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Haunted by hidden past, humane law enforcement legend Dave Garcia retires

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

DALLAS–Dave Garcia, 55, vice president of operations for
the SPCA of Texas in Dallas since 2001, on August 6, 2005 announced
his retirement from humane work.
“His resignation comes days after Smith County District
Attorney Matt Bingham dismissed three animal cruelty charges against
Julia McMurrey, the former operator of Paws Around the Planet ranch
in Tyler,” reported Kim Horner of the Dallas Morning News.
“Bingham received anonymous information, which was
confirmed, that Garcia has a criminal background including arrests
for driving while intoxicated in Texas, Missouri, and Arizona,
plus a rape and kidnapping conviction in Arizona in 1973. Garcia was
paroled in the rape and kidnapping case in 1976. Bingham said he
dismissed the charges against McMurrey because of ethical concerns
about using Mr. Garcia as a witness. He said Garcia told a
prosecutor that he had no criminal history,” Horner added.
Cockfighting proponents, including commentators for Game
Fowl News, have long circulated reports similar to those Bingham
received. Longtime acquaintances of Garcia within the humane
community were mostly aware that he had a troubled past, which had
helped him to successfully infiltrate animal fighting rings and bring
the perpetrators to justice.

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Israeli Rescuers remove about 400 animals from Gaza & Northern Samaria

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

JERUSALEM–Tension accompanying the Israeli withdrawal from
Northern Samaria and Gaza spilled over into the animal rescue work
that followed in the 24 vacated Jewish settlements.
About half the reports reaching animal people descr-ibed
animal rescues. The rest accused other rescuers of performing
publicity stunts and acts of sabotage.
Settlers resisting the withdrawal were often removed forcibly
by Israeli soldiers and police, leaving pets, livestock, and feral
cat colonies behind.
If the 15,000 former residents of the evacuated villages kept
pets and fed feral cats at European rates per household, up to 3,000
pets and 600 feral cats might have been affected. The Israeli Army
and Israeli Veterinary Services allowed some rescuers to enter Gaza
and Northern Samaria on August 16. Accounts forwarded to ANIMAL
PEOPLE indicate that the rescuers evacuated about 400 animals,
mostly cats, but also some dogs, parakeets, lizards, and goats.
Concern for Helping Animals in Israel and Hakol Chai, an
affiliate, worked in Gaza with representatives of the Tel Aviv,
Beersheva, and Jerusalem SPCAs, CHAI founder Nina Natelson told
ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We had veterinarians Sarah Levine and Tsachi Nevo
spelling each other, plus one more who helped as needed,” Natelson
added. “Two drivers took turns, day after day. Hakol Chai staff
worked 15 hour days. We had no lack of volunteers.”

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Marine mammal activist Ben White, 53, dies of abdominal cancer

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Ben White, 53, died on July 30 in
Friday Harbor, Washington, after a six-month
struggle against abdominal cancer.
White “cut open dolphin-holding nets in
Japan, scaled buildings to hang anti-fur
banners, jumped in front of naval ships in
Hawaii to stop sonar tests, and slept atop
old-growth trees to protest logging,” recalled
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter M.L. Lyke.
“In Seattle, he protested the capture of sea
lions at Ballard Locks by locking himself to the
cage used to hold them. In 1999, he marched as
head turtle at the 1999 World Trade Organization
protests [in Seattle]ŠThe turtle costumes became
the international emblem of opposition to the
WTO.”
White claimed to have informed on the Ku
Klux Klan for the FBI at age 16, while still in
high school. He joined the 1973 American Indian
Movement occupation of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs offices in Washing-ton D.C., and
traveled for a time with the Rolling Thunder
medicine show, which popularized Native American
causes and spirituality during the 1970s and
1980s. He was accused of fomenting strife within
both AIM and the Rolling Thunder entourage.

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Who invented no-kill?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Before there could be a successful no-kill movement, the
techniques of combating pet overpopulation without high-volume
killing had to be perfected.
The basic components were high-volume, low-cost dog and cat
sterilization; neuter/return, to help keep dogs and cats at large
from breeding back up to the carrying capacity of their habitat as
their numbers decline; and high-volume adoption, to find homes for
the animals who still come to shelters or can be removed from feral
colonies.
The standard dog and cat sterilization surgeries were
approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association in 1923, but
did not become affordable for most pet-keepers until Friends of
Animals in 1957 opened the first low-cost sterilization clinic in the
U.S., at Neptune, New Jersey.
Watching from across the Hudson River, the American SPCA in
1968 began sterilizing animals before adoption. Mercy Crusade, of
Los Angeles, in 1973 opened a similar clinic that a year later would
host the first city-subsidized sterilization program in the U.S.
Working for that clinic, Marvin Mackie, DVM, developed
high-volume sterilization.

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BOOKS: Intelligence in Nature

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge by Jeremy Narby
Tarcher/Penguin (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2005. 256
pages, hardback. $35.00.

Having been enthralled by Jeremy Narby’s The Cosmic Serpent
(1998), I was pleased when Narby’s second book Intelligence in
Nature came in the mail. It was not a disappointment.
Intelligence in Nature is more-or-less a sequel to The Cosmic
Serpent, continuing to illustrate the parallels between “primitive”
shamanic cultures and modern biology that Narby discovered in his
study of botany. But whereas The Cosmic Serpent dealt mainly with
molecular biology, particularly the structure of DNA, Intelligence
in Nature covers a much broader spectrum, dealing not only with
genetics but also with animal behavior and adaptation.
The ability of individuals to adapt to their environment,
found in even the most primitive of life-forms, is described by the
Japanese term Chi-Sei, meaning “to know.” Throughout the book Narby
uses Chi-Sei to describe the apparent intelligence of everything from
birds to slime molds.

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Obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Beatrice “Betty” Eilers, 92, died recently in Mesa,
Arizona. Eilers was for most of her life associated with Animals’
Crusaders, a global advocacy network founded in Spokane in 1950 by
L. Constance M. Barton, with affiliates in New Zealand, Scotland,
and Canada. The network concept failed due to the cost and
difficulty of maintaining communications with pre-Internet
technology, but at least two regional groups descended from Animals’
Crusaders still exist. “Legally blind and handicapped, B.B. Eilers
was still active on behalf of animals,” recalled Lynn Fox, who
transcribed Eilers’ correspondence, including letters published in
several recent editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Elizabeth Blitch, 55, attorney and ex-Catholic school
teacher, recalled by the New Orleans Times-Picayune as “an avid
fundraiser for the Humane Society of Louisiana,” died on July 28,
2005 in New Orleans.

Iris Kay Call, 42, of Pewee Valley, Kentucky, was killed
in an August 1, 2005 housefire after re-entering her blazing home to
find her cat. The cat was also killed.

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Animal obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Ginny, 17, a schnauzer/husky mix adopted in 1990 by former
steamfitter Philip Gonzalez, of Long Beach, New York, died on
August 25. Ginny led Gonzalez to the first of more than 800 cats
that she insisted he should rescue on their third day together. Her
determination to find and assist cats in distress compelled Gonzalez
to become a fulltime cat rescuer/caretaker, and brought him out of a
prolonged depression that followed a workplace accident. Gonzalez
and Leonore Fleischer chronicled Ginny’s exploits in a 1995
best-seller, The Dog Who Rescues Cats, and produced a sequel, The
Blessing of the Animals, in 1996. Gonzalez, 55, still feeds 320
feral cats in 19 colonies that Ginny found, and keeps 17 of her
rescues at home, along with two other dogs.

Meimei, 36, believed to have been the oldest living panda
bear, died on July 12 at the Guilin City Zoo in southern China.
Coco, 9, a harbor seal rescued from a Maine Beach in 1996,
kept at the Woods Hole Science Aquarium on Cape Cod since 1998, died
on July 30 after an inner ear infection spread to her brain.

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No justice for horses in court or Congress

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., FORT WORTH, RENO–U.S. District Judge
Terry Means on August 25 ruled that the Beltex and Dallas Crown horse
slaughterhouses in Fort Worth and Kaufman may continue killing horses
despite a 1949 Texas law against selling horsemeat for human
consumption. Beltex and Dallas Crown are the two oldest and largest
horse slaughterhouses in the U.S.
Means found that federal law permitting horse slaughter supersedes
the state law, which has apparently never been enforced.
While the verdict was pending, the Texas Department of
Criminal Justice sold 53 horses to Dallas Crown, despite a 2002
opinion by former state attorney general John Cornyn that such
transactions would be illegal.
Cornyn, now a Republican U.S. Senator, has not been visibly
involved in Congressional efforts to save wild horses from slaughter.
Under an amendment to the 1971 Wild and Free Ranging Horse
and Burro Protection Act slipped through Congress as a last-minute
rider to the November 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act, the
Bureau of Land Management is now mandated to sell “without
limitation” any “excess” horse or burro who is more than 10 years of
age, or who has been offered for adoption three times without a
taker. “Excess” means any wild horse or burro who has been removed
from the range. The Bureau of Land Management has taken about 10,000
horses and burros from the range in nine western states in each of
the past three years, and plans to take 10,000 this year in 57
roundups.

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What has no-kill accomplished?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

ANAHEIM–Another way to describe the “no-kill movement” might
be “the democratization of animal sheltering.”
The no-kill concept had already won the battle for public
opinion decades before no-kill sheltering existed on any significant
scale. Dogcatchers were a familiar film villain even before animated
cartoons and “talking pictures” were invented.
Fritz Frelang and rival Walt Disney merely revitalized the
stereotype in Dog-Pounded (1954), starring Sylvester the Cat, and
Lady & The Tramp (1955). More than half a century later,
bird-catching feral cats are still at imminent risk of landing in a
pound full of ferocious dogs, licensing is still advanced from many
directions as essential to end shelter killing, the public still
does not like dogcatchers, and animal control officers still don’t
like their image.
Winning over animal shelter management is a battle still
underway–but increasingly irrelevant to tens of thousands of
volunteer rescuers, donors, and upstart shelter founders, who have
taken the work of saving animals into their own hands.
After decades of railing at “irresponsible” pet-keepers,
animal control agencies and humane societies are facing activists who
are claiming responsible roles, whether or not they can fulfill them.

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