ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Former Assembly of God pastor
Dan Knapp, 42, well regarded for his
administration of the Humboldt County
Humane Society and Humane Society of
Sonoma County at past stops, in July was
named new chief of Animal Services of the
city of Los Angeles. He inherits a difficult
situation, including shelters reportedly
holding half again as many animals as they
were built for, 180 employees but an undersized
veterinary department, and a per
capita killing ratio which while good by
national and even California standards, is
still three times higher than that of San
Francisco. The job also comes with vocal
public critics of the whole Los Angeles animal
care and control apparatus.

An audit of New York City
Health Department records by city controller
Alan Hevesi disclosed in late July
that the department deposited into the city
general fund $77,000 in public donations
received with dog license applications and
renewals in 1996 and 1997. Hevesi found
in a survey of 100 donors that most expected
their gifts to help the Center for Animal
Care & Control. The audit also criticized
the CACC for spending $42,000 in donations
to lease a parking lot next to its
Brooklyn shelter for visitor use, while staff
park in a city-owned lot next door, and said
the CACC violated its contract with the
Health Department by adopting out 3,649
dogs without requiring the new owners to
buy dog licenses. “We sent the Department
of Health a letter on July 14, 1997, asking
that they supply us with the applications and
postage,” CACC spokesperson K y l e
B u r k h a r t responded to Tom Topousis o f
the New York Post. “They did not do that
until April of this year.”
The city council of Pacific
Grove, California, on August 5 unanimously
approved in concept an ordinance
requiring drivers to report collisions with
wildlife. The ordinance resulted from public
response to a June incident in which a
hit-and-run driver killed a fawn. A reckless
driving charge against the driver is pending.

The no-kill sanctuary Living
Free, of Mountain Center, California, in
June temporarily suspended operation of a
public neutering clinic and initiated “budget
cuts in all areas,” president Sunderland W.
E v e r s t i l l told supporters, because annual
expenditures of circa $1.5 million were
threatening to erode the $3 million endowment
left by the founder, Emily Jo Beard,
who died in 1989.
Comments are due August 24
on three proposed changes to A n i m a l
Welfare Act enforcement regulations. The
first would extend licensing and monitoring
requirements to hunting dog and guard dog
breeders. The second would narrow the
legal definition of a “retail pet store,” a
class of animal dealer exempt from Animal
Welfare Act requirements. The third would
exempt breeders with up to 60 breeding
females from USDA oversight. The USDA
is accepting electronic input at
> > h t t p : / / c o m m e n t s . a p h i s . u s d a . g o v / c o mments/requests/1013.html<<.
The Orange County, Florida
board of commissioners, responding to
complaints about “socialized medicine for
cats and dogs” issued by the C e n t r a l
Florida Veterinary Medicine Association,
on August 4 ordered the Orlando Humane
S o c i e t y to stop providing any veterinary
services except neutering at the county-subsidized
low-cost neutering clinic.
Miami-area animal rescuer
Sally Matluk and Scott Miller, DVM, in
July put a 21-cage mobile neutering clinic
on the road after three years of effort, to
serve low-income areas of Broward,
Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties,
which now have some of the highest p e r
capita shelter killing ratios in the U.S. The
area is also getting help from the low-cost
Animal Welfare Society Medical Center,
which recently moved from a small clinic in
Miami to a 10,000-square-foot site in Coral
Gables via a $1 million gift from F r o s e n e
S o n d e r l i n g . AWS policy is to treat any
animal who can be treated; no animal is
killed only due to the cost of care.

High-profile escapes of dangerous
pet reptiles, tracked by A N I M A L
P E O P L E via mass media coverage, have
risen from seven cases nationwide in 1994
to 21 in 1995, 28 in 1996, 50 in 1997, and
35 through July 31, 1998, which projects
to 60 for the full year. Pythons are the
species most often involved, accounting for
21% of the total escapes, and third of the
cases resulting in serious injury to a human,
and all four of the cases resulting in a
human death.
Donald Lodmell and colleagues
at Rocky Mountain Research
L a b o r a t o r i e s in Hamilton, Montana, in
the August edition of Nature Medicine
announced that they have developed a
DNA-based rabies vaccine which proved
100% effective in protecting laboratory
macaques against all known rabies strains.
Joseph B. Verrengia of Associated Press
reported that “Infectious disease specialists
in federal laboratories said the gene-based
vaccine is long-lasting, inexpensive to
make, and does not require careful storage
and handling,” which might make it particularly
useful in Third World nations.
Deborah Anderson, 46, of
Sharon, Connecticut, former vice president
of the Salisbury Bank & Trust Co.,
pleaded guilty on July 21 to embezzling
$25,000 from The Last Post Animal
Sanctuary, founded by the late New York
City radio show host Pegeen Fitzgerald.
Anderson is to be sentenced on October 15.
The Center for Compassionate
Living and the Komie Foundation a r e
offering grants in support of exceptional
humane education programs. Get details
c/o POB 1209, Blue Hill, ME 04614;
telephone 207-374-8808; fax 207-374-
8851; or e-mail >>ccl@downeast.net<<.
There is no application deadline.