Animal health

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Fifteen thousand cattle have
died so far in Tanzania from an outbreak
of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia––
and it could spread to Zambia, Malawi,
and the rest of southern Africa, United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organiza-
tion animal health officer Peter Roeder
warned on March 29. “Cattle movements
from Uganda and Kenya, sometimes as
result of civil strife, have already caused
major outbreaks in Zaire and Rwanda,” he
said.
Canine distemper is on the
wane in Serengeti National Park, says
Melody Roelke-Parker, chief veterinarian
for Tanzania National Parks––after it
killed 80% of the now rebounding lion
population.

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Zoos

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Yan Yan, a female giant panda on a
five-year loan from the Beijing Zoo, on April 14
joined Bao Bao, the Berlin zoo’s solitary male,
whose former partner Tien Tien died of a viral
infection in 1984. Yan Yan was taken from the
wild at age three months in 1985. The World
Wildlife Fund ripped the Berlin loan and the loan
of two pandas to the San Diego Zoo as “a danger-
ous precedent,” which could “lead to further
depletion of an already fragile wild panda popula-
tion,” via further removals from the wild. WWF
has asked the secretariat of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species to
restrict panda loans to captive-bred animals. The
Dept. of the Interior on March 30 proposed such a
rule to govern future panda loans to the U.S.

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Performing animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Contrary to wire service reports and the account
in the April edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, dogs did die in
this year’s 1,161-mile Iditarod sled race from Anchorage to
Nome, Alaska––but race officials failed to disclose the
March 10 death of a dog belonging to Minnesota musher
Robert Somers until March 25, eight days after Japanese
musher Keizo Funatsu lost a dog and suffered frostbite just 22
miles from the finish. Although winner Doug Swingley fin-
ished on March 14, Funatsu was still on the course when
ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press.
At deadline a bill to ban horse-tripping, a staple
of charro-style rodeo, needed only New Mexico governor
Gary Johnson’s signature to become law. California adopted a
similar law last year.

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San Juan to St. Louis

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

ST. LOUIS––”If I was a lost, sick, hungry stray
cat or dog,” says Pet Search volunteer Judith Riddell
Messimer, “Alice Dodge is the face I’d most want to see.”
The 100-odd cats and two dozen dogs in Dodge’s
care at any given time might agree. Messimer was so con-
vinced just from her experience in adopting one kitten that
she traded in an economical Ford Escort for “an $18,000
Jeep PetTaxi,” as she recalls, to be of maximum use in
“spending my Sundays shuttling animals from rural Missouri
to St. Louis and interviewing potential owners.”
But 11 years ago, Dodge couldn’t even stand to
see her own face in the mirror.
“Alice’s son was killed when the vehicle she was
driving was hit broadside,” Messimer explains. “Kenny,
who was five, had removed his seatbelt to climb over the
seat. The impact threw open the passenger door, and Kenny
fell out. His head injuries killed him, but not before Alice
had to see him struggling to survive for days in the hospital.
The guilt and grief nearly killed her.”

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LETTERS [May 1995]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:
Fix dogs too
There is little disagreement in the animal welfare
movement that neutering is the humane answer to pet over-
population and destruction. It is also recognized that most
low-income pet owners are unable to afford the usual veteri-
nary charges for surgery––especially for dogs. It is therefore
unbelievable to read in your April edition that in San Jose
$100,000 “obtained from a surplus in animal licensing,” i.e.
dog licensing, will be used for free vouchers to neuter only
cats, the rationale being that costs for dogs are twice as high
so two cats can be helped for each dog. Consider two equal-
ly poor pet owners, one with a large dog and one with a cat.
Because the surgery costs for the dog are more than twice as
much as for the cat, only the cat owner will be assisted.
––Elisabeth Arvin
Ojai, California

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Editorial: Earth Day is over. Take a clod to lunch.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

The Editor’s most original contribution to the initial Earth Day, 25 years ago,
may have been coining the slogan, “Today is Earth Day; take a clod to lunch.” In the 1970
atmosphere of Berkeley, California, where the Editor was then a cub reporter, it went
without saying that the lunch would be vegetarian. The radical idea was not that meat-eat-
ing was and is the most fundamental environmental issue. Already Food First author
Frances Moore Lappe, Population Bomb author Paul Erlich, and Silent Spring author
Rachel Carson had delineated the links between meat production and depleted topsoil, star-
vation, and overuse of pesticides. Every incipient environmentalist in that particular time
and place at least paid lip-service to the ideal of vegetarianism. Disagreement arose, rather,
over the affirmation that the path to change lay through breaking bread instead of heads;
that environmental problems were due not to inherent flaws in the capitalist system, but to
rectifiable ignorance, which could be overcome more easily through discussion than
through fulminating about smashing the state.

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“Full speed ahead and damn the manatees!”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

ORLANDO, Florida– Killing
manatees at a record rate of almost two a
week, boaters could extinguish the Floridan
subspecies in the wild––if they keep it
up––before the end of the 20th century, now
less than five years away. More than 60
Florida manatees died during the first quarter
of 1995, twice the rate of 1994, when 192
manatees were found dead, second only to
the 206 deaths reported in 1990 among the 25
years that statistics have been kept. As in 24
of those 25 years, the leading cause of death,
claiming exactly 60, was being sliced or
stabbed by power boat propellers, prows,
and keels. That broke the 1989 record of 58
human-caused deaths, 53 of them caused by
boats. Severe cold is the manatees’ only other
significant killer.

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TREASON CHARGE FOR DOLPHIN VIDEO

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

CORAL GABLES, Florida––Aldemaro Romero is alive and well as an Adjunct
Associate Professor at the University of Miami. That annoys the Venezuelan government.
Officially, he’s wanted for treason. Unofficially, some authorities would rather have his tor-
tured corpse in a ditch, along with that of his colleague Ignacio Agudo, a fellow academic
and president of Fundacetacea (The Whale Fund), who has been dodging dragnets in
Venezuela for more than a year now.
Said Ramon Martinez, governor of Sucre state, to Wall Street Journal reporter Jose
de Cordoba, “If it were up to me, I’d have them shot.”
Their alleged crime was videotaping a fishing crew in February 1993 during the acts
of harpooning a dolphin, then hacking her apart alive for use as bait.
“The remains of 13 other dolphins were found on the beach,” states Romero. “The
crew said on tape that they kill dolphins for shark bait. They also provided information about
the number of dolphins they kill per month, and where they get the harpoons.”

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Who you gonna call? Pet Savers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

PORT WASHINGTON, New York––If $35 could save
each and every shelter animal’s life, how many would you save?
“We’ll save them all,” longtime North Shore Animal
League board chairperson Elisabeth Lewyt decided six years ago,
committing North Shore resources to saving not only the animals
coming through its own shelter, but also those handled by other
shelters around the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Since then, North Shore and the two-year-old Pet Savers
Foundation it created with a $6.3 million start-up grant have helped
arrange nearly 170,000 extra adoptions, above and beyond the annu-
al totals the participating shelters achieved prior to North Shore
involvement. By itself, the North Shore/Pet Savers adoption pro-
gram has achieved a cumulative 3% drop in the U.S. euthanasia
rate––an even more impressive figure considering that, big as it is,
it involves barely 1% of U.S. shelters.

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