Clear NMFS of buyers and sellers

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

by Carroll Cox, special investigator, Friends of Animals

Entrusted with the duty of protecting marine life in
U.S. waters, the National Marine Fisheries Service is at the
same time a division of the Department of Commerce, mandated
to promote trade. This builds into NMFS a conflict of interest
similar to that within the USDA between the mandate to
promote agriculture, the first function of the agency, and the
duty to safeguard public health and animal welfare.
The much better known conflict of interest within the
USDA was subject of a 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose
series by the Kansas City Star, and of an expose by Marian
Burros, food editor of The New York Times, as recently as
April 9 of this year. Between exposes, at least 45,500
Americans died of food-borne diseases, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the clout of
the meat, egg, and milk industries within the USDA,
Congress, and the White House is such that nothing has been
done to separate the functions of promotion and inspection.

A GRAVE SITUATION FOR CHS

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The Connecticut Humane Society in
late March announced it will replace the 50-
year-old animal health clinic at its Newington
headquarters with a new $1 million facility to be
built on the site of the CHS pet cemetery, also
about 50 years old, not used in 10 years according
to CHS president Richard Johnston, and
occupying the only buildable space left on the
CHS grounds. About 3,000 pet graves will be
moved to two new plots. Remains of animals
whose owners can’t be located––at least a third
of the total, Johnston indicated––may be placed
in a mass grave. The CHS filing of IRS Form
990 for fiscal year 1995 reportedly showed
assets of $20.7 million, income of $3.2 million,
program costs of $2 million, management costs
of $534,346, and two salaries over $50,000:
Johnston, at $87,834, and executive director
Gus Helberg, $56,276.

Humane legislation

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The North Carolina House on
April 15 unanimously approved a bill to
make dogfighting, betting on dogfighting,
or watching dogfighting a felony. “We
want to dispell the idea of North Carolina
being a center of dogfighting because of the
laxity of our penalties,” said Rep. John
Weatherly, R-Cleveland, just before the
116-0 vote. Weatherly is also pushing legislation
to address cockfighting and potential
weaknesses in current cruelty statutes.

Feral cats

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The British-based Mammal
Society on April 2 published findings that
a rising population of free-roaming cats
seems to coincide with a decline in the
numbers of barn owls, stoats, and
weasels, but which event is cause and
which effect remains hazy. Trying to
quantify feline killing habits, the authors
reported that Siamese cats hunt most
aggressively, while the white cats in the
study apparently didn’t hunt at all.
The East Bay Regional Park
District board, managing numerous
semi-wild recreation areas in the hills to
the eastern side of San Francisco Bay,
agreed on April 2 to study their feral cat
situation for 18 months before proceeding
with further lethal removal. When cats
are removed, Rick DelVecchio of the San
Francisco Chronicle reported, “park
rangers will work with animal rescue

Stray & Feral Animals

Animal control & rescue

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The Commiossioners Court of Harris
County, Texas, voted 3-2 on March 31 to stop
selling animals to biomedical research, on a
motion by Commissioner Steve Radack.
Commissioner Jerry Eversole and County
Judge Robert Eckels also favored the resolution,
ending a 25-year-plus history of rejecting such
motions, as offered from the floor, 5-0.
Euthanizing as many as 80,000 animals a year,
Harris County sold 791 animals in 1996, less than
half as many as it 1994, earning $32,000.
The trustees of the Bernice Barbour
Foundation, a major funder of humane society
special projects, voted in March “to fund only
programs of organizations which spay/neuter animals
before adopting them out. We feel it is most
important that animals being recycled by shelters
and humane groups,” sccretary/treasurer E v e
Lloyd Thompson told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “or
being shipped into eastern humane societies to fill
requests by the public for puppies for adoption,
do not have the opportunity to reproduce.”

Ed Sayres leaves the American Humane Association

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.––Ed Sayres, director of the American
Humane Association’s animal protection division since August 1995,
“resigned his position to seek new opportunities,” AHA executive director
Robert F.X. Hart announced in an April 16 prepared statement.
Personally serving as interim director of the animal protection division,
Hart got an immediate baptism by flood, coordinating the AHA relief
effort in the vicinity of Grand Forks, North Dakota.
ANIMAL PEOPLE reported in April that Sayres was a leading candidate
for the top job at the New York Center for Animal Care and Control,
vacated on January 21 by the resignation under fire of founding director Marty
Kurtz. Sayres confirmed on April 20 that he was interviewed for the CACC
job two days earlier, but said he had not yet been told if he would be hired.

ORGANIZATIONS & ISSUES

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The daily electronic news bulletin
GREENlines, founded as ESA Today, on March 31
announced the departure of lead author Jim Jontz after
nearly 500 editions to become executive director of the
Western Ancient Forest Campaign. Roger
Featherstone remains GREENlines editor and webmaster,
assisted by former Northwest Ecosystem
Alliance staffer Eric Wingerter and outreach coordinator
Megan Delany. GREENlines is a project of the
Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network,
a division of Defenders of Wildlife.
The Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting,
founded as a branch of Friends of Animals and then
taken independent in 1975 by the late Luke Dommer,
has again been absorbed by another group, this time
Wildlife Watch Inc., also incorporating the Coalition
to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese. All
three are led by Anne and Peter Muller, POB 562,
New Paltz, NY 12561; telephone 914-255-4227; fax
914-256-9113; e-mail >>wildwatch@worldnet.alt.net;
web >>http://www.icu.com/geese/ coalition.html.<<

Activists & Organizations

Wise-use wiseguys

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

Alleging trademark violation, the National
Parks and Conservation Association has forced the
Property Rights Alliance, of Washington state, to restructure
the “National Park Watch Homepage,” which NPCA
counsel Libby Fayad contends “sought to sidetrack people
seeking legitimate park information” via ParkWatcher, an
NPCA web page designation, “and expose them to paranoid
fears about the National Park Service and those of us who
work to maintain the parks.” The PRA site reportedly
accused the NPCA, Audubon Society, Sierra Club,
Wilderness Society, and other groups of promoting paganism
and trying to turn over U.S. parks to the United Nations.

Activists & Organizations

The Summit and the top of the heap

May 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

SACRAMENTO––Belton Mouras, founder of both
the Animal Protection Institute and United Animal Nations,
resigned the UAN presidency on March 26 in a seeming replay
of his exit from API almost exactly ten years before.
Mouras founded API in 1968, after about six years as
California representative for the Humane Society of the U.S.,
and went on to found UAN later in 1987.
Former UAN staffer Jeane Westin now chairs the
UAN board, while former vice president Deanna Soares has
become executive director. Mouras almost immediately
accepted a job as development officer for the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, while former UAN program director
Vernon Weir resigned separately to take a similar post with the
Association of Sanctuaries (TAOS).
Mouras told ANIMAL PEOPLE that push came to
shove after UAN received two major bequests and enjoyed an
unusually successful direct mail appeal on behalf of the UANsponsored
Emergency Animal Rescue Service. By fluke, the
appeal reached recipients just as the late January flooding in
California put EARS in the news.

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