Editorial: Conferences build movements

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Education, persuasion, fundraising,
and political organization all begin with getting
to know somebody.
Futurists have predicted since the
invention of book-printing that this ancient
truism would soon be amended by the advent of
mass media, which permit ever more rapid and
far-reaching distribution of ideas. Yet this has
not happened any more than the evolution of
advanced noses enabled dogs to give up their
eyesight. The actual major effect of each new
development in communication is simply to extend
human sensory input capabilities, and the most
frequent use of our extended input is always to
facilitate more human-to-human contact.
Thus book-printing stimulated the growth
of universities. Radio and television stimulated
travel. Use of the Internet exploded when
people discovered that it eases and expedites
meeting others with common interests. The
single most frequent specific use of e-mail is in
finding conjugal partners. Finding or placing
companion animals also ranks among the top dozen
uses, according to Internet researchers, some
of whom estimate that from a third to half of all
pet adoptions are now Internet-assisted.

India loves leopards (with some reservations)

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

MUMBAI–India still has about 6,000 wild leopards,
approximately half of all the leopards of all species left in Asia,
because much of the public is concerned about their survival–and
might even be said to be fond of leopards despite their penchant for
getting into serious trouble.
Since January 1999, when ANIMAL PEOPLE began keeping track,
at least 111 leopards are known to have been poached or otherwise
illegally killed.
During that same time, Indian leopards have killed 62 people and
injured at least 62 more in reported incidents.
The victims were typically either children or elderly people,
mostly poor and rural, who were attacked at night near their homes,
and in some cases were actually dragged from homes whose doors and
windows were open to the night breeze because of the heat.
The leopards were usually believed to be in the vicinity to
hunt goats, dogs, sheep, pigs, cattle, or chickens. Many
attacks occurred in areas where wild prey populations had crashed due
to drought, disease, fire, or poaching.

United Arab Emirates try to save the Arabian leopard

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

SHARJAH, UAE–Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Quasimi of
Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in mid-February 2003 hosted an
international conference on saving the Arabian leopard, which was
considered extinct until a goatherd shot one in 1992. Experts now
think 150 to 250 Arabian leopards persist in the UAE, Yemen,
Oman, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.
About three times larger than a domestic housecat, the
Arabian leopard normally hunts Nubian ibex, the Arabian gazelle,
and wild or feral goats. The Animal Management Consultancy, funded
by Al Quasimi, has a wild population of 10 Arabian leopards, has
bred eight in captivity, and in January purchased a wild-caught
leopard named Al Wadei from a roadside zoo in Yemen, where according
to Severin Carrell of the London Independent he was kept in
“appalling” conditions.
The Sharjah leopard conference was convened two weeks after
reporter Nasouh Nazzal of Ras Al Khaimah disclosed that one Abdullah
Khamis Rashid Al Habsi, 65, recently stoned to death a “lynx” that
he claimed was about to attack him, and that Al Habsi admitted to
shooting one two years earlier, also in purported self-defense.

Earth Island again tries to save dolphins

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

SAN FRANCISCO–Earth Island Institute and six other
environmental and animal protection groups on February 12 applied for
a federal injunction against a December 31 rule change by the
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration which would allow U.S.
firms to market tuna netted “on dolphin” as “dolphin-safe,” if no
dolphins are known to have been killed during the netting.
The injunction application takes the “dolphin-safe” issue
back into the same court where chief judge Thelton Henderson in May
1990 banned imports of yellowfin tuna from Mexico, Venezuela, and
Vanuatu, under a set of 1988 amendments to the 1972 Marine Mammal
Protection Act, and in January 1992 invoked the same law to ban $266
million worth of tuna imports from 30 nations.
Introduced by Congress in 1990, in reinforcement of the first
Henderson verdict, the “dolphin-safe” label has until now denoted
tuna caught by methods other than netting “on dolphin,” the method
preferred by Latin American tuna fishers. The Latin American tuna
industry has contended since 1990 that discriminating against imports
of tuna netted “on dolphin” amounts to trade protectionism on behalf
of the U.S. fleet.

American Humane, fighting losses, drops Farm Animal Services; FAS to go Independent

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Washington, D.C.–The fiscally troubled American Humane
Association on February 20 cut loose Farm Animal Services, which had
been the first major new program started under AHA auspices since it
began supervising the screen industry in 1940.
While Farm Animal Services may continue to certify products
from animals raised according to standards it has developed for
dairy, poultry, and egg producers, FAS vice president Gini Barrett
said, it is discontinuing the Free Farmed logo program that it
started in partnership with the AHA.
FAS has required that farm animals be able perform natural
behaviors, do not have antibiotics and hormones added to their diets
to enhance growth, receive nutritious food, and are humanely
transported and slaughtered.
“When the Free Farmed program was started, the commitment
from AHA was to fund it from startup in 2000 to projected
self-sufficiency in 2006,” Barrett explained in a press release.
“Unfortunately, after two and a half years, American Humane
decided that it could no longer make a binding long-term financial
commitment. The FAS board felt it would be unethical to continue to
promote the program and add producers with this uncertain financial
future.”

Kharkov bioethics course makes a difference

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

KHARKOV, Ukraine–Humane educators have been wondering ever
since Massachusetts SPCA founder George Angell introduced the first
humane curriculum more than 100 years ago whether the results of
their teaching can be effectively measured.
Olga Ivanova Tolstova, founding chair of the Bioethics
Centre at the Kharkov Zoological & Veterinary Academy in the Ukraine,
believes she and her fellow faculty members have developed evidence
that encouraging students to think about the ethics of animal use
makes a profound difference.
Like a growing number of universities in the U.S. and Europe,
Kharkov Zoological & Veterinary Academy requires students to take a
bioethics course.
At the start of the course the instructors ask students to
rate on a scale of one to five whether 16 common human uses of
animals are cruel, and whether they are acceptable. The uses
include whaling, biomedical research and testing, purebred dog
breeding, keeping hens to lay eggs, fishing, fur farming, keeping
a pet dog, cosmetics testing, factory farming, hunting, trapping,
keeping a pet parrot, operating a pet shop, bullfighting,
zoological exhibition, and keeping a sick or injured deer in a
sanctuary.

Orangutans in Kalimantan coal smoke & heated dispute

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

DENVER–Underground coal fires beneath Kalimantan province,
Indonesia, could exterminate the island’s orangutans and sun bears,
Indonesian Ministry of Energy coalfield fire project chief Alfred
Whitehouse and East Georgia College professor Glenn Stracher told the
American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference
in Denver on February 15, 2003.
Of the 20,000 remaining wild orangutans, about 15,000 live
in Kalimantan, Wbitehouse and Stracher said. Already imperiled by
habitat loss due to logging and slash-and-burn agriculture,
orangutans have now lost about half of Kutain National Park due to
underground fires and lethal smoke, according to Whitehouse and
Stracher.
The Kalimantan coal reserves apparently ignited after
slash-and-burn fires raced out of control during the drought years of
1997 and 1998. razing an area the size of Costa Rica. Since then,
at least 159 separate underground fires and perhaps as many as 3,000
have evaporated groundwater and dried surface vegetation, allowing
more fires to start and burn uncontrolled on the surface. The fires
emit as much carbon dioxide per year as all the motor vehicles in the
U.S. combined, Whitehouse and Stracher said.

Thai government to buy surplus elephants for forest patrol

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

BANGKOK–Two hundred out-of-work domesticated elephants are
to be purchased by the Thai government and be re-employed patrolling
37 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, natural resources and
environment minister Prabhat Panyachartak announced on February 12.
Prabat Panyachartak expected to obtain cabinet approval for
the purchases as a Valentine for Queen Sirikit, who apparently
suggested using the elephants for patrol work after the national
police reported promising early results in training 50 street dogs
for investigative duties, as King Bhumibol Aduladej recommended in
his November 2002 birthday speech.
The King, 75, and Queen, 72, have no formal political
authority, but are viewed as the moral guardians of Thailand.
Always fond of animals, both have become outspoken about animal
welfare since adopting a street dog in 1998.
“Elephants would be well-suited to the job. Using elephants
is better than using four-wheel-drive vehicles, in terms of
pollution reduction and energy savings,” World wildlife Fund
Thailand secretary general Surapon Duangkhae told Ranjana Wangvipula
and Kultida Samabuddhi of the Bangkok Post.

Jordan hero dog dies for love and freedom

March 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ZARGA, Jordan–A teaching of strict fundamentalist Islam is
that it is the duty of brothers to keep their sisters “pure” by
isolating them from contact with unrelated men prior to arranged
marriage. A three-year-old German shepherd named Big Joe recently
defeated that custom by carrying secret correspondence several blocks
back and forth between a man identified only as “Thamer” and a woman
whose identity news media concealed. Big Joe on January 11 carried
the man’s marriage proposal to the woman and fought off her brother
when he tried to intercept it, but the brother fatally beat him with
a large stone. The father of both the woman and her brother approved
of the marriage, perhaps in appreciation of what the loyalty,
bravery, and resourcefulness of Big Joe implied about him.

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