward a large
seal rookery in the Cabot Strait. One of the smaller boats,
L’Acadien II, with six men aboard, lost rudder control, possibly
from the rudder striking ice, and was taken in tow by the Canadian
Coast Guard icebreaker Sir William Alexander.
L’Acadien II captain Bruno Bourque and crew members Gilles
Leblanc and Marc-Andre Deraspe were killed and crew member Carl
Aucoin was missing and presumed dead after the boat hit a truck-sized
chunk of ice early on March 29, and flipped over while still under
tow. The sealing vessel Madelinot War Lord, following the tow,
rescued sealers Claude Deraspe and captain Bourque’s son,
Bruno-Pierre Bourque.

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