Care For The Wild grows into the mission

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

RUSPER, West Sussex, U.K. ––It would be hard to be more active in international wildlife protection than Care For The Wild on a comparable budget––or to be more obscure, even with offices in seven nations on four continents.

None of the Care For The Wild expenditure of $1.3 million a year goes for show, or for office comfort. The headquarters in retired veterinarian and chairperson William Jordan’s former animal hospital can barely be seen from the street. Most of the staff occupy a converted stable. William Jordan himself and other executives share closet-sized rooms in the downstairs of his Tudor house.

Care For The Wild is perhaps the biggest employer near the crossroads of Rusper, a village whose other landmarks are a medieval church and two 400-yearold pubs. But Rusper, on the outer edge of the London sprawl, isn’t really near anywhere. It is still rural enough, in fact, that abundant rabbits might be prey for a feral leopard or puma repeatedly seen in the neighborhood.

Moi: “Shoot to kill cattle rustlers.”

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Nairobi––Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi on December 23 ordered police to shoot armed cattle rustlers on sight. Moi spoke at the Shadrack Kimalel Primary School in Baringo, while attending a goat auction held to fund education throughout the district. The sale of 3,029 donated goats fetched nearly $40,000.

Rustling and related massacres among members of the Pokot, Marakwet, Kalenjin, and Jemp tribes of the North Rift district have produced civil unrest which has in turn hurt the development of tourism and oil fields.

Moi issued a similar shootto-kill order pertaining to armed elephant and rhino poachers in 1984. It was invoked as recently as January 2, when Kenya Wildlife Service rangers killed four poachers––three of whom shot back with automatic rifles––just after the poachers killed four elephants in Kora National Park near Garissa.

People & Projects

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Animal rescue information was scarce after December floods and mudslides that killed at least 30,000 people in Venezuela––but Reuters reported from Tanaguarena on December 23 that one Ricardo Rodrieguez had turned to rescuing animals upon finding no people left alive, and had freed about 80 dogs plus miscellaneous cats, parrots, monkeys, and other species from the muck and rubble. “The animals are given food and water he has hoarded in an abandoned house,” said Reuters. “He gives them to relief teams and soldiers leaving the disaster area, “so they can start a new life.”

Attorneys Katharine Meyer and Eric Glitzenstein, who won Endangered Species Act protection for grizzly bears, Canada lynx, and the Queen Charlotte goshawk in cases funded by various national advocacy groups, have formed their own nonprofit advocacy front, the Wildlife Advocacy Project. Named WAP director was D’arcy Kemnitz, formerly coordinator for the Alliance for Animals and midwest regional coordinator for the Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network, sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife.

Activists & Organizations

Statements

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Said PETA cofounder Ingrid Newkirk of a Little Rock city government plan to divert funds from zoo improvements to buy land for the future Bill Clinton p r e s idential library, “The Little Rock zoo is the worst in the country. The idea that money is going to be taken away from them to fund Clinton’s library is an abomination.” Her remarks were published as far away as China, where officials are sensitive about American criticism of Chinese zoos.

Comedian Richard Pryor, suffering from multiple sclerosis and previously afflicted by severe burns resulting from drug abuse, reportedly sent Christmas cards urging recipients to withhold donations from charities which fund animal research.

Activists & Organizations

Awards & honors

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, who said “Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet,” was on December 26 named “person of the 20th century” by Time magazine.

The first-ever Red Cross Award for animal rescue, sponsored by the Wells Fargo Foundation, was recently given to the Pasado’s Safe Haven sanctuary in Sultan, Washington, for calling public attention to the abandonment of thousands of chickens at the financially distressed Amberson Egg Farm in Lake Stevens, Washington, last summer.

Sheila Siddle, cofounder of the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in South Africa, on November 20 honored Kenyan wildlife photographer Karl Amman with the first-ever Chimfunshi Pal Award for his exposes of the traffic in wild primates as meat. One of those exposes appeared in the March 1996 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Positions & transitions

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Virologist Harold E. Varmus, 60, director of the National Institutes of Health since 1993, left at year’s end to head the Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center i n New York City. Under Varmus, the NIH budget rose from $10.3 billion to $15.6 billion––but animal use in research continued a 20-year decline, the retirement of nonhuman primates from research use to sanctuaries became almost routine, and the propaganda wars waged against antivivisectionists by his predecessors markedly cooled.

Matt and Mary Kelly in December announced the sale of the Brodie Mountain Ski Resort in western Massachusetts, scene of many vegetarian and animal activist gatherings, to Brian Fairbanks, owner of the nearby Jiminy Peak ski area. “Fairbanks has committed to keep the veggie offerings throughout the food services at Brodie,” Matt Kelly wrote. Three vegetarian events booked for Brodie during 2000 will remain on the calendar.

Activists & Organizations

How the rich can get richer––and help the poor

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

INDIANOLA, Washington–– Richard Linzer, author of It’s Simple: Money Matters for the Nonprofit Board Member, hadn’t seen the December 1999 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE when he wrote a guest column attacking “unimaginable accumulations of wealth by large nonprofit institutions” while the problems the money was meant to rectify continue.

Linzer was not yet aware that the Animal Rescue League of Boston ended the most recent fiscal year with cash and securities worth $98 million, more than 16 times the ARL program spending; or that Dogs’ Home Battersea, of London, England, had cash and securities worth $67 million, nearly ten times as high as the Dogs’ Home program budget; or that the relatively small Holiday Humane Society in southern California has cash and securities worth $14 million, amounting to $42 in reserve for every dollar it spends.

But Linzer, who advises philanthropists in “Microsoft country” near Seattle, did know about similar situations in other branches of charity.

Tales from the

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Bill Wewer, the far-right tax attorney and direct mail fundraiser who formed the Doris Day Animal League in 1986 and the anti-animal rights group Putting People First with his wife Kathleen Marquardt in 1990, was reported dead in San Francisco on April Fool’s Day 1999.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has repeatedly identified Cetacean Freedom Network founder Rick Spill as apparently being a Wewer alter ego, based on clues that Wewer himself provided in a taunting 1997 fax, many eyewitness identifications of photographs of each one as the other, and much other circumstantial and behavioral evidence.

But Spill reportedly appeared during the late November/early December protests against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, helping longtime close associate Ben White and others to build sea turtle costumes.

Individual Compensation

January 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

The National Humane Education Society paid secretary. treasurer William J. Kropp $146,714; paid president Anna Briggs $40,303; and paid assistant secretary James D. Taylor $34,255. The PRedator Project paid no board members and paid no one more than $50,000. The Sierra Club paid assistant secretary Deborah Sorondo $165,503; paid chair Michael McClosky $151,128; paid executive director Carl Pope $138,103; paid assistant treasurer Louis Barnes $130,461; paid assistant treasurer Hamilton Leong $80,123; paid assistant treasurer Jeffrey Christy $ 37,820 ; paid ex-president Adam Werbach $18,273; and paid president Charles McGrady $13,250.

Activists & Organizations

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