Arrivals & Departures
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:
The American Humane Association on February 19 confirmed as president six-year board member Timothy O’Brien. O’Brien, a Denver accountant, had served as acting president since October 1999.
Jeanne Westin, involved in humane work since 1961, has become president of United Animal Nations, after 10 years on the board. Westin worked for the California office of the Humane Society of the U.S. during the 1960s. After office chief Belton Mouras left to form the Animal Protection Institute i n 1968, Westin volunteered and served on the board with API, before following Mouras again when he left API to found UAN in 1986.
Former Last Chance for Animals executive director Eric Mindel, who left in January, has become community director for the Los Angeles-based online veterinary service and support firm One2One Care.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on March 10 announced that Red Wolf Reintroduction Program chief Brian T. Kelly would move from from North Carolina to New Mexico, to succeed Dave Parsons as Mexican Gray Wolf recovery coordinator. Parsons claims he was tricked into resigning last fall.
Bruce Read, 50, a 25-year S t . Louis Zoo staffer who spent the past four years helping to start Walt Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom in Orlando, has been named director of the troubled Birmingham Zoo [see pages 20-21] effective in March, with a mandate to turn it around.
John Mumma, 60, heading the Colorado Division of Wildlife since 1995, has announced his retirement, effective in “April or May,” so that he can hunt and fish more with his family. Mumma was catching heat from wise-users for reintroducing lynx to Colorado, trying to keep them off the federal Endangered Species List, and was under fire from humane activists for weak enforcement of the 1996 Colorado leghold trap ban. A pending bill by state representative Scott McKay (R-Lakewood) would forbid repeated species reintroductions if 40% of the first group released fail to survive one year. Of the first 41 lynx released, 17 are dead; eight are missing. “I am a big game hunter and a strong advocate of property rights. I also feel that some of these reintroductions, in which biologists feel the loss of 80% or 90% is acceptable, are cruel,” McKay said.
Edward Maruska, 66, Cincinnati Zoo director since 1962, retired on February 25. He was under fire (see pages 20-21) for breeding and selling animals, including white tigers––a color variant rarely seen in nature.
J. Christopher Peterson, former director of the Critter Crater Rescue Ranch in Flagstaff, Arizona, hired in April 1999 to direct the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk, resigned on January 11 after frequent conflicts with the Virginia Zoological Society board.
Steve and Linda Kuntz, who founded Wolf Haven in Tenino, Washington, in 1982, said in February that they have been asked to leave, after six years of conflict with the board they formed in 1989. Steve Kuntz resigned from the management in 1994; the Kuntzs were asked to vacate a mobile home on the site in early 1999; and Linda Kuntz was recently dismissed from a job in the Wolf Haven gift shop. Board president Rick Schaefer said that in his view the main problem was that the Kuntzs resisted a ban on petting wolves.
