CANADA’S NOT THE THIRD WORLD, EH?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

VANCOUVER––Animal advocates in Canada often
liken the Canadian animal protection situation to that of the
Third World, noting scarce funding, weak laws, low public
awareness, and heavy government involvement in animal use
industries such as fur, sealing, and the production of Premarin,
based on pregnant mares’ urine.
Yet the Canadian humane dilemma is distinctly First
World, in that disagreements as to definitions of “humane” are
more often at issue than the basic idea that animals should be
treated humanely–– whatever that is.

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LAND O’ THE FIRST GREENS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

DUBLIN––Legend has it that the
only animals ever feared and hated in Ireland
were snakes and wolves. St. Patrick so thoroughly
rousted the snakes, between 440 and
450 A.D., that not even fossils remain to
show they were ever there. Wolves were
extirpated––officially––in the 19th century,
but occasional sightings, probably of escaped
wolf hybrids, are still reported.
Legend also has it, though ANIMAL
PEOPLE hasn’t found confirmation,
that an ancient Gaelic law ordained that farmers
must feed their beasts or release them,
perhaps the earliest humane law, if it really
existed, in any part of Europe.

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Neutering needed, not neutralization

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

by Patrice Greanville

Editor’s note: ANIMAL PEOP
L E website designer Patrice Greanville,
raised in Chile, spentt November traveling
on business in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina.
He has assisted humane societies, environ –
mental and animal rights groups, and ani –
mal-oriented media in all three nations.

The problems in Latin America
with all kinds of animals are staggering, and
humane education is still in its infancy. Stray
dogs and cats are all over, in terrible condition,
and the rate of roadkills easily surpasses
what we see in the U.S.––partly, I suspect,
due to poor road design, the penchant for
speed, and other bad driving habits. Even
the access highways to major cities are littered
with carcasses, including the remains
of horses, chickens, and hogs, who like
dogs and cats wander with little supervision.

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Wildlife thrill-killing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Roberta “Robin” Ferrabee,
35, of Ohioville, Pennsylvania,
near Pittsburgh, stood up in
her living room on December 9 to
turn on the television––and was shot
through the neck with a deer slug,
falling dead in a gush of blood at the
feet of daughter Cassie, age 3.
Officials say they will charge the
hunter who killed her, but at deadline
had not yet said whether it
would be for homicide, carrying
felony penalties, or just violations
of hunting law. The hunter, not
named, was among a three-member
party who were on the land of the
victim’s brother-in-law without permission;
had been drinking; and
fired twice toward the victim’s
house, from inside the 150-yard no
hunting zone around houses stipulated
by Pennsyvlania law since 1937.

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A kinder, gentler seal hunt

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

by Captain Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Since 1993, the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society has
tried to work with the Canadian
Department of Fisheries and Oceans
to create an industry using naturally
molted baby harp seal hairs.
After four years of
research, we have discovered and
demonstrated the following results:
1. Molting hairs from harp
seals can be brushed or plucked from
three-week-old seals without causing
injury or trauma to the animals. This
observation is backed up by Dr.
David Lavigne of the University of
Guelph––one of the world’s foremost
experts on harp seals.

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LETTERS [Jan/Feb 1997]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Sue ‘em!
In July of this year I was
asked to render an opinion on the
legality of live animal sales. I gave
that opinion: California state law
prohibits a business which sells food
from keeping live animals on its
premises, and merchants in San
Francisco continuously violate that
law. I informed the District Attorney
of the law and the violations. He has
the option of prosecuting these cases,
and has chosen not to do so.
A segment of the Asian
community participates in the sale of
live animals. They have been particularly
astute at organizing opposition
to efforts to stop live animal sales by
making claims of cultural violations
and racism. Unfortunately, politicians
are often less interested in the
absurdity of claims than they are in
the voting power of those who make
them. Because of this, it is not realistic
to expect that San Francisco will
pass anything other than the mildest
and most generalized, unenforceable
“welfare” legislation, if even that.

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Editorial: Them bones, them bones

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Twenty-four years ago, toward the end of an active scientific career that spanned
half a century, the late Konrad Lorenz was honored with the Nobel Prize for Physiology
and Medicine, in recognition of his development of the science of ethology.
Ethology is studying how animals work, including humans, by studying behavior.
Lorenz formed important theories about human marriage and parenting, later affirmed
by direct observation of human subjects, through studying greylag geese. Ethology encompasses
social science, including sociology and psychology, and physical science, from
anatomy to zoology, but most essentially, ethology applies ecological principles to the
study of individual species. Unlke the disciplines of science developed by taking things
apart, which attempt to segregate, categorize, and define, ethology recognizes that living
beings act and evolve in continuous response to ever-changing conditions. Instead of asking,
“What is this part?”, the ethologist asks “How does this action relate to the whole?”
That to understand animals we should study them in their totality doesn’t sound as
if it should have taken a Nobel Prize winner to realize, yet before Lorenz, most investigations
of natural history were, as he put it, exercises in necrology, the study of death.

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Longlines and Gore

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

HONOLULU––If allegations
issued by former U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service special agent Carroll E. Cox stand
up, senior officials of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service have for at least six years
buried evidence of illegal threats to endangered
species on a scale that if exposed
could rattle trade relations, the primacy of
the Nature Conservancy in Western Pacific
conservation projects, and even the office
of U.S. vice president Albert Gore.
If Cox is lying, he says, “I’m a
zero, and my career is over. I’ll never work
in the wildlife or law enforcement fields
again, or any other field where people care
if you’re telling the truth.”

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101 Dalmatian stories and rumors of elephants flying

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida––
If Walt Disney Inc. expected praise from animal
advocates for hitting the fur trade at the
outset of the winter sales season with a liveaction
edition of 101 Dalmatians, and for
offering a home to a family of African elephants
who might otherwise have been shot,
the corporate brass got an eye-opener in
November and early December.
Of the 27 nationally syndicated news
stories about 101 Dalmatians that ANIMAL
PEOPLE newswire editor Cathy Czapla forwarded
to our files during the 30 days after
101 Dalmatians debuted in theatres circa
November 14, 24 stories predicted the film
would generate such huge ill-informed
demand for the big, notoriously unruly dogs
that animal shelters would be overrun with
owner-surrendered Dalmatians within six
months to a year. Many asserted that the 1959
original had sparked just such a Dalmatian
boom––and then another, and another, with
each re-release, including the 1991 issue of a
home video version. At least six dog clubs
and 10 animal advocacy groups held press
conferences and/or faxed out press releases to
discuss the expected Dalmatian glut.

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