BOOKS: Monster of God

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Monster of God:
The man-eating predator in the
jungles of history and the mind
by David Quammen
W.W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110), 2003.
384 pages, hardcover. $26.95.

Certain to be classified by most librarians as “natural
history,” Monster of God has already been mistaken by many reviewers
as a screed in defense of “sustainable use.”
Monster of God is actually a book mostly about faith,
exploring the influence of the human evolutionary role as prey upon
concepts of religion, and of the more recent human ascendance as a
top predator on our ideas about conservation.

Elephant captures & rampages spotlight habitat encroachment

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

PRETORIA, NEW DELHI, NAIROBI, SAN DIEGO, BANGKOK,
COLOMBO–Pretoria Regional Court magistrate Adriaan Bekker on April 7
found African Game Services owner Riccardo Ghiazza of Brits, South
Africa, guilty of cruelty to 30 young elephants in 1998-1999. The
verdict reportedly took Bekker four hours to read.
Convicted with Ghiazza, but on just two cruelty counts, was
student elephant handler Henry Wayne Stockigt.
Charges were dismissed against another handler, Craig
Saunders, and another company, African Game Properties Inc.
Captured in the Tuli district of Botswana during July 1998,
the elephants were transported to Brits for training and sale to
overseas zoos.
Global outrage erupted first over the separation of the
elephants from their mothers, and then over alleged rough treatment
of the elephants by trainers hired from Indonesia. The South African
National SPCA began the long effort to convict Ghiazza after
videotape surfaced that reportedly showed Stockigt and others beating
the chained elephants.

Vegetarian mandates

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

“Tourists visiting wildlife sanctuaries in Orissa state will
now have to turn vegetarian for the entire duration of their trip,”
Times of India News Network correspondent Rajaram Satapathy reported
from the Bengal coast city of Bhubaneswar in February.
“Concerned with rampant poaching, the state government has
banned cooking and eating non-vegetarian food in all 18 sanctuaries
in Orissa,” Satapaty elaborated. “The order, issued by the chief
conservator of forests, is being strictly implemented. Recently
more than 125 tourist vehicles, on a single day, were refused entry
into the Similipal Tiger Reserve because they were found carrying
meat and chicken for consumption.”
Taking an opposite view of diet on the opposite coast, South
Mumbai leaders of the neo-fascist Shiv Sena political party in
mid-April threatened to retaliate against Jain and Hindu vegetarian
housing cooperatives by opening stinking fish or chicken stalls
beside their buildings, wrote Haima Deshpande of the Indian Express.
Shiv Sena is a “party, movement and gang at once,” wrote
Julia M. Eckert in The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics
and the Shiv Sena, recently published by Oxford University Press.
Build-ing a power base among disaffected Hindus of the meat-eating
middle classes and military castes, it was once the second strongest
faction within the Hindu nationalist coalition government headed by
the Bharatiya Janata party, but fell from influence after alienating
the Jains, Brahmins, and other vegetarian classes, along with the
Dalits, who are the poorest of the poor.

People for Animals founds Delhi shelter for ex-laboratory monkeys

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

DELHI–Gautam Grover, president of the Delhi chapter of
People for Animals, has “started a shelter for monkeys called
Hanuman Vatika,” he recently wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“We get monkeys from research labs,” Grover explained.
“Most are old and deformed [from experimentation] and are incapable
of survival in the wild. We also have infants who have had a
terrible past,” Grover added. “For example an infant came to me
whose mother was killed by dogs. The infant was clinging to her,
crying. We called the infant Chiku. He now has a new mother, named
Basanti, and a new father, called Dharmender.”
Hanuman Vatika now has more than 100 monkeys, attended by a
human staff of 12, Grover said. But it does not yet have adequate
funding to ensure stability and permit expansion. Ahead is the long
task of educating people who are sympathetic to monkeys about the
distinctions among sanctuaries, zoos, and Hanuman temples.

Bear sanctuary at the Taj Majal

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

AGRA–The future of captive wildlife
protection in India is at Agra, People for
Animals founder Maneka Gandhi believes, near the
east gate of the Taj Mahal.
There, at Soor Sarovar village,
Wildlife SOS cofounders Kartick Sayanar-ayan and
Geeta Sheshamani in December 2002 opened a
30-acre sanctuary for former dancing bears.
Nearly two years into a sustained effort
to enforce provisions of the 1972 Indian Wildlife
Protection Act that prohibit the traveling
exhibition of lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys,
apes, and bears, Mrs. Gandhi sees in the
Wildlife SOS project the start of a sanctuary
network to provide quality care-for-life to
hundreds of seized former circus animals.
The drive to end the use of lions,
tigers, leopards, monkeys, apes, and bears in
traveling shows began in 2001. As then-minister
of state for animal welfare, Mrs. Gandhi won a
series of verdicts from the Supreme Court of
India against exhibitors who had for a decade
used protracted lawsuits to defy seizure order
she originally issued in 1989, during a stint as
environment minister.

Is the NIH really going to send chimps to India?

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

THIRUVANATHAPURAM–G. Mahadevan of The Hindu daily
newspaper caught both the Indian and U.S. animal advocacy communities
by surprise with an April 15 report that the Thuruvananthapuram Zoo
in the capital city of Kerala state “is finalizing paperwork for the
transfer of two male and two female chimps from the National
Institute of Health in Maryland.”
Joyce McDonald, acting communications director for the
National Center for Research Resources at the U.S. National
Institutes of Health, confirmed to ANIMAL PEOPLE that “NCRR has
begun preliminary discussions with the Thiruvananthapuram Zoo in
India concerning the transfer of chimpanzees from the United States,”
but indicated that it is far from a done deal.
“There are many issues that need to be resolved before any
final determinations are made,” McDonald said. “For instance, NCRR
has to be assured that the zoo environment is appropriate and
properly accredited; that lifetime care is available; that the
animals will stay in the zoo; that notification and approval from
U.S. and Indian regulatory agencies has been obtained; that proper
transportation can be provided, etc. In addition, we need to assured
that expenses can be covered by the Indian zoo. Again, our
discussions are very preliminary,” McDonald emphasized, “and these
issues must be resolved to our satisfaction before NIH would
coordinate the transfer of the animals from a U.S. research facility.

Letters [May 2003]

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Drive Fishery

Thank you for helping to stop the “drive fishery” dolphin
slaughter in Futo, Japan.
The Ito City Fishing Co-operative gave up the drive fishery
this year. The season for the fiscal year 2002 drive fishery expired
on March 31, 2003. We gladly report that no drive fishery was
carried out. According to the Yomiuri newspaper, the Ito City
Fishing Cooperative abandoned the drive fishery because it feared the
criticism of animal protection groups.
The Elsa Nature Conserv-ancy collected nearly 3,500
signatures on our petition seeking to stop the drive fisheries and
promote dolphin and nature watching in Futo instead, reinforced by
more than 2400 signatures against the drive fishery from
organizations abroad.
We also received 3,000 e-mails against the drive fishery from
abroad through the efforts of <www.BlueVoice.org>. According to Blue
Voice more than 9,000 e-mails were already sent to public officals.
We appreciate such strong support!

Letters

Why can’t we stop the Omak Suicide Race?

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Why can’t we stop the Omak Suicide Race?
by Irene Muschel

The Omak Suicide Race, held each summer in Omak,
Washington, has been openly cruel to horses ever since a rodeo
promoter dreamed it up in 1935. It consists of galloping horses over
a steep cliff and across the Okanogan River as the main event at the
Omak Stampede rodeo–and is staged four times each rodeo week.
Why have horse protection groups not given more attention and
effort to stopping this event?
Four years after the Omak Suicide Race started, a Hollywood
producer chased a horse over a cliff during the making of the film
Jesse James. That happened just once. Public outrage over the death
of the horse led to the American Humane Association monitoring U.S.
screen productions.
Sixteen horses have died at Omak in the past 20 years.
Humans have been severely injured, and in earlier years at least one
rider was killed, but the Suicide Race is still promoted as a
tourist attraction, after a one-year suspension in 1999, and hardly
anyone seems to be doing anything about it.

Blind “justice” can’t tell chickens from dead wood

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

SAN DIEGO, California–Ward Poultry Farm owners Arie and
Bill Wilgen-burg, of Escondido, California, will not be charged
with cruelty for having employees toss more than 60,000 live hens
into wood chippers, the San Diego County district attorney’s office
announced on April 10, because the Wilgenburgs were told to chip the
chickens alive by a USDA-accredited veterinarian.
The veterinarian was neither working for the USDA nor
representing it, but was advising the Wilgenbergs about killing
their flocks, at two sites, to help halt the spread of the worst
outbreak of Newcastle disease since 12 million chickens and other
domestic birds were killed to control an outbreak in 1971.
San Diego County Animal Services Lieutenant Mary Kay Gagliardo later
told the Wilgenburgs to stop macerating the hens alive.
Live maceration would be prosecutable cruelty almost anywhere
if done to a pet. When done as a routine agricultural practice,
however, it is exempt from prosecution in most states, and is in
fact among the most common means used by egg ranchers to dispose of
unwanted male chicks and spent hens.

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