Author: Dylan Forest

Animal Obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Donner, 7, German shepherd companion to Humane Society of Central Oregon director Kimball Lewis, 38, was allegedly stolen from Lewis’ yard in Deschutes County, Oregon, near Bend, toward dawn on April 12; was shot in the head; and was then returned to the yard and hanged from a juniper bush. Police believe the killing was either an act of revenge or attempted intimidation of Lewis, who is known as an aggressive cruelty investigator, and has been involved in many controversial cases. The Oregon Humane Society posted a reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s), and the reward fund grew to $15,000 within 24 hours. Lewis was previously director of the Greenhill Humane Society in Eugene. Donner, his constant companion, came to work with him every day.

Cero, 3, a German shepherd police dog, was fatally shot on March 25 in Jefferson, Ohio, while attempting to subdue one Levi Ridenour. Ridenour had fatally ambushed a man named Walter Olsen as Olsen took a dawn walk. Ridenour was still carrying a concealed firearm, unknown to police, when Cero intervened. Ridenour was killed in an ensuing shootout. Three hundred police officers and 70 fellow police dogs from around Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and West Virginia attended a full police funeral for Cero, who also received an unprecedented human-style obituary in the Ashtabula Star Beacon. Cero shared the home of Ashtabula County sheriff’s deputy William Niemi and family. “He was as much a police officer as any of us,” fellow deputy Joseph Niemi told Michael Sangiacomo of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Cero sensed the danger, and died saving my brother’s life. For that, I thank him. He also saved other people’s lives. We don’t know who else might have died if not for his sacrifice.” The North Coast Humane Society of Cleveland and the Public Animal Welfare Society donated bulletproof vests in his memory to the two surviving Astabula County police dogs.

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People

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Vegetarian actor James Cromwell, who played Farmer Hoggett in Babe, told viewers of an Easter-season TV ad sponsored by P E T A that, “Pigs are sensitive, intelligent animals. Please do your part. Stop eating pigs.” PETA is also sponsoring signs on which actresses Sandra Bernhard, Elizabeth Hurley, Judi Dench, and Bea Arthur ask women to “Join us in saying ‘neigh’ to Premarin,” which is based on urine from pregnant mares kept in close confinement. Their foals are mostly sold for slaughter.

Harvey Jacobson, of Austin, Texas, who recently sold Jacobson Manufacturing f o r $270 million, gave $1 million to Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation of Bourne, Texas, sanctuary manager Tim Ajax told ANIMAL PEOPLE. WRR used the money to buy a 187-acre new site near Kendalia––six times larger than the present facility, located near fast-growing San Antonio.

Retired biology professor H a r o l d “Catman” Sims, of Cashiers, North Carolina, was appalled that the Jackson County shelter killed 657 of the 755 cats it had received in 1994 ––so he built his own 55-cat shelter and began arranging adoptions. By March 2000, Sims had placed more than 600 cats, while Jackson County cat intake fell to 469 and cat killing to 202.

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Corrections

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Shelter stats

The article “Shelter killing: how low can you go?”, in the March 2000 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, accurately stated that, “The dog and cat killing ratio in San Francisco shelters, already the lowest of any major U.S. city, fell 24% in 1999, to just 3.9 animals killed per 1,000 human residents.”

Extra zeros were somehow added to the number 1,000 in two later sentences, which should have read, “The San Francisco data significantly lowered the floor ratios below which dog and cat euthanasias per 1,000 human residents have never gone. The table below shows in the first column the 1999 San Francisco ratios of dog and cat euthanasias per 1,000 human residents for each major cause.”

Instead, the number “1,000” came out “100,000.”

The number 1,000 and the ratios based upon it were accurately stated throughout the rest of the article.

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Cerebral stuff from U.K.

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Internet anti-pornography filtering software used by U.S. schools and libraries is reportedly steering “hits” away from , the wildlife diary site of British artist Richard Bell, because his topics include blue tits, a pair of great tits, and “a magnificent cock pheasant.” All are birdspecies names which are at least as well-known worldwide as the other uses of the words, known mainly to Americans.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has discontinued the BBC Vegetarian Good Food magazine, founded in 1992. The magazine reportedly surged in popularity when the 1996 bovine spongiform encephalopathy panic brought a rapid decline of beef consumption, but lost circulation and advertising in recent years when many hasty converts to vegetarianism returned to their

British fight for bird habitat

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

LONDON––English Nature, entrusted with protecting endangered species in England, has hung hundreds of hawk silhouettes over 80 third-floor windows at its headquarters, hoping to deter smaller birds from swooping into the “trees” they see reflected in the glass.

Protected species including firecrests, robins, blue tits, blackbirds, kingfishers, and a pallas’s warbler had all recently been killed there. The pallas’s warbler, native to Siberia, was a species so rare it had never previously been seen by any of the 250-member English Nature staff.

“It’s not the shape that matters,” spokesperson Sue Ellis told Jonathan Theobald and Paul Brown of The Guardian. “It has more to do with breaking up the reflective surface. The building is going to look very odd, but it will give the public some idea of what we are trying to do. One of the messages we’d like to send out is the need for better-designed buildings.”

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WILDLIFE AGENCY UPDATES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

A December 1998 training exercise came back to haunt the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement data base (LEMIS) when Tennessee activist Don Elroy in March 2000 found a data entry indicating that 1,012 orangutans valued at $850,000 had come through Miami on a single day, en route from the fictitious firm “Quong’s Orangutans” to an address which turned out to belong to a real-life leather goods importer in Hershey, Pennsylvania. USFWS Office of Law Enforcement Branch of Technical and Field Support chief Circee Pieters told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the alleged deal was one of 29 included in the exercise, with hidden red flags indicating that they were to be deleted when the exercise was done––and they were, she said, but were later restored to the system when a power failure obliged LEMIS to restore files from a backup tape.

The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters in March 2000 sent to secondary schools across the province a 300-page hunter education manual produced in 1982 by the Ontario Natural Resources Ministry and the U.S.-based National Rifle Association. It includes about 50 pages showing how to load, aim, and fire weapons including handguns. “If the schools don’t like it, they can just send it back,” said OFAH spokesperson M a r k Holmes, denying that it might help students to commit murder.

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Did Animal Fair blow a cool million $$ in just six months?!

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Animal Fair, a glitzy magazine and web site created by celebrity cookbook co-author Wendy Diamond, “has raised about $1 million in capital since its launch last fall,” reports Keith J. Kelly of the New York Post, but is already in trouble due to “an exodus of staffers, board members and top executives,” after a split between Diamond and former boyfriend Chris Innis.

Innis formerly chaired the Animal Fair board, following the September 1999 resignation of Reciprocal Records president Larry Miller, but “has a day job as worldwide corporate planning director for magazine giant Emap Petersen, owners of Hot Rod, Teen and Motor Trend,” said Kelly, adding that Emap Petersen was not involved in funding Animal Fair.

Diamond, who claims to have raised $500,000 for charity through cookbook collaborations with rock stars Michael Jackson and Madonna, touts Animal Fair as “the first lifestyle web site and magazine for pet owners and animal lovers, bringing pets to the forefront of education, fashion, and entertainment, while creating awareness for protecting their welfare.”

Paige Powell, former editor of Interview magazine and companion to the late artist Andy Warhol, had similar ambitions for , an electronic magazine she launched from Portland, Oregon in 1996. It continues on a lower key, with a Pacific Northwest focus.

PETA in the US and abroad

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

NORFOLK, Va.; NEW DELHI–– Sacred cows really have little in common with real cows.

Real cows give milk, are increasingly often factory-farmed in the U.S., frequently wander the roads in India without enough to eat, and in either nation follow most of their own offspring to slaughter as soon as they are economically unproductive––although in India the slaughtering tends to be illegal.

Sacred cows stand between real cows and public perception. They occupy billboards, pushing an image of health and contentment, between depictions of children and celebrities wearing white “mustaches.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk and People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi during spring 2000 each tried to erase the “mustaches,” on behalf of suffering real cows––and were each promptly accused of atrocity.

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GeesePeace vs. USFWS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

GeesePeace president David Feld, of Fairfax County, Virginia, on April 14 accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of sabotaging volunteer efforts to control Canada geese by oiling eggs so that they do not hatch.

The Fish and Wildlife Service appears to prefer controlling geese by sport hunting or by USDA Wildlife Services roundups of geese for donation to soup kitchens.

“They have required that permit applications be processed on pink paper, declared corn oil––the recommended oil for egg treatment–– to be a pesticide which can only be used by a certified applicator, and required nest sites to be identified 60 days in advance, which they know is impossible,” Feld told Washington Post staff writer William Branigan.

Feld said the Fish and Wildlife Service also barred volunteers from oiling eggs on private property, even with landowner permission.

Added Doris Day Animal League executive director and GeesePeace member Holly Hazard, “This is a problem that the Fish and Wildlife Service itself created. Egg-oiling is something they should lead the charge on. They are not even in the army.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service introduced nonmigratory Canada geese to most of the sites where they are now problematic, beginning more than 40 years ago.

Introductions continue. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources, for instance, recently confirmed that it is trying to double the Iowa population of Canada geese, despite public complaints.

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