BOOKS: Kalahari Dream by Chris Mercer & Bev Pervan

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

Kalahari Dream by Chris Mercer & Bev Pervan
Paperback:  <http://amzn.to/vLHjhv>.  Download for Kindle:
<http://amzn.to/vYlNJk>.
Download for iPad and all other eReaders:  <http://bit.ly/sFM2Wb>.
302 pages,  including 100 photos.  $9.99.


On an overnight stay in Kuruman,  South Africa,  deep in the

Kalahari desert,  wildlife enthusiasts Chris Mercer and his wife Bev
Pervan asked about land for sale.   Purchasing a rundown 1,500-acre
farm,  in 1998 they opened the Kalahari Raptor Centre,  the first
wildlife rehabilitation center in the Northern Cape Province.
Mercer,  a former attorney who turned to farming before
taking up wildlife rehab, describes the huge renovation project that
they undertook to start the project as prolonged chaos,  but “The
transformation from the tired, degraded farm we had bought,  to the
luscious, rich parkland we now owned,  was quite extraordinary,”  he
writes.  “It was rather like buying an old tin mug at an auction,
and then finding out that it was made of pure gold.” Read more

Birding crimes

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2012

 

WASHINGTON D.C.— Convicted in District of Columbia Superior

Court of misdemeanor attempted cruelty to animals on October 31,
2011,  anti-feral cat ornithologist Nico Dauphine was on December 14,
2011 sentenced to do 120 hours of community service,  spend a year on
probation,  and pay a fine of $100,  with 180 days in jail suspended.
Dauphine is prohibited from volunteering or working with cats during
her time on probation.  A security camera caught Dauphine allegedly
trying to poison cats on March 2,  2011.  Employed at the time by the
National Zoo,  Dauphine has authored papers attacking neuter/return
feral cat control which have been distributed and cited by the
American Bird Conservancy and the Wildlife Society. Read more

Obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

Obituaries

 

“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

Lynn M. Gorfinkle, 64,  of Redding,  Connecticut,  died on
December 25,  2011 in Danbury Hospital.  The longtime president of
the Animal Rights Alliance of Fairfield County,  and active in cat
rescue with her friend Natalie Jarnstadt of Project Save A Cat,
Gorfinkle was best known for opposition to deer hunting and culling.
Gorfinkle “would not, if she were stranded on a desert island with
only a rabbit, eat that rabbit in order to survive,”  wrote Rob
Inglis of Yale Daily News in 2006.  “She thinks that modern-day
American sport hunters–especially deer hunters–are morally
deficient and probably ‘hung like hamsters.'”  Hunting media
denounced Gorfinkle from coast to coast three years later,  after a
bowhunter wounded a deer who fled to the Gorfinkle property before
dying.  Her husband Mike Gorfinkle refused to allow the hunter to
retrieve the deer. “If someone’s going to eat that deer,  I want it
to be natural predators,  not some hunter,”  Lynn Gorfinkle told
reporters.  Coyotes dragged away the carcass about two weeks later. Read more

Criminal justice

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

VICTORVILLE,  California— Convicted on December 6,  2012 of
committing the 2009 contract murder of Jesus Rocha Sr. on his chicken
ranch near Helendale,  California,  Edgar Gutierrez, 40,  and David
Gomez, 18,  face life in prison without parole.  Co-defendant Oscar
Acosta,  who testified against them,  could receive 35 years to life
in prison.  A fourth co-defendant,  Jose Sosa,  who acted as lookout
during the murder and also testified against the others,  is expected
to receive a sentence of 13 years and eight months.  Gutierrez
allegedly paid Gomez and Acosta $5,000 each to kill a man who lived
with Rocha whom Gutierrez claimed had not paid him $10,000 in
connection with arranging the sale of a gamecock.  They killed Rocha
when Rocha found them on the property. Read more

Editorial—The "Animal Rights Agenda" 25 years later

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

The “Animal Rights Agenda” 25 years later

 

“Politics of Animal Liberation” was the formal title of an ad hoc document prepared in 1987 by ANIMAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett, Animal Rights International founder Henry Spira, feminist theorist Marti Kheel,  and others who formed an animal rights caucus at that year’s Green Party national convention.  Spira,  who died in 1989,  Kheel,  who died in November 2011, and Bartlett sought without success to win inclusion of the principles outlined in “Politics of Animal Liberation” in the U.S. Green Party platform.

Bartlett,  then editor of the Animals’ Agenda magazine,  subsequently published “Politics of Animal Liberation” in the magazine as a discussion document,  but little discussion followed.  Apparently not controversial with Animals’ Agenda readers,  “Politics of Animal Liberation” was never formally presented to animal rights organizations for ratification. There has never actually been any mechanism through which the many different organizations representing what they perceive as the animal rights cause might have adopted a collective mission statement.  Yet in the years since 1987, “Politics of Animal Liberation” has been extensively reprinted around the world by people on all sides of the issues as “The Animal Rights Agenda,”   and remains widely accepted as such. Read more

What’s the difference between eating plants and animals?

BY KIM BARTLETT, Animal People

 

A common objection posed by meat-eaters to considering a vegetarian diet is that “plants have feelings” which may be comparable to the feelings of animals, or that the result of a vegetarian diet is for more plants to die than animals and thus the net amount of killing is somehow equal.

While it is essential to realize that these arguments are virtually always made by people as a way to dismiss the idea of not eating animals without having to seriously consider the moral advantage of a vegetarian diet, the vegetarian advocate must be prepared to respond to these objections.  There are three main points to understand. Read more

Australian use of risky drug may drive Indonesian cut in livestock imports

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

JAKARTA,  MELBOURNE– Australian cattle and sheep exporters barely had time to anticipate ramped up live animal shipments to Islamic nations,  under new protocols announced on October 21,  2011 by agriculture minister Joe Ludwig,  when word came from Jakarta that Indonesia is likely to accept barely half as many live cattle from Australia as were landed in 2011. Read more

Puppy millers move from malls to web sites

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

WASHINGTON D.C.,  NEW YORK,  LOS ANGELES–A concerted effort by humane organizations to discourage mall sales of puppy mill pups appears to be succeeding at possible cost of driving the traffic to web sites and social media. Mobilizing in response through web sites and social media, the Humane Society of the U.S. and the American SPCA on December 29, 2011 jointly announced that the USDA “plans to improve oversight of commercial dog breeders by issuing rules to regulate those breeders who sell over the Internet.” Read more

13 nations miss the European Union deadline for phasing out battery cages

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

BRUSSELS,  DUBLIN–Allowed 13 years to phase out battery caging for laying hens,  egg farmers in 13 European Union nations nonetheless missed the January 1,  2012 deadline for compliance with the 1999 EU battery cage ban.

In Ireland,  where farmers were mostly compliant,  “the Irish Farmers Association reported to the media that up to 100,000 birds would have to be slaughtered ‘early,’ as 10 farmers did not have the required cages to comply with new legislation,”  e-mailed Vegan Education Centre of Ireland diet and lifestyle coach Sandra Higgins to the U.S.-based organization United Poultry Concerns. Read more

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