Deer hunting kills birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

PHILADELPHIA– – Managing
deer to suit hunters may be the major cause
of vanishing songbirds.
“We’re talking about vireos, warblers,
ovenbirds, all birds who use that bottom
five feet” of the forest ecosystem,
explained National Zoo wildllife biologist
William McShea as far back as 1992,
assessing deer damage to the Shenandoah
Valley, in Virginia. “These birds are all
declining in eastern forests.”
But that’s a message the National
Audubon Society avoided last December 12
at the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
near Tinicum, Pennsylvania. Unveiling a
new national program to encourage bird
habitat conservation, the speakers addressed
“habitat loss” and “fragmentation,” blaming
development rather than deer nibblings.

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Brucellosis, bison, wardens and the horses they ride in on

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL
PARK––The guns fell silent on January 31,
at least temporarily, after shootings and shipments
to slaughter killed 25% of the bison in
America’s most famous herd. News video of
bison falling dead and a Fund for Animals call
of a boycott of tourism to Montana brought a
change of plans from National Park Service
director Roger G. Kennedy, Forest Service
chief Michael Dombeck, and Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service administrator
Terry L. Medley.

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Who is the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service servicing?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––In the last week of January,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service embraced a partnership with
the trophy hunting organization Safari Club International, permitted
the U.S. Navy to kill every endangered ovenbird on
Farallon de Medinilla 2.5 times each, and advanced a scheme
to kill coyotes, purportedly to rebuild the endangered
Columbian whitetailed deer population on the heavily overgrazed
Washington mainland sector of the Julia Butler Hansen
Refuge, along the Columbia River.

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TRIBUTE TO CARL SAGAN

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Carl Sagan, astronomer, pioneer
in exobiology, and author of many best-selling
books, died of pneumonia on December
20, 1996, at age 62 from complications
resulting from a bone marrow transplant
which, ironically, had cured him of
myelodysplasia, a bone marrow disease he
had battled for two years.
Sagan actively and sympathetically
participated in public discussion of animal
rights for at least the last 20 years of his scientific
career. He viewed intelligence as the
definitive requirement for the possession of
rights, rather than the capacity to suffer, but
did not draw the line at the limits of human
intelligence. He remained aware of animal
suffering, raising it in works that might otherwise
have been quoted in defense of unrestricted
animal use.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Judi Jones, 51, director of operations
since 1989 for the Friends of the Sea
Lion Marine Mammal Center in Laguna
Beach, California, died January 13 of complications
after gall bladder surgery. A registered
nurse, Jones began helping Friends of
the Sea Lion as a volunteer in 1983. The animal
care staff at Sea World San Diego on
January 17 named a rescued baby gray whale
J.J., in her honor.

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STRATEGIES FOR ACTIVISTS FROM THE CAMPAIGN FILES OF HENRY SPIRA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

“This handbook is a project of Animal Rights International, POB 214, Planetarium Station, New York, NY 10024, and is not for sale.”

If you’re serious about
activism, meaning serious about
getting results, not just venting
spleen, drop Henry Spira a note
requesting Strategies for Activists.
Asking for some of the same information
is more-or-less how I got to
know Spira, 16 years ago, as a frustrated
Quebec newspaper muckrake.
I’d exposed fraudulent
manipulation of animal tests to
defend corporate and governmental
entities against liability in connection
with reckless toxic chemical
use, but even though I’d caught
bureaucrats reversing the course of
major rivers, on paper, to deny evident
pollution, I hadn’t been able to
convert exposure to reform.

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BOOKS: Bless All Creatures Here Below

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Bless All Creatures
Here Below
A Celebration for the Blessing of the Animals
by Judith Gwyn Brown
Morehouse Publishing (POB 1321, Harrisburg, PA
17105), 1996. 32 pages, illus., hardcover, $15.95.

Presented as an illustrated children’s book, Bless
All Creatures Here Below could also serve as a guide to
assist churches in preparing a blessing of animals, including
verse, music, and prayers for the occasion, all kept
unthreateningly ecumenical. I wondered about the inclusion
of a dragon and a unicorn among the other animals
receiving blessings in the illustrations, but decided that the
mythical animals do belong, together with the religious
symbols a sharp-eyed child may spot in archetectural
details of the backdrop. The author invites everyone to
come and be at pease together, and to borrow and reproduce
one page of the book as a poster inviting animals and
their people to your local blessing ceremony.
––Phyllis Clifton

BOOKS: The Fairfax Ferret

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

The Fairfax Ferret
by Pamela Troutman Grant
Carlton Press (Order c/o Star Ferrets,
POB 1714, Springfield, VA 22151-0714), 1996.
49 pages, hardcover, $14.45.

I hope librarians and others who buy books for
children see The Fairfax Ferret, as few books describe
pets other than dogs and cats, or small wiggly things that
mothers have difficulty accepting. Fish and birds are often
purchased to fill needs foreign to their natures. A ferret is
in-between-sized: one can cuddle a ferret, but the animal
accommodates the small apartment lifestyle. Author
Pamela Grant, who runs a “rescue mission” for ferrets,
describes how Johnny loses his ferret in an unaware
moment, but gets lucky and gets the ferret back, who survives
the transition from comfortably pampered pet to foraging
feral and back again.

BOOKS: Animals as Teachers and Healers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Animals as Teachers
and Healers
by Susan Chernak McElroy
Ballentine Books (201 E. 50th St., New York, NY
10022), 1996. 253 pages, hardcover. $18.95.

We have no evidence that there was a previous
edition of Animals as Teachers and Healers, yet author
Susan McElroy leaves the confusing impression that there
was one, piecing together many accounts from various
sources without warning that her book is a pastiche. I kept
turning back a page to be sure of the identity of her everchanging
narrator. Teachers will be tempted to scribble on
the cover, “WHERE is your outline? See me,” as the
topic meanders from animals as mentors of compassionate
behavior to the destruction of wolves by forest and park
rangers and the hypocrisy of various others who have
harmed animals while purportedly helping them.
McElroy’s own contribution centers on her experience
with cancer and the help she believes she posthumously
received from her dog, Keesha, who died of cancer several
years before McElroy’s own was diagnosed.

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