OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

John H. Prescott, 63, executive
director of the New England Aquarium 1972-
1994, died on June 30 in Weston, Massachusetts.
Recruited from Marineland of the
Pacific, now defunct, Preston turned the New
England Aquarium into a renowned research
center, but is best remembered for joining
Charles “Stormy” Mayo in forming the Marine
Mammal Stranding Network, and for directing
the first successful rescue, rehabilitation, and
release of stranded pilot whales. Taking in
three whale calves in December 1986, among
more than 60 who beached themselves along
Cape Cod, Prescott returned them to the sea
on July 29, 1987. Reputedly the first marine
mammals tracked by satellite, one was followed
for a then-record 95 days before the
transmitter failed. Prescott later headed both
the committee of scientific advisors to the U.S.
Marine Mammal Commission and the National
Humpback Whale Recovery Team.

Marietta Thornton, 59, telecommunications
director for the Massachusetts
SPCA and American Humane Education
Society since 1987, editor of the Angell
Memorial Hospital alumni newsletter, and
wife of MSPCA president Gus Thornton, died
from complications of surgery on July 10.

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BOOKS: Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare
Edited by Marc Bekoff with Carron A. Meaney
Greenwood Publishing Group (POB 5007, Westport, CT 06881-5007), 1998.
472 pages, hardcover, $59.95.

Extensive but incomplete, and
inherently unreliable due to partisan composition
and editing, the Encyclopedia of Animal
Rights and Animal Welfare purports be a single-source
backgrounder on major animal
protection issues. Compilers Marc Bekoff
and Carron A. Meaney erred, however, in
entrusting authorship of key entries to
employees of major advocacy organizations.
Their work was apparently not subjected to
well-informed nonpartisan scrutiny. Second
opinions are offered on only a handful of the
most obviously controversial topics, e.g. zoos
and biomedical research. The result is much
uncontested repetition of inaccurate dogma.

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BOOKS: Ethics Into Action

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Ethics Into Action:
Henry Spira and the
Animal Rights Movement
by Peter Singer
Bowman & Littlefield, Publishers
(4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706), 1998. 192 pages, hardcover,
$22.95.

We hope Ethics Into Action, Peter
Singer’s revealing and inspiring biography of
Animal Rights International founder Henry
Spira, shall become as influential over the next
25 years as Singer’s 1973 opus Animal
Liberation has over the past 25: as a blueprint
for action on behalf of animals, this time exemplified
as well as theorized.

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BOOKS: The Human Use of Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

The Human Use of Animals:
Case Studies in Ethical Choice
by F. Barbara Orlans, Tom L. Beauchamp, Rebecca
Dresser, David B. Morton, and John P. Gluck
Oxford University Press (198 Madison Ave., New York,
NY 10016), 1998. Paperback, 330 pages, $26.50.

“The following,” Orlans et al pronounce
on page 5 of The Human Use of
Animals, “are universal precepts, stated in
the form of obligations, that all morally
serious persons in all moral traditions
accept: tell the truth, respect the privacy of
others, protect confidential information,
obtain consent before invading another person’s
body, do not kill, do not cause pain,
do not incapacitate, do not deprive of goods,
protect and defend the rights of others, and
prevent harm from occurring to others.”

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BOOKS: Project Puffin

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Project Puffin:
How We Brought Puffins
Back to Egg Rock
by Stephen W. Kress
as told to Pete Salmansohn
40 pages, hardcover, $16.95.

Giving Back To The Earth:
A Teacher’s Guide for Project Puffin
and Other Seabird Studies
by Pete Salmansohn and Stephen W. Kress
70 pages, paperback, $7.95.
Both from Tilbury House
(132 Water St., Gardiner, ME 04345), 1997.

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What do you do about monkeys?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

NAPLES, Fla.; CAPE TOWN, South Africa;
HONG KONG; NEW DELHI & MUMBAI, India;
TOKYO, Japan; TAIPEI, Taiwan; KUALA LUMPUR,
Malaysia; BANGKOK, Thailand––Officials in Naples,
Florida, in late July endured an exotic headache when someone
complained to the local health department about a colony of
feral South American squirrel monkeys who have lived in the
trees overlooking the tennis court at the Collier Athletic Club for
at least 50 years.
The Health Department forwarded the complaint to
Lieutenant Wayne Maahs of the Florida Game and Fresh Water
Fish Commission, who in 1995 reportedly recommended
removing the monkeys because they are not native to Florida.
Maahs called trapper Gary Rosenblum, 42, owner of World
Exotics Zoo Supply in South Naples. Rosenblum agreed to capture
the five-pound monkeys for resale as pets. He expected to
get about $500 apiece for them.

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Wild tails about Wildlife Waystation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST,
California––Three people from ANIMAL
PEOPLE spent nearly seven hours at Wildlife
Waystation recently, including five hours of
hiking up hill and down dale behind the seemingly
inexhaustible founder, Martine Colette,
viewing more than 1,000 animals. Yet we still
saw the most remote paddock for hooved animals
only from a distance.
The scale of the Waystation is overwhelming
to those who may be familiar only
with sanctuaries of ordinary size. Near
Sacramento, California, the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, for instance, reportedly
sheltered 38 animals as of September
1997, while the Farm Sanctuary site at Orlans,
California, had 47.

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The history of D.E.L.T.A. Rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

The history of D.E.L.T.A. Rescue
Adapted from “Is This The Place?”, by Leo Grillo
[Additional editorial notes are in brackets.]

1 9 7 9 – Leo Grillo, a Hollywood
actor, found 35 dogs starving in the wilderness
outside of Los Angeles. Without food or
shelter, their lives depended on his daily
feeding. Grillo learned to medicate these
dogs in the field when they were sick.
(Oscar, the last of those dogs, died in 1995.)
1 9 8 0 – Grillo leased kennel space.
He rescued those 35 dogs and about three
dozen more who were abandoned during that
first year. He found homes for most, but
kept about 20 because they were abused and
unwanted. He realized that most shelters
would kill them, but he refused, saying
“These animals are people too!”

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ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Former Assembly of God pastor
Dan Knapp, 42, well regarded for his
administration of the Humboldt County
Humane Society and Humane Society of
Sonoma County at past stops, in July was
named new chief of Animal Services of the
city of Los Angeles. He inherits a difficult
situation, including shelters reportedly
holding half again as many animals as they
were built for, 180 employees but an undersized
veterinary department, and a per
capita killing ratio which while good by
national and even California standards, is
still three times higher than that of San
Francisco. The job also comes with vocal
public critics of the whole Los Angeles animal
care and control apparatus.

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