Day: September 1, 2004

Letters [Sep 2004]

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

Bali turtles

I appreciate animal people’s June 2004 coverage of sea turtle
conservation. I just returned from Bali, Indonesia, where the
trade in endangered turtles is alive and well. Hundreds of turtles
are caught off shore and brought into warehouses where, fins tied,
they languish without water until they are sold for slaughter. All
of this is against Indonesian law, but occurs anyway due to to
corrupt law enforcement and greed.
–Wayne Johnson, Ph.d
Honolulu, Hawaii
<Waynezorro@aol.com>

CHAMP International Forum

Thank you for enabliing me to show the video of the Animal
Balance work in the Galapagos at the international session of the
recent Conference on Homeless Animal Management & Policy. You have
helped me SO much and I will be forever grateful to Animal People.
I love meeting other folks from around the world and hearing
about their amazing work and how they find solutions to such awful
problems. We all become friends very quickly.
Thank you for providing us with a forum that gives us energy
to keep going and save more lives.

Read more

Doctor fined up to $70,000 for buying Cuban dolphins

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

MIAMI–Graham Simpson, M.D., 53, in late August 2004 told
Miami Herald correspondent Charles D. Sherman that he is “negotiating
a fine of up to $70,000″ for violating the U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba by purchasing six wild-caught dolphins from Cuba to stock the
Dolphin Fantaseas swim-with-dolphins facilities that he and his wife
formerly owned in Antigua and Anguilla.
Originally from South Africa but now a naturalized U.S.
citizen, Simpson said several years ago that he traveled to Cuba
under a British passport, and paid $45,000 each for the six dolphins.
Simpson and his wife recently sold Dolphin Fantaseas to Dolphin
Discovery, of Cancun, Mexico.
Owned by U.S. citizens, Dolphin Discovery has purchased “at
least 33, maybe 70″ Cuban dolphins over the years, Dolphin Project
founder Ric O’Barry told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Having brought the Dolphin Fantaseas dolphin acquisition from
Cuba to light, O’Barry and Gwen McKenna of Toronto are now targeting
Dolphin Discovery.
“If they got even a $1 million fine, it would not put a dent
in that operation,” said O’Barry.
The Dolphin Project, now sponsored by the French group One
Voice, is currently “campaigning in the Cayman Islands trying to
keep Dolphin Discovery from expanding into that country,” said
O’Barry, who has been trying to end dolphin captivity since 1970.

Panic, not disease, killed Auburn raptors

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

AUBURN, Alabama–A purported deadly outbreak of the avian
bacterial disease mycoplasma galliseptum in mid-2003 caused the
South-eastern Raptor Rehabilitation Center at Auburn University to
kill 17 rare birds after eight others died, halted the tradition of
a golden eagle named Tiger flying at Auburn home football games, and
led to the June 2003 firing of raptor center director Joe
Shelnutt–but there never were any actual cases of mycoplasma
galliseptum, Associated Press writer Kyle Wingfield revealed on
August 24, 2004.
Wingfield obtained a copy of a report on the incident by
University of Minnesota Raptor Center director Patrick Redig. The
report was shared with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Auburn
officials in January 2004 but was not previously made public.
“Instead of a microorganism, the report blames faulty
laboratory techniques and poor decision-making,” Wingfield disclosed.
Tiger is again going to football games, with two understudies.

Reducing the vehicular accident risk to dogs

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.–“Dear Abby” advice columnist Jeanne
Phillips, a frequent defender of animals, on August 8, 2004 urged
vehicular restraint–“the kind that buckles”–for dogs as well as
children.
Phillips was responding to a letter entitled “Grieving In
Lexington, Kentucky,” from a man whose dog was killed by traffic
after falling out of the bed of a pickup truck.
Phillips, daughter of column founder Pauline Phillips,
previously urged vehicular restraint of dogs in December 1999 and
January 2000.
University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center
associate director Jane Stutts in 2001 reported that about 1% of all
traffic accidents appear to be caused by an unrestrained dog
distracting a driver.
“That’s not piddly, because cell phones accounted for only
2%,” Stutts told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
According to Stutts’ figures, based on 412 narrative
accounts of accidents that occurred in 1998, unrestrained dogs in
vehicles may be responsible for about 440 human deaths per year.

Read more

AVMA strengthens position against forced molts

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

PHILADELPHIA–The American Veterinary Medical Association
house of delegates on July 28, 2004 adopted a resolution against
forced molting that resolves one of the major issues between the AVMA
and the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights.
On June 21, AVAR co-sponsored a full-page ad in the New York
Times asking “Has anyone betrayed more animals than the American
Veterinary Medical Association?’
Similar to an ad published in April in ANIMAL PEOPLE by the
Coalition for Nonviolent Food, the New York Times ad targeted the
AVMA positions on forced molting, gestation crates for pregnant
sows, veal crating, and “the inexplicable retention of Dr. Gregg
Cutler on the AVMA Animal Welfare Committee,” explained AVAR vice
president Holly Cheever, “despite the fact that he was shown in
three separate affidavits, including his own sworn deposition, to
have ordered the mass slaughter of 30,000 chickens in California by
throwing them alive into a wood chipper.”
Furious over the ad, AVMA executive vice president Bruce
Little on July 21 barred the Association of Veterinarians for Animal
Rights from tabling at a booth it had already reserved and paid for
during the five-day AVMA annual conference, July 24-28. This was
reported in the July/August 2004 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, which
went to press while the conference itself was just underway.

Read more

Judge upholds tuna/dolphin standard–again–and raps Bush cabinet “meddling”

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

SAN FRANCISCO–U.S. District Judge
Thelton Henderson on August 10, 2004 upheld the
“dolphin-safe” tuna labeling standard against
government attempts to weaken or scrap it for the
fifth time in 14 years.
Ordered Henderson, “Dolphin-safe shall
continue to mean that ‘no tuna were caughtŠusing
a purse seine net intentionally deployed on or to
encircle dolphins, and that no dolphins were
killed or seriously injured,'” on the voyage that
caught the tuna.
Henderson rapped Commerce Secretary
Donald Evans and the George W. Bush
administration for “a pattern of delay and
inattention” in failing to enforce the
dolphin-safe labeling standard.
“The record is replete with evidence that
the secretary was influenced by policy concerns
unrelated to the best available scientific
evidence,” Henderson wrote.
“This court has never, in its 24 years,
reviewed a record of agency action that contained
such a compelling portrait of political meddling.”

Sanctuaries sue Powerball lottery winner over unpaid pledges

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

EPPING, N.H.–Mary Ellen Sanderson, co-winner of a $66
million Powerball lottery in 1997, has been sued by a second animal
charity to which she pledged annual funding. Sued earlier by the
Oasis Sanctuary Foundation, a tropical bird sanctuary located at
Cascabel, Arizona, Sanderson was also sued in July 2004 by Equine
Protection of North America–which Sanderson helped to create,
reported Manchester Union Leader correspondent Toby Henry.
The original EPONA directors, Henry indicated, were
president Susan Fockler and director Ronald Levesque, both of
Epping, New Hampshire, and Mary Ellen and James Sanderson, then a
married couple. As with the Oasis Sanctuary, Mary Ellen Sanderson
helped EPONA to obtain a sanctuary site. The EPONA facility, near
Dover, New Hampshire, houses about 25 horses at a time, Hnery said.
According to Henry, the lawsuit alleges that Mary Ellen
Sanderson agreed to give EPONA $70,000 a year, amounting to more
than 80% of the organization’s entire budget. The Oasis Sanctuary
suit claims Mary Ellen Sanderson was to donate $100,000 a year.
Both organizations were cut off at the end of 2003, after
the Sandersons divorced.

Standardizing microchips

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

ORLANDO–Iams company spokesperson Kelly Vanasse, addressing
the 2004 Conference on Homeless Animal Management & Policy in
Orlando, Florida, announced on August 22 that Iams is prepared to
donate 30,000 microchip scanners to humane societies, animal control
agencies, and veterinarians throughout the U.S.–if the makers will
cooperate to produce a scanner that reads both the 125-kilohertz
chips that are most used in the U.S. and the 134-kilohertz chips that
are recommended by the International Standards Organization.
The 125-kv chips are made by Avid Identification Systems and
Digital Angel Inc., and are used by the Schering Plough Animal
Health “Home Again” program. The 134-kv ISO chips are distributed in
the U.S. by PetHealth Services and Crystal Tag. The latter is the
chip provider to Banfield, The Pet Hospital Inc., but Banfield has
suspended microchipping pets until it is convinced that an adequate
number of 134-kv scanners are in use in the U.S. to make the program
effective.
Avid has sued PetHealth Services and Banfield, and has been
countersued by PetHealth acting through the Coalition for Reuniting
Pets & Families, over issues including alleged patent infringement,
unfair competition, and false advertising.
Vanasse told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the Iams proposal could be
worth about $5 million in equipment costs to the humane community,
and that the scanner purchases could be allocated among the various
chip makers so that each gets a fair share of the income.

Judge rules against mining in Florida panther habitat

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

FORT MYERS–Ruling that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and Army Corps of Engineers improperly issued a finding of “no
jeopardy” to the endangered Florida panther, U.S. District Judge
James Robertson on August 20, 2004 invalidated the federal permits
issued to Florida Rock Industries Inc. to develop a 6,000-acre mine
site in Lee County.
“In isolation, most individual projects would impact only
small portions of potential panther habitat,” Robertson wrote.
“Multiplied by many projects over a long time, the cumulative impact
on the panther might be significant.”
The lawsuit against the mine was filed by the National
Wildlife Federation, the Florida Wildlife Federation, and the
Florida Panther Society.
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel staff writer David Fleshler
reported that the case “received support in May 2004 when Andrew
Eller, a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service, filed a
formal complaint accusing his own agency of knowingly using bad data
on panther habitat, reproduction, and survival to approve eight
construction projects.”

Read more

1 2 3 4