Author: Archivist

BOOKS: Curious creatures, wonderous waifs: My life with Animals

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

Curious creatures, wonderous waifs: My life with Animals
by Ed Kostro
PublishAmerica, (www.publishamerica.com), 2004. 217 pages,
paperback. $16.95.

Kostro’s journey starts when he is a three-year-old living in
the inner city with his Polish immigrant parents and grandparents.
As a boy he often rescued animals; as a teenager he found summer
camp a place of untold discovery; and his relationships with
animals, especially his little dog Pepper, fared better than his
marriage, which ended in divorce.
“I truly believe that my encounters with all sorts of
animals have been an integral part of making me who I am today–an
avowed ‘animal person,'” Kostro writes.
There are plenty of amusing stories. For example, he finds a
baby robin who has fallen out of her nest. Up goes a huge ladder and
the baby is returned to a full nest of robin chicks. As one chick is
replaced and Kostro climbs down, another is pushed out and there
begins a procession of returning robin chicks to the rather
inadequate nest. A large crowd of neighbors gathers to watch.

Read more

Human obituaries

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Spetember 2004:

Dan Knapp, 49, died unexpectedly on August 1, 2004.
Longtime friend Warren Cox told ANIMAL PEOPLE that he understood
Knapp suffered a heart attack while mowing his lawn. An ordained
minister, Knapp led churches in Piedmont, San Jose, Santa Monica,
and Huntingon Park, California, and handled inventory control for a
Silicon Valley maker of mass spectrometers, before finding his
calling in 1988-1989 as executive director of the Humane Society of
Humboldt County. Moving to the somewhat larger Humane Society of
Sonoma County in 1990, Knapp achieved an economic turnaround,
markedly reduced animal control killing, and formed effective
alliances with cat rescuers, dog breed rescue clubs, local
children’s services, and animal rights groups. Knapp was recruited
in July 1998 to become general manager of the Los Angeles Department
of Animal Regulation. Knapp in March 2000 persuaded the Los Angeles
city council to adopt one of the widest differentials on record in
the cost of licensing sterilized v.s. unsterilized pets. A favorite
of animal rights activists, Knapp otherwise ran into conflict and
controversy in Los Angeles, most memorably when he attributed a
controversial mid-2000 roundup of free-roaming dogs to preparation
for the Democratic National Convention, and was rebuked by Mayor
Richard Riordan. An epileptic since 1996, Knapp was fired by
Riordan’s successor, James K. Hahn, in October 2001, after a
prolonged medical absence. He subsequently sued Los Angeles for
alleged discrimination based on his epileptic condition. In January
2002 he became executive director of the Capital Area Humane Society
in Columbus, Ohio, where–as in Sonoma County–he won praise from
all quarters. “Dan was an important advocate for animals and people
in our community,” said CAHS board president Becky Johnson. “He was
committed to preventing animal and human violence through
intervention and community education. Dan provided exemplary
leadership, and will be difficult to replace.”

Read more

BOOKS: The Great Compassion & Holy Cow

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

The Great Compassion:
Buddhism & Animal Rights
by Norm Phelps

Holy Cow:
The Hare Krishna Contribution to Vegetarianism & Animal Rights
by Steven J. Rosen

Both from Lantern Books (1 Union Square West, Suite 201, New York,
NY 10003), 2004.
169 pages, paperback. $16.00.

Norm Phelps, spiritual outreach director for the Fund for
Animals, is an angry Buddhist and animal rights activist.
Phelps’s righteous anger is primarily directed at the many
Buddhists –he estimates about half–who eat meat. Phelps regards
meat eating by Buddhists as both hypocrisy and as much a heresy as
can be committed within a religion whose teachings emphasize
tolerance. Phelps contends that western Buddhists who continue to
eat meat, when they must know of the horrors of factory farming,
offend the fundamental principle of their ancient religion, which
requires compassion for all sentient beings and preparedness to make
personal sacrifices in order to reduce others’ suffering.

Read more

Who killed hunting profits in Zimbabwe?

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

HARARE–The search for someone to blame is underway in Zimbabwe.
“We have a situation where the previous hunting season earned $24
million U.S. and then suddenly the last hunting season earned only
$13 million,” fumed National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority
chief executive Morris Mtsambiwa to Isadore Guvamombe of the
government-controlled Harare Herald in mid-August 2004.
“Our question is, what happened to the other $11 million?
Investigations are in progress,” Mtsambiwa continued.
Mtsambiwa said nothing of land occupations by mobs of “war
veterans,” confiscations of especially attractive properties by
corrupt public officials, uncontrolled poaching, and the near
complete destruction of many of Zimbabwe’s renowned private wildlife
conservancies. His remarks, however, hinted at a pretext for
further seizures.
“Hunting proceeds are paid in advance to the safari
operators,” Guva-mombe wrote, “but last year many operators,
working in cahoots with white former farmers, devised methods of
circumventing foreign currency declaration procedures.”
Hwange safari operator Headman Sibanda meanwhile sued
Zimbabwean environment and tourism minister Francis Nhema for
allegedly improperly awarding a hunting concession to a company
headed by a Nhema associate named Marble Dete.

Read more

Kenya leads opposition to lifting CITES ivory trade ban, seeks lion trophy trade ban

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

NAIROBI–Kenya will again lead the opposition to lifting the
global embargo on ivory and rhino horn trafficking at the October
2004 conference of the 166 parties to the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species in Bangkok, Thailand, Kenyan
assistant minister for the environment and natural resources George
Khaniri announced on August 26.
Kenya is also proposing to ban international traffic in
African lion trophies, but the Kenyan recommendation is opposed by
the U.S. and Britain, two of the nations with the most lion hunters.
The wild African lion population is believed to have fallen
70% since 1996, to just 23,000, distributed among 89 locations.
Half live in the Masai Mara and Serengeti region of Kenya and
Tanzania, the Selous game reserve in Tanzania, Kruger National Park
in South Africa, and the Okavango Delta of Botswana.
Khaneri told The Nation that Kenya now has 28,000 elephants
and 500 rhinos, up from 16,000 and 250 since CITES imposed the ivory
and rhino horn trade bans in 1989.
Anticipating that the ivory and rhino horn embargoes might
soon be eased or lifted, poachers typically raiding from Somalia
have recently escalated their activity, as often occurs on the eve
of a CITES meeting.

Read more

Governments push hunting the big bucks, boars, et al–for the price on their heads

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

CANBERRA, JOHANNESBURG,
NAIROBI–Australian government agencies are
missing the gravy train by hiring sharpshooters
to kill non-native wildlife, University of
Queensland faculty members Gordon Dryden and
Stephen Craig-Smith reported in early September
2004 to the Rural Industries Research &
Development Corporation.
The RIRDC is a federal think-tank formed
to create jobs in the Outback. It envisions the
Outback as a tourism draw rivaling Africa–for
one type of tourist.
“Wealthy hunting enthusiasts around the
world would be happy to cull these animals that
nobody in Australia wants, and would pay for the
privilege,” Craig-Smith said. “This would be a
niche tourism market targeted at cashed-up
hunters,” he added, “not a wholesale slaughter
of animals.”

Read more

BOOKS: Parrot Culture

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Parrot Culture by Bruce Thomas Boehrer
University of Pennsylvania Press (4200 Pine Street, Philadelphia,
PA 19104), 2004. 224 pages, paperback. $27.50.

The parrots who were popular in Greco-Roman imperial times, and
thereafter in Europe during the Middle Ages, came from India. But
the overland traffic in parrots slowed after the rise of Islam,
partly because Mohammed taught against caging birds and partly
because warfare between Christians and Muslims significantly reduced
the chances of moving fragile species through Central Asia alive.
Bruce Boehrer’s research shows that the parrots who flooded
into Europe after the Renaissance came from the New World, as a
direct result of Christopher Colum-bus’ voyages of discovery.
Over two millennia, the reverence with which captive parrots
were originally treated disappeared and the birds later became
objects of ridicule and satire. Boehrer delves at some length into
depictions of parrots in art and literature over the ages. Included
is the famous Monty Python “Dead Parrot Sketch.”
Renaissance writers transformed parrots into comic figures,
and some painters of the period did the same thing. Parrots appear
in numerous paintings by great masters including Rubens, Van Dyk,
Manet, and even some of the French impressionists, notably Renoir.

Read more

Black & white

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff “is dedicated to
Lloyd Tait, VMD, the ASPCA’s first ‘head of shelter medicine,’ who
was everything one could imagine in a friend and mentor. Irascible,
supportive, quixotic, and fiercely dedicated to animal welfare, he
laid the early foundation for the formal practice of veterinary
medicine in the ASPCA shelters,” editors Lila Miller and Stephen
Zawistowski acknowledge.
Tait now works for the World Society for the Protection of
Animals. We recently received a copy of his comprehensive report on
the progress of dog sterilization in place of animal control killing
in Sri Lanka.
Tait joined the ASPCA staff in 1968, following former ASPCA
Brooklyn shelter director George Watford, now retired, as the
second nationally prominent humane worker of African descent. Miller
joined the ASPCA staff in 1977. She became the third nationally
prominent humane worker of African descent.
Since Miller was hired, a few other people of African
ancestry have become prominent in shelter work, perhaps most notably
longtime National Animal Control Association board member Keith
Robinson, but a convention of Afro-American executive directors of
humane societies could probably be held around one small table, and
would still have empty chairs.

Read more

BOOKS: Vegetarianism: A History

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Vegetarianism: A History by Colin Spencer
Four Walls Eight Windows (39 W. 14th St,, New York, NY 10011),
2004. 384 pp., paperback. $16.00.

Until recent times, the history of vegetarianism was also
the history of religion and politics. The first two thirds of Colin
Spencer’s book describes the evolution of humanism and political and
religious influence on meat-eating.
Until the 18th century, vegetarianism in Europe was usually
equated with radicalism and heresy. During the Albigensian Crusade
against the vegetarian Cathari, who from about 1150 until circa 1250
challenged the primacy of Catholicism in southern France, alleged
heretics were required to prove their innocence by eating meat.
Spencer relates how “heretics” were brought before the
Emperor: “Among other wicked Manichean doctrines, they condemned
all eating of animals and with the agreement of everybody present,
he ordered them to be hanged.”
Circa 500 years B.C. the Greek philosopher and mathematician
Pythagoras was viewed with suspicion, though treated with greater
tolerance, when he openly abjured flesh. Pythagoras cited his belief
in the health benefits of vegetarianism, and his hope that
vegetarian societies would be less inclined to wage war. The basis
of his vegetarianism, however, appears to have been a belief in the
transmigration of souls (reincarnation).

Read more

1 … 227 228 229 230 231 … 648