Day: April 1, 2000

ACTIVIST LAWSUITS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

The California First District Court of Appeals on February 7 affirmed a 1998 trial court ruling that Chinatown markets selling live animals for either on-site or take home slaughter are not breaking state cruelty and health laws. San Francisco attorney Baron Miller, pursuing the case on behalf of the Coalition for Healthy and Humane Business Practices, indicated that he would appeal again, this time to the California Supreme Court.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Frank Wasielewski on January 21 reversed a 1999 libel verdict won by Society of St. Francis president and Animal Lobby founder Cindy Schultz against radio talk show host Charles Sykes and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, but on March 10 rejected their petition to seize and sell Schultz’s Mequon home in satisfaction of a claim against her of nearly $500,000. Wasielewski ordered Schultz to pay $155,797. Schultz held that Sykes wrongfully accused her of stealing a dog whose owner she had accused of neglect.

U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt on February 14 ordered orangutan trainer Bobby Berosini to return $2 million to the U.S. within 30 days. Jeanne Roush, a longtime PETA board member, alleged that Berosini transfered the funds to a Panamanian land investment firm to avoid paying PETA $200,000 in legal fees, plus interest, awarded in 1996 after the Nevada Supreme Court reversed a defamation judgement Berosini won against PETA in 1990 for alleging that he beat his orangutans backstage.

Kenya, India fight to save elephants

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

NAIROBI––The U.S. and Britain in mid-March remained noncommittal as to whether they would support motions to restore the full global ban on ivory sales at the 11th triennial meeting of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The motions are to be introduced by Kenya, hosting the April 10-20 meeting, and India.

Lobbying for the restored ban in Washington D.C. and London in early March, Kenya Wildlife Service director Nehemiah Rotich pointed toward an explosive worldwide rise in elephant poaching since 1997, when CITES allowed Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia to sell ivory seized from poachers and/or taken from elephants culled as “surplus” or for alleged crop-raiding.

Rotich and former KWS chief Richard Leakey, now heading the entire Kenya civil servie, believe the U.S. and Britain may favor applications by Tanzania and South Africa to join Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia in further ivory sales. Japan is the major buyer.

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Wins against dissection, pound seizure

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

CHICAGO, HOUSTON, SAN DIEGO––University of Illinois veterinary students need no longer participate in killing and dissecting healthy dogs.

At urging of Class of 2002 member Linnea Stull and allies, the faculty of the UI College of Veterinary Medicine on February 8 affirmed a January 17 promise to adopt a new animal use policy which officially allows for students to opt out of “demonstrations or invasive procedures performed solely for instructional purposes which conclude with the death or euthanasia of the animal.”

Alternative learning procedures are to be offered to students who opt out of the dog labs. UI also discontinued using any random source animals, i.e. dogs and cats from pounds and/or Class B dealers.

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A win for whales

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

MEXICO CITY––Grupo de la Cien founder Homero Aridjis, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and Earth Island Institute all claimed victory on March 4 when Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo cancelled a long-pending plan to build a solar salt extraction plant at San Ignacio Lagoon, an important gray whale calving area. The plant was to have been operated in partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation, of Japan.

But celebration was brief for the Sea Shepherds and IFAW, as the annual Atlantic Canadian offshore seal hunt, another of their longtime campaign focuses, was soon to start. The 2000 sealing quota is 275,000––almost as high as it ever has been.

 

CATASTROPHE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

Dorothy Reynolds, 84, of Jackson, Michigan, who founded the Jackson Animal Protective Association i n 1961, was on February 25 burnt out of her home of 41 years by alleged arson. She escaped with her two dogs and two cats, but must make extensive repairs with no insurance. Reynolds is receiving mail at P.O. Box 52, Addison, MI 49220.

Thirteen cats died, 13 cats and a dog survived, and two cats were missing after a February 28 fire gutted the home of Cleveland animal rescuer Chris Mohan– – who was fully insured, she told Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Michael Sangiacomo.

Lessie Davis, 54, identified by Michelle Crouch of Knight-Ridder Newspapers as “the only wildlife rehabilitator within 75 miles of Charlotte (N.C.) to take care of baby songbirds,” lost her uninsured home and clinic in January when an ice storm felled two trees on the roof. Davis may be contacted c/o Wild Care, P.O. Box 1049, Wingate, NC 28174.

Congo war kills apes

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

At least three eastern lowland gorillas were killed in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Congo, during January 2000, reports the Primate Conservation and Welfare Society. This brought the gorilla toll within the par k to 151 within b arely two years, leaving no more than 90 survivors.

The total wild eastern lowland gorilla population is under 17,000––all of them in the Congo, no w center of the biggest war in African history.

The Georgia-based Gorilla Haven sanctuary charged that the Rwandan Patriotic Army and the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie aided the poaching, which has also virtually wiped out the Kahuzi-Biega elephants, by disarming the park rangers. The Gorilla Haven sources were apparently Germans who are assisting civilian refugees.

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