Author: Dylan Forest

Accra zoo to be rebuilt

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
ACCRA, Ghana–The Accra Zoo, serving about 120,000 visitors
per year, is to be relocated and rebuilt over the next five years,
Ghanian minister of lands, forestry, and mines Dominic Fobih
announced on August 1, 2006. The animals are to be moved to the
Kumasi Zoo, about 200 miles inland, by the end of September 2006 to
make room for a new presidential complex. The new zoo is to be built
with the help of the London Zoological Society, Fobih said.
Founded as first Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah’s private
menagerie in the early 1960s, the Accra Zoo opened to the public
after his overthrow in 1966.

Help at last for the Addis Ababa zoo

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:

ADDIS ABABA–That little was done for more than 30 years to
improve the Haile Selassie Zoo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, might be
no surprise, in view of the usually dilapidated state of African
zoos–but the zoo holds a well-documented population of the rarest of
all lion subspecies, believed to be the oldest captive lion colony
in existence.
The black-maned Atlas lion, Barbary lion, or Lion of Judah,
hauled to Imperial Rome by the thousands for use and slaughter in
Colossium spectacles, was extirpated from Libya by 1700, from Egypt
by 1800, from Tunisia in 1891, from Algeria in 1912, and from
Morocco in 1921. This was a year after the lion was deleted from the
World Encyclopedia of Animals as already extinct.

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Letters [Oct 2006]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
 
Sanctuarians cross no-man’s-land to save asses

I hope that you will let me update your
readers on the work of the British charity Safe
Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land, dedicated to
caring for working and abandoned donkeys in
Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
Safe Haven was founded in 2000 by former
British Airways flight attendant and Jerusalem
SPCA volunteer Lucy Fensom, who saw first-hand
the cruelty and neglect inflicted on many of the
thousands of donkeys still used as beasts of
burden in the region.
Today, at the Safe Haven sanctuary near
the Israeli town of Netanya, 100 donkeys live
free from pain and overwork, and have the chance
to form herds and roam freely on the 4-acre site.
Safe Haven’s work does not stop at the
sanctuary gates. Aware that the donkeys living
there are just a tiny percentage of those
desperately needing help, Lucy has initiated
free veterinary clinics in the Palestinian
Territories. Each week Lucy and her team make
the sometimes risky border crossing with Safe
Haven’s well-equipped mobile clinic to visit a
different village and provide veterinary care,
farriery and tooth rasping for the animals, and
of course advice and support for the owners.
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Walking horse industry quick-steps after failed USDA soring inspections

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
NASHVILLE–Between allegedly “sored” horses and sore losers,
walking horse competition burst into national view as never before in
late August 2006. But the attention was almost all embarrassing to
breeders and exhibitors in a business whose excesses, a generation
ago, prompted passage of the federal Horse Protection Act a year
before the passage of the Animal Welfare Act.
The Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration championship
competition in Shelbyville was cancelled on August 26 after USDA
inspectors disqualified seven of the 10 finalists for alleged soring
violations of the Horse Protection Act. For the first time in the
67-year history of the event, it named no grand champion.
The National Celebration reportedly brings as much as $38.5
million a year into Shelbyville.

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Editorial: Voting to help animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
On midterm election day, November 2, 2006, depending on
the will of the U.S. electorate, both the House of Representatives
and the Senate may shift from Republican to Democratic control.
President George W. Bush, a Republican, will remain in the White
House until 2008, but history suggests that if either the House or
the Senate goes to the Democrats–or both–the outcome for the next
two years will probably be much better for animals than if either
party controlled all three elected branches of the federal government.
That possibility alone should be sufficient incentive to get
pro-animal voters out to the polls in the many closely contested
districts, even where neither candidate has a record on animal
issues that especially inspires either support or opposition.
Pro-animal voters will obviously want to support strongly pro-animal
candidates of either party, and oppose those with anti-animal
records, as indicated by the legislative scorecards published by
such organizations as Humane USA PAC and the Humane Society
Legislative Fund, but this year there is a further consideration.
Almost all of the major pro-animal federal legislation, including
the Animal Welfare Act, Endangered Species Act, and Marine Mammal
Protection Act, was originally passed and has been most positively
amended by divided Congresses. Precedent thus indicates that this
year the outcome of every seriously contested House and Senate race
matters to people who care about animals.

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Thai coup may hit wildlife traffic

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
BANGKOK–The September 20, 2006 Thai
military coup postponed for six days the already
long delayed return of 41 smuggled orangutans
from Thailand to Indonesia. Still, Wildlife
Friends Found-ation Thailand founder Edwin Wiek
told members of the Asian Animal Protection
Network, “We believe that under the new rule the
conservation of wildlife will improve.”
The repatriation flight, orginally set
for September 23, was rescheduled for September
29.
Another seven orangutans are suffering
from hepatitis, the Jakarta Post reported on
September 16. Indonesia has refused to accept
them, at least until after they recover.
“The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
and Wildlife Friends, who were to facilitate the
repatriation for the Indonesian government, were
told that the Indonesian Navy plane that was to
pick up the apes could not land in Thailand until
further notice,” Wiek said earlier.

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Could carbon monoxide gas chambers make a comeback?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Are the surging numbers of dangerous dogs
entering animal shelters retarding progress
toward abolishing gas chambers?
Warren Cox began to wonder in May 2004
when he arrived for a stint as interim executive
director at the Montgomery County Animal Shelter
in Dayton, Ohio, and found a carbon monoxide
chamber that only a few days before was still in
sporadic use.
Having managed more than two dozen
shelters since 1952, Cox knew he was looking at
an anachronism. The Dayton chamber had
supposedly been decommissioned years earlier.
The Dayton Daily News published exposés of
gassing in nearby Fayette County and Darke County
in 1995 and 1997 without apparent awareness that
animals were still gassed right there in Dayton.
Continued gassing at the Mont-gomery
County Animal Shelter came to light as result of
a September 2003 complaint to county officials by
veterinarian Sue Rancurello and shelter
volunteer Jodi Gretchen, and was discontinued
after a shelter evaluation by American Humane
affirmed the obsolescence of gassing.
“Two top administrators at the Montgomery
County Animal Shelter were removed,” the Dayton
Daily News reported, in part for “using carbon
monoxide instead of lethal injection to euthanize
more than the recommended number of animals.”
Cox had the carbon monoxide chamber
removed. But Cox also took note of who used it,
and why. Throughout the first half of Cox’s long
career in shelter work, carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide, nitrogen, and decompression chambers
were used to kill animals in high volume. The
Dayton gas chamber was used to kill specific
animals whom some of the staff considered too
dangerous to handle.

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Anti-chaining activist is busted for saving a dog

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
ALTOONA, Pa.–Tammy Sneath Grimes, founder of the national
anti-chaining organization Dogs Deserve Better, was released from
police custody in East Freedom, Pennsylvania, at 2 a.m. on
September 12, 2006, about 12 hours after she removed a seriously
debilitated chained dog she called Doogie from the yard of East
Freedom residents Steve and Lori Arnold.
“I’m out,” on unsecured $50,000 bail, Grimes e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE, for whom she is a part-time assistant web site
developer. Charged with theft, receiving stolen property, criminal
mischief, and criminal trespass, Grimes remained convinced she had
done the right thing.
“I will not take this lying down,” Grimes pledged.
The criminal trespass and criminal mischief counts were
dismissed at a September 21 preliminary hearing, as about 75 Grimes
supporters demonstrated outside. Grimes is to stand trial on the
charges of theft and receiving stolen property on November 27.
The Arnolds call the elderly German shepherd/Labrador mix
Jake. They claim he is 19 years old, an extraordinary age for
either breed. The Arnolds told news media that the dog was in the
condition he was in because he is arthritic and they had hesitated to
have him euthanized. They said they had given him aspirin for pain
relief.

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BOOKS: Around the Next Corner

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

Around the Next Corner by Elizabeth Wrenn
New American Library (c/o Penguin, 375 Hudson St.,
New York, NY 10014), 2006. 320 pages, paperback. $12.95.

Deena, a mother of three, married for what seems to be
forever, overweight, insecure and suffering all the emotions
involved with “midlife invisibility,” is locked into a marriage that
has become stale.
With one child away at college, two bored and selfish
teenagers, and a husband so busy at work that she rarely sees him,
Deena feels a void in her life as a wife and mother. Desperately
seeking to add meaning to her life of drudgery, Deena decides to
raise a puppy for K-9 Eyes for the Blind.

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