BOOKS: Hummingbirds: My Winter Guests

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Hummingbirds:
My Winter Guests
by Arnette Heidcamp
Crown Publishing (201 E. 50th St. New
York, NY 10022), 1997.
192 pages, hardcover, $18.00.

Several years ago I found a bird’s
nest in the woods: tightly woven from fine
grass fibers, and incredibly small. Recognizing
that it had belonged to a hummingbird, I
was astounded to realize that the tiny bird had
raised her entire family in it.
Arnette Heidcamp’s third volume
on her experiences with hummingbirds
recounts the events of the 1995-1996 winter,
when she hosted two injured rubythroats and
two rufuses who stayed too long in their summer
territory.

BOOKS: Land of the Tiger

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Land of the Tiger
A Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent
by Valmik Thapar
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720), 1998.
288 pages, 167 color photos, $29.95 hardcover.

You might expect a pornographic
preoccupation with predation from the title
Land of the Tiger , a dry tome from the subtitle,
a coffee table ornament from the oversized
illustrated format, or New Age quasi-spiritual
gibberish from the jacket blurb promising that
Valmik Thapar “links the reverence shown to
nature by Eastern religions, including
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, to the
tremendous biodiversity that remains on the
Indian subcontinent today.”

OBITUARIES

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Mary Richard, 33, director of the
Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Sanctuary in
Oyster Bay, New York, was killed late on
February 25 when her companion, sanctuary
operations manager Michael Brust, 23,
wrecked the sanctuary minivan. Brust,
whom Richard hired after he worked at the
sanctuary for several years as a teenaged volunteer,
was charged with driving while
intoxicated and driving with a suspended
license. Richard “was a bird watcher and
lover of nature since she was a child,” her
sister Christine Palmer told Al Baker of
Newsday. The National Audubon Society
hired Richard to run the sanctuary in 1991.
“It is the oldest Audubon sanctuary in the
U.S., so for her to be in charge of it was a
major accomplishment,” said National
Audubon Society president John Bianchi.

Obituaries

250 Things You Can Do To Make Your Cat Adore You

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

250 Things You Can Do To
Make Your Cat Adore You
by Ingrid Newkirk
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1998.
201 pages, paperback, $11.00.

In 1992 and 1995, ANIMAL PEOP
L E surveys of cat rescuers netted several
signed responses from PETA staffers who,
almost alone among the respondents, identified
mass roundups for killing by needle as
their preferred “rescue” method. One of them
killed an average of about one cat per day.
In January 1998, ANIMAL PEOP
L E received a detailed account from John
Newton of the Meower Power Feral Cat coalition,
alleging that a hit squad led personally
at first by PETA cofounder Ingrid Newkirk
had for three years frequently trapped cats
from supervised neuter/release colonies in the
vicinity of Fort Norfolk, Virginia, and delivered
many to their deaths at local animal shelters.

BOOKS: Slaughterhouse

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Slaughterhouse:
The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane
Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry
by Gail A. Eisnitz
Prometheus Books (distributed by the Humane Farming Association,
POB 3577, San Rafael, CA 94912), 1997. 310 pages, hardcover, $25.95.

Gail Eisnitz offers a nightmare view
of the meat industry. Her ten-year investigation
of meat packers, the industry’s
euphemism for slaughterhouses, depicts a
world in which cattle are skinned alive and pigs
are boiled to death in giant scalding vats.
When fully conscious cows dangle by one hind
leg from a steel shackle, workers snip off their
front legs to prevent them from kicking.

BOOKS: RANCH OF DREAMS

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

RANCH OF DREAMS
by Cleveland Amory
Viking Press (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 1997. 288 pages, hardcover,
$22.95.

Cleveland Amory’s Ranch of Dreams is a pleasant stroll through the informative,
adventurous corridors of his memories of evolving from the child who adored his Aunt Lu
and all the strays she took in to become one of the founders of the modern animal rights
movement. It’s a sweet, often moving tale.
Amory begins with fond childhood recollections of both his Aunt Lu and his
grandmother (a personal favorite of mine), and the pivotal influence they and Anna
Sewell’s classic novel Black Beauty had on young Amory’s developing values and sensibilities.
From there Amory moves ahead to his acquisition of the Texas acreage which
became the Black Beauty Ranch sanctuary. He details his decades-long fight to rescue wild
burros, his raison d’etre for establishing the ranch. The chapter, like the entire book, is
packed with laughs, tears, excitement, frustration, and best of all, success.

HINDU GOVERNMENT TO INCLUDE MANEKA

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

NEW DELHI––”Maneka Gandhi was re-elected as
an independent and has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party government,”
Help In Suffering executive director Christine
Townend faxed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on March 14. “It looks
likely she will be given a lesser cabinet ministry,” an analysis
confirmed by the editors of The Hindu, the nationally circulated
newspaper most closely aligned with the BJP.
Founder of People for Animals, the strongest Indian
animal advocacy group, Maneka thus for the third time in her
political career parlayed isolation into strength. Twenty-two
seats short of a majority in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, after
national elections held in stages from February 16 through
March 5, the BJP needs the support of every non-aligned delegate
it can get in order to take office. Previously in power only
once, for just 13 days, the BJP––if it can form a majority––
will represent the ascendency of Hindu nationalism over the
secular Congress Party, which had dominated Indian politics
since India won independence from Britain in 1948.

African animal notes

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Reported Reuters on February 28 from Dar Es
Salaam, Tanzania, “A dog, named Immigration by owner
John Kachela, was sentenced to hang by a judge in Rukwa
province last week because its name was deemed insulting.
The dog was spared the noose, but newspapers reported that
police shot the year-old mongrel after an appeal was rejected.
Prosecutors told the court in Sumbawanga, Tanzania, that
Kachela named the dog after a respected government department
and went there daily to boast about it. Kachela was
found guilty of scandalizing the department and given a suspended
six-month jail term.” Address the Embassy of the
United Republic of Tanzania, 2139 Kalorama Rd. NW,
Washington, DC 20008; fax 202-797-7408.

Africa asks, “Is hunting really ecotourism?”

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

PRETORIA, South Africa––WildNet Africa,
described by publisher Raymond Campling as “the InterNet’s
largest publisher on African wildlife matters, is polling web
site visitors on whether they think hunting is legitimately promoted
as eco-tourism.
As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, the tally was
1,901 ayes (47%), against 2,150 nays (53%).
The voting, at >>http://wildnetafrica.co.za<<, may
be influential as African nations heavily dependent on tourism
strive to recover from a collapse of traffic coinciding with civil
strife in Rwanda, the Congo, the Sudan, Uganda and Kenya.
Even relatively stable South Africa is reviewing traditional
approaches to tourism and wildlife management, as transition
to majority African rule coincides with the dampening
effect on tourism of fires that ravaged Kruger National Park in
1996, together with poaching and canned hunting scandals in
and around Kruger that emerged in mid-1997. Subsistence
communities on the Kruger fringes are being integrated into the
protected area in exchange for pledges that the villagers will get
a bigger piece of the related economic action. Corporate landholders
are encouraged to enroll their ecologically sensitive
holdings in the South African Natural Heritage Programme,
instead of fencing them off and turning them into private game
preserves, a growing trend in the former apartheid nations.

1 2 3 … 5 »