ANIMALS IN ENTERTAINMENT

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Tracks hounded out of business

BRIDGEPORT, Ct.– – Grey-
hound racing foes are torn between
rejoicing that the $30 million Shoreline
Star track has shut for the winter and perhaps
forever, after just one year, and
mourning the dogs who may be destroyed
because the closure of eight tracks in
three years has glutted the demand for
greyhound pets.
About 200 dogs were believed
to have been at Shoreline Star when the
track, still open for simulcast betting, on
November 30 suspended live racing until
at least May 1. Owner Robert Zeff filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reorganization
last summer. The track reportedly
generated just $14 million in revenue,
less than 25% of the $60 million first projected.

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CITES experts have a leak on Zimbabwean elephant ivory strategy

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

The possibility of resumed ivory trading has meanwhile
demonstrably stimulated poaching, say Clark and David
Barritt, African director of the International Fund for Animal
Welfare. Barritt recently visited the scene of the September
massacre of 250 elephants near the Congolese border with
Gabon. “The poachers told the local inhabitants, whom they
hired, that it was all right to kill the elephants,” Barritt
explained to Inigo Gimore of the London Times, “because next
year the trade in ivory is going to be resumed legally.”
Indeed, the trade never stopped. “The preliminary
report of the CITES Panel of Experts,” FoA president Priscilla
Feral wrote on December 6 to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
chief of management authority Kenneth Stansell, “claims that
there is evidence that Zimbabwe has been engaged in large volume
commercial export of raw, worked, and semi-worked
ivory to eight countries, including the United States. Other
countries identified as having imported commercial volumes of
elephant ivory from Zimbabwe are Japan, China, Thailand,
Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Africa.
FoA is alarmed,” Feral said, “especially in light of significant
U.S. assistance to Zimbabwe’s elephant conservation programs,
as well as in light of persistent Zimbabwean claims of being
able to exercise vigorous control over the ivory trade.”

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Animal control & rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

The multi-party Home Affairs Committee recommended to the
British Parliament on December 18 that the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act be amended
to eliminate mandatory death penalties for alleged pit bull terriers and other
dogs of purportedly dangerous breed who haven’t committed an offense; provide
“bail” for dogs pending a hearing; allow owners to visit dogs kenneled for cause
more often; and reintroduce national dog licensing, scrapped as unenforceable
about a decade ago.

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PetsMart buys 50 British stores

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

PHOENIX––PetsMart, only founded in
1989 but already operating 311 U.S. stores in 33
states, on October 25 expanded to Great Britain,
purchasing the 50-store Pet City Holdings chain for
$239 million. PetsMart CEO Mark Hansen said the
acquisition “provides a platform for expansion in
Europe,” which he said “represents a 900-to-1,000-
store opportunity,” about the same size as the niche
PetsMart seeks in the U.S. market.
One secret of PetsMart success is privatizing
and making profitable at affordable prices some
of the otherwise money-losing functions of nonprofit
humane societies. PetsMart stores provide local
humane societies with an adoption venue, rather
than selling purpose-bred dogs and cats, and frequently
include in-house low-cost neutering clinics.

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CHILDREN & ANIMALS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

“Let’s put this in perspective,” said football
coach Tom Smythe of McNary High School in
Salem, Oregon, to Portland Oregonian correspondent
Cheryl Martinis on November 25, after 18-
year-old linebacker Thomas Shepard was arrested
and charged with felony animal abuse for allegedly
clubbing a stray cat to death. “He didn’t rape,
maim, or pillage anyone. He committed a foolish
act that cost a dumb animal its life. So let’s not drag
this out forever.” Charged with Shepherd was Darle
Dudley, also 18. In October 1995, seven McNary
students including four football players were charged
with aggravated animal abuse for beating an opossum,
then burning her alive. They videotaped the
killing and showed the video in a classroom while
the teacher was out.

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Whale-watching

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

University of Queensland PhD. candidate Ilze
Brieze reported in late October, after a year of study, that the
dolphins of Moreton Bay, off Brisbane, Australia, and at the
Australian Sea World are behaviorally unaffected by human
contact, even though the bottlenose dolphins at Sea World
appear to enjoy swimming with humans and being hand-fed.
Studies by other researchers have indicated that the wild dolphins
who interact with humans at Monkey Mia in western
Australia may have become excessively dependent upon handfeeding,
and that one result is dolphin mothers who so fixate
on humans that they neglect their infants. Studying the same
Moreton Bay dolphin population as Brieze, Mark Orams of
Massey University joined her in warning that even when there
are not obvious ill effects from contact, wild dolphins should

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SIRENIANS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Fewer than 2,000 dugongs persist along the
Australian east coast and southern Great Barrier Reef, as
numbers have crashed from 50% to 80% in recent years,
partly due to storms and coastal development which have
devastated the sea grass that Australian dugongs depend on
for food, but to greater extent as the result of gillnetting,
which accounted for 15 of 30 recent dugong deaths at Great
Barrier Reef Marine Park, according to Helene Marsh of
James Cook University. Shark nets alone caught 654
dugongs off central Queensland in 1995, along with 651 dolphins
and 4,059 sea turtles. Only 45 dugongs, 31 dolphins,
and 1,420 turtles survived. Nine newly established protection
zones off Queensland may not help, warns North Queensland
Conservation Council coordinator Jeremy Tager. “The reality
is, there is no new protection from human threats to
dugnongs in these areas,” he said.” Gill netting, hunting,
coastal development, vessel traffic, and even the use of
explosives will continue in the proposed protection areas.”

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Seals, sea otters, sea lions

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Junior home office minister Tom Sackville told
the British House of Commons on November 30 that grey
seals and common seals along the eastern coast of Britain
from New Haven, East Sussex to the Scots border will
receive another three years of protection from any form of
killing, injuring, or capturing, following the December 19
expiry of the latest in a series of three-year protective orders
first issued in 1988. An outbreak of a disease believed to be
closely related to canine distemper cut the eastern coast seal
population from 3,900 in early 1988 to 1,551 by 1991. Since
then, seal numbers are up to 2,758, but that’s still just 70% of
the count formerly sustained.

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Whaling politics heat up

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

NEAH BAY, Washington––Easily winning the fall
band election––as anticipated––the pro-whaling faction of the
Makah tribe moved immediately to form a 20-member commission
to draft a whaling charter and management policy.
The Makah in June 1996 withdrew an application for
an International Whaling Commission “aboriginal subsistence”
quota of up to five grey whales, but the would-be whalers, led
by logger and fisher Dan Greene, has announced intent to get a
quota this year––and, some hint, to go whaling whether or not
the IWC approves.
Although the Makah have not been whaling in 72
years, Greene et al claim the 19th century treaty that established
the Neah Bay reservation also guaranteed them whaling
rights in perpetuity. The Bill Clinton administration supports
that interpretation.

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