Month: October 2007

Hawaii record dog attack verdict

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
HONOLULU–A circuit court jury on October 12, 2007 awarded a
Hawaii dog attack case record $850,000 to Keeton Manguso, age four,
and his mother Veronica Tomooka, who were mauled at Kahala Beach on
Mother’s Day 2005 by a Rottweiler belonging to Mariko Bereday. “The
jury awarded Manguso’s family $500,000 in punitive damages and
$350,000 in general damages. The award included $6,500 in medical
bills,” reported Hawaii Advertiser staff writer Gordon Y.K. Pang.
“Bereday told reporters that photos taken of the boy’s wounds were
faked,” Pang added. “Bereday also said that she intends to appeal.
During a separate criminal proceeding last year involving the
incident and another attack involving a 4-year-old girl six days
after the attack on Keeton, Bereday was sentenced to five days in
jail and a $2,000 fine. The dog was ordered destroyed. The case is
under appeal. The girl victim’s family has also sued Bereday.”

Why Best Friends bought Dogwood Kennels

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
BYRNES CHAPEL, Virginia– The Best Friends Animal Society
surprised dog breeder Ivan Schmucker Jr. and quite a few other people
on October 12, 2007 by using an undercover intermediary to buy
Schmucker’s Dogwood Kennels inventory of 178 dogs, including newborn
puppies.
Started without required county permits, Dogwood Kennels
became intensely controversial after a March 21, 2007 fire killed
167 dogs. Best Friends organized local opposition to Schmucker’s
attempts to get the necessary permits and rebuild the business with
about 100 dogs who survived the fire.

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The legacy of a winged monkey army

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
CHENNAI–The Central Bureau of Investigation raid on the Blue
Cross of India came about two weeks after chief executive Chinny
Krishna prominently criticized a government plan to breach Ram Sethu,
or Adam’s Bridge, an underwater rock formation linking India to Sri
Lanka.
Krishna wondered after the September 28, 2007 raid whether
the intense political controversy over breaching Ram Sethu might have
been involved, but ANIMAL PEOPLE found no hint that it was.
Krishna pointed out, as many others have, that Ram Sethu
helped to break the force of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Promoted by the Congress Party, which presently heads the
Indian federal government, the breach would cut about 30 hours and
considerable fuel use from the itineraries of coastal cargo vessels.
But it would also considerably alter the aquatic ecology of the
strait between India and Sri Lanka, and would be considered an act
of sacrilege by many Hindus. Controversy over the proposal
reportedly could be a factor in forcing the Congress government to
call early elections.

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28 dolphins captured off the Solomon Islands are flown to new swim-with facility in Dubai

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:

 

DUBAI, U.A.E.– Twenty-eight dolphins captured in July 2007
off the Solomon Islands “are definitely coming to Dubai and will all
go to one place, the Atlantis Palm Dubai,” a Dubai representative
of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species told
Emmanuelle Landais of Gulf News two days before the flight.
But even though the transaction was extensively covered for
The Independent news services and Associated Press by Solomon Islands
correspondent George Herming, a Kerzner International spokesperson
insisted to Landais that, “We cannot disclose information about
where we acquire our dolphins or details of the transport at this
time as a matter of security.”
Former Vancouver Aquarium trainer Christopher Porter and
Solomon Islands Marine Mammal Education Centre director Robert Satu
reportedly negotiated the deal for about $30,000 per dolphin–but
Satu also “would not reveal the identity of the importer or the price
paid,” Herming wrote, and guards on October 11 chased away a camera
crew who tried to videotape the dolphins’ departure.

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The image of pigeon flying takes a tumble

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
PORTLAND, Oregon–Portland U.S. District
Judge Ancer Haggerty on October 11, 2007
sentenced pigeon flyers Peter Kaufman and Ivan
Hanchett to each pay a $2,000 fine plus $2,000
more to the Endangered Species Justice Fund at
the Oregon Zoo, for illegally killing an unknown
number of birds of prey.
Kaufman and Hanchett were also barred
from any involvement with the roller pigeon
fancy, hunting, and fishing during a year on
probation, during which they must each do 120
hours of community service.
The sentences were far lighter than the
fines of $10,000 apiece sought by the
prosecution, and less even than the $7,500 fine
proposed by one of the defense attornies,
objected Audubon Society of Portland conservation
director Bob Salinger. Salinger, Portland mayor
Tom Potter, and Portland Metro Council president
David Bragdon had all called for the stiffest
possible penalties.

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Horse defenders try to close borders

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
CHICAGO, SAN ANTONIO, WASHINGTON D.C.–A September 21,
2007 ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court
of Appeals appeared to end horse slaughter within the U.S., pending
further appeals by plaintiff Cavel International.
Immediate effects of the ruling, upholding a May 2007
Illinois law prohibiting the slaughter of horses for human
consumption, were to increase exports of horses to slaughter in
Mexico and Canada, and to redouble efforts by the Humane Society of
the U.S. to ban the exports.
“States have a legitimate interest in prolonging the lives of
animals that their population happens to like,” the three-judge
panel opined. “They can ban bullfights and cockfights and the abuse
and neglect of animals.”

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Conservationists give cover for Mauritian monkey sales to labs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
PORT LEWIS, KUALA LUMPUR, HANOI–Nearly 500 years after
Dutch sailors are believed to imported the first macaques to
Mauritius, claims of a need to control them as an alleged invasive
species have become a front line of defense for the booming Mauritian
macaque export industry– which captures some macaques from the wild,
but breeds them in captivity to comply with U.S. and international
laws that prohibit or restrict the use of wild-caught animals in labs.
Six Mauritian companies export macaques. The largest may be
Noveprim, founded in 1980. “Monkeys are not indigenous to
Mauritius,” emphasized Noveprim chief executive Gerald de Senneville
in an October 2007 interview by Nasseem Ackbarally of the Inter Press
Service, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Ackbarally found quick agreement from Mauritian Wildlife
Foundation executive director Jacques Julienne and conservation
manager Vikash Tattayah.
“The monkeys are a nuisance from a conservation point of
view,” said Julienne. “They eat birds’ eggs, kill small and adult
birds alike, and attack indigenous plants.”

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Progress toward abolishing animal sacrifice in Nepal and India

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
KATHMANDU–“Though a ceasefire between the government and the
Maoist guerrillas has held for over a year now,” India News Service
reporter Sudeshna Sarkar wrote from the Nepalese capital city of
Kathmandu on October 19, 2007, “Nepal is passing through one of
its goriest periods with thousands of animals being sacrificed daily
on the occasion of Dashain, the biggest Hindu festival in the
country.
“On the eighth day of the nearly fortnight-long
celebrations,” Sarkar explained, “animal killings reach a
crescendo, with buffaloes, goats, and chickens being slaughtered.”
But since the recent dissolution of the Nepalese theocracy,
Sarkar noted, dissent against the sacrifices–formerly personally
led by the king–has emerged.

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Buffalo Field Campaign director enters 2007-2008 bison migration season on probation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:

 

BOZEMAN–Buffalo Field Campaign director Daniel Brister, 37,
was fined $585 and put on six months of probation on October 10,
2007, after a six-member jury convicted him of obstructing a peace
officer, in an incident which ended in Brister receiving three
staples at the Bozeman Deaconess Hospital to close a scalp wound.
Brister was arrested near West Yellowstone, Montana, on May
9, 2007, while videotaping law enforcement officers who were
hazing about 300 bison back into Yellowstone National Park.
A Buffalo Field Campaign press release issued soon afterward
said the incident began when volunteer Peter David Bogusko urged
Montana Highway Patrol officer Shane Cox to close Highway 191 before
the herd stampeded across it. Bogusko was apparently unaware that
the U.S. Forest Service had already closed the highway. Cox ordered
Bogusko to leave the area. When Bogusko allegedly tried to go a
different direction, Cox arrested him. Bogusko then allegedly
kicked out a side window of Cox’s patrol car, and was charged with
felony criminal mischief.

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