A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
Saratoga Springs, N.Y.–The Thoroughbred
Retirement Foundation “has been so slow or
delinquent in paying for the upkeep of the more
than 1,000 horses under its care that scores have
wound up starved and neglected, some fatally,”
charged New York Times horse racing writer Joe
Drape on March 18 2011.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
NEWARK–The New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs on March
24, 2011 announced that an entity called NJ Horse Angels and
founders Sharon Catalano-Crumb, 54, and Frank Wikoff, 55, both of
Phillipsburg, New Jersey, “will repay $57,129 in misused donations
to the Division of Consumer Affairs. The Division in turn will donate
the funds to registered non-profit horse rescue organizations.”
The amount to be repaid was found by the Charities
Registration & Investigation Section of the Division of Consumer
Affairs to have been “misappropriated by Catalano-Crumb and used by
her for trips to Atlantic City casinos, personal shopping, meals,
pre-paid phone cards [and] also diverted in the form of cash
withdrawals. Some donations were used for horse rescue,” the
Division acknowledged.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:
CHIBA, Japan–Chiba prefecture Governor Kensaku Morita told a
March 13, 2011 press conference that the earthquake and
tsunami-ravaged region is also fighting an outbreak of H5N1 avian
flu–potentially lethal to humans.
Chiba, second among Japanese prefectures in egg production,
lies between Tokyo and the prefectures to the northeast that had the
most displaced people and animals. Living in severely crowded
conditions, with disrupted sanitation, inadequate food, and often
little protection from the elements, many victims–both human and
animal–were already in weakened health due to effects of the tsunami
and, in some cases, perhaps exposure to radiation from the
malfunctioning Fukushima nuclear complex.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
Dar es Salaam–“Shoot, shovel, and shut
up,” the creed of ranchers and land developers
opposed to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, may
have reached Tanzania. But nobody knows for sure.
What is known is that a confidential
government Environmental & Social Impact
Assessment Draft Report on a proposed highway
that would bisect Serengeti National Park in
October 2010 identified the May 2010
reintroduction of five black rhinos to Serengeti
as a potential obstacle.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
MUMBAI, LONDON–The most ambitious dog
and cat surgical sterilization training program
in India has rapidly expanded into the most
ambitious rabies eradication program in India.
The multi-directional project began with
a 2009 visit to the India Project for Animals &
Nature by Luke Gamble, founder of Worldwide
Veterinary Service, to film the pilot for Vet
Adventures.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
JAKARTA, BANTUL, UBUD–Amid rumors that
the Bali government will reinstitute aggressive
dog-killing when a new fiscal year begins in May
2011 came two hints from Jakarta that Indonesian
authorities may be starting to realize that only
high-volume vaccination lastingly reduces rabies
transmission.
More than 150 people have died from
rabies on Bali since October 2008, more than 90%
of them infected before the Bali government
authorized the Bali Animal Welfare Association to
vaccinate dogs throughout the island, funded by
the World Society for the Protection of Animals.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
Climate change has more than doubled the
risk of flooding since 1950, two new studies
agreed in the February 16, 2011 edition of
Nature.
“For years scientists have said that
global warming would likely cause extremes in
temperatures and rainfall. But this is the first
time researchers have been able to point to a
demonstrable cause-and-effect,” assessed
Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press writer
Seth Borenstein.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
The Lady & Her Tiger by Pat Derby with Peter S. Beagle
Performing Animal Welfare Society (P.O. Box 849, Galt, CA 95632),
1976; reprinted for PAWS. Paperback, 263 pages. $10.00.
Performing Animal Welfare Society cofounder Pat Derby did not
see the modern animal rights movement coming 35 years ago, when her
memoir The Lady & Her Tiger became one of the books that launched it.
Published by E.P. Dutton in May 1976, six months after Peter
Singer’s Animal Liberation, and 20 months after Cleveland Amory’s
Man Kind?, The Lady & Her Tiger won an American Library Association
award and was a Book of the Month Club selection. Reissued as a
Ballentine paperback in 1977, The Lady & Her Tiger ensured that the
treatment of performing animals was prominent on the nascent animal
rights agenda–but Derby remained a Hollywood animal trainer, albeit
in the doghouse with much of her profession after exposing their
methods, for another eight years.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
A New Name for Worthless: A Hero is Born
by Rocky Shepheard, illustrated by Tamara Ci Thayne
c/o Dogs Deserve Better (P.O. Box 23, Tipton, PA 16684), 2011.
Hardcover, 16 pages. $17.97.
A chained dog named Worthless craves human companionship. In
the winter a shabby doghouse barely protects the old dog from the
brutal winters. There is not much shade from the sizzling summer sun.
A New Name for Worthless means well. Author Rocky Shepheard
presents it as a tribute to Tamira Ci Thayne, founder of Dogs
Deserve Better, and her devotion to freeing dogs from the misery of
chains, a most laudable goal. But the book conveys mixed and
confusing messages to its intended audience of young readers.