Animal rescuers respond to the crisis in Japan

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

 

If animals ran for high ground or took cover just before the
Thoku Chih earthquake hit Japan at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011,
accounts of their behavior did not reach ANIMAL PEOPLE. The
catastrophe appears to have taken Japanese animals as much by
surprise as humans, more than 27,000 of whom were dead or missing.
Rating 9.0 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter 20 miles
below the sea off the northeast coast, the most powerful quake in
recorded Japanese history was followed by a tsunami whose 33-foot
wave hurled cars through third-floor windows. Already airborne,
several news agency helicopters videotaped destruction resembling the
rampages of the cinematic monster Godzilla.

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Anna Briggs, 101, lived an animal rights lifestyle before there was a movement

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
Anna Catherine Briggs, 101, died on February 15, 2011 in
Berryville, Virginia. Co-founder in 1948 of the National Humane
Education Society, Anna Briggs was the youngest and last living
representative of a minority faction within early 20th century
humane work who demonstrated an “animal rights” philosophy more than
50 years before the emergence of the animal rights movement.
Leaders of the proto-animal rights faction included David and
Diana Belais, who founded the Humane Society of New York in 1893,
the New York Anti-Vivisection Society in 1908, and the short-lived
First Church of Animal Rights in 1921; Flora Kibbe, who founded the
Bide-A-Wee Home in 1903; and James J. Briggs, prominent within the
cause in the Washington D.C. area long before he met Anna, who was
then Anna Reynolds.

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Amteshwar Anand, mother of Maneka Gandhi

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

 

Amteshwar Anand, 77, died on February 28, 2011, in New
Delhi. The daughter of Sir Sardar Datar Singh, Amteshwar Anand was
mother of People for Animals founder Maneka Gandhi and her almost
equally outspoken younger sister, longtime PfA director Ambika
Shukla.
Widowed at 44 by the 1977 death of her husband, Colonel T.S.
Anand, Amteshwar Anand spent the rest of her life working for
animals, joining her daughters in founding People for Animals in
1984.

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Obituaries [April 2011]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
 
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do
lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
–William Shakespeare
 

Fateh Singh Rathore, 79, died on March 1, 2011, two weeks
after receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Worldwide Fund
for Nature in recognition of 50 years of work to protect Indian
tigers. The son of a police officer, “Tiger Man” Rathore became a
forest ranger at the Alwar Game Reserve, now Sariska National Park,
circa 1955. In January 1961 Rathore was sent to the nearby Sawai
Madhopur Game Sanctuary to organize a tiger shoot for Queen Elizabeth
II of Great Britain and her husband Prince Philip. This experience

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Animal Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

 

Knut, 4, a polar bear who was rejected by his mother soon
after birth at the Berlin Zoo on December 5, 2006, but was raised
by his keepers, died suddenly on March 19, 2011 from unknown
causes. “He was by himself in his compound, he was in the water,
and then he was dead,” bear keeper Heiner Kloes told Associated
Press. “He was not sick. We don’t know why he died,” pending a
necropsy that was to be done on March 28. Knut’s first chief
keeper, Thomas Doerflein, 44, was found dead in his apartment of a
heart attack on September 22, 2008. A 25-year Berlin Zoo employee,
Doerflein from March 2007 to July 2007 exhibited Knut to the public
in a popular play-wrestling act. The act ended when zoo management
decided that Knut had become too large for Doerflein to play with
safely. The “Cute Knut” phenomenon reportedly boosted Berlin Zoo
attendance by 27% in 2007, and increased revenues by $10 million.
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Bison get grazing space in Montana but settlement puts wolves in the crosshairs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

MISSOULA, Montana–Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer on
March 17, 2011 authorized bison wandering out of Yellowstone
National Park to graze within the Gardiner Basin, flanking the
Yellowstone River on either side for about 13 miles north of
Yellowstone. Bison who wander farther, into the Paradise Valley
south of Livingston, will be shot, said Montana gubernatorial
natural resources advisor Mike Volesky.
The March 17 order was Schweitzer’s second attempt in 2010 to
resolve the annual winter conflict between the instinct of bison to
migrate out of Yellowstone to lower elevations in search of forage,
and the hostility of ranchers to the presence of bison from fear that
they may transmit brucellosis to domestic cattle–which has in fact
never happened.

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Effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on animals will be bad, but how b ad?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

FUKUSHIMA–Humans were evacuated from
within a 20-kilometre radius of the
earthquake-damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor
complex soon after the overheated reactors and
spent fuel ponds began leaking radiation. Most
who left homes that escaped destruction from the
ensuing tsunami are believed to have taken their
pets–but wildlife, farm animals, and pets left
amid the rubble of shattered seaside communities
remained exposed.

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Tsunami hit sea birds’ nests at Midway Atoll

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

 

MIDWAY–The farthest reported animal impact of the March 11,
2011 Thoku Chih earthquake came at Midway Atoll, more than 2,000
nautical miles from the epicenter. More than three million sea birds
inhabit Midway Atoll, including about 2,220 Laysan albatross–two
thirds of the world population.
While the most devastating tsunami following the earthquake
surged west, hitting Japan, a tsunami racing eastward completely
submerged one of the smaller Midway islands, and covered 60% and
20%, respectively, of the two largest islands.

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Dolphin defenders have a close call while in Iwate monitoring port activity

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

 

IWATE–Save Japan Dolphins founder Ric O’Barry and Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson spent two frantic
days trying to reach six missing volunteers.
“Brian Barnes, one of our SaveJapanDolphins.org volunteers,”
O’Barry told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “was monitoring the Dall’s porpoise
hunts in Iwate Prefecture, near the epicenter of the quake. He was
with Sea Shepherd volunteers Scott West, Mike Vos, Tarah Millen,
Carisa Webster, and Marley Daviduk.”

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