Children & Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1995:

Barbara Carr of Buffalo, New York, executive director of the
SPCA Serving Erie County, attended the non-governmental forum at the
recent United Nations World Conference on Women, held in China. “I put
forth that the marriage of humane education to literacy is as old as history,”
she said, “and that we have taught children and societies values and morals
through stories about animals from Aesop to Walt Disney. I outlined the link
between violent treatment of animals and violent treatment of women and
children. The other delegates easily saw the point.”
A recent Illinois Department of Conservation telephone survey
of 504 state residents found that only 22% approved of fur trapping and
27% approved of fur hunting––and 50% hadn’t heard of the agency. After
hearing a series of statements favoring fur trapping and hunting, however,
which seem to have exaggerated wildlife nuisances, 46% approved of fur
trapping; outright disapproval of fur trapping dropped from 71% to 46%.

The DNR is now offering $90 apiece to 100 Chicago-area teachers of grades
7-10 to attend a workshop at Northwestern University on teaching positive
attitudes toward fur hunting and trapping. Fifty teachers are to attend each of
two sessions, to be held October 12 and October 13. A pro-hunting and
trapping instructional kit called People, Animals, and the Environment,
costing $35 a copy, has already been sent to all 4,300 Illinois secondary
schools, and will be followed up with mailings. The $200,000 push is supported
by the state Habitat Stamp program.
A year after documenting the use of 4H Conservation
Education Field Days in Rome, New York, as a forum for promoting
hunting, trapping, and gun sales, Pat Fish and Jill Howe of Citizens for
Balanced Environmental Education were on September 13 barred from
attending this year’s edition. The annual event, a popular destination of
middle school field trips, was founded in 1966 by the Federated
Sportsmen’s Club specifically to push hunting and trapping, but was later
turned over to Cornell University Cooperative Extension Services, and now
receives $1.1 million in county funding plus $765,000 in state funding, Fish
told ANIMAL PEOPLE. School funds are also used, to transport the students.
At last year’s Field Days, Fish videotaped the distribution to seventh
graders of advertisements for 9-millimeter handguns.
The Santa Clara County Fair in Morgan Hill, California, this
year featured the successful efforts of a local 4H group to rehabilitate eight
baby goats who were burned in a barn fire.
Matt Wood and Mark Adams, each age 8, were honored in the
September edition of A d v a n c e, the “Activists of Delaware Valley Animal
Network Calendar of Events,” for initiating a successful effort to rescue
more than 170 turtles from Alcyon Lake, in Pitman, New Jersey, after it
was drained as part of a Superfund toxic waste clean-up. The turtles were
returned to the now cleansed lake on August 17.