Day: September 1, 1995

LETTERS [Sep 1995]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

What’s best for Willy?
While I favor of moving Keiko the killer whale out of
Mexico City and into a better situation, it is obvious that
Warner Brothers opted for the easy, politically correct solution
rather than what is in the best interest of Keiko. Their decision
to turn him over to Earth Island Institute and the Oregon Coast
Aquarium was public relatons damage control at its best––or
worst, from Keiko’s perspective.
Although I’m sure the Oregon Coast Aquarium is a
fine institution, Keiko would have been much better off going
to a facility that had other killer whales for possible future
companionship, with experienced husbandry personnel who
recognize that training, although frowned upon by most animal
activists, is one of the key activities that helps maintain the
mental and physical well-being of cetaceans in oceanariums.
Keiko helped make over $100 million for Warner
Bros., and he deserves better. What’s worse, Earth Island
Institute’s Free Willy/Keiko Foundation is politicizing his
future for their own agenda, ignoring the fact that from a sci-
entific standpoint, Keiko is probably one of the poorest candi-
dates for release among all the cetaceans in North America.
Everything they’re doing is predicated on the short-term goal of
dumping him into the ocean and declaring victory. They have
not addressed his long-term needs if he remains in captivity.

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LABORATORY ANIMALS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

NYU sells LEMSIP chimps to Coulston
STERLING FOREST, N.Y.––The New York University
Medical Center on August 9 transferred ownership of the Laboratory
for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates to the Coulston
Foundation, headed by Frederick Coulston, 81.
A primate researcher since 1936, Coulston is accused of
multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act in pending cases,
which allegedly caused the deaths of five chimps from thirst and heat
stress in two separate incidents at other primate facilities he runs in
New Mexico. Coulston claims three of those deaths were due to
malfunctioning equipment inherited when he took over one of the
facilities from the University of New Mexico two months earlier.
Activist groups are meanwhile demanding reinvestigation of eight
other recent chimp deaths at Coulston facilities, which also may
have involved alleged negligence.

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A sensible alternative to xenotransplants by Alan H. Berger

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Transplanting vital organs has become a rela-
tively common medical procedure, readily accepted by
the public, with about 12,000 such operations performed
each year in the United States. Patients who need organ
transplants can sign on to the waiting list of the United
Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond, Virginia, non-
profit group that under a federal contract allocates organs
nationally. But being listed does not guarantee receiving
an organ.
In 1993, of 50,169 patients who registered with
UNOS, 2,887 died while waiting to receive donor
organs. Of 7,039 candidates for liver transplants, 558
died waiting for a suitable liver. Nationally, mortality on
transplant lists is 8% for liver, 12.2% for heart, and 3.8%
for kidney.
These deaths occur because only about one per-
son in five has consented to donate organs at death. Thus
a chronic shortage of healthy human organs has led many
transplant centers to consider using substitute organs from
sheep, pigs, and nonhuman primates.

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Editorials: Prepare for post-pet overpopulation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Any defunct gas station could become a vibrant example of a new age in animal
care-and-control: a neighborhood humane outpost. Offering easy access and plenty of
parking, ex-gas stations can’t keep lots of animals, but that isn’t what they should do.
Their showrooms can display cats in all the decorator colors; they have garages able to keep
adoptable dogs in spacious runs, and park a van for the night; and they have adequate
office space for a small-scale operation, which could be either a satellite of a larger organi-
zation or an independent entity cooperating with other shelters of differing capabilities.
The van would be not just wheels, but an extension of the job. In normal configu-
ration, it would do animal pickup-and-delivery. A slide-in veterinary module would make
it a mobile neutering-and-vaccination clinic, or a rescue vehicle.
A humane outpost obviously couldn’t receive lots of drop-off litters and other
owner-surrendered animals. Nor could it house animals through a multi-day holding period,
or do any but emergency euthanasias. Those would remain the duties of central shelters.
Likewise, a humane outpost couldn’t do law enforcement. But it might hold drop-offs tem-
porarily, for exchange with adoptable animals from a central shelter. It might also do com-
munity liaison for anti-cruelty and animal control officers working out of a larger office.
A humane outpost would not be an animal shelter in the familiar sense. It would
exist not to collect, keep, or kill animals, nor to deal with pet overpopulation per se, the
main job of animal shelters for the past 120 years, but rather to facilitate responsible pet-
keeping in the post-pet overpopulation milieu, by arranging appropriate placements, help-
ing pets get essential care, and providing referrals for other services. In some towns, a
low-overhead, high-traffic humane outpost might even pay for itself.

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Sealing their doom: Whale sanctuary may be last safe harbor

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,
QUEBEC––The Canadian government got
the word about cod stocks on June 29, and it
wasn’t good. Having allowed northern cod to
be fished to commercial extinction before cut-
ting quotas and cracking down on foreign
dragnetters, Canada may have lost the greater
portion of its Atlantic fishery until at least a
decade into the 21st century, if not forever.
Scrambing to shift the blame, and
hoping to revive the global market for seal
pelts by way of tossing a bone to frustrated
fishers, Canadian fisheries minister Brian
Tobin claimed that evening on the CBC
Prime Time News that, “Whatever the role
seals have played in the collapse of ground-
fish stocks, seals are playing a far more
important and significant role in preventing,
in slowing down, a recovery.”

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SHOWDOWN AT THE DOLPHIN PEN

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

SUGARLOAF KEY, Florida––The first anniversary of the arrival of the dolphins
Molly, Bogie, and Bacall at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary came and went with no resolu-
tion in sight of the impasse between Sugarloaf director of rehabilitation Ric O’Barry and oth-
ers involved in the rehab-and-release effort. Brought from the former Ocean Reef Club in
Key Largo on August 10, 1994, all three dolphins remain at Sugarloaf, for the time being,
along with three former U.S. Navy dolphins whom O’Barry is preparing for release in a sepa-
rate deal arranged by the Humane Society of the U.S.

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YELLOWSTONE: The steam isn’t all from geysers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––Filmed in Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, the 1952 western classic Shane depicted stubborn men who thought them-selves reasonable in a tragic clash over limited range. Alan Ladd, in the title role, won the big showdown, then rode away pledging there would be no more guns in the valley.

But more than a century after the Shane era, the Yellowstone range wars not only smoulder on, but have heated up. To the north, in rural Montana, at least three times this year armed wise-users have holed up for months, standing off bored cordons of sheriff’s deputies, who wait beyond bullet range to arrest them for not paying taxes and taking the law into their own hands.

One of the besieged, Gordon Sellner, 57, was wounded in an alleged shootout and arrested on July 19 near Condon. Sellner, who said he hadn’t filed a tax return in 20 years, was wanted for attempted murder, having allegedly shot a sheriff’s deputy in 1992. A similar siege goes on at Roundup, where Rodney Skurdahl and four others are wanted for allegedly issuing a “citizen’s declaration of war” against the state and federal governments and posting boun-ties on public officials. At Darby, near the Bitterroot National Forest, elk rancher Calvin Greenup threatens to shoot anyone who tries to arrest him for allegedly plotting to “arrest,” “try,” and hang local authorities. Greenup is Montana coordinator of the North American Volunteer Militia.

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