Editorial: No tears for this croc––well, cayman

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The call came late November 16. Westchester Wildlife Sanctuary rehabilitator
Barry Rothfuss needed help in placing a five-foot-long, cross-tempered female cayman, a
close relative of a crocodile, who’d spent her whole life in a pet store aquarium. He’d taken
her in to keep the proprietor from shooting her, as she’d grown too dangerous to handle.
“I can keep her maybe 24 hours,” Rothfuss explained, his six-month-old daughter
in his lap and the cayman nearby, her mouth held shut with duct tape. “I’m not set up to
keep a high-risk animal, or any animal who needs a heated environment, and I don’t know
anything about caymans, but I thought I could at least give her one more chance.”
Two years ago Rothfuss spent a month dodging the law with a few dozen orphaned
raccoons he had immunized against rabies. The New York wildlife department had ordered
rehabilitators to euthanize all raccoons in their possession, ostensibly to slow the spread of
rabies. Rothfuss hid out until he could get the message across that his raccoons were no
threat––and wound up appointed to the state advisory commission on rabies.

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Editorial: Culture is no excuse for cruelty

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

It is with further disgust that we note the opobrium cast upon Afro-American nov-
elist Alice Walker, a distinguished defender of animals, abused women, and children, for
attacking ritual female genital mutilation in her new books Possessing The Secret of Joy and
Warrior Marks. From 85 to 114 million women alive today, mostly black African
Muslims, have suffered the excision of all or part of their clitoris and labia minor in a rite
performed by elder women, without anesthetic or antiseptics, when girls of their culture
reach adolescence. Millions more suffer this procedure each year. Many die of resultant
infection. The purpose of the abuse is to make young women marriageable in a genuinely
patriarchal society by insuring virginity at marriage and chastity thereafter through making
sexual intercourse painful or uninteresting.

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Editorial: Reclaim the cause from the terrorists

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

One cannot make peace by waging war––a truth that should seem self-evident.
The cause of animal protection is essentially the cause of peace, extended to all sentient
beings: of preventing suffering through preventing violence. As conscientious and consid-
erate people, we should all understand by now that one cannot prevent suffering by causing
suffering, nor can one prevent violence by causing violence. That much should be obvious
to anyone who has ever either held or beheld a cruelly wounded and frightened victim of
anyone’s violence, animal or human. Pain and fear know no bounds of age, sex, species,
or ideology.

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THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY MEET LISA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana–
Legislation In Support of Animals recently
gave the New Iberia City and Parish Council
until January 1 to make a firm commitment
to reforming their pound––or else.
“We have reached the limit of our
patience,” said mild-mannered LISA
founder and executive director Jeff Dorson,
sounding a lot more like Clint Eastwood than
he looks.
The ultimatim brought a three-part
expose of pound conditions in the local
newspaper. On December 10, New Iberia
reached an amicable agreement with LISA to
better separate animals in the pound, house
fewer per cage, provide fiberglas resting
boards, clean the cages more often, hire an
answering service to handle off-hours emer-
gency calls, and promote adoptions through
the New Iberia Humane Society.

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Alaska and the Yukon: The silence of the wolves

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, and WHITEHORSE, the Yukon––At least 63 of the
wolves the world sought to save in Alaskan wildlife management unit 20-A, south of
Fairbanks, have been killed by airborne state trappers––and that may be almost all the
wolves who lived there, a fraction of the number state officials claim have ravaged moose
and caribou to the extent that sport hunting in the area has been suspended since 1991.
A comparable massacre has resumed in the Yukon Territory, Canada, where
officials last winter killed only 61 of a quota of 150 wolves in the beginning of a five-year
push to cut the estimated wolf population of the Kluane-Aishihik region near the Kluane
National Park and World Heritage Site by 85%. As in Alaska, the Yukon killing is pur-
portedly part of a “caribou enhancement” program, and also as in Alaska, independent
experts believe the official quota is several times higher than the actual wolf population of
the sector. The Kluane-Aishihik caribou herd has crashed and other Yukon herds have lev-

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