CHILDREN AND ANIMALS

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

New pocket (gopher and bat) books

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

VIVISECTION

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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

Hunting & Fishing

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

FUR

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

COURT CALENDAR

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

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

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

Wildlife

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.”

Habitat

June 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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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