HUMAN OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Ronald Lockley, 96, died on April 12 in Auckland, New Zealand. Lockley did his first nature study while recovering from appendicitis at age 19, but only began to make it his career after he and his first wife Doris tried to raise chinchillas for fur on an offshore island in 1926, failing because they couldn’t catch any. Stuck with a 21-year lease on the island, Lockley wrote the first three of his more than 60 successful nature books plus the screenplay for the 1934 Academy Award-winning documentary T h e Private Life of the Gannet. Lockley’s opus, however, was The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), acknowledged by Richard Adams as the factual reference which enabled him to write his 1972 best-selling novel W a t e r s h i p Down. Lockley emigrated to New Zealand in 1977 with his third wife, after arranging for his former island home and an estate he later owned on the mainland to become nature reserves. Adams in later life became a curmudgeonly rabbit-hater, but Lockley was last in the public eye as an outspoken critic of the release of rabbit calicivirus to reduce the New Zealand feral rabbit population. It was needlessly cruel, he said, and would not lastingly lower the numbers of rabbits.

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ANIMAL OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Bart the Bear, 23, the 9’6”, 1,500-pound ursine star of more than a dozen Hollywood films, was euthanized on May 10 after a two-year bout with cancer. Bart appeared in Windwalker, The Edge, White Fang, The Bear, The Great Outdoors, and Legends of the Fall, performing especially well with Anthony Hopkins, said to trainers Lynne and Richard Seus, who bought him from a zoo as a five-pound cub in 1978.

Michael, 27, male companion of Koko the signing gorilla at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California, died on April 19 from a sudden heart attack. Like Koko, Michael learned and used American Sign Language, but was better known for his painting. Born in the Cameroun, he was acquired by language researcher Francine Patterson in 1976 as a potential mate for Koko––but though they became close friends, Koko rejected him as a suitor.

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Prakash Shah–– martyr for cattle

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

RAJPUR, Gujarat, India– – Prakash Amrutlal Shah, 28, an anti-cattle slaughter activist for eight years, was fatally bludgeoned on April 2, allegedly by three butchers who ambushed Shah with staves as he walked from his home in Rajpur, Gujarat, to the p i n j a r a p o l e (cow shelter) in nearby Disa. Found by a passer-by, Shah reportedly identified his attackers to local police, who arrested two suspects but told the newspaper G u j a r a t Samachar that they had lost Shah’s statement.

”Prakash Shah died on April 10 at Shrye Hospital in Ahmendabad,” said Gujarat Samachar. “Thousands of people attended his cremation,” including representatives of the Viniyog Parivar Trust. The Trust sponsors many individuals who like Shah fight illegal cattle slaughter and export with little more than copies of the Indian Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and hope for reincarnation.

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BOOKS: Rabbit Handbook

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

Rabbit Handbook:
A Family Guide to Buying,
Keeping & Breeding Rabbits
by David Taylor, BVMS, FRCVS, FVS
Sterling Publishing Co., Ltd.
(387 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10016), 2000.
96 pages (all with color photos), paperback; $12.95

Every other guide to rabbit-rearing that I have ever seen, including several bad examples kept on file here, emphasizes the fecundity of rabbits, their limited space needs, and their inexpensive diet as an opportunity to get rich quick–– or at least win a 4-H ribbon––by raising them for meat.

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Lab to be charged

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

CAPE TOWN, S.A.––S o u t h African National SPCA senior inspector Neil Fraser told reporters in mid-May that cruelty charges would be brought against Centre in Africa of Primatological Experimentation director Marc BaillyMaistre for allowing 30 baboons and vervets to starve at his facility, described by Fiona Macleod of the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian as having “shadowy links with the military.” Seven starving wild-caught baboons were euthanized, a decade after 122 baboons were euthanized at CAPE for similar reasons by National Council of SPCAs staff.

According to Macleod, CAPE operates from government land and “was allegedly set up as a front for the former South African Defence Force. CAPE has also been linked,” she wrote, “to the notorious Roodeplates Research Laboratory near Pretoria, where the SADF conducted biological and chemical experiments.”

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