A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
LOS ANGELES–The feature film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, comedy TV program The Colbert Report, IMAX docementary Born to be Wild, news programs ABC 20/20 and NBC Nightly News, and magazine Vanity Fair were among the big winners at the 26th annual Genesis Awards ceremony, held on March 24, 2012 in Beverly Hills. Sponsored by the Humane Society of the U.S., the awards honor mass media for raising public awareness of animal issues.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
CHICAGO–Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel on March 21, 2012 abruptly appointed two-time Chicago Animal Care & Control acting director Sandra Alfred to replace incumbent executive director Cherie Travis, effective immediately.
Travis, appointed by previous mayor Richard Daley, had headed Chicago Animal Care & Control since November 2009. Alfred had been deputy director of Chicago Animal Care & Control since 2001, after spending 12 years with the Chicago Department of Health. Emanuel, formerly chief of staff for U.S. President Barack Obama, praised Alfred as “a champion for animal rights and advocate for animal care,” who “knows every facet of the department and is a natural choice to lead the department’s efforts.” Emanuel did not explain why the change was made. “We simply decided to go in another direction with the leadership,” mayor’s office spokesperson Sarah Hamilton told media. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
Animal advocates hopeful of reaching an accord with the biomedical research community recognize that some biomedical research, testing, training and education using animals will continue in the foreseeable future. The biomedical research community has already agreed in principle that scientific use of animals should be subject to rigorous scientific review including serious consideration of non-animal alternatives and, if approved and funded, conducted in a manner which ensures that the smallest possible number of animals are involved, of species with the lowest potential for pain and suffering, and that such animals should be provided with optimum housing, handling, and care. However, we have identified areas in which both animal welfare and science might be improved in the practices of scientific institutions, in the regulation of animal use by public agencies, and in the federal Animal Welfare Act’s definition of “animal.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia— Wildlife trafficking prosecutions have dropped by more than 80% since the Malaysian Wildlife Conservation Act 2010 came into force, boasted Natural Resources & Environment minister Seri Douglas Uggah Embas to Joseph Sipalan of the Malaysia Star on March 15, 2012.
“I’m very happy to note that the Act has had an effect. We’ve learned from the previous Act that one main ingredient is deterrent penalties,” Embas said, noting that only 464 wildlife trafficking cases were recorded in 2011, down from an average of 3,500 cases a year in 2007-2010.
But Anson Wong, 54, the first prominent trafficker convicted under the 2010 law, walked free on February 22, 2012 after the Malay Court of Appeal cut his jail sentence from five years to 17 months and 15 days. Wong was identified by Bryan Christy in his 2008 exposé book The Lizard King as “the most important person in the international reptile business.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe–-Masavingo police and security guards shot at least 20 dogs a day from mid-February to mid-March 2012 in a purported attempt to control anthrax, the newspaper New Zimbabwe reported.
“John Chikomo, the Zimbabwe National SPCA regional manager for Masvingo, said they were against ‘indiscriminate shooting of stray dogs,’ but said they were powerless to stop the exercise,” New Zimbabwe added.
“Masvingo is a chronically anthrax affected province, but stray dog control has no part in anthrax control,” responded Martin Hugh Jones, resident anthrax expert for the International Society for Infectious Diseases’ ProMed online information service. Jones has long urged Zimbabwe to escalate vaccinating livestock against anthrax. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
The Hunter
Starring Willem Dafoe, Frances O’Connor, & Sam Neill
Directed by Daniel Nettheim
Adapted from novel The Hunter by Julia Leigh.
Porchlight Films, 2011 (Australia). U.S. release on April 6, 2012.
By Wolf Clifton
The Tasmanian tiger, more properly called the thylacine, was a large carnivorous marsupial with tiger-like stripes and a dog-like build. Thylacines dwelt in the forests of Tasmania until hunted to apparent extinction, chiefly by sheep herders who feared predation-although the historical evidence is that thylacines were only an incidental sheep predator. The last thylacine killed in the wild was shot in 1930. The last known thylacine, captured in 1933, was accidentally locked out of his night quarters at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Australia, and died of exposure on September 7, 1936. Founded in 1895, the Beaumaris Zoo had kept thylacines since 1909, and was the only zoo that had them. Without living thylacines to exhibit, the zoo collapsed financially and was permanently closed in 1937. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
CAP-AUX-MEULES, Quebec— Seal clubbing and shooting started on March 22, 2012 for Iles-de-la-Madeleine vessels, five days ahead of schedule, because ice floes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence were receding so rapidly that Quebec sealers were at risk of finding no seals to kill.
Canadian Fisheries Department area director Vincent Malouin told Canadian Press that only two to five boats from Iles-de-la-Madeleine were expected to hunt seals in 2012. Iles-de-la-Madeleine was allocated a sealing quota of 25,000, from a total Canadian quota of 400,000, the same as in 2011, despite a lack of evident markets for seal pelts since 2010, when the European Union banned seal pelt imports. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2012:
DES MOINES, SALT LAKE CITY –-Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Utah Governor Gary Herbert on March 2, 2012 and March 20, 2012 signed into law the first two U.S. state “ag-gag” bills, written to suppress undercover video exposés of animal handling.
Following a template introduced into at least eight state legislatures since 2010, the Utah law creates a criminal offense called “agricultural operation interference,” committed if a person, “without consent from the owner of the operation, or the owner’s agent, knowingly or intentionally records an image of, or sound from, the operation, while the person is on the property where the agricultural operation is located, or by leaving a recording device on the property where the agricultural operation is located.” Read more