CAMPAIGNS, ORGANIZATIONS, LEADERS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Animal control
Dave Flagler, 44, director of animal control in
Fairfax, Virginia for just one year, quit in June to head animal
services in Salt Lake County, Utah. Flagler said he was frustrated
by tight resources in Fairfax0.3, and concerned about a
possible move toward privatization. Previously director of animal
control in Multnomah County, Oregon, Flagler in Fairfax
replaced Daniel P. Boyle, DVM, longtime animal control
chief in DuPage County, Illinois, who after moving to Fairfax
was fired for alleged maladministration just four months later.
Attacked by hunters and trappers in Illinois for pursuing a local
leghold trap ban, Boyle ran afoul of animal rights activists in
Fairfax for using a once standard animal disposition test, now
considered obsolete, in which a dog and a cat are held face to
face. Animals who respond aggressively are killed. Flagler, in
Oregon, was targeted by activists for introducing a tough antivicious
dog law. He drew flak in Fairfax when the county
Board of Supervisors asked him to reduce deer numbers.
Flagler favored hiring a sharpshooter, but the Fairfax Animal
Shelter Advisory Commisson convinced the board to say no.

“The ACES Foundation,” endowed by Animal
Care Equipment & Services Inc., “provides very modest grants
in the animal care and control fields under narrow guidelines,”
writes ACES founder Bill Brothers. “1997 grants will be considered
to provide organizational seed money in those states
which do not currently have state animal control associations or
humane federations. 1998 grants may be expanded to include
certain costs of organizing a state or regional training meeting.”
Contact Brothers at POB 3275, Crestline, CA 92325.
Former Florida Animal Control Association president
Kim Staton, who quit to take a job with the D e n v e r
Dumb Friends League, changed her mind once in Denver and
returned to Florida in time to succeed herself.
Federal appointments
President Bill Clinton on June 27 named retired
National Park Service national capital region drector Robert G.
Stanton, 56, a 34-year staffer, to head NPS. If confirmed by
the Senate, Stanton will be the first Afro-American NPS chief.
The USDA on June 23 named Craig A. Reed,
DVM, to succeed the retired Donald W. Luchsinger as associate
administrator of the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service, which enforces the Animal Welfare Act.
A 24-year USDA staffer, Reed was associate administrator of
the Food Safety and Inspection Service, and had headed the
science division of the Agricultural Marketing Service.
Wildlife conservation
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently backed
the distribution of Project Wild videos favoring hunting to public
schools, making two related grants totaling $330,000 to the
Council for Wildlife Conservation and Education, an arm
of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The grants
were made under published criteria requiring that the applicants
“provide innovative approaches to introducing people to hunting
and fishing, including emphasis on families,” in the context
of “promoting natural resources and environmental education
of K-12 students.”
Arguing the USFWS has a duty to present all sides of
the hunting issue, The Fund for Animals has applied for
$142,000 to support similar distribution of Project Respect
materials, including the video What’s Wrong With Hunting? ,
the handbook Think Like The Animal: Questions to Ask Before
You Kill, and the Animal Crusaders newsletter for elementary
school teachers. [Letters in support of the Fund application
may be directed to the USFWS, 1849 C St. NW, Washington,
DC 20240, with copies to Congressional representatives.] Alexander Cockburn reported in the June 1-15 edition
of CounterPunch that, “The big game lobby is ecstatic at
the appointment of Hattie Babbitt, wife of the Secretary of the
Interior, as deputy administrator of the Agency for
International Development, a subsidiary of the State
Department,” which during the years the international ivory
trafficking ban was in full force shoveled $29 million to
C A M P F I R E, the Zimbabwean “regional development” front
which derives 90% of its earned income from promotion of trophy
hunting, and led the successful drive to lift the ban.
Cockburn added that Greenpeace USA is about to
oust national director Barbara Dudley, “with the prime reason
being Dudley’s disastrous position [favoring] the Dolphin
Death Bill.” Greenpeace support of lifting the “dolphin-safe”
standard for tuna imports, Cockburn said, “led swiftly to a
two-thirds decline in contributions.”
In addition, Cockburn wrote, “Vic Sher, head of
the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, now reborn as Earth
J u s t i c e, has also been told to clean out his office. Sher
appears to be departing under a cloud, though whether the
cloud carries a sexual or monetary aroma is hard to determine.”
Sher had headed the organization since 1994, after eight years
of directing old growth-related litigation from Seattle. He was
succeeded on an interim basis by Vawter Parker. The Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund broke from the Sierra Club in 1971,
to avoid risking Sierra Club resources and unity in environmental
lawsuits, and has since pursued an independent direction.
U.S. National Wildlife Refuges “are not sanctuaries
and were never meant to be sanctuaries,” Wildlife Legislative
Fund of America director of national wildlife affairs B i l l
Bragg told The New York Times recently. The system was
founded and refuges declared off limits to hunting by
Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, but the National Wildlife
Refuge Administration Act of 1966 allowed USFWS to admit
hunting. Presidential administrations have opened refuges to
hunters as an election year favor ever since. The Clinton/Gore
administration, for instance, opened 23 refuges to hunting
[and 18 to fishing] during 1996, meaning that hunting now
occurs on more than 300 of the present 500 refuges.
The Defenders of Wildlife “Florida Habitat for
Bears” campaign debuted June 4, seeking 10,000 signatures in
support of a petition asking the legislature to authorize a commemorative
license plate to raise funds to help Florida black
bears. The drive is backed by the Florida Game and Fresh
Water Fish Commission, the Wildlife Foundation of
Florida, and the Sierra Club. Similar plates have raised $17
million each for Florida panthers and manatees––but Florida
already issues 40 other commemorative plates, and the experience
of other states with similar programs is that at a certain
point each new plate cuts into the income produced by others.
The same phenomenon occurs with tax refund checkoffs, commonly
used by state wildlife agencies to raise money for endangered
species conservation, and now pursued by humane organizations
in several states, along with commemorative licenses,
as potential sources of support for statewide neutering funds.
The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled
in February, on behalf of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, that
commercial fishing in Glacier Bay National Park is illegal, but
also said the National Park Service may authorize it––and the
NPS has moved to do so. Comments, due October 15, may be
sent to James M. Brady, Superintendent, Glacier Bay National
Park, POB 140, Gustavus, AK 99826.

Wise-use wiseguys
Formed in 1988 to defend laboratory use of animals,
the Washington Association for Biomedical
R e s e a r c h has increased its annual budget from $70,000 to
circa $200,000 since the 1993 hiring of executive director
Debra Pylypec, freelance Jeanne Sather recently reported
in the Puget Sound Business Journal. Pylypec’s arrival coincided
with media attention to the FBI pursuit of alleged laboratory
arsonist Rod Coronado, who was believed to have
been hiding in Washington, and is now just over halfway
through a four-year federal prison term as an alleged accessory
to laboratory attacks in five states––mostly on facilities
doing research for the fur trade. The Washington actions purportedly
involving Coronado actually occurred in 1991.