Human obituaries

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Leone Cosens, 52, a native of New
Zealand who moved with her husband Tim Cosens Jr.
to Phuket, Thailand, in 1992, on December 26
responded to a call from nine British guests that
water was flooding into the guesthouse the Cosens
ran at Yanui Beach, near Laem Phromthep. Unaware
that the high water was the result of a tsunami,
Leone Cosens apparently ran right into the
highest wave. Tim Cosens Sr., visiting from
Slidell, Louisiana, found her remains in a
nearby rice field the following day. Of the nine
guests Leone Cosens was trying to help, eight
survived, seven with serious injuries, while
one is still missing. A cofounder and former
director of the Phuket Animal Welfare Society,
“Leone was fired because she was treating and
sterilizing too many dogs! Wow, do we miss her!
I’m so incredibly sad!” e-mailed Margot Park,
founder of the Soi Dog Foundation, also in
Phuket. Recalled the Phuket Gazette, “Leone
worked with her Thai helpers selflessly,
tirelessly, and very often at her own expense,
to help strays in the south of the island, and
around Nai Harn Beach in particular. Leone
Cosens was also an outspoken critic of puppy
mills in the Phuket area, citing a “mounting
number of pedigree dogs appearing at veterinary
surgeries with signs of distemper, hip dysplasia
or calcium deficiencies” in a recent letter to
the Phuket Gazette.

Obituaries

BOOKS: Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology, Behavior, and Conservation

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Sea Turtles: A Complete Guide to Their Biology,
Behavior, and Conservation by James R. Spotila
Johns Hopkins University Press (2715 N. Charles
St., Baltimore, MD 21218), 2004. 224 pages,
illustrated. $24.95 hardcover.

“The lessons from Malay-sia are clear,”
James R. Spotila summarizes in the next-to-last
paragraph of his section on leatherbacks, three
paragraphs from the end of Sea Turtles.
“Developers built hotels and cottages right on
the nesting beaches to accommodate as many as
1,000 people a night who came to see the
leatherbacks nest. In addition, Malaysians
continued to take the eggs. The result was
near-extinction.
“People can make a difference,” Spotila
continues, “by assisting in efforts to oppose
development on leatherback beaches and by
demanding that their governments get industrial
fishing under controlŠWe may not be able to
accomplish this in counties like India and
Malaysia during our lifetimes,” he concludes on
a note of pessimism.

First animal shelters open in Iraq and Iran

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

TEHRAN, BAGHDAD–If humane societies are imagined as a chain
of beacons, illuminating their surroundings and spreading the word,
two new points of light just ignited.
“We recently opened the first Iranian shelter for dogs in
Kooshkezar, and the first for cats in Karadj. Both cities are
suburbs of Tehran,” wrote Center for Animal Lovers founder Fatemeh
Motamedi, “After my husband Sirous provided us with land, the
efforts of dedicated volunteers have made possible building the
shelters,” which actually are to function mostly as out-patient
hospitals for street dogs and feral cats.
The Center for Animal Lovers’ plan is “to provide care for
sick and injured cats and dogs, and also take in strays, sterilize
them, give them a health check, then release them to safe public
areas,” Motamedi wrote. “Unfortunately adoption programs are
not socially popular enough yet,” for adoption promotion to be part
of the regular routine.
“At this point,” Motamedi continued, “our team consists of
two Iranian veterinarians and 18 volunteers, most of whom are
university students.”

Middle East

Bill introduced to halt wild horse slaughter; horse lovers rally

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., RENO– U.S. Representatives Nick J. Rahall
(D-West Virginia) and Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) on January 25
introduced a bill to restore to wild equines the full protection
extended by the 1971 Wild & Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Protection Act.
The Rahall/Whitfield bill, HR-297, would repeal a stealth
rider attached by Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana), to the
Consolidated Appropriations Act passed by Congress on November 18,
2004.
“If allowed to stand, the Burns provision will lead to the
slaughter of thousands of wild horses for human consumption abroad,”
summarized American Horse Defense Fund attorney Trina Bellak.
An impromptu demonstration of the symbolic significance of
wild horses to the American public came on January 21 at Damante
Ranch High School in Nevada.
Fearing that the Nevada Department of Agriculture was
rounding up mustangs to sell to slaughter, 30 to 40 students left
their classes, marched to the temporary corral in two separate
groups, so that if one group was intercepted the other might get
through, and released about a dozen horses who had already been
captured with hay as bait.

Video law holds up in first test against animal fighter

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

PITTSBURGH–Reaching a unanimous verdict in only 45 minutes,
a federal jury on January 13, 2005 convicted video distributor
Robert Stevens of three counts of selling depictions of illegal
cruelty to animals across state lines.
The case was the first court test of 1999 legislation
introduced by Representative Elton Gallegly (R-California).
U.S. Senior District Judge Alan N. Bloch rejected federal
public defender Michael Novara’s contentions that the law violated
Stevens’ First Amendment right to freedom of expression, and that it
was misapplied because the law was introduced to address “wanton
cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.”
The law prohibits the interstate distribution of videos or
films depicting illegal cruelty to animals, if they are without
“serious religious, political, scientific, educational,
journalistic, historical, or art value.”
Stevens, 64, of Pittsville, Virginia, in 2003 sold two
videotapes of dogfights and one video of a “hog/dog rodeo” to
investigators for the Pennsylvania State Police and USDA Office of
the Inspector General. Stevens advertised the videos for sale in the
Sporting Dog Journal, whose publisher James Fricchione, 34, was
convicted in March 2004 of six felonies and five misdemeanors for
allegedly promoting dogfights.

Python was the first animal hero in Sumatra

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

MEDAN, Sumatra, Indonesia– Among the dogs, elephants,
and other species who saved humans from the Indian Ocean tsunami on
December 26, 2004, the most surprising story may have been that of
the python who pulled a 26-year-old clothing vendor named Riza and a
neighbor’s nine-year-old twin daughters to safety near Bandar Blang
Bintang, Indonesia.
The Indonesian state news agency Antara reported on December
30 that, “Riza at about 8 a.m. was enjoying the holiday in bed when
suddenly she saw walls of water, mud, rocks and branches rushing
into the neighborhood. People were screaming and running. Riza,
living in a rented house near the coast in Banda Aceh with three
friends, dashed up to the second floor of a neighbor’s house and
stood on top of a cupboard.
“But as she told Antara from a makeshift shelter, the current swept
her and her friends off their perch. As Riza drifted, she saw the
two girls and their mother.”
All three were badly injured.

Tsunami destruction of fishing fleet brings respite for sea turtles

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

VISAKHAPATNAM, VELANKANNI, PHUKET–The Indian Ocean sea
turtle nesting season had just begun when the tsunami hit on December
26, 2004.
“I was awake by five a.m.,” Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep
Kumar Nath told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Every morning during the nesting season Nath organizes
volunteer foot patrols to find and protect sea turtle nests along the
beaches of Visakhapatnam, India. The volunteers try to spot the
turtles as they come ashore, keep crowds away, and ensure that the
nests are properly buried, to avert predation by street dogs,
jungle cats, jackals, and foxes. “I have witnessed such incidents
since we began our turtle protection program,” Nath said. “The
dogs eat quite fast.”
On December 26, Nath recalled, “Our
poacher-turned-volunteer saw a sea turtle laying eggs, while another
turtle returned to the sea without laying, he informed me around
8.30 a.m.” It was a quiet morning. Done at the beach, the Visakha
SPCA team departed–just in time.

Soi Dog Foundation anchors Thai tsunami animal relief effort

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

PHUKET, Thailand–“We are okay,” Soi
Dog Foundation president Margot Park e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE on December 26, soon after the
tsunami, “but the devastation is indescribable.
Three Norwegians, including a baby, three
Russians, and a German are stranded at our house
with seven more Norwegians on their way. Many
dogs have lost their homes and more will be
dumped as people flee.
“My extremely good friend Leone Cosens
has been found dead,” Park added. (See
Obituaries, page 22.)
The Phuket Animal Welfare Society,
founded by Cosens in 1992, lost countless local
volunteers. Almost a month later the PAWS web
site still said nothing of the tsunami; there
was apparently no one to update it.
“If anyone travels to Phuket,” Park
asked, “he/she could perhaps bring some things
such as long-acting antibiotics, Iver-mectin to
treat mange, and suture materials for
sterilization surgery. But our most immediate
need,” Park stipulated, “is funds to buy dog and
cat food. Many dogs and cats perished, but
those who survived have lost their food sources
and cannot find fresh drinking water.”

Wildlife fared better in Sri Lanka than Thailand

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Like the wildlife of India, Sri Lankan wildlife mostly
seemed to have sufficient warning to escape the tsunami–but the
wildlife of Thailand, hours closer to the earthquake that detonated
it, fared far worse.
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society president Ravi Corea
inspected Yala National Park soon after the tsunami.
“There were reports that elephants fled the coast just before
the tsunami hit. We saw no dead animals except for two feral water
buffalo,” Corea e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We saw large herds of
axis deer, a male elephant, many peacocks, wild boar, black-naped
hare, two species of mongoose, and a pack of five jackals,” Corea
recounted.
However, Corea saw longterm threats to Sri Lankan wildlife
in the extensive damage to vegetation and fresh water sources.
“It is important to assess how salt water is affecting the
life in lakes and will affect the food chain, especially for apex
feeders such as aquatic birds, fish-eating mammals, and reptiles,”
Corea said. “Such study might help us to understand how global
warming and a resulting rise in sea level might affect inland coastal
areas.”

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