Animal health

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

University of Minnesota researcher Dr. Jesse Goodman and team announced January 24 that they have managed to isolate and grow the bacterium that causes human granulocytic ehrlichiosis, a newly identified and sometimes fatal disease borne by the same ticks as Lyme disease.

Having apparently gotten away with a wind-assisted premature release of the rabbit-killing calcivirus during field tests last September, without apparent harm to species other than rabbits, Australia is now hoping to halt the advance of South American cane toads through the use of the Irido virus, which apparently kills both toads and tadpoles in Venezuela. The cane toads were themselves introduced about 60 years ago, in hopes they would eat insects who plagued sugarcane growers.

Avian epidemiology

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

The Florida Keys Wild Bird
Center in January declared finished a
five-year epidemic of “wasting synd
r o m e ” among cormorants. The victims
were found anemic, dehydrated,
and severely underweight, but without
obvious disease or injury. About 90%
died. The syndrome was to become
subject of a major study––but in March
1995, cases quit coming. Overall, the
Wild Bird Center treated 130 cormorants
in 1994 and 133 in 1995. Half of those
treated in 1994 had “wasting syndrome,”
but most in 1995 had been hurt by fishing
gear––like most other birds the center
receives. “We have pelicans, pelicans,
fishhooks and pelicans,” director
Laura Quinn told Nancy Klingener of the
Miami Herald, “because pelicans hang
around fishers.”

ADDENDA: WHO GETS THE MONEY?

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

This second addenda to our sixth annual
report on the financial affairs of the major national animal
and habitat protection groups and opposition
groups includes those whose IRS Form 990 didn’t
reach us before either our December or January/
February issue deadline. As a bonus this time, we’re
also including several small all-volunteer groups with
noteworthy prominence relative to expenditures.
Groups are identified in the second column
by apparent focus and philosophy: A is for advocacy,
C for conservation of habitat via acquisition, E f o r
education, H for support of hunting, L for litigation,
P for publication, R for animal rights, S for shelters
and sanctuaries, V for antivivisection, and W for animal
welfare. The R and W designations are used only
if an organization makes a point of being one or the
other.

Zoos

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

The Lincoln Park Zoo and
Chicago Bulls sports surgeon Dr. John
Hefferon teamed up January 24 to perform a
first-ever arthroscopic repair of an arthritic silverback
gorilla’s knee, allowing him to
resume his sex life. Frank, 32, caught in
Cameroon in 1966, is esteemed not only for
having sired 11 offspring in captivity, but
also because since 1986 he has accepted and
protected nine infants who were rejected by
other gorilla troupes.
Two years after the death of the
Lincoln Park Zoo’s highly endangered 21-
year-old Asiatic lion stud, the Chicago zoo
has replaced him with a captive-born African
lion, imported from the Kapama Game
Reserve in South Africa (a drive-through zoo)
to increase the genetic diversity of the U.S.
captive lion population. African lions are
plentiful in the U.S., both in zoos and in private
ownership, but only 43 lions divided
among 14 zoos are certifiably not inbred.

Zoos & Aquariums

Whistleblowers fight back

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Jan Moor-Jankowski, M.D., founder and director for 30 years of the
Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates at New York University,
raised $1.2 million to retire the 225 LEMSIP chimps, coincidental with his own
retirement––but NYU last year froze the funds, closed LEMSIP, and ousted both MoorJankowski
and his lieutenant, James Mahoney, after they resigned from the NYU Institutional
Animal Care and Use Committee, and filed complaints of primate care negligence with the
USDA that obliged the suspension of the NYU addiction research unit run by Ronald Wood.
The USDA probe of the Wood case is reportedly now complete; whether charges will be filed
or Wood will resume his work is yet to be seen. NYU president Jay Oliva and NYU Medical
Center associate dean David Scotch meanwhile sold the LEMSIP chimps to the Coulston
Foundation, a New Mexico-based research supplier, which is to take possession of the chimps
on March 15. Moor-Jankowski in 1991 won a landmark Supreme Court verdict for press freedom
against the Austrian pharmaceutical giant Immuno AG, which sued him for libel, as editor
of the International Journal of Primatology, after he published a letter-to-the-editor by
International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal. Coulston filed a brief backing
Immuno. Investigating whether Moor-Jankowski was illegally punished for whistleblowing,
the USDA on December 22 subpoenaed Oliva, Scotch, and all related records.

BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

“We have raised 96% of the funds
for the Buckshire 12! It looks like they will
be here in March,” Primarily Primates secretary
Stephen Rene Tello told ANIMAL PEOP
L E at deadline. The Buckshire Eight, a
group of nonbreeding chimpanzees otherwise
destined for terminal research, became the
Buckshire 12 in January when the Buckshire
Corporation, eager to be out of the chimp
trade, offered to add four “prime breeder”
females to the group. “This meant we could
directly help prevent the breeding of chimps
for research,” explained Tello. It also meant
Primarily Primates needed to raise the funds to
build not just one more chimp enclosure, but
two. “Thanks to the direct efforts of Nancy
Abraham,” Tello added, “the Jacob Bleibteu
Foundation of New York agreed to fund a second
enclosure in its entirety.” That permits
“the largest retirement effort of its kind to
date,” said Tello. Primarily Primates still
needs support for the chimps’ ongoing care, at
POB 15306, San Antonio, TX 78212-8506.

Sea Shepherds want to herd Hondo

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

SEATTLE––Hondo, the California sea lion
who ambushes salmon and steelhead at the base of the
Ballard Locks near Seattle, was back for the start of
this winter’s spawning runs, with others, and when
the National Marine Fisheries Service said it had no
money to capture and hold him throughout the spawning
season, as it did last year, at cost of $120,000,
shooting seemed imminent. But on January 25 the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society put the killing on hold
by formally proposing to relocate Hondo and friends to
San Francisco Bay.
“Sea Shepherd has offered to pay this year’s
costs of temporary housing and immediate translocation
of sea lions to California,” said Sea Shepherd
Pacific Northwest coordinator Michael Kundu. “We
have legal permission from the San Francisco Bay
Commission to return these sea lions to California,”
their native waters.

More Canadian wildlife traffic–– with government support

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

WINNIPEG––”Vowing to
upset Manitoba government plans to
privatize the province’s wild elk and
transform it into antler farms to supply
the international wildlife parts
trade,” People for Animal
Liberation coordinator James
Pearson announced February 6,
“PFAL has sent a team of activists to
the Swan River Valley to shield wild
elk from capture.”
Already, Pearson said,
activists had vandalized a corral and
squeeze chute used to hold the elk as
their antlers are cut off. “Highly
veined and innervated,” he charged,
“the antlers are sawn off at the most
sensitive stage of their development.
Elk ranchers involved with the plan,”
Pearson continued, “want to see the
government begin trade in bear gall
bladders, a logical next step.”

Fires hit more than zoo

March 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

The December 24 electrical fire at the
Philadelphia Zoo that killed 23 endangered primates
[January/February edition] was followed by a series
of other reminders of the vulnerability of animal care
facilities of all kinds to fire: not regulated as closely
as human dwellings, frequently filled with easily combustible
hay, straw, and sawdust, and usually left
unattended overnight.
Also within the Philadelphia area, a January
10 blaze at the Rocky Top Stable in North Union,
Pennsylvania, killed 13 show horses, five dogs, and
two cows. Nearby water sources were frozen, and
because of heavy snow, pumper trucks had to stop
900 feet away. Among the victims was a Paso Fino
horse rated as the top Puerto Rican show horse in the
United States.

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