Israeli Supreme Court rules on feral cats

June 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

TEL AVIV–Recently retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice
Dalia Dorner, still ruling on cases she heard earlier, on June 3
ordered that the Israeli Agriculture Ministry Veterinary Service
“must establish more restrictive rules concerning the authority to
exterminate street cats,” reported Haaretz correspondent Yuval Yoaz
“The killing of street cats…must be the last step, taken
only when the public cannot be protected by other reasonable means,”
Dorner wrote, according to the Haaretz translation of the verdict,
rendered in Hebrew.
The verdict was affirmed by active Justices Aharon Barak and
Asher Grunis, but was promptly appealed. Concern for Helping
Animals in Israel founder Nina Natelson told ANIMAL PEOPLE that a
seven-judge panel would review the appeal within 30 days.
ANIMAL PEOPLE received widely varying interpretations of the
verdict from observers of the case and participants.
The case originated out of the four-year-old attempt of the
no-kill organizations Let The Animals Live and Cat Welfare Society of
Israel to prosecute veterinary technician Na’ama Adler-Blu and her
husband Eyal Blu for killing feral cats. The couple own a firm
called Magen Lahatul that captures and kills feral cats under
contract with the Agriculture Ministry Veterinary Service. The Tel
Aviv SPCA was also a defendant.

Court Calendar

June 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

Humane work

New York State Supreme Court Justice Bruce Allen on May 28
upheld the constitutionality of the state anti-cruelty law under
which barber Darrel Nelson, 56, was convicted in December 2003 for
amputating a three-month-old Rottweiler’s tail in October 2002.
Nelson used a rubber band to stop the blood supply to the tail, then
cut the tail off with a sharp instrument. Nelson was convicted only
days before the New York Court of Appeals ruled 6-0 against a case
brought by Manhattan lawyer Jon H. Hammer that sought to overturn the
tail-docking requirements in the breed standards of the American
Kennel Club and American Brittany Club. Hammer argued that the
anti-cruelty law language under which Nelson was convicted should
apply to the breed standards. The court held that Hammer had no
standing to sue, and that the statute applies only to deeds, not to
recommendations for procedures not actually performed by the AKC and
ABC.

South Africa purges “95%” of Table Mountain tahr

June 2, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

CAPE TOWN–South Africa National Parks on June 9, 2004
suspended efforts to exterminate feral Himalyan tahrs on Table
Mountain, after 25 days of shooting.
SANParks claimed to have killed 109 tahrs, estimated to be
95% of the descendents of a pair who escaped from the long defunct
Groote Schnur Zoo in 1935.
Officially, the killing stopped due to the onset of winter
weather. But SANParks chief executive David Mabunda had come under
increasing public criticism for claiming to have no alternative to
killing the tahr.
In fact The Marchig Animal Welfare Trust had proposed in
March 2004 to pay for either sterilizing and relocating the tahrs to
the Sanbona Wildlife Reserve near Barrydale, operated by private
conservationist Adrian Gardiner, or returning them to their native
India if the logistics could be arranged.
The tahrs are an endangered species in India. The Indian
government has asked several times for the tahrs to be repatriated,
but has lacked funding for their capture and transportation. A
coalition called Friends of the Tahr pursued repatriation from 1999
until earlier this year, but disbanded, without remaining assets,
after unsuccessfully pursuing legal action on the tahrs’ behalf.

Awards & honors

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Humane Farming Association investigator Gail Eisnitz, author
of the 1997 expose book Slaughterhouse, is recipient of the 2004
Albert Schweitzer Medal, presented by the Animal Welfare Institute
for outstanding achievement in animal welfare. In 1994-1995 Eisnitz
had a significant role in exposing illegal veal industry use of the
synthetic steroid clenbuterol, leading to the criminal convictions of
several prominent U.S. veal producers. In April 2000 Eisnitz
obtained videotape documenting extensive but still unprosecuted
alleged violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at the IBP meatpacking
plant in Wallula, Washington. Eisnitz has been helping Sioux
opponents of factory pig farming to fight plans by Sun Prairie Inc.
to establish pig barns on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South
Dakota since 1998. Sun Prairie began raising pigs in 24 barns at two
Rosebud sites in 1999. In February 2003, however, the U.S. Supreme
Court declined to review an April 2002 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
verdict that may evict Sun Prairie from the reservation–if Sun
Prairie loses a crossfiled case still underway. Meanwhile Eisnitz
has submitted 65 pages of employee interviews and photos to South
Dakota attorney general Lawrence E. Long, asking him to prosecute
Sun Prairie for multiple acts of alleged cruelty.

Awards

“Why be kind to tahrs?”

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

CAPE TOWN–Twenty-three prominent South African
environmentalists on April 4, 2004 published a joint letter urging
the immediate massacre of the last Himalayan tahrs on Table Mountain.
Endangered in India, where the goat-like tahrs are native,
they are officially deemed “invasive” in South Africa. The Table
Mountain herd, culled sporadically for nearly 30 years, is
descended from a pair who escaped from the long defunct Groote Schuur
Zoo in 1936. A helicopter count recently found 51, but Table
Mountain National Park staff say there may be as many as 150.
Fifty-four tahrs were killed in 2000 before an effort to
exterminate them was halted at request of former Indian minister for
animal welfare Maneka Gandhi and Friends of the Tahr, who hoped to
repatriate the survivors to India but have not raised enough money to
do it.
“Why be kind to tahrs specifically? Why not a ‘Friends of
the Norwegian rat’ or a ‘Friends of the cholera virus’?” asked the
joint letter from the environmentalists.
The joint letter was reportedly drafted by Working For Water
chair Guy Preston.

Discovering Help In Suffering

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Discovering Help In Suffering
by Ursula Wilby

In late February and early March 2004 I visited India.
Arriving in Delhi I was surprised to see dogs everywhere. Some were
in rather bad shape with mange. But others looked healthy and–at
least from a distance–well fed.
Our first stop after Delhi was Jaipur. I got up at the crack
of dawn, camera ready, and positioned myself in a nearby square,
watching the town wake up. It was fascinating to observe the dogs
and their behaviour toward each other and all the other animals
competing for scraps of food thrown out on huge rubbish piles. The
first thing I noticed was that the dogs, without exception, seemed
happy. Although they did not rush up to me, it was quite obvious
that they were treated well, as they never avoided human contact
either.
I was puzzled by the number of dogs. While there were more
than we normally see in northern European cities, there still seemed
to be too few, considering that there apparently was no human
interference with mating.
I decided to ask at the hotel how the dog population was kept
at a reasonable level. The answer I got was that if there were too
many dogs, the government would round them up and take them away.

Asia

Court Calendar

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

A two-judge panel from the Supreme Court of India on March
11, 2004 upheld the right of civil authorities to ban the sale of
meat, fish, and eggs within the pilgrimage city of Rishikesh. The
ban was first formally proclaimed in 1956, and was extended in 1976.

The U.S. Department of Justice and FBI in April 2004 agreed
to pay $2 million to Earth First! activist Darryl Cherney and the
estate of the late Judi Bari in settlement of a civil suit resulting
from the FBI response to a bomb that detonated in their car in
Oakland, California on May 24, 1990. Bari, who never fully
recovered from her injuries, died of cancer in 1997. The FBI
investigated Cherney and Bari as suspects in making and transporting
the bomb, but never charged them, while allegedly ignoring evidence
that the bomb may have been planted by opponents of Earth First!
After a two-month trial in 2002, a federal jury ordered the FBI and
Oakland police to pay $4.4 million to Cherney and the Bari estate.
The city of Oakland agreed to pay $2 million in four annual
installments, but the FBI appealed.

Cat fight at API Primate Sanctuary

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

SACRAMENTO–The Animal Protection Institute took an online
beating from feral cat advocates, other sanctuary operators, and
supporters of former API Primate Sanctuary director Lou Griffin in
late April 2004 after an intern at the sanctuary in Dilley, Texas,
circulated an e-mail asking for help in sterilizing 60 to 80 feral
cats who dwell among the resident Japanese macaques.
Griffin and Aesop Project founder Linda Howard, a
Griffin-era volunteer, agreed that the sanctuary had 19 cats when
API fired Griffin in March 2002, and that all of those cats were
sterilized. API contends that some cats there then were not
sterilized, and that their offspring formed the present colony.
Griffin sued API after she was fired by former executive
director Alan Berger, who left API himself in April 2003 and now
heads the John Ancrum SPCA in South Carolina. The case is still in
court.
An alternate hypothesis is that the cat population grew from
abandonees between Griffin’s exit, after 22 years, and the arrival
of current sanctuary director Nedim Buyukmihci, VMD, about 18
months later.

North America

Discount deal on Neutersol for humane societies in developing nations

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

FAYETTE, Missouri; CONCORD, N.H.– One day after the April
2004 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, noting that the
U.S.-approved chemosterilant Neutersol is still not affordably
available to help control street dogs in developing nations,
Neutersol product director Cord Harper announced that the
manufacturer, Addison Biological Laboratory Inc. in Fayette,
Missouri, “would like to show a strong commitment to the
international animal welfare community by offering 100,000 vials of
Neutersol at $15 per vial to a coalition of groups that could put it
to good use in developing countries where it is desperately needed.”
Harper, who had not yet seen the ANIMAL PEOPLE coverage,
made the offer through Peter Bender and Anne Ostberg of the Pegasus
Foundation.
Based in Concord, New Hampshire, with a second office in
West Palm Beach, Florida, the Pegasus Foundation funds dog and cat
sterilization in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and the Navajo Nation,
including parts of Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico.
“Neutersol has begun gaining acceptance in the U.S. animal welfare
community. Many of the largest shelters in the country are beginning
to adopt it,” Harper said. “We have inventory that would be much
better utilized to permanently and humanely sterilize hundreds of
thousands of dogs rather than sit in a warehouse.”

Medicine

« 1 … 233 234 235 236 237 … 648 »