ANIMAL OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Bart the Bear, 23, the 9’6”, 1,500-pound ursine star of more than a dozen Hollywood films, was euthanized on May 10 after a two-year bout with cancer. Bart appeared in Windwalker, The Edge, White Fang, The Bear, The Great Outdoors, and Legends of the Fall, performing especially well with Anthony Hopkins, said to trainers Lynne and Richard Seus, who bought him from a zoo as a five-pound cub in 1978.

Michael, 27, male companion of Koko the signing gorilla at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California, died on April 19 from a sudden heart attack. Like Koko, Michael learned and used American Sign Language, but was better known for his painting. Born in the Cameroun, he was acquired by language researcher Francine Patterson in 1976 as a potential mate for Koko––but though they became close friends, Koko rejected him as a suitor.

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Prakash Shah–– martyr for cattle

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

RAJPUR, Gujarat, India– – Prakash Amrutlal Shah, 28, an anti-cattle slaughter activist for eight years, was fatally bludgeoned on April 2, allegedly by three butchers who ambushed Shah with staves as he walked from his home in Rajpur, Gujarat, to the p i n j a r a p o l e (cow shelter) in nearby Disa. Found by a passer-by, Shah reportedly identified his attackers to local police, who arrested two suspects but told the newspaper G u j a r a t Samachar that they had lost Shah’s statement.

”Prakash Shah died on April 10 at Shrye Hospital in Ahmendabad,” said Gujarat Samachar. “Thousands of people attended his cremation,” including representatives of the Viniyog Parivar Trust. The Trust sponsors many individuals who like Shah fight illegal cattle slaughter and export with little more than copies of the Indian Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and hope for reincarnation.

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BOOKS: Rabbit Handbook

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Rabbit Handbook:
A Family Guide to Buying,
Keeping & Breeding Rabbits
by David Taylor, BVMS, FRCVS, FVS
Sterling Publishing Co., Ltd.
(387 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10016), 2000.
96 pages (all with color photos), paperback; $12.95

Every other guide to rabbit-rearing that I have ever seen, including several bad examples kept on file here, emphasizes the fecundity of rabbits, their limited space needs, and their inexpensive diet as an opportunity to get rich quick–– or at least win a 4-H ribbon––by raising them for meat.

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Lab to be charged

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

CAPE TOWN, S.A.––S o u t h African National SPCA senior inspector Neil Fraser told reporters in mid-May that cruelty charges would be brought against Centre in Africa of Primatological Experimentation director Marc BaillyMaistre for allowing 30 baboons and vervets to starve at his facility, described by Fiona Macleod of the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian as having “shadowy links with the military.” Seven starving wild-caught baboons were euthanized, a decade after 122 baboons were euthanized at CAPE for similar reasons by National Council of SPCAs staff.

According to Macleod, CAPE operates from government land and “was allegedly set up as a front for the former South African Defence Force. CAPE has also been linked,” she wrote, “to the notorious Roodeplates Research Laboratory near Pretoria, where the SADF conducted biological and chemical experiments.”

Alex Pacheco forms Humane America

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

LOS ANGELES––Alex Pacheco, who with Ingrid Newkirk cofounded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1981, left PETA at the end of 1999 to head the newly formed Humane America Foundation, billed–– in a distinct break from PETA policy––as focusing on dogs and cats, intending to help make the U.S. a no-kill nation. PETA has always been highly critical of no-kill sheltering.

Other key figures with Humane America include executive director David Meyer, who was executive director at Last Chance for Animals, 1995-1998, and research director Doug Mckee, of Virginia. Various celebrities have also lent their names to it.

The first Humane America project was a survey of 517 Los Angeles residents about pets and attitudes toward petkeeping. It mostly confirmed the findings of surveys of San Jose and San Diego residents done in 1995 and 1996 by Karen Johnson of the National Pet Alliance. L.A. residents kept fewer cats than expected, however, and opposite to Johnson’s findings had fixed 80% of their dogs but only 67% of their cats.

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HUMANE LAW ENFORCEMENT

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer during the first week of April issued a legal opinion that pigeon shoots are illegal under existing California anti-cruelty legislation, because “conducting a pigeon shoot subjects the pigeons to needless suffering, inflicts unnecessary cruelty upon the birds, abuses the pigeons, and takes place after the contest organizers have failed to provide the birds with proper food and drink.” Lockyer wrote in response to a request from state assembly member Sheila James Kuehl, who questioned the legality of a four-day pigeon shoot held in 1998 in Sierra county. “Pigeon shoots are now held only in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Texas,” said Fund for Animals national director Heidi Prescott, “All three have pending litigation to halt pigeon shoots under state anti-cruelty laws.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the Pennsylvania anti-cruelty law is applicable to pigeon shoots, bringing the end of the notorious Labor Day shoot at H e g i n s, which had been held since 1935. Existing laws were first used successfully to stop pigeon shoots in 1992, when S H A R K founder S t e v e Hindi stopped them in Illinois.

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Pet big cat buyers buy trouble the world over

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

HOUSTON, CALCUTTA–– The growing proliferation of poorly housed, understimulated, and often underfed big cats in private hands was spotlighted yet again at a child’s expense on March 15 in the Channelview district of Houston.

Jayton Tidwell, 4, wandered outdoors unseen during a family reunion and apparently tried to pet his uncle Larry Tidwell’s pet tiger. The tiger bit young Tidwell’s arm off at the elbow. Neurosurgeon Mark Henry reattached the arm and waived his fees, but the medical costs are still expected to exceed $500,000.

The tiger remained on the premises, haphazardly “quarantined” under a blue plastic tarpaulin.

The incident was heavily publicized for several days, but went unmentioned in national coverage of a March 29 press conference in Washington D.C. called by actresses Bo Derek, Melanie Griffith, and Tippi Hedren to promote “The Shambala Wild Animal Protection Act of 2000.”

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BOOKS: The Horse’s Choice

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

The Horse’s Choice
by Staci Layne Wilson
Running Free Press (P.O. Box 6778, Eastview,
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 97034), 1999. 79 pages,
paperback. $17.95, plus $3.50 postage/handling.

 

There is much debate among animal rights activists as to whether horseback riding is justifiable. In the long run, in my view, it is probably not. Yet there are nearly seven million domesticated horses in the U.S., and most will be trained for riding and driving. Leaving them alone in pastures is not realistic and could subject them, paradoxically, to abusive boredom.

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HUMAN OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Ryszard Karczewski, DVM, 43, of Warsaw, Poland, was mauled on March 13 while trying to tranquilize one of three Bengal tigers who escaped from the Korona Circus. Already fatally injured, he was then accidentally shot in the chest by police who were trying to save him. The tiger, at large for about two hours, was also killed. The other two tigers were recaptured earlier. The R z e c z p o s p o l i t a daily newspaper two days later received an e-mail from a previously unknown group calling itself the Polish League for Protection of Animals, which claimed it had released the tigers and added that it would release animals from circuses or zoos once a week. The same perpetrators are believed to be responsible for releasing four polar bears from the Nuremburg Zoo in Germany on March 30. All four bears were shot dead after tranquilization attempts failed.

Naren Saikia, a guard and tiger census worker at Kaziranga National Park, near Guwahati, India, was fatally gored by a mother rhino on March 16, who apparently mistook him for a threat to her calf.

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