Month: July 1996

Flaws in the laws

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Calls to reform Massachusetts
child neglect law rose on May 23 when Essex
County authorities filed cruelty charges against
Heidi Dreher, 25, of Hyannis, and Kenneth
Reader, 25, of Windham, New Hampshire,
for leaving a border collie locked in a hot car,
but were unable to charge them for leaving two
small children in the same vehicle. Police officer
Albert Inostroza did arrest them for possession
of crack cocaine. Reader was also
charged with assaulting Inostroza; Dreher was
additionally charged with disorderly conduct.
The children were turned over to the state
Department of Social Services, while the dog
was taken to the Methuen shelter of the
Massachusetts SPCA. State senators Frederick
Berry and James Jajuga said on May 28 that
they were drafting appropriate legislation.

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Animal control & rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The North Shore Animal League’s second annual May adoptathon
involved more than 700 U.S. shelters, which among them placed
20,000 animals––and all of the National Canine Defense League and Blue
Cross Animal Care shelters in England, which placed up to 60-75% of the
dogs in their care plus 40% of the cats.
The Calcasieu Parish Animal Control and Protection
Department uses local high school career days “to spread the word that
work in animal control makes a major contribution to the community,”
reports director Laura Lanza, who is willing to share a three-page set of
handouts on career opportunities in animal control with other agencies.
Her office address is 210 West Railroad Ave., Lake Charles, LA 70601;
telephone 318-439-8879; fax 318-437-3343.
Knox County Humane Society consulting veterinarian
Stephen Smith, 34, has filed as the only Democrat to oppose
Republican incumbent John J. Duncan Jr. in the race for the Second
District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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The wild west

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

HERRO OF THE HOUR
LAS VEGAS––Believing the nonprofit Animal
Foundation International could adopt out more animals and euthanize
fewer than the for-profit Dewey Animal Control Center, AFI
president Mary Herro bid successfully on the Las Vegas animal
control sheltering contract, taking over the job in December.
After five months, AFI had received 3,409 dogs and
cats from animal control, only five fewer than Dewey, and had
returned 652 animals to their owners, 29 more than Dewey.
Adoptions were right at Herro’s target pace of 500 a month:
2,534, up from 686 under Dewey, and the euthanasia percentage
was down to 31%, from 46%, already low compared to the
national norm of about 65%, reflecting the impact of the 75,000
discount neutering surgeries done by AFI since 1989. But
euthanasias were also up, from 1,871 under Dewey to 2,041 under
AFI, because public turn-ins rose from 487 under Dewey to 1,463
under AFI, and owner surrenders jumped from 179 to 1,650.

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GOP still gunning for ESA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Endangered species protection
programs, already crippled by budget cuts, would
be deeply cut again under the proposed Interior Department
budget for fiscal 1997 approved on June 5 by the House
Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. Total Interior
spending would be $12 billion, down $500 million from
fiscal 1996, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget
was cut by $12.5 million, including a 39% cut in the
budget for researching endangered species listing proposals,
and a 50% cut in U.S. support of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species.
The proposed cuts were in line with a revised
strategy for dismantling the Endangered Species Act reportedly
favored by Louisiana Representative Billy Tauzin,
who struck as U.S. Fish and Wildlife chief Mollie Beattie,
49, fell ill again with brain cancer. Undergoing her first
surgery in December, Beattie returned to work in April
after a second operation, but three weeks into May was
forced to go back on sick leave, and resigned on June 5,
leaving administration of the ESA to deputy director John
Rogers––who inherited multiple political headaches.

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Meeting to beat bush meat

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

BERTOUA, Cameroon–– In
March ANIMAL PEOPLE shocked the
animal protection community with
Kenyan wildlife photographer Karl
Amman’s expose essay “The Great Ape
Project and the bush meat trade,”
describing the “overwhelming evidence
that the bush meat trade is one of the
biggest, if not the biggest, primate conservation
issues facing Africa today.”
Amman frustratedly described
how major conservation and animal protection
groups ignored his findings
through six years of field research. A
two-year association with the World
Society for the Protection of Animals
brought some exposure, but no substantive
action from other players.
“Is there any time left for theoretical
debates on great ape rights?”
Amman concluded. “Would the chimpanzees,
bonobos, and gorillas of Africa
not benefit more if the combined talent,
energy, and influence of the scientific
community now engaged in the Great
Ape Project took some time to devise a
strategy on how to keep these animals
out of the cooking pot?”

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CHINESE PRIMATES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Amid ongoing controversy
over how and whether to protect
the commercially valuable old
growth forest in Deqing county,
Yunnan province, home of about
200 of the last wild snubnosed golden
monkeys, China has at least two
other primate conservaton problems.
One is the recent rediscovery
of a mouse-sized marmoset in the
Wuyi mountains of eastern Fujian
province. The seven-ounce marmoset
was a prestigious pet circa
800 years ago, but was long
believed extinct. The other problem
is the rapid decline of black
gibbons, the most primitive of the
great apes, on Hainan island. Only
15 to 20 black gibbons remain,
down from a reported 2,000 some
40 years ago.

WOOFS AND GROWLS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Though ANIMAL PEOPLE
heard frequent complaints that our former
World Wide Web site, maintained by the
Animal Rights Resource Network, was
incomplete and hard to find, it reportedly
drew 183,000 “hits” in five months, amounting
to as many as 1,220 readers a day.
Consultant Patrice Greanville is now at work
on a new site to be posted under our own
name soon, which will include a complete
archive of back issues plus prompt additon of
current issues. The ARRN site proved unviable
for both technical and philosophical reasons,
the latter resulting from a conflict of
the ideological mandate of ARRN with the
ANIMAL PEOPLE journalistic ethic.

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Distortion

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

NEW YORK––AIDS patient Jeff
Getty, who received an experimental baboon
bone marrow transplant in December, decried
“the tactics of distortion” in a June 13 Wall
Street Journal op-ed essay, which is apparently
to be offered to other newspapers, but evidently
was never fact-checked.
According to Getty, “AIDS
researchers at Stanford University were forced
to build labs and complexes underground following
attacks on university property carried out
in the name of animal rights.”

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ZOONOTIC DISEASE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Ebola
The Philippines on June 10 lifted
a ban on monkey exports in effect since
March 21, when Ebola virus was discovered
in two out of 50 crab-eating macaques sold to
the South Texas Primate Center in Alice,
Texas, as one shipment of a lot of 100, by the
Philippine firm Ferlite Scientific Research Inc.
One macaque died of the disease, another was
definitely infected, and the remainder were
killed to keep the lethal virus from spreading.
Of the five Philippine monkey breeding companies,
only Ferlite remains under quarantine.
Ferlite, exporter of about 400 of the 2,500
monkeys the Philippines sells each year, was
also the source of the only previous Ebola outbreak
in the U.S., which was contained at a
primate center in Reston, Virgina, in 1989.

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