Maneka, as in “manic, eh?”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

NEW DELHI––Maneka, pronounced
“manic-eh,” is in India quite a common
first name. Yet headlines often refer just
to “Maneka,” and Indians know exactly who
they mean: Maneka Gandhi, the maniacally
energetic founder of India’s leading animal
advocacy group, People For Animals; foe of
corruption; fearless newspaper columnist; and
member of Parliament. She is lampooned
almost daily by cartoonists and fellow columnists,
but is also quoted thoroughly on subjects
that most others in public life dare not address.
“It was pyrotechnics,” the Indian
Express opened on November 1, describing a
typical Maneka speech to a local Rotary Club.
“Maneka had everyone scurrying for cover, as
she launched a loaded attack on policy makers,
parliamentarians, seminar organizers, and ‘all
those who make a big show of environmental
conservation without even understanding what
they are saying.’”

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Do they see pink humans?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BENGAL––Cops, sociologists,
and commanders of troops know that males
without females may start fighting and
boozing––and that’s the problem among the
elephants of eastern Bengal, reports the
Wildlife Institute of India.
Normal Indian elephant herds,
they say, consist of one male to several
females, governed by the eldest female.
Adult males usually travel apart from the
main herd when no females are in estrus,
but remain under herd rule. Bachelor elephants
are normally just the grown but not
yet mated, and the very old or dispossessed.
Few and alone, they historically kept out of
trouble.

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African elephants

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Three years after “sustainable use” advocate
David Western replaced Richard Leakey as
head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, the service is
plagued by resignations, short funding, and poor
morale, Louise Tunbridge of the London Daily
Telegraph reported in early December––and elephants
in Tsavo National Park are under fire, while
Western’s own salary has tripled in two years.
“Glossy KWS brochures state that only 11 elephants
were killed by ivory poachers last year,” Tunbridge
wrote, “but security sources say the true figure is at
least 67.” At urging of elephant expert Daphne
Sheldrick, Tunbridge continued, the David
Sheldrick Wildlife Trust “paid for a tanker of petrol
to keep the Kenya Wildlife Service anti-poaching
teams going” until the new year, and “the British
charity Care for the Wild is paying to patch up the
park’s roads, which are in very poor repair.”

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TROUBLE AT HSUS-SPONSORED SANCTUARY IN SOUTHERN INDIA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI– –ANIMAL PEOPLE learned at press time
that the scheduled January 2 hearing of a legal action seeking to
remove Deanna Krantz of Global Communications for Conservation
from the management of the Nilgiris Animal Welfare Society was
delayed to February.
NAWS, a 52-acre facility in the Nilgiri Hills region of
southern India, a popular vacation area, was founded in 1954 by
Dorothy Dean, an English immigrant, and run after her death for
some years by an Australian couple. After they retired, Krantz,
wife of Humane Society of the U.S. vice president Michael Fox,
assumed direction of NAWS in 1996. She apparently received
funding from the Dean estate, the GCC-India Project for Nature,
and Humane Society International, an HSUS subsidiary. Warmly
welcomed by Indian animal rights activists and prominent Jains,
Krantz issued glowing reports about her improvements of facilities
and animal rescues, and her work was profiled–– from afar––by at
least two U.S. animal protection publications. When she ran into
trouble with local people, including a March 1997 physical altercation
with a female neighbor, she claimed it was over her opposition
to cruelty. When major Indian humane societies investigated,

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Logging & grazing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––The 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals just before Christmas lifted injunction
it imposed in July aganst logging on 13 National
Forest tracts in northern Arizona and three in New
Mexico, and allowed grazing to resume on 715 leaseholds
that Forest Guardians and the Southwest Center
for Biodiversity alleged were illegally administrated.
Forest Guardians and the Southwest Center
for Biodiversity argued that the logging and grazing
could harm endangered, threatened, and otherwise
protected species, including the Mexican spotted owl
and northern goshawk. The July injunction had temporarily
voided 177 of the 202 grazing leases in the
Coronado National Forest. But it didn’t end the issue:
as the 9th Circuit verdict was imminent, Forest
Guardians on December 12 filed another suit, seeking
to remove about 10,000 cattle from National Forests
alongside four rivers in Arizona and three rivers in
New Mexico, on grounds they may harm 18 endangered
species.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Huntingdon drops PETA suit
Huntingdon Laboratories in mid-December dropped a
federal suit against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
and undercover investigator Michele Rokke, 31, who after four
years of undercover work has reportedly left PETA and returned
home to Minnesota. In early July 1997, PETA disclosed videotape
Rokke took of alleged abuse of monkeys during tests performed at
a Huntingdon facility in New Jersey under contract to Procter &
G a m b l e. P&G immediately suspended and later discontinued all
dealings with Huntingdon. The videotape came from about 50
hours of clandestine taping that Rokke did while working as a
Huntingdon animal care technician. Rokke had also taken copies
of as many as 8,000 pages of documents. Huntingdon charged
about two weeks after the PETA disclosed the alleged abuses that
Rokke had violated a confidentiality clause she signed when she
was hired, suing under a law that would have allowed the firm to
collect triple damages if successful in prosecuting the case.

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THE SIERRA CLUB SUES AND IS SUED

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Suing under the National Wildlife Refuge
Improvement Act, signed into law by President Bill
Clinton in October 1997, the National Audubon
Society and Sierra Club head a coalition asking a
federal judge in Sacramento, California, to restrict
irrigation, row cropping, and pesticide use on farms
located within the Lower Klamath and Tule Lake
refuges south of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The refuges
host millions of birds each spring and fall, midway on
their migrations from Mexico to Canada and back.
Bluebird Systems, a computer software
company based in Carlsbad, California, has sued the
Sierra Club, alleging negligence, fraud, conspiracy,
and breach of contract. The suit claims former
Bluebird employee Dan Anderson, also sued, ran
the Sierra Club official web site from Bluebird computers
for more than two years without authorization.

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Appeals Court and Congress steal ALDF victories

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.––A threejudge
panel representing the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit on December 9 reversed an October
1996 verdict by the late Federal Judge
Charles Richey that USDA rules for enforcing
the Animal Welfare Act violate the
intent of Congress in passing 1985 AWA
amendments that require animal vendors,
exhibitors, and researchers to provide for
the psychological needs of dogs and nonhuman
primates.

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Sanctuary founder evicted

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

DALLAS––A federal court on December 8
ruled that Texas Exotic Feline Foundation cofounder
Gene Reitnauer must leave her home at the TEFF
sanctuary within 30 days, despite a bankruptcy claim
she filed after a Travis County court ordered her to
pay $1.8 million in restitution and damages for
allegedly converting TEFF assets to her personal use.
The Travis County judgement held that the use of
donors’ funds on the house made it TEFF property
rather than her own.

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