PEOPLE & DEEDS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

Appointments
Meryl Harrison, formerly general
manager of the Bulawayo Branch SPCA,
was in August named national coordinator for
the Zimbabwe National SPCA. The
Zimbabwe Standard noted that Harrison “rose
to prominence when she successfully challenged
a visiting Egyptian circus whose animals
were in a terrible state.” She was also
prominently involved, said the S t a n d a r d, in
relocating a female chimpanzee from a substandard
zoo to the Chimfunshi sanctuary in
Zambia, improving rail transport conditions
for cattle, and obtaining a Department of
National Parks and Wildlife Management
edict against hunting leopards with coonhounds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
in August named former Montana Department
of Livestock and USDA Wildlife
Services trapper Carter Niemayer to succeed
Roy Heberger, who retired, as head of wolf
recovery in Idaho. Niemayer helped capture
the Canadian wolves who were released in
Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995-
1996, and has since semi-specialized in relocating
or killing wolves who attack livestock.
Russell George, 54, retiring as
speaker of the Colorado house of representatives,
will succeed John Mumma on September
18 as head of the Colorado Division of
Wildlife. “George has never been a friend of
wildlife,” warned Sierra Club state wildlife
chair Mike Smith, recalling that George in
1996 authored a bill that moved jurisdiction
over predator control from the Division of
Wildlife to the state agriculture department.
George told Denver Post Capitol Bureau
reporter Julia C. Martinez that the bill was a
mistake he would remember. But also in 1996
George authored another bill, vetoed by thengovernor
Roy Romer, which would have kept
the Wildlife Division from limiting raccoon
and coyote hunting seasons, while expanding
state liability for loss of livestock to predators.
In 1995 Romer vetoed a George bill to require
legislative approval before any endangered
species could be reintroduced in Colorado.
Donna Fernandes, former curator
of the Prospect Park Wildlife Center i n
Brooklyn and vice president of operations at
Zoo New England in Boston, will on
September 11 become first female president of
the Buffalo Zoo. She will be just the fifth person
to head the zoo since it began in 1875.
Susan Paris, president of A m e r –
icans for Medical Progress 1991-1998, the
pro-animal use front once funded by U . S .
Surgical Corp., is now vice president for university
relations at Boston University.
Honors
N i k k i, an FIV-positive red tabby
domestic shorthair who lives at the offices of
the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine, was in September named to the Cat
Fancy Working Cats Hall of Fame.
Winners of the 10th annual V o i c e
for Animals essay contest for high schoolers,
held by the Humane Education Network o f
Menlo Park, California, include D a n i l o
Stepanic, Cathy Ton, and Henluen Wang,
all of San Jose; with honorable mentions to
Jessica Lohmeier and Andrea Apland ( a l s o
of San Jose); Briana Cimino of Belmont;
and Marissa Morales of Santa Clara.
Heroes
The Cameron Park Zoo in Waco,
Texas, is proposing a $9.5 million bond issue
on the November municipal ballot, which
would finance exhibits of Brazos River
Country species to surround a $45,000 prairie
dog complex built in honor of Joe Herring.
Herring, still alive, has protected a prairie dog
town on his farm near Delia since the 1930s.
Attorney Kristin Lein, 37, of
Oregon, Wisconsin, and 20 friends have
incorporated Angel’s Wish, a cat rescue society.
“We want to concentrate on those who are
most often euthanized––the old, sick, or feral
cats,” said Lein, who is allergic to cats but
has already rescued and placed in homes more
than 400 since 1990. Lein and husband Kerry
Connell, also allergic to cats, have personally
adopted 29 with special needs.
The February 2000 introduction of
“pet passports” for vaccinated animals arriving
in Britain from other European Union
members, in lieu of the quarantines required
for most of the 20th century, may enable
Gordon and Katherine McLaughlin t o
return home with their 57 rescued cats and
three dogs, after 17 years on the Greek island
of Andros. A job teaching English became
prolonged exile when the McLaughlins took in
homeless animals they were unwilling to abandon
but could not afford to quarantine.
Exits
Splitting with Francine Cousteau,
widow of the late marine explorer J a c q u e s
Cousteau, New Zealand yachtsman Sir Peter
B l a k e has yielded the helm of the C o u s t e a u
S o c i e t y and formed his own organization,
B l a k e x p e d i t i o n s, to promote ecotourism in
support of the United Nations Environment
P r o g r a m. Blake takes with him the former
Cousteau vessel Antarctic Explorer, renamed
Seamaster. Jacques Cousteau named Blake to
succeed him, on his deathbed in 1997, but
Blake spent most of the next two-plus years
preparing Team New Zealand to defend the
Americas Cup. Blake told the New Zealand
Press Association that he wished “to help protect
life in, on, and around the waters of the
world,” while Francine Cousteau wished to
emphasize coastal conservation.
Christine Gwyther, 40, the first
vegetarian to serve as agriculture minister in
Wales, was dismissed on the eve of the Royal
Welsh Agricultural Show, after surviving
two censure motions in 15 months but losing a
third. Opening the show is the most prominent
ceremony attached to the office.