WHAT’S TO BECOME OF A BARREL OF MONKEYS?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

MADISON, Wisconsin––Virginia Hinshaw, dean
of graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
on February 3 gave Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk until
March 2 to find a way to keep 100 rhesus macaques and 50
stump-tailed macaques at the Vilas Zoo, their longtime home.
The Vilas Zoo has long housed the macaques under
contract to the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center,
funded by the National Institutes of Health. American Zoo
Association policy has discouraged the use of zoo animals in
research since 1986, but the Vilas Zoo arrangement, dating to
1963, predated the policy.
The macaque colonies are descended from those who
provided subjects for the notorious isolation experiments of the
late Harry Harlow, who moved his work to the University of
Arizona in 1971 and died in 1981. They are the oldest stable
breeding colonies of macaques in captivity. About 1,300 kin
are at separate facilities on the university campus.

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WARFARE AND ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

The Bureau of Land
Management has asked the U.S. Air
Force to redesign a plan to create a new
target bombing range 25 miles southeast
of the Saylor Creek Training Range in
Idaho. The BLM wants the Air Force to
restrict low level flights over the Owyhee
Canyonlands to avoid disturbing either
bighorn sheep during lambing season, or
recreational visitors during peak use
times. The Air Force earlier agreed to
avoid the most critical lambing areas and
to restrict flights over two other parts of
the proposed range during the times most
favored by rafters and kayakers. The
current plan is the fourth expansion proposal
from the Air Force since the
Persian Gulf War showed the need to
train pilots for desert combat. Previous
plans were halted by opposition from
Native Americans, environmentalists,
hunters, and ranchers.

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BOOKS: The Compassion of Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Compassion
of Animals:
True Stories of Animal
Courage and Kindness
by Kristin von Kreisler
Prima Publishing (POB 1260, Rocklin,
CA 95677-1260), 1997.
257 pages, hardcover. $22.95.

On December 28, 1997, in Marion
County, Arkansas, mongrel named Scotty
found Misty Harger, age 12, who was lost in
the woods, and kept her warm until police
found her 22 hours later.
That evening, in Chicago, a yearold
Belgian shepherd named Missy leaped in
front of a car to push Dashun McMiller, six,
to safety, at cost of her own life.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Howard Gilman, 73, patron of
the White Oak Conservation Center, at the
White Oak Plantation in Yulee, Florida, died
at the plantation of a heart attack on January
3. Gilman, grandson of Gilman Paper
Company founder Isaac Gilman, took over
the firm in 1973, building it into the largest
privately held producer of paper and building
products in the U.S. He formed the Howard
Gilman Foundation in 1981, becoming
known as a major patron of dance, the visual
arts, and cardiology and AIDS research––but
the Conservation Center, one of his first projects
and one of those of lowest profile, may
have had the most influence, showing
zookeepers the value of space, privacy, and
natural habitat in breeding endangered
species. The center has been instrumental in
breeding captive populations of highly endangered
African and Asian rhinos, cheetahs,
maned wolves, okapis, antelopes, and wild
cattle, and hosted efforts to save the Florida
panther via captive breeding. It also funds
habitat protection in the animals’ native countries.
The work continues under longtime
Conservation Center and plantation general
manager John Lukas, who is outspoken in his
belief that keeping animals in close confinement
is cruelty and should be seen as such.

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REVIEWS: Tiger books

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Through The Tiger’s Eyes: A Chronicle of India’s Wildlife
by Stanley Breeden & Belinda Wright
Ten Speed Press (POB 7123, Berkeley, CA 94707), 1997. 193 pages, paperback, $24.95.

Fight For The Tiger:
One Man’s Battle To Save The Wild Tiger From Extinction
by Michael Day
Headline (Trafalgar Square, North Pomfret, VT 05053), 1998. 438 pages, paperback, $13.95.

Track Of The Tiger: Legend And Lore Of The Great Cat
Edited by Maurice Hornocker
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 1997.
120 pages, 75 color photos, hardcover, $30.00.

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Doing it all with nothing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BOMBAY––An American shelter worker, used to
stainless steel cages on vinyl floors, the din of barking dogs,
and a busy killing room, could easily be misled. The Bombay
SPCA has little or nothing of stainless steel, no vinyl floor covering,
the street-wise dogs keep their peace, and though the
shelter includes a new electric crematorium, used often in traditional
Hindu ceremonies by grieving petkeepers, there is no
killing room, nor any killing of healthy or recoverable animals.
Nor is the Bombay SPCA located, like most U.S.
shelters, at the edge of town, near the dump, or crammed into
a single cinder block building.
Indeed, the Bombay SPCA at a glance looks more
like a crumbling old army post or convent than an animal shelter,
until one sees the 250-odd animals of several dozen species
who occupy the premises at any given time: here a former carriage
horse with a broken leg and his ribs showing, there a
burro with a severely scarred face, to the left a walk-in cage of
songbirds recently confiscated from street vendors, to the right
an exercise yard full of humpbacked Brahmin cattle, and dog
and cat areas both ahead and behind.

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HELP IN SUFFERING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

JAIPUR––The Indian view of animals, Help In
Suffering director Christine Townend admits, both morally
empowers her work and at times greatly complicates it.
“Many Brahmins, as well as Jains, cannot feed their
dogs meat due to their religious belief in vegetarianism,” she
explains, and do not feed cats at all. “This means cats and
dogs are often brought to us in advanced malnutrition.”
Euthanizing the animals is also difficult, Townend
adds, as many Brahmins and Jains also believe that they “may
not take the life of a dog even if the dog is suffering acutely and
is sure to die.”
Townend works in the shadow of paradox. The Help
In Suffering shelter is at the opposite end of Jaipur from the
Amber Fort, the palace-turned-tourist-trap of Akbar the Great,
a Charlemagne-like illiterate who consolidated the Mogul
empire, encouraged learning, protected wildlife, and abolished
suttee, the ancient custom of burning widows alive.

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General Chatterjee and the Animal Welfare Board

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI––Named for the Buddhist emperor Ashoke,
who issued the first Indian animal protection law circa 240 B.C.,
Lieutenant General Ashoke Kumar Chatterjee trained to head the
Animal Welfare Board of India by commanding first the Indian
peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka and then the United Nations peacekeeping
force in the Maldives.
A former polo player, Chatterjee won the attention of
Indian humaitarians in 1976-1977 when he mobilized troops to relocate
horses and cattle away from severe drought in Rajasthan and
Gujarat. Retiring in 1990, after 38 years in uniform, he was
promptly drafted to revitalize the AWB.
Created in 1960, actually convened in 1962, the AWB
exists to implement the two sections of the Indian
constitution––unique in the world––which mandate animal protection.

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