Will Thai zoo crowd eat Kenya wildlife?

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

BANGKOK, NAIROBI–A long-controversial sale of 135 wild
animals from Kenya to the Chiang Mai Night Safari zoo in Thailand on
November 10 appeared to be almost a done deal.
Kenya president Mwai Kibaki and Thai prime minister Thaskin
Shinawatra ceremonially signed the agreement at the State House in
Nairobi.
The transaction is to include both black and white rhinos,
elephants, lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, servals, hippos,
and at least 14 hooved species.
But the deal was originally to have included more than 300
animals, as described in July 2005. It was scaled back after Youth
for Conservation rallied international opposition to the animal sale,
over a variety of humane, tactical, precedental, and conservation
considerations.

Rescued donkeys bring peace to bloodsoaked ancient battlefields

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

LISCARROLL, County Cork–In time the
Donkey Sanctuary of Ireland may be remembered as
the most significant institution in the history
of the blood-soaked rolling hills of Liscarroll.
The 350 donkeys peacefully grazing at the
impeccably tidy 30-acre visitor center and the
equally well-managed 70-acre donkey retirement
farm together form a living monument to a
globally influential turning point in
animal/human relations.
Donkeys are known to have lived at
Knockardbane, the farm that became the visitor
center, since 1926, when Donkey Sanctuary
manager Paddy Barrett’s grandfather retired from
a career as a police officer, and took up
grazing livestock instead.
But in all likelihood donkeys have
inhabited the site for almost as long as donkeys
have been in Ireland.

Animal Friends Croatia halts beagle experiments & wins circus animal act bans, but who are they?

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

ZAGREB–The difficulty of getting from one part of Croatia to
another may have kept Animal Friends Croatia from attending the
International Companion Animal Welfare Conference in Dubrovnik–but
they were busy.
Between October 10 and November 11, Animal Friends Croatia
won bans on circus animal acts in ten cities: Mursko Sredisce,
Varazdin, Donji Mholjac, Rovinj, Velika Gorica, Split, Delnice,
Gospic, Cakovec, and Ozalj.
The string of victories started 81 days after Animal Friends
Croatia exposed and ended a series of debilitating surgical
experiments on 32 beagles at the University of Zagreb Medical School,
following just six days of campaigning.
The campaign was amplified by all radio and TV stations in
Zagreb, five days in a row, and was endorsed by 15 leading Croatian
public figures, including national president Stejepan Mesic.
Eventually the beagles were surrendered to Animal Friends Croatia.

ESA rewrite author Pombo took junket funding from anti-animal welfare front

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C.– Central California
rancher and House of Representatives Resources
Committee chair Richard Pombo (R-Tracy) enjoyed
the biggest victory of his political career on
September 29, 2005, when the House passed his
“Threatened & Endangered Species Recovery Act”
229-192, with 96 co-sponsors and little debate,
just eight days after introduction.
Rolling back the 1973 Endangered Species
Act, the chief feature-of the Pombo rewrite is a
requirement that property owners must be
compensated for any loss of land use that results
from protecting animals or habitat.
“It establishes an extraordinary new
entitlement program for developers and
speculators that requires taxpayers to pay them
unlimited amounts of money,” House Democratic
leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) told
Zachary Coile of the San Francisco Chronicle.

International animal legislation

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Twenty-three nations with native chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas, and orangutans on September 9, 2005 signed a Declar-ation
on Great Apes in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, committing
themselves to protecting great apes and ape habitat in terms similar
to the language of the 1982 global moratorium on commercial whaling
and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change.
The treaty was brokered through four years of negotiation by
the Great Apes Survival Project, formed by the United Nations
Environment Program and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation. “GRASP has convinced nearly all of the range states
that saving great apes is very much in their interests, by stressing
that apes can bring enormous economic benefit to poor communities
through eco-tourism,” summarized Michael McCarthy, envronment
editor of the London Independent. “The new agreement places ape
conservation squarely in the context of strategies for poverty
reduction and developing sustainable livelihoods.”

New state laws

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on October 7, 2005
signed into law a bill by state senator Jackie Speer (D-Hillsborough)
that allows local governments to enact breed-specific dog
sterilization ordinances. Cities and counties including San
Francisco are reportedly rushing to have mandatory sterilization of
pit bull terriers and other breeds commonly used in fighting in place
when the state law takes effect on January 1, 2006.

North Carolina Govern-or Mike Easley in late September 2005
endorsed into law a felony penalty for anyone who is convicted in any
way of participating in a cockfight, including spectating.
Cockfighting is now illegal in 48 states and a felony in 32 of them.

New York Governor George Pataki and Michigan Governor
Jennifer Granholm in September 2005 signed into law bans on hunting
via web sites.

Letters [Nov 2003]

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

PetSmart & live animal sales

Regarding PetSmart’s Luv-A-Pet Adoption Centers, described
in your September 2005 edition, and the October 2005 letter from
PetSmart Charities vice president Susana M. Della Maddalena, I
sincerely appreciate all that PetSmart Charities does for dogs and
cats, but implore PetSmart to reconsider selling other animals as
merchandise.
Birds, reptiles, fish and small mammals deserve the same
respect as dogs and cats. Petco, pressured by PETA and other animal
rights groups, in April 2005 agreed to stop selling large parrots.
Should we now campaign against PetSmart?
–Tami Myers
The Angry Parrot, Inc
P.O. Box 442
Thorndike, MA 01079
Phone: 413-283-5039
<Tami@thebeakretreat.com>
<www.theangryparrot.org>

Letters

Forced Labor on the Factory Farm

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Forced Labor on the Factory Farm
by Karen Davis, PhD, founder & president, United Poultry Concerns

“Unless they were productive, their lives were worthless to their masters.”
–Anne Applebaum, Gulag, A History

A primary difference between a factory
farm and a concentration camp would appear to be
the role of forced labor.
“Work was the central function of most
Soviet camps,” according to Anne Applebaum in
Gulag: A History. In Nazi Germany, Hitler built
camps to terrorize the population into
compliance, and, after war broke out, to
provide German industry with cheap, expendable
labor. “The entire existence of Nazi
concentration camps was marked by a constant
tension between work and extermination,” says
Enzo Traverso in The Origins of Nazi Violence.
Compared to our usual concept of “work”
as “physical and/or mental effort exerted to do
or make something,” the notion that chickens on
a factory farm “work” may seem strange. Granted,
egg-laying hens are caged in horrible conditions,
but while they are there, are they not just
laying eggs the way apples fall from a tree?

Farm Animals

Humane reps can’t get to H5N1 sites in Croatia

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

DUBROVNIK–Concern that the potentially human-killing avian
flu H5N1 might hit Croatia during the October 18-19, 2005
International Companion Animal Welfare Conference in Dubrovnik proved
premature.
Though the spread of H5N1 from nearby parts of Romania,
Russia, and Turkey was considered inevitable, the first cases were
not actually detected until October 21, when six swans were found
dead at a fish farm near Zdenci National Park.
Tissue samples from the dead swans were rushed to Britain for
further testing, but Croatian officials did not wait for the
results before killing all 10,000 chickens and other domestic fowl
kept within three kilometers of where the swans were discovered.
Poultry product sales fell by hal

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