A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
Animal Care Equipment & Services Inc., for 20 years the
leading distributor of animal rescue and handling equipment
worldwide, has moved from California to 4920-F Fox St., Denver, CO
80216; 303-296-9287; fax 303-298-8894; <www.animal-care.com>.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
TAMPA, Fla.–Florida humane worker Carol Childs may have
been the only outside animal rescuer to reach Myanmar after the
December 26, 2005 tsnami.
Better known to the world as Burma, and still called Burma
by most of the residents, according to Childs, Myanmar has been an
isolationist military dictatorship since 1962. News media are
strictly censored. Few visitors are admitted. The
security-conscious Myanmar regime at first denied having any tsunami
casualties, and refused outside aid, but rumors leaked out of at
least 90 deaths.
Childs, planning an intensive Southeast Asian excursion that
also took in parts of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in
late 2004 managed to secure a tourist visa to go to Myanmar. A
veteran of Florida disaster relief efforts, including the aftermath
of Hurricane Andrew and four hurricanes in six weeks during the
summer of 2004, Childs realized that her skills might be needed.
She landed in Thailand on January 11 with suitcases of veterinary
supplies, but was unable to connect by telephone with any of the
Thai animal disaster relief organizations. Not a computer user, she
did not try via the Internet.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
AGRA, CHENGDU–Wildlife SOS founder Kartick Satyanarayan
spent most of the first two months of 2005 often literally up to his
hips in post-tsunami swamp water and sometimes displaced salt water
crocodiles, gorged on human remains. Still, Satyanarayan did not
forget that his primary objective for the year was to rescue sloth
bears and jail the poachers who supply cubs to dancing bear trainers
and bear-baiters.
“Kartick has been madly rushing from tsunami work in the
Andaman Islands and Tamil Nadu to anti-poaching work, as this is the
peak season for bear cub poaching,” Friendicoes SECA shelter manager
Geeta Seshamani told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We have managed four raids
between all the other work and rescued nine tiny cubs and six
slightly older cubs at locations in Orissa, Karna-taka, and
Maharashtra states.”
Wildlife SOS originally partnered with Friendicoes SECA to
rescue animals from the streets of Delhi. Friendicoes SECA handles
dogs, cats, and other domestic species; Wildlife SOS responds to
calls about urban wildlife, mostly snakes and monkeys.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
CHENNAI, VISAKHAPATNAM, PORT BLAIR
–The first phase of disaster relief is rescue.
Then comes accommodating refuges, followed by
rebuilding.
“Our immediate relief activities have
been now replaced by the medium term to long term
relief work made necessary by the animals we have
rescued,” Blue Cross of India director Chinny
Krishna told ANIMAL PEOPLE, two months after the
December 26, 2004 tsunami.
Eager to start rebuilding, including
developing India’s first formal animal disaster
relief plan, Krishna found himself still in the
middle of refugee accommodation.
“The large number of rescued animals, as
well as those surrendered by people who said they
found them in their neighborhoods, have made
things difficult at our Guindy center,” Krishna
explained. “A rescued pig and her litter of
eight piglets occupy a large area behind our
cattle shed. Rescued dogs occupy every available
step on the staircases, and the recent rains in
Chennai have sent all the dogs normally in the
four-acre outdoor part of the shelter scurrying
indoors to have a roof over their heads!”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
COLUMBO, CHENNAI, PHUKET–Concern for marine life after the
Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 centered on sea turtles
and coral reefs.
Sea turtles, just beginning their nesting season, and usually
drowned by the thousands in trawler nets, appeared to be among the
few beneficiaries–other than fish–of the destruction of fishing
fleets and beachfront development.
Thirty olive ridley sea turtles hatched on February 16 at
Tanjung Beach on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for example, a
tsunami-struck resort area where sea turtles had not nested
successfully in more than a decade.
But U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service coral reef expert
Tom Hourigan told Paul Recer of Associated Press that reefs badly
damaged by the regional El Nino effect of 1997-1998 were likely to
have taken a further pounding.
“It is very likely that the tsunami would damage the coral
and some of the worst damage would come from debris thrown up against
the reefs,” Hourigan told Recer.
“Some entire reef ecosystems could have been buried by
sediments flushed into shallow environments,” added coral reef
division chief Russel E. Brainard of the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
PHUKET, Thailand–As the tsunami waves receded on December
26 and the size of the disaster became evident, Soi Dog Foundation
volunteer John Dalley e-mailed to the International Fund for Animal
Welfare a plea for help on behalf of the animals. No one responded.
Dalley, Soi Dog founder Margot Park, and the other Soi Dog
volunteers took in as many human and animal refugees as they could,
then tried again.
ANIMAL PEOPLE wired relief funding on December 29. The Best
Friends Animal Society sent aid the next day.
The IFAW response came at last on February 16, from IFAW
grants manager Laura Saliba. “Thank you for your interest in IFAW
grants,” Saliba wrote. “Unfortunately, IFAW is currently not
accepting unsolicited grant requests. We receive a large number of
worthwhile proposals, and we are only able to fund a portion of
those due to limited funds, and the desire to be as effective as
possible in the work we support. “
As of the most recent IFAW filing of IRS Form 990, it had
cash and securities reserves of approximately $17.8 million.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
Humane Horse Care For Equine Wellness
by Andrew F. Fraser
280 pages, paperback. $25.00.
A Guide To Carriage Horse Care & Welfare by the Canadian Farm Animal Care Trust
46 pages, paperback, $10.00.
Both from: Canadian Farm Animal Trust
(22 Commerce Park Drive, Unit C, Suite 306, Barrie, Ontario L4N
8W8), 2003.
CANFACT founder Tom Hughes sent these two very useful manuals
exactly one year ago. I looked them over as thoroughly as I could,
then tried to find a reviewer with appropriate experience in
evaluating horses in normal working and riding condition.
Horse rescuers tend to see the worst of the worst–but the
purpose of these manuals appears to be to enable a humane inspector
to recognize potential problems long before they develop, so as to
put in a few words of preventive advice.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
Bina Robinson, 81, has ended the Civil Abolitionist
newsletter, after 15 years, due to falling circulation and rising
costs, but remains active by e-mail at <civitas@link-ny.com>, and
still directs the 500-acre Civitas Wildlife Sanctuary at Swain, New
York. “Civitas began in the early 1980s as the U.S. branch of CIVIS,
Swiss medical historian Hans Ruesch’s international anti-vivisection
organization,” explains the Civitas web site,
<www.linkny.com/~civitas>. In 1983 it split into two parallel
groups, Citizens for Planetary Health, which continues the original
focus, and the Coalition to Protect Animals in Parks and Refuges,
whose newsletter Robinson issued as a Civil Abolitionist insert.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:
Bear, dog of Rockinghorse Ranch riding stable owner Dale
Stone, of Big Baddeck, Nova Scotia; Tio, Great Pyranees of Brian
Cherry and Peg Klouda of Victor, Montana; and Bubba and Savannah,
mastiffs of Marcela Egea of Belton, Missouri, all strayed recently
into traps near their homes and were killed. Tio, Bubba, and
Savannah all could have been released but were shot instead. Cherry
and Klouda have formed an organization, Trapping Information
Offensive, in memory of Tio. Trapper Michael Kartman, 39, who
admitted killing Bubba and Savannah, was cited by Missouri
Department of Conservation agent Phil Needham for failing to label
his traps with his name and address and for improper disposal of the
remains of a raccoon, two opossums, and a skunk.
Kumba, 35, the first western lowland gorilla born at the
Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, was euthanized on February 12 due to
acute kidney failure.