PEOPLE & ORGANIZATIONS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

A week after ANIMAL PEOPLE
exposed the unsuccessful effort of Sierra
Club Cascade Chapter conservation committee
chair Ingrid Hansen to get the
Washington-based chapter to “support the
Makah Tribe’s proposal to take five grey
whales,” and her apparent success in defeating
a counter-proposal that the chapter should
“oppose all taking of whales,” Hansen on
August 28 resigned by e-mail “as Conservation
Chair of the Cascade Chapter of the
Sierra Club, as Sasquatch Group representative
to the Cascade Chapter executive committee,
and as representative of the Cascade
Chapter to the Northwest Regional
Conservation Commitee.” Hansen did not
explain her resignation.

Jeff DeBonis, cofounder and chair
of Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, resigned as executive director
effective July 1, “to slow down and get married,”
said cofounder Jeff Ruch, formerly
program director and counsel, who took over
as executive director. Recent PEER investigative
reports cover big game trophy imports,
the Bureau of Land Management wild horse
program, and the designation of protected
grizzly bear habitat. The latter, G r i z z l y
S c i e n c e, appeared just before Ken Olsen o f
the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported that
the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service are to approve a deal under
which “taxpayers will provide $30,000 of the
yearly cost for maintaining” two miles of
access road which are to be built to enable the
Stimson Lumber Company “to build 59 miles
of road on its own property in key endangered
grizzly bear habitat.”
Actress Betty White, a Greater
Los Angeles Zoo Association board member
since 1974, was on September 13
appointed to the five-member panel that will
oversee the newly formed Los Angeles Zoo
D e p a r t m e n t, which took over zoo management
authority from the Department of
Recreation and Parks effective July 1.
White has served on the board of the Morris
Animal Foundation since 1971, and
received the American Veterinary Medical
Association’s Humane Award in 1982.
The Beaver County Monitor, of
Milford, Utah, is “on the verge of bankruptcy,”
according to the Salt Lake City Deseret
News, because local officials who encouraged
Circle Four Farms to build a nearby complex
holding 250,000 pigs organized a successful
boycott of advertising, after failing in an
attempt to buy the paper outright from outspoken
editorial critic Alice Smith, 56. Circle
Four has plans to expand the complex to hold
one million pigs plus a slaughterhouse.
Roberta Wright, founder of
Supporting and Promoting Ethics for the
Animal Kingdom and a prominent Tucsonarea
activist for 17 years, has moved to
Boston to become executive director of the
New England Anti-Vivisection Society,
replacing Irene Cruickshank, who resigned
in July. Now leading SPEAK is Joyce
Laszloffy, a former P E T A staffer who
cofounded Arizona People for Animal
Rights with Wright in 1994.
The Animality, a tabloid begun in
1992 to “promote responsible pet ownership
and the adoption of homeless animals”
around Charlotte, North Carolina, has passed
from founder K Jones to new publisher
Robin Wohlbruck, who told readers her
immediate goal is “to focus on our advertisers.”
Jones was recently named art director of
the national decorating magazine At Home.
Michael Giannelli, executive
director of The Ark Trust, “has decided, for
personal reasons, to pursue other career
options,” Ark Trust president Gretchen
Wyler announced September 18. Wyler and
Giannelli started the annual Genesis Awards
program, honoring outstanding mass media
work promoting animal protection, as a project
of the Fund for Animals, where Wyler
was west coast director and Giannelli was science
director. As the Genesis program grew,
they left the Fund to form The Ark Trust in an
amicable 1991 split.
The Fund for Animals’
Washington D.C. office has relocated to 8121
Georgia Ave., Suite 301, Silver Spring, MD
20910. The telephone remains 301-585-2591.

INTERNATIONAL
Jane Goodall Institute e x e c u t i v e
director Bill Kaschak announced September
10 that the institute will soon relocate from
Ridgefield, Connecticut, to Washington
D.C., because “The international donor community
and other private organizations working
in conservation and ecology are in
Washington.” The Roots & Shoots e d u c ational
program will continue to be run by the
Jane Goodall Center for Excellence in
Environmental Studies, at W e s t e r n
Connecticut State University. The Goodall
Institute is currently developing a sanctuary
near Johannesburg, South Africa, for infant
chimpanzees, illegally captured and sold as
pets, who have been seized from traffickers.
The League Against Cruel Sports
on August 19 confirmed the expulsion of former
chair Mark Davies and former
Bedfordshire regional representative S t e v e
Watson for allegedly compromising the organization
by taking leading roles in the
Wildlife Network, described by Hugh Muir
and Charles Clover of the London D a i l y
T e l e g r a p h as “a group which is seeking to
reform rather than abolish hunting.” The
Wildlife Network was organized by former
League Against Cruel Sports director Ja m e s
Barrington, who left under fire in November
1995 for telling The Field magazine that hunting
could be given “a new lease on life” if
hunters accepted certain reforms. According
to The Daily Telegraph, Davies and Watson
held secret talks in February 1997 with I a n
F a r q u h a r, master of the Beaufort Hunt,
and Lord Mancroft, deputy chair of the
British Field Sports Society.
Colin Blakemore, 53, a leading
target of antivivisection protest since 1972 for
his vision experiments on kittens, was in
August elected president of the B r i t i s h
Association for the Advancement of
S c i e n c e. Blakemore cofounded both the
European Dana Alliance, which seeks more
funding for neurological research, and the
Boyd Group, described by the London
Sunday Times as “an attempt to bridge the gap
between vivisectors and their detractors,”
formed with Les Ward of Advocates for
A n i m a l s and the Reverend Kenneth Boyd,
director of the Institute of Medical Ethics at
Edinburgh University. The Animal
Liberation Front responded to Blakemore’s
election by vandalizing the cars and homes of
five Oxford University scientists; one car
was parked in Blakemore’s driveway.
Previously, said the Sunday Times, “Blakemore’s
windows have been smashed, his children
threatened with kidnapping, and in 1993
a bomb packed with needles was sent to his
home,” which his children stacked under their
Christmas tree before it was detected.