ANIMAL CONTROL & SHELTERING
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:
Caucasing on June 1 at the National Animal Control Association confere n c e in Indianapolis, 18 representatives of seven organizations formed Compassionate Animal Control International, intended to be a global online help network for animal care and control officers. Among the directing agencies are to be N A C A, the Western Australia Rangers Association, and the National Dog Wardens Association of Great Britain, with Canadian and other U.S. agencies expected to join. Technical services are to be donated by ; ANIMAL PEOPLE is to contribute information and publicity.
Peru on May 22 gained a national humane law, sought by Amigos de los Animales of the Lima suburb of Miraflores since 1978. Analagous to the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, the Peruvian law reportedly sets operating standards for zoos, circuses, animal husbandry and transport, slaughterhouses, animal shelters, and educational institutions which use animals. It is to be overseen by a national committee on animal protection.
The Cat Protection League, Britain’s oldest and largest cat charity, now no-kill, on June 23 unveiled to the Royal Highland Show at Edinburgh a program to place “a neutered socially maladjusted cat” for free in any barn, stable, or estate yard whose owner has a rodent problem and will feed a cat.
The Wisconsin Humane Society, of Milwaukee, experimented in June with adopting out adult cats for free. Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control brings WHS an average of 15-16 cats per day; WHS places 10.
A June 14 Serbian Ministry of Information dispatch said officials were laughing and shrugging off protests from German activists over an anti-stray dog extermination campaign, because allegedly no Germans had objected to reported retalitatory massacres of Serbs by ethnic Albanians in occupied Kosovo.
Examining the spleens of 500 birds who were either caught by cats, flew into windows, or were hit by cars, researchers Anders M o l l e r and Johannes Erritzoe of the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris reported in the June 3, 2000 edition of T h e E c o n o m i s t that they discovered the spleens in the cat-killed birds were a third smaller on average, in 16 of 18 species, than in the birds killed in accidents. In part this was because 70% of the cat-killed birds were juveniles; only half of the others were. But a more important factor, they suggested, was that “Birds succumbing to lots of infections, or inundated with energy-sapping parasites, have smaller spleens than healthy birds.”
The Metropolitan Administration in Bangkok, Thailand, is reportedly close to adopting dog licensing by way of enforcing rabies vaccination and sterilization, at recommendation of the World Society for the Protection of Animals. Bangkok officials report that of the 554,463 dogs in the city of more than five million people, 458,142 are owned while 96,321 are stray or feral. Many owned dogs also roam at large. Bangkok has had 22 human deaths from rabies since 1977.
New York Governor George Pataki on June 6 authorized a new law allowing courts to require the forfeiture of abused animals.
New York City mayor Rudolph G i u l i a n i on May 12 signed a new city ordinance providing that an animal control shelter shall be provided in each borough, increasing shelter record-keeping requirements, and requiring that all dogs and cats placed from animal shelters or pet shops shall be sterilized.
The Ohio legislature on May 25 sent to Governor Robert Taft a bill to criminalize surgically debarking any dog who has maimed or killed a human, any other animal, or is a pit bull terrier. The bill was reportedly prompted by finding barkless pit bull terriers guarding two drug dens raided recently in Lucas County.
