Month: September 2007

Malaysia plans to export street macaques to labs & live markets

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

 
KUALA LUMPUR–Malaysian natural resources and environment
minister Seri Azmi Khalid at a September 5, 2007 press conference
asserted that the government had not lifted a 23-year-old ban on
exporting long-tailed macaques, but admitted that plans are
proceeding to export macaques captured in cities to laboratories and
Chinese live markets.
“I did not use the word ‘lift.’ The media quoted me wrongly,” Seri
Azmi Khalid claimed, according to Loh Foon Fong of the Malaysia Star.
Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, reported on
August 17, 2007 that “Malaysia has lifted the ban on the export of
long-tailed macaques.”
“The cabinet has decided to lift the ban because we want to
reduce the number of long-tailed monkeys in urban areas. The lifting
of the ban is only for peninsular Malaysia and does not cover Sabah
and Sarawak,” Seri Azmi Khalid was quoted as saying.
Reporting about the same speech, Elizabeth John of the New
Straits Times wrote that Seri Azmi Khalid said the export ban had
been “lifted.”

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New animal protection laws in Texas, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maine

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

 

New Texas legislation permits felony prosecution of people
whose dogs kill or maim other humans, but attorneys familiar with
handling dog attack cases and representatives of the animal control
officers who will have the primary duty of enforcing the new law told
Roy Appleton of the Dallas Morning News that it does not actually
eliminate the ancient “one free bite” rule for determining if a dog
is vicious, and will require animal control officers to do criminal
investigation, whereas the typical animal control offense is a
summary infraction. “This is better than what we have now,” said
Dallas attorney and Animal Legal Defense Fund president Robert
Trimble, “but whether it solves the problem, I guess we’ll have to
wait and see.”
Texas also banned keeping dogs tethered between 10 p.m. and 6
a.m., and limited tethering to three hours within any 24-hour
period. Waco police department animal control chief Clare Crook
noted to Waco Tribune-Herald staff writer David Doerr that
enforcement may be complicated by thin animal control staffing during
night hours, but felt the law would be helpful.

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How does Wal-Mart reconcile selling live turtles in China with “sustainable” policy?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

 

BENTONVILLE, Arkansas–In October 2005, Wal-Mart chief
executive officer Lee Scott declared that as the world’s largest
retail store chain, Wal-Mart has a special responsibility to be a
“good steward for the environment.” In October 2006, Newsweek
published a gruesome account of how live turtles, fish, crabs, and
clams are sold and killed to order “in the grocery section of a
Wal-Mart in north Beijing.”
In January 2007, Care for the Wild International chief
executive Barbara Maas suggested to Clifford Coonan, Beijing
correspondent for The Independent, that Wal-Mart and other retail
chains including Carrefour of France, Metro of Germany, and Tesco
of Britain should set better examples in China by not stocking
turtles and frogs.

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Editorial feature: How to eradicate canine rabies in 10 years or less

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

 
“Rabies could be gone in a decade,” BBC
News headlined worldwide on September 8, 2007.
“Rabies could be wiped out across the world,”
the BBC report continued, “if sufficient
vaccinations are carried out on domestic dogs,
according to experts.”
BBC News went on to quote staff of the
Royal Dick Veterinary School at Edinburgh
University in Scotland, who were among the
cofounders of the Alliance for Rabies Control and
promoters of the first World Rabies Day, held on
September 7, 2007.
None of the Alliance for Rabies Control
spokespersons appear to have actually set any
sort of timetable for possibly eradicating
rabies, but no matter. Experts have recognized
for decades that rabies is wholly eradicable from
all species except bats through targeted mass
immunization–and the chief obstacle to
eradicating bat rabies is that no one has
developed an aerosolized vaccine that could be
sprayed into otherwise inaccessible caves and
tree trunks. Inventing such a vaccine is
considered difficult but possible.

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Wildlife Waystation founder Martine Colette says sanctuary is broke

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

LOS ANGELES–The Los Angeles Daily News and KNBC-4 television
on August 30, 2007 amplified emergency appeals from Wildlife
Waystation founder Martine Colette for funding she said was urgently
needed to keep the 31-year-old sanctuary operating.
“We are $1 million in debt, and we have no funds left,”
Colette told Daily News staff writer Dana Bartholomew. “Things as
they are today will not continue for the next week, or two weeks,
without help.”
Colette suggested that if an immediate infusion of cash was
not forthcoming, the 400 Waystation animals would “become the
county’s problem, the state’s problem,” a threat she has issued
before in years of disputes with regulatory agencies.
Closed for 110 days by the Calif-ornia Department of Fish &
Game in 2000, Wildlife Waystation never fully regained the permits
it needed to host donors’ visits, which until then were the
sanctuary’s chief revenue engine. More than just generating
on-the-spot donations, visits tended to inspire new donors to give
regularly, and established donors to give more.
“Trying to obtain a permit is a long process,” Colette told
KNBC. “There are many regulations we have to meet in order to get a
permit, and we cannot meet those regulations at all. In the
meantime we have gone broke trying to run the sanctuary without being
open to the public.”
Colette estimated that Wildlife Waystation operating costs
currently run at about $5,000 a day. This is consistent with the
most recent Waystation filings of IRS Form 990. ANIMAL PEOPLE has
found that determining the balance of Waystation program expense,
fundraising costs, and administrative expenditures has been
difficult, however, because of idiosyncracies in how the forms have
been completed.
“Last month,” wrote Bartholomew, “five of the eight
Waystation board members quit, apparently burned out over troubles
at the beleaguered agency.”
Colette at the end of August laid off general manager Alfred
J. Durtschi, who was paid $107,153 in the most recently reported
fiscal year, and also laid off half of the 48 Waystation caretakers
and groundskeepers.
Colette told news media that Southern California Edison had
threatened to cut off the sanctuary electricity due to unpaid bills,
and that the Waystation was also about to lose propane delivery.
Former Waystation board chair Robert Lorsch resigned on July
1, 2007, after five years of intense involvement.

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Fourteen of 26 defendants are sentenced & lectured in British dogfighting case

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

 

BIRMINGHAM–Four-teen of 26 defendants in
one of the biggest dogfighting cases brought to
British courts in decades pleaded guilty on
September 3, 2007, and were fined from £500 to
£1,300, plus £80 court costs.
The case is unusual in that all 26 men
arrested at the February 2006 dogfight are
Muslims –as is Birmingham Magistrates Court
district judge Kal Qureshi, who lectured the men
about their “sadistic and cruel” behavior.
“The event itself is best described as
sadistic,” Qureshi said. “In my view it
involved inflicting unimaginable pain without any
pity for the animals.”
Qureshi fined them less than the maximum
£2,500 because they were first-time offenders.
Dogfighting in Britain has historically
not involved immigrants and ethnic minorities,
and in recent years has often been a pursuit of
so-called skinheads espousing anti-minority
attitudes.
Twelve defendants elected to go to trial,
including the two men who allegedly organized the
fight. Both dogs involved were killed.

A dogfighting case rocks Gaelic football

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

BELFAST–A 17-month undercover
investigation of dogfighting by BBC Northern
Ireland’s Spotlight program, aired on August
30, caught County Tyrone Gaelic football star
Gerald Cavlan, 31, boasting in front of a
hidden camera about a dogfighting club he
cofounded called Bulldog Sanctuary Kennels.
Cavlan’s alleged use of the “sanctuary”
ruse appeared to be a first in the British Isles,
but U.S. dogfighters have often been caught in
recent years operating behind false front
“sanctuaries” and “rescues.” Some have
collected pit bull terriers and “bait” dogs and
cats from unwitting members of the public.
“The BBC program deployed an undercover
specialist from England who duped organizers of
two dog-fighting clubs in Northern Ireland and
two breeders of American pit bulls in Finland who
supplied dogs to Cavlan and other Northern
Ireland-based dog fighters,” reported Shawn
Pogatchnik of Associated Press. “All were filmed
discussing the tricks of their trade and methods
of evading detection.”
The two BBC crew confronted Finland-based
breeders Robert Gonzales and Paul Dunkel with
evidence of their activities before police
arrested them.

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Five Makah arrested for killing whale without permit

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

NEAH BAY, Washington– Frustrated by eight years of failing
to obtain a new federal permit to kill gray whales, after killing
one in May 1999, Makah tribal whaler Wayne Johnson, 54, and four
other Makah– Theron Parker, Andy Noel, Billy Secor and Frank
Gonzales Jr.–on September 8, 2007 killed a whale without a permit
and without tribal authorization or awareness.
“Crew members plunged at least five stainless steel whaling
harpoons into the animal. Then they shot it,” wrote Seattle Times
staff reporter Lynda V. Mapes. “The Coast Guard, alerted to the
hunt by onlookers, was on the scene within hours. Johnson and the
others quickly found themselves in handcuffs,” recounted Mapes.
“The Coast Guard confiscated the gun and their boats, and cut the
whale, harpoons and all, loose to drift on the current. By evening,
the whale was dead, and sank out of sight.

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Iceland halts commercial whaling

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

REYKJAVIK–Iceland fisheries minister Einar K Guofinnsson on
September 3, 2007 announced that Iceland will not issue new
commercial whaling quotas.
Iceland in 2006 joined Norway in unilaterally defying the
21-year-old Inter-national Whaling Commission moratorium on
commercial whaling by issuing itself permits to kill 30 minke whales
and nine endangered fin whales. Anticipating a market in Japan for
whale meat, Icelandic fishers killed seven minke whales and seven
fin whales, but were unable to get permission to export the meat.
“There is no reason to continue commercial whaling if there
is no demand for the product,” Guofinnsson said.
Iceland, like Japan, has sustained a remnant whaling
industry despite the IWC moratorium by authorizing whalers to hunt in
the name of research. Iceland issued “scientific whaling” permits to
kill 38 minke whales in 2003, 25 in 2004, 39 in 2005, and 60 in
2006–far below the Japanese toll of 6,795 whales killed in research
whaling since 1987.

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