RSPCA of Australia offers beer for cane toads

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
SYDNEY–” Hops for hoppers plan likely to croak,” the Sydney
Morning Herald headlined on February 27, 2007.
A year after the Royal SPCA of Australia began offering cane
toad hunters a free beer for every toad delivered to RSPCA shelters
alive, the offer has reportedly had few takers–while hunters
continue to club cane toads, shoot them, spear them, and sometimes
lick them, to get a potentially lethal high from a poison they
secret that has reputed psychadelic effects.
Native to the Amazon rain forest, 101 cane toads were
released in Queensland in 1935 to combat cane beetles, native to
Australia, who were attacking sugar cane crops. Ignoring the cane
beetles, cane toads instead became the most successful predators of
mosquito larvae Down Under.

Indian humane societies clash with PETA & government over wildlife rescue role

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
Indian humane societies clash with PETA & government over wildlife rescue role

by Merritt Clifton

BANGALORE–PETA/India, the Karnataka state forestry agency,
and the Central Zoo Authority of India are aligned against all five
of the local humane societies in a turf war over who has the right to
house and treat wildlife.
Summarized The Hindu on February 27, 2007, “In a petition before
the Supreme Court, PETA seeks the closure of all unrecognised zoos
and unauthorized rescue and rehabilitation centers,” allegedly
because “poor infrastructure has led to unnecessary pain and
suffering of animals housed in them.”

Placing predators in land of 1.1 billion people

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

Indian tigers, lions, and leopards who menace humans or
livestock are killed, as predators are in other nations–but Indian
animal advocates have long sought alternatives.
The tiger conservationist Jim Corbett, born in India of
British parents, first won fame by shooting the tigers he
memorialized in his 1946 memoir The Man-Eaters of Kumaon. Yet far
from boasting of his kills, Corbett pleaded for tiger habitat to be
set aside, within which tigers could be tigers, safe from the
threat of human encroachment.
Though tiger reserves were eventually created, as Corbett
recommended, and one of the largest was named in his honor,
poaching and encroachment have diminished most of them. The Sariska
tiger reserve, formerly among the most accessible to tourists, was
apparently poached completely out of tigers in 2003, as was
officially confirmed in November 2004. Poachers admitted killing 10
of the 20-odd tigers who were believed to have inhabited Sariska.
The rest appeared to have existed only on paper as result of counts
inflated to keep tourists coming.

Animal Planet pulls White Lions video

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
The December 2006 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE mentioned that the
Animal Planet cable television channel had come under criticism from
canned hunt opponents for airing a documentary called White Lions:
King of Kings.
The documentary, said ANIMAL PEOPLE book reviewer and
Cannedlion.com founder Chris Mercer, “presented Marius Prinsloo, a
notorious canned lion breeder in South Africa, as a paragon of
conservation working to preserve the white lion gene.”

Horse slaughterhouse closes after verdict

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
DALLAS–Horse slaughter in the U.S. for human consumption
appeared to be closer to an end on March 23, 2007, when the Dallas
Crown slaughterhouse in Kaufman, Texas, temporarily laid off staff.
“We have decided temporarily not to process, because we have
some changes to make here,” Dallas Crown spokesperson Chris Soenen
told Michael Gresham of the Kaufman Herald. Soenen said that “just
about everyone other than administration” had been sent home, but
said this did not mean Dallas Crown would be going out of business.
“This is just temporary as we restructure,” Soenen said.

People & positions

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
The Mohawk & Hudson River Humane Society, serving Albany,
New York, since 1887, on March 19, 2007 introduced new executive
director Brad Shear. Shear was previously shelter manager and animal
care and control director for the Humane Society of Boulder Valley in
Colorado, managed the Brooklyn shelter for the New York City Center
for Animal Care & Control, and was director of operations for the
Atlanta Humane Society. Shear succeeds interim director Warren Cox,
who has headed 24 humane societies and animal control agencies in 55
years. His seventh post was as founding director of the Animal
Rescue League in Marshalltown, Iowa, whose director since 1976,
Wendy Fields, in March 2007 announced her retirement. Fields began
working at the Animal Rescue League at age 16 to pay off her dog’s
impoundment fees. She succeeded then-director Bob Brandau, recalled
Greg Pierquet of the Marshalltown Times-Republican, after showing
her dedication by bottle-feeding two orphaned skunk babies. The
skunks remained her pets for eight years.

Activists & Organizations

South Africa, Zimbabwe claim need to cull elephants

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:
ADDO NATIONAL PARK– South African environmental affairs and
tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk on February 28, 2007
announced that culling elephants may resume soon after a 12-year
suspension, under a draft policy open for public comment until May 4.
“If culling is allowed after the process of public comment,
and if it is included in the final draft,” van Schalkwyk said,
speaking cautiously to media at Addo National Park on the Eastern
Cape, “it would really depend on the management plans and
management objectives of each of the parks” where elephants might be
killed.
Addo and Kruger National Park, South Africa’s oldest and
largest, are most often mentioned as sites of alleged elephant
overpopulation.
“We have about 20,000 elephants in South Africa,” van
Schalkwyk said, of whom “more or less 14,000 are in Kruger National
Park. In 1995, when we stopped culling we had around 8,000
elephants. The population growth of elephants is six to seven
percent [per year]. This is the hard reality,” Van Schalkwyk
explained.

Editorial: Media relations & the Bangalore dog crisis

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

The Bangalore dog crisis, extensively covered in both this
and the previous edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, has underlying meaning
for almost every reader.
Heavily publicized dog attacks, in Bangalore and elsewhere,
may cause India to rescind or weaken the decade-old policy mandating
civic participation in the national Animal Birth Control program,
and forbidding indiscriminate massacres of street dogs.
This would be a reversal of momentum toward achieving no-kill
animal control of global influence–and would come even though ABC
has cut the street dog population of India by as much as 75% in 10
years, according to the most recent World Health Organization
estimate. Dog attacks are down proportionately, including in
Bangalore, which has 74% fewer dog attacks per 1,000 citizens than
the national average.

BOOKS: The Plight of Pakistani Animals

April 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

The Plight of Pakistani Animals
by Khalid Mahmood Qurashi
President, Animal Save Movement, Pakistan

In Pakistan even human beings are not accorded fundamental
rights. But the condition of animals is worse and miserable.
Both birds and land animals are so frequently hunted as if
they were an enemy army, including by some of the persons and
organizations whose jobs are to protect animals. and their lives.
Members of our wildlife and forestry departments often aid the
hunters, and even participate in the killing.
Bankers, industrialists, and politicians invite their
foreign business partners, including Arabian princes, to come hunt
even our rarest species–and to capture our vanishing wild falcons,
to turn them into hunting weapons. Local leaders and merchants
show their influence by hosting cockfights, bear-baiting, and other
kinds of animal fight.

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