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BOOKS: Life With Darwin & Other Baboons

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Life With Darwin
& Other Baboons
by Fransje Van Riel
Penguin Books South Africa Ltd.
(2nd floor, 90 Rivonia Rd., Sandton, 2196,
South Africa), 2003. 227 pages, paperback.
113 South African Rands .
(about $21 U.S., c/o <www.exclusivebooks.com>.)

It is undeniable that baboons cause problems for farmers in
South Africa. Unfortunately, the usual response to their presence
is to shoot them. Life With Darwin & Other Baboons seeks to reduce
hostility toward baboons by providing insight into the complexities
of baboon society and the inevitable conflicts that arise when
animals and humans use the same habitat.
I once visited the South Texas Primate Sanctuary in Dilley,
Texas (now known as the API Primate Sanctuary). Founder Lou Griffin,
then still the director, knew every snow monkey and understood how
they fit into the group. When Lou introduced me to the snow monkeys,
she gave me the privilege of entering a fascinating new world. Life
With Darwin opens a similar door.
Fransje Van Riel introduces us to baboons through Karin Saks,
foster mother to an orphaned infant named Gismo. As Karin cared for
his physical and emotional needs, she realized that she would
ultimately have to find him a wild baboon family. Locating a wild
troop, she slowly introduced Gismo to it. Thanks to her
extraordinary efforts, the troop accepted him.

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Animal obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Shopper, 6, a California sea lion who swam up the Napa
River to visit a Petaluma motorcycle shop, was shot circa July 5 by
an unknown person near Benessere Vineyards, north of St. Helena.
Captured by Marine Mammal Center staff after his first swim inland,
Shopper was released on June 22 at Point Reyes National Seashore,
but returned upriver the next day. Napa radio station KVON raised a
reward fund of $12,500 for the conviction of his killer.

Tina, 34, an Asian elephant born at the Oregon Zoo, kept
at the Greater Vancou-ver Zoo 1972-2003, died suddenly on July 21,
2004 at the Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee, her home
since August 2003, much missed by two companions.

A.J., 12, the bloodhound who inspired Kat Albrecht to use
dogs to track lost pets, died on July 7. “His history included many
searches for criminals and lost people,” Albrecht wrote. “In 1998,
A.J. was retired from police work due to hip displasia, and moved
straight into tracking pets. On his first search he found a missing
diabetic cat named Marmalade in less than eight minutes. He received
hip replacement surgery in 1999 and lived afterward in relative
comfort. A.J. was featured in the PBS program Dogs With Jobs., and
in the PAX program Miracle Pets (now shown on Animal Planet as Animal
Miracles). Several of his searches are featured in The Lost Pet
Chronicles,” reviewed on page 20.

Oasis in a storm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

BENSON, Arizona–Since the high-tech stock crash of
2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, hundreds
of charities have coped with abrupt losses of income, but the ups
and downs of the Oasis Sanctuary Foundation have occurred for other
reasons.
Sybil Erden in 1997 started Oasis from her home in Phoenix to
provide lifetime care to cast-off tropical birds. Also in 1997,
two strangers, Mary and Jason Sanderson, of Nashua, New Hampshire,
won a $66 million Powerball lottery. They became acquainted with
Erden in 1998.
Struggling with a cumulative deficit of almost $80,000,
Erden in 1999 moved Oasis to a 72-acre former pecan orchard beside
the San Pedro River at Cascabel, Arizona, secured on a five-year
mortgage with a pledge from the Sandersons to donate $100,000 a year
for 24 years. In January 2004, however, the Sandersons told Erden
that their pending divorce would end the payments. Oasis is now
suing them for the unpaid balance.

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USAid pushes Zimbabwean “wise use” wildlife management model in Kenya

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

HARARE, NAIROBI–The future of wildlife in Zimbabwe and
Kenya may depend on the outcome of the November 2004 U.S.
Presidential election–or may be decided sooner, as officials in a
position to cash in on consumptive use rush to do it.
U.S. President George W. Bush brought to the White House a
renewed commitment to the wildlife policies of his father George H.
Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Echoing the “sustainable use” rhetoric of the World Wildlife
Fund and African Wildlife Foundation, all three Presidents have
actually been more closely aligned with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and Safari Club International–and none more so than George
W., who was the Safari Club “Governor of the Year” in 1999 for
vetoing a Texas bill to restrain canned hunts.
Operative assumptions of the George W. Bush administration
African wildlife policy, are that wildlife should pay its own way;
that trophy hunting is the best ecological and economic use for large
wildlife; that breeding huntable populations of wildlife in
captivity is an acceptable alternative to protecting habitat; that
conservation is best motivated by profit rather than altruism; and
that his Republican forebears knew what they were doing, since none
of the Big Five trophy species–African elephant, rhino, lion,
leopard, and Cape buffalo–went extinct on their watch.
The Center for Private Conservation, a Competitive
Enterprise Institute subsidiary, touted Zimbabwe as the showplace
for successful “wise use” wildlife policy during the 2000 U.S.
election campaign. Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, an avowed
Marxist just a few years earlier, seduced the Reagan and George H.
Bush administrations by turning conservation over almost entirely to
the private sector.

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Human obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

Bonny Shah, 58, died on July 28, 2004, in Dallas, after
a long battle with leukemia. She married electrical engineer Ratilal
Shah, a Jain from Gujarat, India, in 1968. Unable to find work as
a teacher, she started a business called Maharani, importing
hand-crafted dog collars and other gift items from India, “but
instead of selling the collars, she used them to bring rescued dogs
home,” Rati Shah told ANIMAL PEOPLE. He joined Maharani in 1975,
three years after the birth of their son Noah. The firm found a
niche supplying animal-theme items to zoo gift shops. As it grew,
the Shahs hired ever-increasing numbers of Indian artisans. They
built a school in India that was among the first to teach computer
skills as part of the curriculum, a human birth control clinic that
performs 200 sterilizations per year, and a general-purpose clinic
serving 30 villages that treats 18,000 patients per year without
charge. In exchange for donating 20 computers to the school the
Shahs built, Bonny Shah won a pledge that the school will look after
several dogs she rescued throughout their lives. At the Shahs’ home
in Bartonville, Texas, they founded the Ahimsa of Texas sanctuary,
managed by Bonny’s parents, Lou and Evelyn Karstadt, who continue
in her memory. “Bonny loved donkeys. She wanted to do more for
donkeys,” Rati Shah continued, “so in India we created the Dharma
Donkey Sanctuary,” now supervised by Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep
Kumar Nath. “With the help of the Blue Cross of India,” Rati Shah
said, “we treat 2,500 donkeys there at donkey camps held every six
months.” Bonny Shah also sponsored humane education and feral cat
rescue work by Kat Chaplin, the Dallas-based “Neuteress of the
Night.” Chaplin introduced the Shahs to ANIMAL PEOPLE in January
1998. During the next six years Bonny Shah contributed profiles of
the Bishnoi people of the Rajasthan desert, whose Jain-like faith
emphasizes kindness toward animals; the Donkey Sanctuary, in
England; and the Wildlife SOS and Friendicoes sanctuaries in India.

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Post-9/11 shelter killing hits 4.9 million a year

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004

Entering 2004, ANIMAL PEOPLE hoped that 2003 would prove to
have been the year when U.S. shelter killing of dogs and cats fell
below four million for the first time since the first national
estimates of the toll were developed circa 1960.
Instead, surging intakes of pit bull terriers,
Rottweilers, and mixed breed dogs with pit bull or Rottweiler traits
appear to have more than offset all the reductions achieved since
1997 in feral cat intake, accidental litters of puppies and kittens,
and surrenders of unruly year-old purebred dogs of other types.
Thus the estimated U.S. shelter death toll soared by 17%, to
4.9 million.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate is based on data from every
shelter in cities, counties, or sometimes whole states containing
more than a third of the U.S. human population, and is
proportionately weighted to get regional balance. It includes data
collected only in the three preceding years.
Thus the 2004 ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate is the first to consist
predominantly of data reflecting the economic conditions following
the high-tech stock collapse of 2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001.

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Turkey, Austria, Italy win animal welfare laurels; Greece pulls up lame

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

ATHENS–Turkey, Austria, and Italy
claimed the gold, silver, and bronze medals for
passing pro-animal legislation on the eve of the
2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Britain tried to
get into the race.
Activists pushing for animal welfare
reform in Greece meanwhile say they have had
little to show for their pre-Olympic efforts so
far except videos of dead dogs and cats, and
livestock being abused en route to slaughter.
Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan on
July 1 endorsed into law the most comprehensive
animal welfare statute in the Islamic world.
“I am now in contact with the government
to discuss implementing the law as it affects
stray animal control,” Fethiye Friends of
Animals founder Perihan Agnelli told ANIMAL
PEOPLE.
“I am very pleased,” Agnelli said,
“that as well as neuter/return being lawfully
accepted as the method of animal control [except
in the case of a declared rabies emergency],
compulsory neutering of privately owned dogs is
also to become law.

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HAPS is back at work in Ethiopia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

ADDIS ABABA–The Homeless Animal Protection Society of
Ethiopia has survived six months of bureaucratic attack by proponents
of killing street dogs, cofounders Efrem Legese and Hana Kifle
e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on July 5, 2004.
“After all the pressure to destroy us and HAPS through
misinformation became exposed,” Legese and Kifle wrote, “about 98%
of all the higher officials, the local community, and the staff of
Bale Mountains National Park promised to stand beside us and help in
any way they can. We pray for longer life and health so that we can
stop the suffering of homeless dogs here in Ethiopia.”
In June 2004, Legese explained, “The Oromiya Civil Service
commission law court decided that we should return to our work, with
all our salaries paid since the day we were suspended unjustly,” in
January 2004.
Oromiya Rural Land and Natural Resource Authority director Siraaj Bakkalii
Shaffee refused to accept the verdict, Legese said, and
tried to have Legese and Kifle arrested. Legese and Kifle turned
themselves in to the Bale Zone Police Department, who found that the
court had already dismissed the charges.
Radio Ethiopia amplified the outcome.

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Pilgrim’s Pride & pride in slaughter

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

MOORFIELD, West Virginia –The poultry processing firm
Pilgrim’s Pride on July 21, 2004 fired three managers and eight
hourly workers at a slaughterhouse in Moorfield, West Virginia,
where a PETA undercover videographer documented workers killing
chickens by stomping them and beating them against walls.
“The move followed an ultimatum by KFC, a major customer,
that it would stop buying chicken from the plant unless there were
assurances that the abuse had stopped,” wrote Barry Shlacter of the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
KFC president Gregg Dedrick told Vicki Smith of Associated
Press that KFC will hire a fulltime animal welfare inspector to
monitor the slaughterhouse, which is one of two similar facilities
in Moorfield that are owned by Pilgrim’s Pride. Altogether,
Pilgrim’s Pride employs 2,300 people in a county of under 13,000.
Pilgrim’s Pride, headquartered in Pittsburg, Texas, is the
second-largest poultry producer in the U.S., employing 40,000 people
at 24 slaughterhouses in 17 states, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.
After PETA posted the video on its web site, “The Pilgrim’s
Pride share price fell 3%, while that of KFC’s parent company, Yum
Brands, lost 2%,” Shlacter reported.

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