REVIEWS: North Atlantic Humpback Whales

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

N o rth Atlantic Humpback Whales, recorded by Paul
Knapp Jr. Compass Recordings (POB 8173, Bridgeport, CT
06605), 1992. $10.00.
As the do-wop chorus behind Paul Winter, Mannfred Mann,
Country Joe and others, whales have a CV comparable to that of the little-
known Diana Love, who sang on even more hit albums than the Beatles
before getting a star billing in her 29th year of rock-and-roll. Paul Knapp
Jr., an active member of Cetacean Society International, rectifies the
musical injustice to whales with his tape North Atlantic Humpback Whales.
The whales sing uninterrupted and unspliced on side A, picking up a back-
ground chorus of popping and crackling pistol shrimp on side B.

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Birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Bald eagle recovery in New
York and New Jersey reached milestones
this spring, as the former had 24 nesting
pairs and the latter five, up from one
apiece when DDT was banned in 1972.
Before the introduction of DDT, which
built up in the food chain and caused the
females to lay brittle eggs, New York had
75 pairs; New Jersey had 20 to 25. The
current population are descended from 198
eagles imported from Alaska between
1976 and 1988, plus 60 from Manitoba,
who were released between 1983 and
1988. Of the original 198, 32 are known
dead––half of them shot by vandals––and
another 32 are known to have reached
maturity and paired at least once. Eagles
from that group have now settled in seven
states. Curiously, half of the pairs who
have nested within New York state have
chosen trees that were documented nesting
sites around the end of the 19th century.

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AGRICULTURE

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

At deadline Washington D.C. sources believed
a Justice Department probe of accusations that Agriculture
Secretary Mike Espy improperly accepted free travel, foot-
ball tickets, and other favors from the Tyson poultry empire
would end without charges being filed. However, Bob
Gottsch, a leading Nebraska cattle feeder, on June 14 sued
Espy for $22 million in damages, alleging Espy unfairly
favored poultry over beef in strengthening sanitary require-
ments for beef slaughterhouses without likewise regulating
poultry slaughterers. Ironically, Espy was editorially hit the
same week by The New York Times for purportedly favoring
beef by exempting hamburger from a requirement that meat
product labels must accurately describe fat content.
Despite recent improvements, the USDA meat
inspection system “is only marginally better today at pro-
tecting the public from harmful bacteria than it was a year
ago or even 87 years ago when it was first put in place,”
General Accounting Office food and agriculture chief John
Harmon told Congress on May 25.

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Captive wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

The Audubon Institute in
Algiers, Louisiana, broke ground June 1 for
the $15 million Audubon Center for
Research of Endangered Species, a high-
tech laboratory intended to complement the
adjacent Freeport-McMoran Audubon
Species Survival Center. The next planned
Audubon facility, an insectarium to be built
in the French Quarter of New Orleans, is
getting a mixed reception from future neigh-
bors, but appears certain to be approved by
municipal authorities, in part because it is
expected to attract 600,000 visitors per year.
Singapore on May 23 opened
Night Safari, a $38 million state-of-the-
art zoo for nocturnal species. The facility
has already achieved successful breeding of
18 of the 43 resident species, including the
russet-coated Asian wild dog, the fishing
cat, the Malaysian tapir, and the striped
hyena. The zoo took seven years to build.

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Wildlife

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Media accounts widely misrepresented
an alleged disparity between $21,000 donated to
help the orphaned cub of the mountain lion who
killed California runner Barbara Schoener in May,
and the $9,000 donated to help Schoener’s children.
In fact, $15,000 of the amount “given” to the cub
came from the Folsom County Zoo’s dedicated
building fund for creating a mountain lion exhibit,
which the cub will occupy. An attempt by hunters to
use the fatal attack as pretext to reverse a hunting
moratorium imposed in 1971 and made permanent
by the passage of the 1990 Mountain Lion Initiative
was rebuffed June 14 by committees of both the
California state senate and assembly. In Montana,
meanwhile, the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks
Commission delayed until August a decision on
whether to deliberately cause a mountain lion popu-
lation crash by raising the kill quota from 436 to 479,
of whom at least 328 would have to be females.

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ANIMAL HEALTH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Zoonosis
Tests by the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit have
concluded that the only sure way to prevent allergic reactions
to cats is “to remove the cat from the home,” Dr. Charles
Klucka recently told the American Academy of Allergy and
Immunology. “The next best thing is keeping the cat out of
the bedroom,” while the cat owner takes allergy drugs or
shots. Bathing cats in distilled water, applying a topical
spray 60 times per week, and giving them low-dose tranquil-
izers, all touted as antiallergen treatments, did not reduce the
dander of the 24 cats included in the Ford Hospital study.
Ten thousand volunteers in Connecticut, New
Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin are field-
testing a Lyme disease vaccine developed by Connaught
Laboratories, following up on a 1992-1993 test that included
300 people. Preliminary data published in the June 8 edition
of the Journal of the American Medical Association showed
that levels of Lyme antibodies increased fourfold in 23 of 24
volunteers who participated in a limited test in Albuquerque,
none of whom suffered serious side effects. A rival firm,
SmithKline Beecham PLC, is reportedly also close to testing
a vaccine for Lyme disease, which afflicts about 10,000
Americans a year, and has been found in 44 of the 50 states.

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Woofs and growls

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy (not!)
U.S. Surgical Corporation chairman Leon Hirsch, 67, was
sued on June 16 by his former housekeeper, Gizella Biro, 40, for alleged-
ly keeping her in virtual sexual slavery from November 1989 until May of
this year. Hirsch is noted in animal protection circles for funding pro-vivi-
section groups and for having purportedly set up an alleged assassination
attempt on himself in 1988 to discredit antivivisectionists. Biro’s husband
of 20 years, former U.S. Surgical groundskeeper Denis Sebastian, made
similar allegations to acquaintances during his divorce from Biro in 1990,
while Biro formally charged Sebastian with sexual abuse. According to
Biro, a Romanian immigrant who lived next door to Hirsch in a million-
dollar mansion that Hirsch provided, and drove cars furnished by Hirsch,
she was forced abouty once a week to have non-consensual sex with Hirsch
and sometimes his wife, U.S. Surgical executive vice president Turi
Josefson, as well as with other women. Biro further alleged that Hirsch
sexually asaulted her two daughters, whose education Hirsch paid for,
along with her friend and fellow former housekeeper, Eva Kale, whom
Biro invited to join the staff. Kale is reportedly preparing a similar suit.
Biro is asking $21 million to drop her charges, all of which Hirsch denies.

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Animal control & rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Consistent with previous studies done in
Portland and Minneapolis, which have found that
German shepherds make up about 14% of the canine popu-
lation but do about 27% of the biting, a Denver study of
178 first-time biters and 178 nonbiters issued June 9 by the
Centers for Disease Control found that German shepherds,
chows, and collies were the dogs most likely to attack; the
least likely were golden retrievers and poodles. Only one
pit bull terrier, a nonbiter, was included in the sample.
Despite the frequency of German shepherd bites, which
may reflect their frequent use as sentries, the ANIMAL
PEOPLE log of dog attacks causing death or serious injury
indicates that German shepherds are responsible for under
2% of the attacks in those categories, while pit bulls,
Rottweilers, and wolf hybrids together account for 79% of
the deaths and 92% of the maimings.

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Anti-rodeo vet was performer

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

BURLINGTON, Vermont–
“I raced two of my horses at local
rodeos,” veterinarian Peggy Larson
recalls of her youth in North Dakota,
“and often rode other people’s horses in
races. I also rode bareback bucking
horses for two years at local rodeos.
Once I rode a steer. Damned near killed
myself.”
Now an outspoken rodeo critic,
Larson remained involved in rodeo long
after becoming a veterinarian. “Duane
Howard, a national champion bull and
saddle bucking horse rider, was a client
of mine,” she recalls. “He was retired
from rodeo because of a serious injury
which left him partially deaf and ataxic.
He also rode in the same small town
rodeos where I rode.”

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