Animal control & rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1997:

The Commiossioners Court of Harris
County, Texas, voted 3-2 on March 31 to stop
selling animals to biomedical research, on a
motion by Commissioner Steve Radack.
Commissioner Jerry Eversole and County
Judge Robert Eckels also favored the resolution,
ending a 25-year-plus history of rejecting such
motions, as offered from the floor, 5-0.
Euthanizing as many as 80,000 animals a year,
Harris County sold 791 animals in 1996, less than
half as many as it 1994, earning $32,000.
The trustees of the Bernice Barbour
Foundation, a major funder of humane society
special projects, voted in March “to fund only
programs of organizations which spay/neuter animals
before adopting them out. We feel it is most
important that animals being recycled by shelters
and humane groups,” sccretary/treasurer E v e
Lloyd Thompson told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “or
being shipped into eastern humane societies to fill
requests by the public for puppies for adoption,
do not have the opportunity to reproduce.”

The Life Conservationist Association,
the first animal advocacy organization in Taiwan,
achieved a signal victory on April 10, when
Taiwan responded to two years of LCA exposure
of horrendous cruelty on the part of animal control
contractors by forming a special task force to
improve conditions and practices. Task force
members include the World Society for the
Protection of Animals, the Taiwanese C o u n c i l
of Agriculture a n d the Taiwanese
Environmental Protection Agency. “There are
an estimated two million stray dogs in Taiwan,”
WSPA reports. “Over 66,000 dogs were removed
from Taiwan’s streets in 1995.” International
exposure helped get the pound reform campaign
started, but the turning point was apparently a
press conference that brought pound conditions to
the awareness of a shocked Taiwanese public.
The USDA Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service is seeking comment on a proposal
to seek amendments to the Animal Wefare
Act which would redefine the term “retail pet
store” as used by the Act to include dealers of
hunting dogs, guard dogs, and dogs to be used
mainly for breeding.
Kim Staton, briefly president of the
Florida Animal Control Association, stepped
down in March to accept a post with the Denver
Dumb Friends League.
The Milwaukee County Board o n
March 20 balked––by one vote––at approving
funding for a new county animal shelter, to
replace the use of the Wisconsin Humane
Society shelter. WHS is near the end of a twoyear
phaseout of animal control programs,
intending to follow the San Francisco role model
of getting out of high-volume intakes and
euthanasias to focus instead on preventing pet
births, via low-cost neutering and humane education.
Unlike the San Francisco SPCA, however,
which had to oversee the creation of just one
municipal animal control department when it
withdrew from animal control subcontracting,
WHS formerly provided animal control service to
19 different cities, each of which needs to have
an alternative in operation by the end of this year.
“Enthusiasts starting sanctuaries are
becoming more of a problem for us than breeders,”
says Jim Brewer of PIGS: A Sanctuary.
The first sanctuary to specialize in handling potbellied
pigs, PIGS has bailed out failed would-be
emulators in all parts of the U.S.
Noting that a third of all shootings by
police are of dogs, along with a 134% increase
in the number of police shootings of dogs since
1993, and injuries to seven police officers, four
suspects, and two bystanders from ricochets as
police shot at dogs during this interval, N e w
York City police chief Charles Mattes has proposed
that his patrol personnel carry and use carbon
dioxide fire exinguishers against aggressive
dogs instead of their guns. Co2 “works well in
repelling a dog attack by making the dog retreat,
freezing its snout and temporarily blinding it,”
Mattes told Associated Press. Yet a blast of Co2
would rarely do a dog any lasting harm.
Primate rescue organizations c r i n g e d
at word published by the Cedar Rapids Gazette on
April 2 that Sue Kriz of Shueyville, Indiana, has
somehow obtained a USDA license to “buy, sell,
replace and stock animals.” In December 1995,
humane workers seized 50 allegedly malnourished
monkeys from Kriz’ home.
Seventy-five cats and four dogs were
killed when fire swept a mobile home in January
that served as temporary shelter for the no-kill
Lake Superior Humane Society, in Two Harbors,
Minnesota. An investigator hired by shelter director
Todd Stoehr found evidence that the blaze was
arson, but there currently are no suspects.