Organization notes

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

The Humane Society of the U.S. board of directors on April
24, 2004 elected senior vice president for government affairs and
media Wayne Pacelle, 38, to succeed Paul Irwin as president and
chief executive. Irwin, senior vice president under John Hoyt
1975-1996, and president since then, is retiring. Pacelle joined
HSUS in 1994, after five years as executive director of the Fund for
Animals. Pacelle was selected over chief of staff Andrew Rowan, who
continues in that position, and former Maryland governor Parris
Glendenning.

Farmed Animal Watch founder Mary Finelli on April 17, 2004
turned the electronic newsletter over to new editors Hedy Litke and
Che Green, after two years and 47 editions. Litke also directs the
New York City-based Animal News Center. Green is a longtime member
of the Seattle-based Northwest Animal Rights Network. Farmed Animal
Watch is jointly sponsored by Animal Place, the Animal Welfare
Trust, Farm Sanctuary, the Fund for Animals, the Glaser Progress
Foundation, and PETA.

Uncategorized

How to tell the Best Friends Animal Society from the cult who built Kanab

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

KANAB, Utah–The Best Friends Animal
Society main entrance at the mouth of Angel
Canyon now has a National Park-sized reception
center and gift shop, newly expanded to include
a 50-seat orientation room.
Shelter director Faith Maloney and
reception center manager Anne Mejia already
wonder how long it will be big enough. Best
Friends now attracts more than 20,000 visitors
per year. At least half a dozen other major
animal shelters and sanctuaries around the U.S.
attract more, but they all occupy central
locations in cities of several million people.
Best Friends attracts more than three times the
total population of Kane County. The closest big
city is Las Vegas, three hours away by car.
Visitors to other major U.S. shelters and
sanctuaries come mostly to adopt or surrender
animals. They usually enter, transact their
business, and leave within an hour. Visitors to
Best Friends come as a pilgrimage. They spend
the day, or become temporary volunteers,
contributing several days.

North America

BOOKS: The Art Of Being A Lion and The Art Of Being An Elephant

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

The Art Of Being A Lion and The Art Of Being An Elephant
both by Christine & Michel Denis-Huot
Barnes & Noble Inc. (122 5th Ave., New York, NY 100011), 2003.
224 pages, 224 color photos, hardcover. $19.95.

The authors of these twin photo collections are Michel
Denis-Huot, a wildlife photographer who has spent the past 30 years
in Tanzania, and his wife Christine Denis-Huot, a former computer
engineer who writes the accompanying texts.
Typical of the glossy coffee table book genre, the books
parade the beauty of animals in the wild, describing the behaviour
and natural history of lions and elephants.
The Art Of Being A Lion includes chapters on the history of
lion/human interaction, lion anatomy, social life and sexuality,
the lion family, and the art of eating.
Unfortunately, I found myself flicking the pages over as if
paging through a magazine, speed-reading the text to get a vague
notion of the content before turning to the next photo. Some hard
research and statistical analysis of the issues affecting the
survival of lions and the other wildlife they interact with would
have relieved the tedium of turning the pages from one lovely photo
to another until they all began to look the same, and would have
rescued the book from characteristic blandness.

Canadian sealers kill at record speed

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

MONTREAL–Authorized by Ottawa to kill 350,000 harp seals in
2004, Atlantic Canadian offshore sealers killed so aggressively that
the Department of Fisheries & Oceans on April 14 closed the
large-vessel hunt only 48 hours after it started, suspecting that
the large-vessel quota of 246,900 had already been reached.
Again this year, as in each of the past five years,
International Fund for Animal Welfare observers led by Newfoundland
native Rebecca Aldworth obtained extensive video of sealers skinning
seal pups who were still thrashing and dragging live seals on hooks.
Again this year DFO denied that the writhing seals were still alive.
Sealers and DFO spokespersons boasted of rising global demand
for seal pelts, reportedly wholesaling at about $50 Canadian apiece.
But the evidence was ambiguous–and $50 in Canadian money has only
about half the buying power today that it had more than 20 years ago,
when seal pelt prices last were in that range.
“The landed value of last year’s seal hunt accounted for less
than one tenth of 1% of Newfoundland economy, nowhere near the
figures claimed by the sealing industry,” IFAW president Fred
O’Regan wrote to The New York Times. “Lasting solutions to the
economic challenges facing Atlantic Canada require more than
subsidizing the slaughter of nearly a million seals in the next three
years.”

Neuter/return works for Alaskan wolves

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

FAIRBANKS–Animal advocates who sterilize and release feral
cats and street dogs had the right prescription for wolf predation
control all along, Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists are
discovering.
Clamoring to shoot and trap wolves to reduce predatory pressure on
the depleted Fortymile caribou herd, the Alaska DFG in 1997
grudgingly agreed to sterilize the alpha pairs in 15 wolf packs under
pressure led by Friends of Animals.
“The idea was that the sterilized pairs would defend their
territories against other packs, which they have done quite
successfully,” wrote Fairbanks Daily News-Miner staff writer Tim
Mowry on March 28.
As with feral cats and street dogs, sterile wolves hunt much
less than animals with young to feed. Therefore the caribou herd
would increase.
DFG biologists performed the sterilizations amid prophecies by
hunters and politicians that the experiment would neither work nor
shut up the opponents of wolf-culling, and therefore should never
have been started.

BOOKS: Disposable Dogs

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Disposable Dogs by Steve Swanbeck
White Swan Publishing
(1 Green Hill Road, Chester, NJ 07930), 2004.
197 pages, paperback. $11.95.

“The old blind German shepherd with tumors all over her body
sat alone in the shelter and waited. The chances of Bralie being
adopted was as remote as her vision,” begins Steve Swanbeck,
describing how the dog was about to be euthanized when she was
rescued by Noah’s Bark Pet Rescue.
After months of loving care and expensive veterinary help,
Bralie recovered to the point that she could be taken to a pet
adoption fair at a nearby town. “Dad, its Bralie!” said a little
boy, and the dog went crazy, howling and whining and wagging her
tail. She was reunited with her family.
The father explained how fireworks had frightened Bralie,
who leaped the garden fence and got lost. They visited their local
shelter without success and had eventually given up hope of ever
seeing Bralie again.
Bralie’s story is typical of the 70 true short stories–make that
truncated stories–in this little book. These could make wonderful
bedtime tales for children.
–Chris Mercer & Beverley Pervan

Cattle evacuated from U.S. coastal islands

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Huge cattle rescues are not unheard of in the U.S.–just rare.
A recent example was the November 2003 evacuation of 106 bison from
Santa Catalina Island, led by In Defense of Ani-mals southern
California director Bill Dyer.
Another evacuation, initially described by some sources as a
rescue, removed at least 38 cattle from Chirikof Island, Alaska.
Subsequent investigation revealed that even if live removal could be
made to work, the motivation behind the attempt was to sell the
cattle for slaughter.
In both instances the cattle were moved from both Santa
Catalina and Chirkoff in response to conservationist pressure to have
the feral herds shot, in order to restore wildlife habitat to a
semblance of pre-settlement conditions. The Catalina Island
Conservancy controls 88% of Santa Catalina, while Chirikoff Island
is under control of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The Catalina bison were descended from a herd of 14
introduced to the island in 1924 during the filming of the 1926 film
The Vanishing American. The herd was later supplemented and built up
as part of a commercial beef ranch operated by chewing gum magnate
William Wrigley Jr.

Animal Obituaries

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Purr Box Jr., 17, tiger tabby cat of Mary Wilkinson of
Stamford, Connecticut, died on May 1. A portrait of Purr Box Jr.
appeared on page 1 of the March 10, 2004 edition of The Wall Street
Journal, beneath the headline “Purr Box goes to communion at St.
Francis Episcopal.”

Kathy, 34, the oldest female beluga whale in captivity,
was euthanized on April 9, 2004 at the New York Aquarium due to
incurable illness. Born in the Churchill River in northern Manitoba,
Kathi came to the aquarium in 1974. She gave birth twice, in 1981
and 1991. Both infants lived longer, at the time, than any others
born in captivity. Her 1991 calf, Casey, survived to age eight.

Yoda, a genetically modified dwarf mouse, died in his cage
on April 22 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, at age four
years and 12 days, the oldest lab mouse on record. He was a third
smaller than the average mouse, with heightened sensitivity toward
cold because of limited ability to hold his own body heat.

Obituaries

BOOKS: Dog Is My Co-Pilot

May 1, 2004 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

Dog Is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship
from the editors of The Bark. Crown Publishing Group (299 Park Ave.,
New York, NY 10171), 2003. 304 pages. Hardcover, $ 25.00.

The Bark magazine began as an eight-page newsletter in 1997,
aimed at persuading the civic authorities in Berkeley, California to
legalise exercising dogs off-leash at a local park.
Through this campaign the founders, Claudia Kawczynka and
Cameron Woo, discovered the emergence of a new dog culture in
America, and set out to explore it.
Kawczynka and Woo in Dog Is My Co-Pilot present essays,
articles and short stories about dogs and dog people by 42 different
contributors. The content is grouped into four sections, entitled
“Beginnings,” “Pack,” “Lessons,” and “Passages,” but the breadth
of vision and style of writing makes the distinctions arbitrary and
unnecessary. Philosophy is too broad to be shoe-horned into
compartments, and some of these writings are as philosophical as Zen.
Among the more memorable passages may be a discussion of the
common allegation that childless people who are crazy about their
dogs (or cats) are sublimating their desire for children. Responds
Ann Patchett, author of four novels including The Patron Saint of
Liars, “I imagine there are people out there who got a dog when what
they really wanted was a baby, but I wonder if there aren’t other
people who had a baby when all they really needed was a dog.”

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