How does Wal-Mart reconcile selling live turtles in China with “sustainable” policy?

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

BENTONVILLE, Arkansas–In October 2005, Wal-Mart chief
executive officer Lee Scott declared that as the world’s largest
retail store chain, Wal-Mart has a special responsibility to be a
“good steward for the environment.” In October 2006, Newsweek
published a gruesome account of how live turtles, fish, crabs, and
clams are sold and killed to order “in the grocery section of a
Wal-Mart in north Beijing.”
In January 2007, Care for the Wild International chief
executive Barbara Maas suggested to Clifford Coonan, Beijing
correspondent for The Independent, that Wal-Mart and other retail
chains including Carrefour of France, Metro of Germany, and Tesco
of Britain should set better examples in China by not stocking
turtles and frogs.

Editorial feature: How to eradicate canine rabies in 10 years or less

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

“Rabies could be gone in a decade,” BBC
News headlined worldwide on September 8, 2007.
“Rabies could be wiped out across the world,”
the BBC report continued, “if sufficient
vaccinations are carried out on domestic dogs,
according to experts.”
BBC News went on to quote staff of the
Royal Dick Veterinary School at Edinburgh
University in Scotland, who were among the
cofounders of the Alliance for Rabies Control and
promoters of the first World Rabies Day, held on
September 7, 2007.
None of the Alliance for Rabies Control
spokespersons appear to have actually set any
sort of timetable for possibly eradicating
rabies, but no matter. Experts have recognized
for decades that rabies is wholly eradicable from
all species except bats through targeted mass
immunization–and the chief obstacle to
eradicating bat rabies is that no one has
developed an aerosolized vaccine that could be
sprayed into otherwise inaccessible caves and
tree trunks. Inventing such a vaccine is
considered difficult but possible.

Wildlife Waystation founder Martine Colette says sanctuary is broke

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

LOS ANGELES–The Los Angeles Daily News and KNBC-4 television
on August 30, 2007 amplified emergency appeals from Wildlife
Waystation founder Martine Colette for funding she said was urgently
needed to keep the 31-year-old sanctuary operating.
“We are $1 million in debt, and we have no funds left,”
Colette told Daily News staff writer Dana Bartholomew. “Things as
they are today will not continue for the next week, or two weeks,
without help.”
Colette suggested that if an immediate infusion of cash was
not forthcoming, the 400 Waystation animals would “become the
county’s problem, the state’s problem,” a threat she has issued
before in years of disputes with regulatory agencies.
Closed for 110 days by the Calif-ornia Department of Fish &
Game in 2000, Wildlife Waystation never fully regained the permits
it needed to host donors’ visits, which until then were the
sanctuary’s chief revenue engine. More than just generating
on-the-spot donations, visits tended to inspire new donors to give
regularly, and established donors to give more.
“Trying to obtain a permit is a long process,” Colette told
KNBC. “There are many regulations we have to meet in order to get a
permit, and we cannot meet those regulations at all. In the
meantime we have gone broke trying to run the sanctuary without being
open to the public.”
Colette estimated that Wildlife Waystation operating costs
currently run at about $5,000 a day. This is consistent with the
most recent Waystation filings of IRS Form 990. ANIMAL PEOPLE has
found that determining the balance of Waystation program expense,
fundraising costs, and administrative expenditures has been
difficult, however, because of idiosyncracies in how the forms have
been completed.
“Last month,” wrote Bartholomew, “five of the eight
Waystation board members quit, apparently burned out over troubles
at the beleaguered agency.”
Colette at the end of August laid off general manager Alfred
J. Durtschi, who was paid $107,153 in the most recently reported
fiscal year, and also laid off half of the 48 Waystation caretakers
and groundskeepers.
Colette told news media that Southern California Edison had
threatened to cut off the sanctuary electricity due to unpaid bills,
and that the Waystation was also about to lose propane delivery.
Former Waystation board chair Robert Lorsch resigned on July
1, 2007, after five years of intense involvement.

Fourteen of 26 defendants are sentenced & lectured in British dogfighting case

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

BIRMINGHAM–Four-teen of 26 defendants in
one of the biggest dogfighting cases brought to
British courts in decades pleaded guilty on
September 3, 2007, and were fined from £500 to
£1,300, plus £80 court costs.
The case is unusual in that all 26 men
arrested at the February 2006 dogfight are
Muslims –as is Birmingham Magistrates Court
district judge Kal Qureshi, who lectured the men
about their “sadistic and cruel” behavior.
“The event itself is best described as
sadistic,” Qureshi said. “In my view it
involved inflicting unimaginable pain without any
pity for the animals.”
Qureshi fined them less than the maximum
£2,500 because they were first-time offenders.
Dogfighting in Britain has historically
not involved immigrants and ethnic minorities,
and in recent years has often been a pursuit of
so-called skinheads espousing anti-minority
attitudes.
Twelve defendants elected to go to trial,
including the two men who allegedly organized the
fight. Both dogs involved were killed.

A dogfighting case rocks Gaelic football

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

BELFAST–A 17-month undercover
investigation of dogfighting by BBC Northern
Ireland’s Spotlight program, aired on August
30, caught County Tyrone Gaelic football star
Gerald Cavlan, 31, boasting in front of a
hidden camera about a dogfighting club he
cofounded called Bulldog Sanctuary Kennels.
Cavlan’s alleged use of the “sanctuary”
ruse appeared to be a first in the British Isles,
but U.S. dogfighters have often been caught in
recent years operating behind false front
“sanctuaries” and “rescues.” Some have
collected pit bull terriers and “bait” dogs and
cats from unwitting members of the public.
“The BBC program deployed an undercover
specialist from England who duped organizers of
two dog-fighting clubs in Northern Ireland and
two breeders of American pit bulls in Finland who
supplied dogs to Cavlan and other Northern
Ireland-based dog fighters,” reported Shawn
Pogatchnik of Associated Press. “All were filmed
discussing the tricks of their trade and methods
of evading detection.”
The two BBC crew confronted Finland-based
breeders Robert Gonzales and Paul Dunkel with
evidence of their activities before police
arrested them.

Five Makah arrested for killing whale without permit

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

NEAH BAY, Washington– Frustrated by eight years of failing
to obtain a new federal permit to kill gray whales, after killing
one in May 1999, Makah tribal whaler Wayne Johnson, 54, and four
other Makah– Theron Parker, Andy Noel, Billy Secor and Frank
Gonzales Jr.–on September 8, 2007 killed a whale without a permit
and without tribal authorization or awareness.
“Crew members plunged at least five stainless steel whaling
harpoons into the animal. Then they shot it,” wrote Seattle Times
staff reporter Lynda V. Mapes. “The Coast Guard, alerted to the
hunt by onlookers, was on the scene within hours. Johnson and the
others quickly found themselves in handcuffs,” recounted Mapes.
“The Coast Guard confiscated the gun and their boats, and cut the
whale, harpoons and all, loose to drift on the current. By evening,
the whale was dead, and sank out of sight.

Iceland halts commercial whaling

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

REYKJAVIK–Iceland fisheries minister Einar K Guofinnsson on
September 3, 2007 announced that Iceland will not issue new
commercial whaling quotas.
Iceland in 2006 joined Norway in unilaterally defying the
21-year-old Inter-national Whaling Commission moratorium on
commercial whaling by issuing itself permits to kill 30 minke whales
and nine endangered fin whales. Anticipating a market in Japan for
whale meat, Icelandic fishers killed seven minke whales and seven
fin whales, but were unable to get permission to export the meat.
“There is no reason to continue commercial whaling if there
is no demand for the product,” Guofinnsson said.
Iceland, like Japan, has sustained a remnant whaling
industry despite the IWC moratorium by authorizing whalers to hunt in
the name of research. Iceland issued “scientific whaling” permits to
kill 38 minke whales in 2003, 25 in 2004, 39 in 2005, and 60 in
2006–far below the Japanese toll of 6,795 whales killed in research
whaling since 1987.

National dogfighting crackdown vindicates Laura Maloney

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

NEW ORLEANS–Pronouncing herself “Extremely disheartened” by
alleged judicial and mainstream law enforcement indifference toward
dogfighting on April 17, 2007, former Louisiana SPCA executive
director Laura Maloney saw attitudes change abruptly before her
August 31, 2007 departure to join her husband Dan in Australia.
Previously curator at the Audubon Park Zoo in New Orleans,
Dan Maloney now heads Zoos Victoria in Melbourne.
Laura Maloney left the Louisiana SPCA two days after the
second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina destroyed the
Louisiana SPCA shelter, and drove much of the organization’s donor
base out of New Orleans. Yet, while rebuilding the Louisiana SPCA
was Maloney’s biggest challenge, combating dogfighting was her
passion and greatest frustration.

Court awards no fees to Primarily Primates receiver

September 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

AUSTIN–Travis County Probate Court Judge Guy Herman on
September 10, 2007 denied the request of Lee Theisen-Watt for
“Payment of Receiver Fees and Reimbursement of Attorneys’ Fees” for
the time she spent as court-appointed receiver at the Primarily
Primates sanctuary near San Antonio, Texas, from October 15, 2006
until May 1, 2007.
Herman noted that Theisen-Watt testified “she had agreed to
offer her services pro bono, that her original attorney would
represent her pro bono, that she assumed her original attorney would
pay for the fees of her other attorneys, and that she gave a
charitable receipt from Primarily Primates to the original attorney
for the $42,000 the original attorney said he paid” to another law
firm.

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