BOOKS: Paw Prints at Owl Cottage

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

Paw Prints at Owl Cottage
by Denis O’Connor
St. Martin’s Press (c/o MacMillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10010), 2013.
232 pages, hardcover. $19.99.

Denis O’Connor, retired from a career in academia,
established himself as an author of best-selling cat stories in the
United Kingdom first, with Paw Tracks in the Moonlight (2009), about
his rescued cat Toby Jug, who died in 1978, and then Paw Tracks at Owl
Cottage, concerning the cats O’Connor and his wife have kept since
reacquiring the house where O’Connor lived with Toby Jug.

Reviews

Naturewatch founder John Ruane, 61

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

John Ruane, 61, died of lung cancer on December 3, 2013 in
Newent, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. Formerly employed in
international marketing, Ruane founded Naturewatch, based in
Cheltenham, England, in 1992, and incorporated the parallel
Naturewatch Foundation a year later. Initially campaigning mostly
against laboratory use of animals, Naturewatch has since 1992 published
13 editions of a Compassionate Shopping Guide spotlighting companies
that no longer do animal testing and those that continue to use animals
in developing new products. “John Henry Draize,” inventor of the
Draize skin irritancy test most often done on rabbits, “died in 1992
and I am certain he has been Lucifer’s guest ever since,” Ruane
famously remarked.

Obituaries (November/December 2013)

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

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

Alice Anne Blackmore, 93, died on November 10, 2013 in Mason
City, Iowa. Finding an abandoned litter of puppies in 1959, Blackmore
founded the Mason City Pet Assistance League, operating first from the
basement of her family’s home, then from a converted chicken coop,
and eventually from a nearby farm. The organization became the Humane
Society of North Iowa in 1972. A shelter in a former veterinarian’s
office, donated in 1986 by longtime supporters David and Phyllis
Murphy, was replaced by the present 6,400-square-foot facility in 2009.

Obituaries

Contraceptive researcher Wolfgang Jochle

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

Wolfgang J. Jochle, 86, died on November 14, 2013 at his home
in Manahawkin, New Jersey. Born in Munich, Germany, Jochle was
drafted into the Nazi Wehrmacht at age 15 and assigned to attend cavalry
horses. Jochle avoided starvation by sharing the horses’ oats,
longtime Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs board member Linda
Rhodes recalled when presenting him with a lifetime achievement award in
2006.

National SPCA patron Nelson Mandela

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

Nelson Mandela, 95, died on December 5, 2013 at his home in
Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa. Active in the African National
Congress from the introduction of apartheid in 1948, Mandela was
imprisoned from 1962 to 1990, serving 18 of the 27 years at Robben
Island, near Cape Town. Elected president of the ANC in 1991, Mandela
in 1994 became the first president of post-apartheid South Africa,
retiring in 1999.
Withdrawing gradually from public life, Mandela remained
patron-in-chief of the National Council of SPCAs at his death, a post
he had held for nearly 20 years.

Fishy deals menace wolves

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

WASHINGTON D.C., LANSING, SALT LAKE CITY––Public comment
ended on December 17, 2013 on the latest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
attempt to remove grey wolves from the U.S. endangered species list as
purportedly fully recovered.
“Wolves across the U.S. will be left to be hunted, trapped,
and even beaten or poisoned––whatever the state which they call home
sees fit,” warned Endangered Species Coalition executive director
Leda Huta.

Wolves now seldom seen in Denali National Park

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

Washington, D.C. – Fewer than 5% of the visitors
to Denali National Park in Alaska who sought to see wolves in 2013
managed to do so, according to data released by Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility.
In recognition of the exceptional economic value of
wolf viewing in Denali, from 2000 to 2010 the state closed 122 square
miles of lands on the park’s eastern boundary to hunting or
trapping wolves, PEER recounted. In 2010,
when 45% of visitors who tried to see wolves saw some, the
Alaska Board of Game eliminated this no-take wolf buffer. The wolf
population across the six-million-acre park fell from 143 in fall 2007
to just 55 in spring 2013, the fewest wolves known to be in
Denali since 1987.

Cats, tilting at windmills, & what goes around comes around

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Did inflated claims about cat predation on
birds give the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service political cover for granting
a 30-year exemption from prosecution to wind power developers whose
turbines kill eagles?
The exemption was announced on December 6, 2013, two weeks to
the day after Duke Energy Renewables agreed to pay $1 million in
settlement of charges resulting from the deaths of 14 golden eagles and
149 other protected birds at wind farms near Casper and Campbell Hill,
Wyoming between 2009 and earlier in 2013.
Wind turbines in the Altamont Pass east of the San Francisco Bay
area in California are believed to kill about 60 bald and golden eagles
per year. Other wind farms around the U.S. are known to have killed at
least 67 eagles since 2008.

FDA discourages farm use of antibiotics

November 1, 2013 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2013:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The U.S. Food & Drug Administration on
December 11, 2013 announced that the drug makers Zoetis and Elanco,
which produce the majority of antibiotics used to promote livestock
growth, have agreed to participate in a voluntary phase-out of
non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in animal husbandry.
Routine antibiotic doses promote faster growth by suppressing
infections that often result from housing large numbers of animals in
close proximity under unsanitary conditions.

« 1 2 3 4 5 »