Day: April 1, 2005

Demolition, eviction, & good deeds that save animal shelters

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

DELHI, CANCUN, BUCHAR-EST, MONROE
(Ct.)–Two kinds of good deeds are the life and
death of animal shelters: good deeds for animals,
and good title deeds to the land they occupy.
Rescuers who try to do good deeds without
good title deeds may find their hopes and dreams
crashing down around them, as Friendicoes SECA
shelter manager Geeta Seshamani of Delhi, India
did on March 16, 2005.
Acclaimed worldwide for tsunami relief
work in Tamil Nadu state and the Andaman Islands,
Friendicoes SECA “just had a large chunk of its
shelter ripped down by a demolition squad,”
Seshamani e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
In addition to her regular workload,
Seshamani for the first six weeks of 2005
supervised operations at the Wildlife SOS
sanctuary for rescued dancing bears near Agra,
while Wildlife SOS co-founder Kartick Satnarayan
directed the three Wildlife SOS/Friendicoes SECA
tsunami relief teams. The field work left both
institutions shorthanded.

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Editorial feature: National character & the quality of compassion

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Editorial feature:
National character & the quality of compassion

Josphat Ngonyo of Nairobi, Kenya, in 1999 founded Youth for
Conservation to clear poachers’ snares from the Kenyan national
parks. In 2004 Ngonyo helped to create the Kenya Coalition for
Wildlife Conservation, including YfC, which persuaded Kenya
President Mawi Kibaki to veto a bill heavily backed by Safari Club
International and USAid that would have reopened sport hunting in
Kenya, after a 27-year hiatus.
Novalis Yao of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 2000 formed Monde
Animal En Passion, in response to conditions at the Abidjan National
Zoo, once among the best in Africa but now a neglected ruin. While
Yao cannot yet claim big victories, he has continued his efforts for
quite long enough to confirm his dedication, under diffficult
conditions, and has managed to build a small but visible animal
welfare movement where formerly there was none.
Educated, outgoing, articulate, and multilingual, both
Ngonyo and Yao could have sought personal fortune elsewhere long ago,
had this been among their ambitions.
Instead, their common goal is to improve African treatment
of animals. Ngonyo and Yao emphasize wildlife conservation, because
the people of Kenya and Ivory Coast have unique opportunities to
conserve rare species and enjoy the benefits of ecotourism, but they
are also concerned about dogs, cats, and livestock, and can
explain to anyone who will listen how improving the treatment of
animals tends to improve the treatment of woman and children too.

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Letters [April 2005]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Thanks

Thanks for sending ANIMAL PEOPLE and I must congratulate you
for investigating details and info.
Hardly any issue of yours does not have useful info, and we
maintain a separate clipping file for ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Your December 2004 edition gives a good analysis of funding
for animal welfare organisations. Every year your summary of funds
received by different organisations is also kept by us, and we also
disseminate these to many people and NGOs.
–Laxmi Narain Modi
Executive Director
Animal Rights Intl.
Ahimsa Bhawan F-125 Lado Sarai
New Delhi, India 110 030
Phone: 011-29523250
<shakahar@vsnl.net>

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New faces at the Zimbabwe National SPCA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

HARARE–If anything good for animals comes out of the last
years of the Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, it may be the
Africanization of the Zimbabwe National SPCA.
Often seen by Zimbabweans of African descent as a relic of
colonialism, the ZN/SPCA has become emblematic of the battered hopes
of many Afro-Zimbabweans who still aspire to a peaceful and
productive society that shares norms and values with the developed
world.
Mugabe, 81, on April 1, 2005 strengthened his grasp and
that of his henchmen on control of what remains of the faltering
Zimbabwean government after 25 years of increasingly corrupt misrule
by claiming a two-thirds majority in Parliamentary elections.
Critics of the regime both within Zimbabwe and abroad challenged the
authenticity of the results.
Whether or not the balloting was rigged, supporters of
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party again tortured animals to terrorize opponents
before the election, as they often have before. In Makoni, for
example, near Mutare, Mugabe backers burned an opposition leader’s
henhouse, killing 14 birds.
“No arrests have been made but police and the ZN/SPCA
continue to make enquiries,” said ZN/SPCA national chair Bernice
Robertson Dyer.

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Valentines from the un-chain gang

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

The 3rd annual Dogs Deserve Better “Have a Heart for Chained
Dogs” campaign delivered 3,061 Valentines, dog treats, and
anti-chaining brochures on February 14. The Valentines were made by
29 school groups, five Scout troops, three institutions for the
mentally handicapped, a therapy dog group, and individuals
including Bar Mitzvah candidate Andrew Moskowitz of Florida, said
Dogs Deserve Better founder Tammy Sneath Grimes.
Galveston County Animal Services manager Michele Reynolds,
of Galveston, Texas, paid her staff $1.00 for each chained dog
whose address they sent in, Grimes said.
Grimes in March 2005 joined the ANIMAL PEOPLE staff as
associate web producer.
Through the efforts of retired elementary school teacher
Connie Davie, profiled on April 1 by Sarah Newman of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, Creve Cour, Missouri in January 2005 became the 60th
U.S. city in recent years to restrict how long dog may be chained.
Davie, like many others winning passage of anti-chaining ordinances,
brought to the task demonstrated commitment to both child and animal
welfare. About a third of all fatal dog attacks on children involve
dogs whose territoriality has been accentuated by prolonged chaining.

“Animal terrorism” bill vetoed

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

PHOENIX–Arizona Goveror Janet Napolitano on March 14 for the
second year in a row vetoed a bill by state senator Thayer Verschoor
(R-Gilbert) which would have authorized use of state
anti-racketeering legislation to pursue animal advocates and
environmentalists who commit alleged acts of terrorism.
“It is already against the law to injure someone or damage
property,” summarized Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services in
describing Napolitano’s veto statement. “The legislation would have
expanded the racketeering laws to cover those acts if they were
designed to deter people from participating in lawful “animal
activities,” ranging from mining and forestry to hunting and animal
research.
Napolitano noted that parts of the Verschoor bill could have
been used against people who picket abortion clinics. She pledged to
help Verschoor and Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard “to craft a
bill that targets intentional and well-defined animal and ecological
terrorism.”
Ohio state senator Jeff Jacobson acknowledged to Carrie
Spencer of Associated Press that he copied the language of the
Verschoor bill in a similar bill he recently introduced after finding
it on the Internet.

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Norwegian effort to push “trophy sealing” flops

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

OSLO–The Norwegian government opened the
2005 Norwegian sealing season to foreigners,
anticipating a trophy hunting bonanza, but “Only
17-18 foreign hunters signed on,” reported
Aftenposten on March 14, while protests against
the hunt were held outside 22 Norwegian embassies.
Pitching the hunt to tourists was not
popular with Norwegian tour promoters.
“It is completely unnecessary to provoke
world opinion with something as marginal as
tourist seal hunts,” Destination Ålesund &
Sunnmøre head of travel Terje Devol told
Aftenposten.
“If the media focus remains on the seal
hunt, we will see it in our tourist statistics,”
Norwegian Hospitality Association director Knut
Almquist told the rival newspaper Dagsavisen.

Pro-animal science fiction & fantasy author Andre Norton dies at 93

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Andre Norton, 93, died on March 17 from congestive heart
failure at her home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, attended by
longtime caretaker Sue Stewart.
Born Alice Mary Norton, in Cleveland, Ohio, Andre Norton
changed her name to evade discrimination against female authors in
1934, when she published The Prince Commands, the second novel she
wrote. Her first, Ralestone Luck, appeared in 1938.
Employed in the Cleveland Public Library children’s section
until 1950, except in 1941 when she owned a bookstore in Maryland
and briefly worked for the Library of Congress, Norton at first
wrote exclusively for the young audience she knew best. Two years
after becoming a manuscript reader for Gnome Press, a science
fiction publisher, Norton produced Star Man’s Son (1952), her first
attempt at sci-fi. Reissued by Ace Books as Daybreak–2250 A.D., it
became her first mass market paperback hit.
After several more sci-fi successes, Norton left Gnome Press
to write fulltime in 1958. To that point, science fiction targeted
mostly male readers; fantasy was written for females. Norton
mingled the genre in The Beast Master (1959), introducing both the
style that would characterize the most productive phase of her
career, and the motif of telepathic communication among animals and
humans that recurs in most of her biggest hits.

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