Just show me the money!

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

National Alliance for Animals
president Peter Gerard, formerly known
as Peter Linck, on May 29 released long
awaited audited financial statements pertaining
to the June 1996 World Animal
Awareness Week––but they scarcely
answered all the big questions, including
why the cost of the events ran triple
Gerard’s estimate of only two months
earlier, while the crowd of 3,000 was
97,000 fewer than his promotional literature
promised.
Gerard told the April 1996
Summit for the Animals that he expected
World Week to cost $218,000 plus
unspecified amounts for advertising that
he later declared to be $13,320. The
World Week program thanked sponsors
for cash gifts of at least $754,925, and
according to Gerard’s crowd count, ticket
sales for World Week events should
have raised $213,600, for estimated total
receipts of upward of $950,000.

Activists & Organizations

More trouble in Montreal

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

MONTREAL– – Canadian
SPCA executive director Pierre Barnotti
admitted at the organization’s June 15
annual meeting that he augmented his
$49,000 annual salary in 1995 and 1996
by taking cuts from his fundraising campaigns
of $14,000 and $25,000.
Reported Lisa Fetterman of the
Montreal Gazette, “The former real
estate broker, who has declared bankruptcy,
acknowledged that he takes 10%
of the net profit from any fundraising
that costs the CSPCA some money to
mount, and 15% of the net profit if it
does not cost the organization anything.”
Under Barnotti, CSPCA revenue
rose from $1.7 million in 1995 to
$3.2 million last year. At peak in the
late 1980s and early 1990s, the CSPCA
raised $4 million a year, but incurred
debts exceeding $1 million by subsidizing
the animal control contract, 1991-
1993. It finally lost the contract anyway
in 1994 to a private firm, Berger Blanc.

WILD TIME FOR THE WAYSTATION

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST,
Calif.––The California Fish and Game Commission
on June 12 reportedly put off until August a decision
on a Department of Fish and Game request that
it should impose a moratorium on the acceptance of
animals by the Wildlife Waystation sanctuary until
it meets DFG requirements.
DFG director Jacqueline E. Schafer told
the commission on May 16 that the DFG has
refused to renew the Wildlife Waystation permits to
exhibit and keep “detrimental species,” which
expired on February 15, because “the Waystation
continues to possess unpermitted animals, allows
breeding, and houses animals in substandard cages.
Twenty-six unauthorized wild animal births have
taken place at the Waystation since June 1994,”
Schafer charged. She further stated that 23 cages,
mostly housing big cats or bears, have been officially
out of compliance with state regulation since
May 16, 1995.

CAMPAIGNS, ORGANIZATIONS, LEADERS

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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.

McDonald’s “wins” McLibel case ––but is “culpably” cruel to animals

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

LONDON – – Justice
Roger Bell technically found for
McDonald’s on June 19, ending
the second longest trial in British
history, but the $98,000 defamation
award against penniless defendants
Dave Morris, 43, and Helen
Steel, 31, cost the fast food firm
$16 million to win, enabled Morris
and Steel to distribute millions of
copies of the 1990 London
Greenpeace pamphlet Whats
Wrong With McDonald’s? that
started it all, and established that
several of their many allegations
against McDonald’s were true.

CHARC APPEALS WAUCONDA RODEO VIOLENCE TO THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WAUCONDA, Illinois––
Demonstrating more faith in the
court of public opinion than in the
justice system of Lake County,
Illinois, the Chicago Animal Rights
Coalition is challenging the
Wauconda Rodeo and all rodeos this
summer with a 40-minute video,
Bucking The Rodeo, by Robyn
Douglas of Earth Network News.
Wwhatever an authoritarian-leaning
viewer might say about
the allegations the video raises of
police brutality against anti-rodeo
protesters, the arrogance of police
who incorrectly claim it’s illegal to
videotape them, and the perjury of
police whose courtroom testimony
the cameras belie, the violence
toward animals is self-evident.

Odd Bodkin II

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

ANCHORAGE––Responding to “substantial new information”
pertaining to the application of National Biological
Service sea otter project leader James L. Bodkin to kill up to 20
endangered sea otters, reported on page 17 of the June edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has
announced intent to reopen the public comment period.
Documents obtained by ANIMAL PEOPLE indicate
that Bodkin, working out of the Alaska Science Center in
Anchorage, may be seeking a pretext to open sea otter hunting.
Heavily hunted for fur in the 19th century, sea otters
were believed to be extinct early this century, but remnants of two
subspecies were found off California and Alaska in the late 1930s.
Resenting competition from sea otters for lucrative and now depleted
abalone and sea urchins, fishers held a decade ago that the
otters had recovered enough to be removed from the federal endangered
species list. The campaign lost momentum when oiled sea
otters became the icon species of the clean-up effort after the 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Indonesian net isn’t drifting

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

As Indonesia prepared a successful
bid to host the 1999 meeting of the
Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species, Bill Rossiter of
Cetacean Society International forwarded
reports from scuba diver Steve Morris and
marine mammologist Peter Rudolph,
indicating “military and governmental
authorities” had allowed Taiwanese fishers
to suspend two huge nylon nets from
pylons in the Lembeh Strait, just offshore
from the Tangkoko Nature Reserve.
Paraphrasing Morris, Rossiter
said the nets went up in March 1996, and
in their first year caught 1,424 manta rays,
18 whale sharks, 312 other sharks, four
minke whales, 326 dolphins, 577 pilot
whales, 789 marlin, 84 sea turtles, and
nine dugong.

Bombed birds can’t be found

July 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field supervisor
for ecological services Brooks Harper on May 16
issued a new Biological Opinion for Gunnery and
Aerial Bombardment Practice at Farallon de
Medinilla, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands. As Friends of Animals special investigator
Carroll Cox described on page 17 of the March edition
of ANIMAL PEOPLE, Farallon de Medinilla is a
tiny island north of Guam, uninhabited by humans but
heavily used by protected sea birds and sea turtles
––between U.S. Navy bombing and strafing.
The new Biological Opinion, issued preliminary
to more bombing and strafing, notes that the most
endangered bird on the island, the Micronesian
megapode [ovenbird] is “likely to remain underneath
brushy cover, and therefore, deaths or injury from
either direct strikes or indirectly from shrapnel would
be difficult to detect from aerial surveys,” as if finding
anything left of a bird the size of a robin who’s been
hit by a bomb might be likely anyway.

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