BOOKS: Freeing Keiko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

Freeing Keiko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wild
by Kenneth Brower
Penguin Group (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2006. 288
pages, hardcover. $26.00.

Freeing Keiko is a biography of the captive orca whale who
rose to stardom as “Willy” in the Hollywood movie Free Willy! and
sequels. Author Kenneth Brower, son of the late Earth Island
Institute founder David Brower, had uniquely privileged access to
effort to rehabilitate Keiko for release, from the 1993 beginning of
Earth Island Institute negotiations to obtain Keiko from the Mexico
City aquarium El Reino Aventura until the Humane Society of the U.S.
took over the project shortly before Keiko finally broke from human
feeding and supervision in September 2002 and swam to the coast of
Norway to spend the last 15 months of his life.
Captured off Iceland in 1979, Keiko spent two years at
Marineland of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Sold to El Reino Aventura in
Mexico City, he remained there until 1996, when the Free
Willy/Keiko Foundation formed by Earth Island Institute moved him to
a newly built super-sized tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. More
than 2.5 million visitors came to see him before he was airlifted to
a sea pen in the Westmann Islands of Iceland in September 1998, to
learn again how to be a wild whale.

BOOKS: Writing Green: Advocacy & Investigative Reporting About the Environment in the Early 21st Century

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

Writing Green: Advocacy & Investigative Reporting About the
Environment in the Early 21st Century
by Debra Schwartz, Ph.D. Apprentice House
(www.apprenticehouse.com), 2006. 179 pages, paperback. $18.95.

In absence of animal issues specialists on the staffs of most
news media, environmental beat reporters produce about half of all
mainstream news coverage pertaining to animals, with the rest
scattered among beats including farm-and-business, general
assignment, local news, lifestyles, and even sports. Conversely,
about half of all environmental beat reporting involves animal
issues, albeit mostly pertaining to wildlife habitat and endangered
species.
Exactly half of Writing Green examines how Ocean Aware-ness
Project founder David Helvarg, Tom Meersman of the St. Paul Pioneer
Press, and Paul Rogers of the San Jose Mercury News produced
award-winning exposes of oceanic oil drilling, the impacts of
invasive species in the Great Lakes, and federal grazing subsidies,
including extermination of predators by USDA Wildlife Services.
Helvarg, Meersman, and Rogers are all longtime ANIMAL
PEOPLE readers and occasional sources, as are several other Writing
Green contributors. Humane concerns were not among the topics of
their award-winning work, but I am aware through direct acquaintance
that most of the Writing Green contributors take humane concerns into
consideration, among many other values and pressures, when they
write about animals. They often do not reach the same conclusions
that animal advocates would. Yet understanding how they evaluate
their material could be quite valuable to animal advocates who are
seriously trying to be more influential to the world beyond the
already persuaded.

Elephant birth control introduced in India

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
About a dozen female elephants among the 30 elephants used
for patrol work by the West Bengal Forest Department are soon to
receive birth control implants, senior department official P.T.
Bhutiya told news media in mid-September 2006.
“Our department is suffering a budget cut, so we have been
asked to only maintain those elephants who are useful, and introduce
birth control amongst the whole population,” Bhutiya said. The
forestry department herd formerly produced three or four offspring
per year.
Of the estimated 400 elephants left in West Bengal, about
65-80 are captive work or exhibiton animals.

One-legged Sweet Nothing stays ahead of killer buyers

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Sweet Nothing, right, kept by Cindy Wasney & Dick Jackson
of Victoria, British Columbia, is an emissary for Premarin foals,
Big Julie’s Rescue Ranch in Fort McLeod, Alberta, and horses who
learn to live with prosthetic legs.
“I bought her at a feed lot auction,” Big Julie’s Rescue
Ranch founder Roger Brinker told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “She was a $200
horse,” going for little more than the minimum bid.
Conventional belief is that horses who suffer severe leg
injuries must be euthanized, but some especially valuable stud
horses have been saved with prosthetic limbs, typically costing
$6,000 to $8,000.

No more polar bears at Singapore Zoo

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
SINGAPORE–Singapore Zoo director Fanny Lai told Reuters on
September 7, 2006 that the zoo will no longer exhibit Arctic and
Antarctic animals after the eventual death of Sheba, 29, the elder
of the two polar bears on exhibit at the zoo.
Singapore is located just north of the equator.
Lai told Reuters that she has asked the Rostock Zoo in
Germany, manager of the global captive polar bear survival plan, to
find a more suitable home for Inuka, 16, who is to be moved after
Sheba dies.

Baboon rescuer fights for her life

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
CAPE TOWN–Baboon rescuer Jenni Trethowan, 45, was
hospitalized in Contantiberg under heavy sedation in early September,
suffering from central nervous system damage including “violent
spasms, balance problems while walking, and a slurring of speech,”
reported John Yeld of the Cape Town Argus on September 9.
“Trethowan is believed to have been affected by dieldrin,”
an insecticide banned more than 25 years ago, Yeld wrote, “after
handling three young baboons from the Slangkop troop who all died
after being poisoned with the same deadly substance–probably
deliberately,” in mid-August.
“Her husband Ian said she was hooked to an EEG mach-ine,
linked to a video camera, and was being constantly monitored,” Yeld
added.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife sanctuary struggles on–for now

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
KEENESBURG, Colorado–The Rocky Mountain Wildlife
Conservation Center “has received donations and pledges that will
help to keep it operating for now,” the sanctuary management
announced in a September 2, 2006 web posting, but closed to public
visits “for an undetermined period of time,” the web page said,
“so that the board of directors will have time to evaluate the entire
situation.
“The animals are in no danger,” the posting added. “It is
the desire of the board that the animals remain at their current
location…If no solution to keeping the sanctuary operating is
found, the board will proceed with closure and the placement of as
many animals as possible.”

N.J. Consumer Affairs prosecutes another coin-can fundraiser

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
HACKENSACK, N.J.–Exiting New Jersey Office of Consumer
Affairs director Kimberly Ricketts on August 2, 2006, her last day
with the agency, appealed for public help to locate and impound an
estimated 1,400 to 1,500 coin collection canisters believed to have
been placed by an entity calling itself Lovers of Animals.
The Office of Consumer Affairs has filed suit, reported
Newark Star-Ledger staff writer Brian T. Murray, alleging improper
accounting for about $7,500 raised and spent in 2005.
The case followed the state shutdown of coin can fundraiser
Patrick Jemas in June 2006. Jemas did business as the National
Animal Welfare Foundation.
“Lovers of Animals was incorporated when Russell Frontera,
49, of Beachwood was furloughed from state prison in late 2004 after
serving two years of a seven-year sentence for loan sharking,” wrote
Murray. “His name appears on documents filed with the Internal
Revenue Service and the state that year, when he also opened a post
office box for the charity.

Gunfire no aphrodisiac for African elephants

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force chair Johnny Rodrigues and
Presidential Elephant Conservation Project elephant fertility
researcher Sharon Pincott contend that the stress associated with
gunfire has actually suppressed elephant fecundity–a finding which,
if verified, would contradict other studies showing that wildlife
populations tend to increase their fecundity under hunting pressure.
Both coyotes and deer, for example, notoriously raise more
young successfully when hunting has thinned their populations,
making more food available to the survivors.
But different mechanisms are at work.
While coyotes are hunted year-round, intensive hunting
pressure on coyotes tends to be limited to the spring birthing season
for cattle and sheep, and the fall deer hunting season, when deer
hunters often shoot coyotes as well.

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