Animal Control & Rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Animal shelters, public or private, must hold
animals at least five days including a Saturday before
releasing them to Class B dealers or researchers, under an
amendment to Animal Welfare Act enforcement regulations
that took effect August 23. Written certification that the
holding period has been met must accompany each animal.
The Bronx SPCA, recently incorporated by
American SPCA officers Stephen Zawistowski, Eugene
Underwood, and Harold Finkelstein, exists “to make sure
we would have consistent law enforcement authority” with-
in the whole of New York City, Zawistowski told ANI-
MAL PEOPLE. The ASPCA was incorporated before the
Bronx was, and therefore the charter granted to the ASPCA
by the state of New York does not specifically authorize it
as the sole animal protection law enforcement agency for
the Bronx, as it does for the other New York City boroughs.

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Hot water in the North Atlantic

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Canada––Paul
Watson’s homecoming to Atlantic Canada in July and early
August may have been the most bizarre event yet of his long
career in protest. Raised in a New Brunswick fishing vil-
lage, Watson has been reviled throughout the four Maritime
provinces since 1977, when as a Greenpeace representative
he sprayed green paint on baby harp seals to protect them
from hunters. Subsequent anti-sealing expeditions after
Watson founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in
1980 have confirmed his bad reputation among those who
live by what they kill in the sea––but many Atlantic
Canadians are applauding Watson now for his July 28 attack
on a Cuban trawler, the Rio Las Casas.

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MIDWEST FLOOD RESCUE EFFORT: Forty days, forty nights, and still the rain kept pouring

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

MISSISSIPPI BASIN––Two
months of record rainfall that brought
record flooding in nine midwestern states
probably displaced more animals than
any high waters in North America since
the glaciers melted. Of the 791 counties
in the nine states, 421 were declared fed-
eral disaster areas. Clean-up and repairs
are expected to cost more than $13 bil-
lion. But animal rescuers didn’t dwell on
the immensity of the big picture. They
just pitched in however they could, wher-
ever they were, with whatever they could
scrounge by way of equipment and sup-
plies.

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Rabies victim wasn’t bitten; GIRL NEVER KNEW WHAT HIT HER––DEATH DEMONSTRATES RISK TO RESCUERS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

SARATOGA SPRINGS, New York, and
MAMMOTH LAKES, California––The July 14 death of
an 11-year-old girl from rabies and a series of human deaths
from a rodent-borne hantavirus send a heads-up message to
animal rescuers and health care providers everywhere:
zoonosis, or animal diseases passed to people, can hit any-
one at any time. And the symptoms can go unrecognized.
Kelly Aherndt, an athletic would-be veterinarian,
kept a horse and a coop of pigeons; shared two cats, a col-
lie, and a variety of ducks and chickens with her brother
and two sisters; collected nature magazines; and spent
much of her time in the woods near her home in
Bloomingburg, New York, collecting fossils. Her parents
had warned her repeatedly to avoid raccoons and other
potentially rabid wildlife.

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BOOKS: Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Sexual Strategies: How Females
Choose Their Mates, by Mary Batten,
G.P. Putnam Sons (200 Madison Ave., New York, NY
10016), 1992, 248 pages, hardcover $21.95 US, $28.95
CN (ISBN 0-87477-705-4)
From the perspective of evolutionary biology,
everything in nature revolves around the struggle of genes
to survive and reproduce. During her years of researching
and writing nature documentaries, Mary Batten, presently
editor of The Calypso Log, noticed that while the scientific
establishment accepted most aspects of evolutionary biolo-
gy, it tended to ignore the often-documented role of female
choice in the evolution of species and societies.

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Marine Mammals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

The U.S. Navy on May 27 flew five dolphins
from a base on San Diego Bay to the Disney World Epcot
Center “Living Seas” pavillion in Orlando, Florida––with-
out getting prior permission from the National Marine
Fisheries Service, and in apparent contravention of lan-
guage in the current appropriation for the Navy dolphin pro-
gram, which provides “no less than $500,000 only to devel-
op training procedures which will allow mammals which are
no longer required for this project to be released back into
their natural habitat. The confreres prohibit the release of
these mammals to any alternative captive environment.”
The dolphins were moved from San Diego––on a five-year-
loan to Disney/Epcot––to make room for between 40 and 55
dolphins who are being relocated from a base in Hawaii.
Disney/Epcot plans to use the dolphins for captive breeding.

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Animal Health & Behavior

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

CDC goes to rat-@#$%
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention blame an unknown Hantaan virus probably
transmitted by rodents for causing flu-like symptoms that
killed 19 residents of the Four Corners region of New
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado during May and
June. Most of the victims were Native Americans.
Hantaan viruses are typically transmitted through inhala-
tion, after becoming airborne with evaporated urine.
The transmission route for this as yet unidentified virus
has not been found, and investigators have been thwarted
by the reluctance of Navajo victims’ families, in particu-
lar, to speak either of the dead or of matters involving
their religion and rituals. However, Nevada paleoenvi-
ronmental researcher Peter E. Wigand, who seeks clues
to ecological history in ancient deposits of crystalized rat
urine, may have unwittingly provided a clue to the out-
break last January, before it actually occurred. Wigand

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CHILDREN & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

Lucinda Randolph Benjamin of the 4-H Club
and Margaret Barker of the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology are coordinating a study of inner city pigeon
life, funded by the National Science Foundation and actu-
ally carried out by 15 young residents of the Bedford-
Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. The partici-
pants, ages 9-14, are to closely observe the pigeons in
their neighborhood, documenting everything the birds do.
Carol Stevenson, principal of the Ladera del
Norte Elementary School in Farmington, New Mexico,
rewarded a class of 23 second graders for reading 7,000
pages of library books during May by eating six live worms
in front of them. The geek show was apparently the chil-
dren’s idea, inspired by one of the books they read.
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