CHILDREN AND ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Shakira Hemphill, Michael Mims, Robert Ronnell Jones, and LaTroy Eugene Murphy, all of
Abram Simon Elementary School in Washington D.C., on April 29 shared the American Humane Association’s first-
ever Be Kind To Animals Kid Award for their part in bringing to justice an off-duty police officer whom they witnessed in
the act of severely beating a dog. All four witnessed the beating on May 2, 1992. Jones, a third grader at the time,
approached the man and demanded an explanation. As the abuse continued, he ran up and down the street to keep an
eye on the dog, whom the man eventually dragged into an alley, while the others called the Washington Humane
Society. All four then pointed the abuser out to the WHS cruelty officer who responded to their call. The dog was
impounded, but was returned to the owner on June 15, who claimed to have given her away one week later. A grand
jury declined to indict, leaving any punitive action up to the Washington D.C. police department division of internal
affairs. As the nominating shelter for the AHA award winners, WHS received $1,000 worth of dog food from Advanced
Nutrition Cycle.

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New pocket (gopher and bat) books

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Conversations With A Pocket Gopher
And Other Outspoken Neighbors. By Jack
Schaefer. Capra Press (PO Box 2068, Santa Barbara,
CA 93120), 1978, 1992, 126 pages, paper $8.95.
Originally published in Audubon magazine, the
seven tales collected here attempt to explain ecological situ-
ations from the perspectives of individual nonhuman beings.
The late author, best known for his Western novel Shane,
deserves credit for trying, though his style too often
becomes precious and archaic when he strives hardest for
enlightenment.

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VIVISECTION

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Cruelty charges against Dr. Florintino
Sanguinetti, director of the Hospital de Clinicas Jose de
San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, may be dropped
soon because the judge assigned to the case has failed to
schedule a prosecution, according to the Asociacion para la
Defensa de los Derechos del Animal. The case made inter-
national headlines in March 1990 when judge Omar Faciuto
joined ADDA in a visit to the hospital dog laboratory, and
found numerous dogs confined in tiny, poorly ventilated
cages, amid heaps of their own excrement. Faciuto imme-
diately ordered that the dogs be removed and the laboratory
be closed. It was the first time anyone in Argentina had
closed a laboratory via the courts. But that’s where the
action stopped. As of March 17, ADDA urgently requested
that letters be addressed to: Sr. Juez de lra. Instancia

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Hunting & Fishing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Fed up with poachers, the Plaquemines Parish,
Lousiana district attorney’s office two years ago began
offering people convicted of hunting and fishing offenses
the option of contributing to an equipment fund to help
game wardens in lieu of paying higher fines. The 1991
receipts bought walkie-talkies and a video camera.
Receipts rose to $5,125 in 1992, and were mostly spent on
a $4,000 night vision scope, to detect jacklighters.
The Lousiana House of Representatives on
May 14 killed a bill to require hunters under 16 to pass a
gun safety class.
Allen Sarratt, of Camden, Tennessee, killed
his son Brent, 12, and daughter Kelly, 15, with a single
shot on May 17 when he slung his loaded deer rifle over his
shoulder as he started down the steps of their home and it
discharged.

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FUR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Someone used rat poison in late
April to kill more than 17,000 mink at
the Sakhalin Fur Industrial Association fur
farm on Sakhalin Island in the former
Soviet Union. The fur farm claimed a loss
of $2.8 million, although at current world
pelt prices the actual loss was probably
closer to $400,000. Possible suspects
include rival fur entrepreneurs trying to
boost prices for their own pelts by creating
a shortage and simultaneously wiping out a
rival; someone in management attempting
to cash in on the limited insurance cover-
age; and/or disgruntled employees.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Dog Crimes
The Cuyahoga County, Ohio
grand jury on April 23 indicted Jeffrey
Mann, 36, for murder, alleging that he
ordered his pit bull terrier to fatally maul his
common-law wife, Angela Kaplan, 28, on
September 2, 1992. The indictment came
as result of an eight-month probe by
Cleveland homicide detective Michaelene
Taliano, and extensive observation of the
dog’s nature by animal behaviorist Karen
Arnoff. Taliano suspected the attack was a
murder, not an accident, because the dog
bit Kaplan more than 100 times, but never
around the neck and throat, the usual sites
of fatal bite wounds. Mann pleaded inno-
cent and was freed on $25,000 bail.

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“Wear the badge and the uniform.” How a small Alabama shelter wins big in court

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA––On March 12,
the Montgomery County Humane Society took a man
named Tom Green to court. His offense, testified executive
director Mary Stanley Mansour, was keeping seven
Weimeraners in “complete darkness and filth in a large
warehouse for several months.”
It was the sort of case anti-cruelty officers often
hesitate to recommend for prosecution, a case of neglect
rather than overt physical abuse, involving conditions that
in many poor communities aren’t demonstrably far from
“normal,” no matter how undesirable. Mansour was not
eager to prosecute Green, either. She gave him repeated
warnings.

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Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

New head of USFWS
faces fight to renew ESA
LAND USE CONFLICTS ERUPT ALL OVER
WASHINGTON D.C.– – Nominated
by President Bill Clinton to head the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, forester Mollie Beattie
of Grafton, Vermont is expected to be Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s chief mapmaker, as
the administration seeks to secure renewal of a
strong Endangered Species Act by reorienting
the law to protect critical habitat rather than
individual species.
Her main duty, she told Burlington
Free Press reporter Nancy Bazilchuk upon
receiving word of her nomination, will be to
“map and inventory the country’s ecosystems,
so we know which ones are scarcest and need
more protection.”

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Habitat

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:

Over the past 28 years, the Land and Water
Conservation Fund financed by offshore oil and gas
drilling royalties has raised more than $9 billion, the
revenues from which––$900 million a year––were sup-
posed to have been spent on acquiring land for national
parks and wildlife refuges. However, the Ronald
Reagan and George Bush administrations gradually
diverted the money elsewhere. The current federal bud-
get, Bush’s last, allocated only $284 million for land
acquisition, and Bill Clinton’s proposed budget cuts that
24%, to just $208 million.
China has set aside 77,000 square miles in
northern Tibet as a wildlife sanctuary––an area the
size of South Dakota. More than 125,000 square miles
of the remote Himalayan nation had already been
reserved for wildlife. Nearly 40% of Tibet is now offi-
cially protected habitat for yaks, snow leopards, rare
high-altitude sheep, and a vareity of antelope species.
New York City has announced plans to sepa-
rate the Central Park Reservoir from the city water
system later this year. The reservoir, one of the critical
habitats for New York’s urban wildlife, may be added to
the park area intact––or may be drained, filled, and
converted into athletic fields.
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