Primarily Primates digs out after six & a half months of receivership

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
SAN ANTONIO–A month after returning to Primarily Primates,
executive director Stephen Rene Tello told ANIMAL PEOPLE,
“Ninety-five percent of the debris” left by six and a half months of
court-appointed receivership had been cleaned up.
From October 15, 2006 until May 1, 2007, Primarily
Primates was managed by receiver Lee Theisen-Watt, whose background
was in wildlife rehabilitation, and a variety of PETA staff and
volunteers.
The sanctuary was seized largely based on claims by two
former Primarily Primates staff members who had been dismissed for
cause. The allegations were forwarded to now retired Texas assistant
attorney general John Vinson and Office of the Texas Attorney General
investigator Christopher Krhovjak in May 2006 by PETA counsel for
research and investigations Leona Stormont.

ELF/ALF strategist sentenced as terrorist

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
EUGENE, Oregon–Stanislas Meyer-hoff, 29, on May 23, 2007
drew 16 years in federal prison for his admitted participation in a
string of arsons attributed to the “Earth Liberation Front” and
“Animal Liberation Front.” The fires, set in five western states,
did more than $40 million damage, according to federal prosecutors.
Meyerhoff was the first of 10 admitted ELF and ALF arsonists
to go before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken for sentencing, and was
expected to draw the longest sentence.
“According to the government,” wrote Bryan Denson of the
Portland Oregonian, who covered the case from the first actions
onward, “Meyerhoff co-owned a pair of MAK-91 semiautomatic rifles,
helped write the Earth Liberation Front’s manual on how to set fires
with electrical timers, coached others on how to make [explosive
devices], and led arsons.”

ADL-LA fined $49,600 for demos

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
LOS ANGELES–A Los Angeles Superior Court judgment on May 3,
2007 fined the Animal Defense League of Los Angeles $49,600, after
representatives pleaded “no contest” to seven criminal charges,
including trespassing and conspiracy, arising out of a series of
demonstrations held outside the homes of Los Angeles Animal Services
employees in 2004 and 2005.
“Seven other charges were dropped by city prosecutors,”
Associated Press reported.
The court placed all members of the Animal Defense League of
Los Angeles under three years of probation, including a prohibition
on “annoying, harassing, threatening, stalking or committing any
act of force or violence” against L.A. Animal Services staff.
“The group is barred from demonstrating within 100 feet of
the homes of previously targeted workers,” said Associated Press,
“and the league must remove their photos and personal information
from its web site.”

32 British activists held after May 1 raids

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
LONDON–More than 700 police officers on
May 1, 2007 raided 29 addresses in 12 British
counties, two addresses in The Netherlands, and
one in Belgium, detaining 15 men and 17
women–all in Britain–on suspicion of
involvement in arsons and vandalism committed in
the name of animal rights.
The dawn raids reportedly seized £100,000
in cash, numerous mobile telephones, computer
equipment, and documents.
The most prominent address raided was the
25-year-old Freshfields Animal Rescue Centre in
Merseyside. Freshfields manager Dave Callender,
47, in March 1996 was sentenced to serve 10
years in prison for conspiring to commit arson.
“A jury at Birmingham crown court heard
he had enough material to make more than 100
incendiary devices,” wrote Guardian crime
correspondent Sandra Laville. “The prosecution
alleged that he was planning a ‘campaign directed
at targets which included cattle farms,
slaughterhouses, meat traders, egg production
farms, and also societies connected with hunting
and other field sports.’

Attempt to legally adopt chimp goes to appeal

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
VIENNA–Austrian judge Barbara Bart on April 24, 2007
rejected the request of British teacher Paula Stibbe, 38, a
longtime resident of Vienna, that she be allowed to legally adopt
Hiasl, 26, a male chimpanzee, whom she has visited weekly at a now
bankrupt sanctuary since 1999. Stibbe immediately appealed the
verdict.
Stibbe petitioned to adopt Hiasl, she said, out of concern
that he might be sold to a laboratory outside of Austria. Bart ruled
that the adoption could not proceed because Hiasl is neither a
mentally impaired human nor in a crisis situation requiring emergency
intervention.

NIH makes permanent chimp breeding freeze

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
WASHINGTON D.C.– The U.S. National Institutes of Health on
May 24, 2007 announced that for financial reasons, it will make
permanent a moratorium in effect since 1995 on breeding chimpanzees
kept by the National Center for Research Resources.
The center is responsible for about 500 of the 1,200 chimps
who remain in U.S. laboratories.
Only nine U.S. labs still use chimps.
“NCRR’s prudent decision is timely,” said New England
Anti-Vivisection Society president Theo Capaldo, “since not only
U.S. but world sentiment is growing in support of the day when no
chimpanzees will be used in lab research.”
The NIH escalated chimp breeding in the early 1980s,
anticipating that many chimps would be used in HIV-AIDS research.
However, chimpanzees proved to be extraordinarily resistant
to the human forms of HIV-AIDS.

70 years of missing the link

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
CHENNAI–Non-recognition of the
relationship between Indian street dog purges and
monkey invasions is no new phenomenon–and not
only Indians have failed to observe it.
Separate articles on page 22 of the July
1938 edition of the National Humane Review,
published by the American Humane Association,
detailed both a dog pogrom in Chennai, then
called Madras, and the industry of shipping
monkeys to U.S. laboratories that had emerged in
several leading Indian cities. Neither the
British correspondents who furnished the
information nor the Americans who wrote the
articles appeared to be aware that one practice
might be fueling the other.
“Stray dogs are a problem in India, as
in our own country,” the editors observed, “and
city handling in India is as revolting as in many
American cities. Through the endeavors of the
Madras SPCA, electrocution has taken the place
of clubbing dogs to deathŠThat the practices of
city dog catchers are much the same the world
over is indicated by a complaint that the dog
catchers were taking only healthy dogs and
passing up the diseased ones.”

Monkeys may swing elections, but Delhi doesn’t want them

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
DELHI–“Marauding monkeys and the chaos they spread across
New Delhi” were “an important issue” in the April 2007 municipal
elections, reported Rahul Bedi of The Daily Telegraph.
But the outcome for monkeys was not apparent in the election
results, because no party really seems to have a politically viable
and popular solution.
Members of the Congress Party most flamboyantly campaigned against
“the monkey menace.” The Congress Party recommended raising a
“monkey army” of chained languors, to roust the smaller and much
more abundant rhesus macaques who cause most of the monkey trouble.
Indeed, chained languors are at times employed successfully
to guard specific locations for limited times–but apart from the
humane issues involved in capturing and training them, they are
often the losers when troupes of macaques gang up and counter-attack.
Few politicians other than former federal minister for animal
welfare Maneka Gandhi advocate leaving street dogs alone, to chase
off monkeys as they have for centuries. But several Delhi citizens
gave testimony to Bedi suggesting that urbanized macaques have become
a much bigger threat than street dogs ever were, except possibly in
potential for carrying rabies, and macaques can transmit rabies too,
if infected.

Will Taiji again capture orcas?

June 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2007:
“The town of Taiji plans to capture orcas in order to secure
financial resources,” charges Sha-Chi JP, a Japanese-based web
site “dedicated to the Taiji-5 orcas captured on February 7, 1997.”
The site is posted by volunteers Seiji Inagaki, Nanami Kurasawa,
Yoshiko Nagatsuka, Yoshimi Takahashi, and Carla Hernandez, with
the help of OrcaLab, the British Columbia-based project of
anti-captivity marine mammologist Paul Spong.
Taiji is globally notorious as the site of dolphin massacres.
Herded into shallow water by boat, the dolphins are confined with
nets, then hacked to death. The toll exceeds 1,000 dolphins per
winter. Most are of small species. The 1997 orca captures were
unusual.

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