Author: Archivist

Marineland of Canada sues Niagara Action for Animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

St. Catherines, Ontario– Niagara Action for Animals has
appealed for financial help in defending against a lawsuit brought
against it by Marineland of Canada.
Opened in 1961, Marineland of Canada was the first
oceanarium residence of Keiko, the orca star of the Free Willy!
films. Captured off Iceland in 1979, Keiko lived at Marineland of
Canada for approximately two years before he was sold to El Reino
Aventura in Mexico City, where the first of the Free Willy! films
was made in 1993. Keiko died in a Norwegian fjord in December 2003
after an only partially successful return to the wild.
The Niagara Action for Animals web site and published
references to the group indicate that it is chiefly involved in
sterilizing dogs and cats.
Niagara Action for Animals has been involved in protests
against Marineland of Canada for approximately 10 years, coordinator
Daniel K. Wilson said, but the ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate that it
neither started the protests nor was particularly prominent in
leading them until 2001.

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Arizona, New Jersey, and Alaska governors & wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

TUCSON, TRENTON, FAIRBANKS–Arizona Governor Jane
Napo-litano asked the Arizona Game & Fish Department to stop hunting
four pumas in Sabino Canyon, near Tucson, even after the department
agreed to live-trap instead of kill them, refused to authorize use
of a National Guard helicopter to help in the hunt, and told media
that she might ask the legislature to authorize her to hire and fire
the Game & Fish Department head, to make the agency more
accountable. Currently the head answers only to the five-member Game
& Fish Commission. Naming one member per year, newly elected
Arizona governors are in the last year of their first term before
they have named the majority.
Two weeks after closing Sabino Canyon on March 9, 2004
because the pumas purportedly posed a threat to hikers, the Game &
Fish Department had yet to bag a puma, but nabbed convicted Animal
Liberation Front arsonist Rod Coronado and Esquire writer John H.
Richardson for allegedly trespassing in the canyon while the hunt was
underway.
New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey, via environmental
commissioner Bradley M. Campbell, meanwhile asked the New Jersey
Fish & Game Council to refrain from authorizing another bear hunt,
after 328 bears were killed in the first New Jersey bear hunt since
1970. Wildlife officials had estimated that there were 3,200 bears
in New Jersey. Further study found that there are fewer than 1,500.

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Humane education materials from South Africa

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Animals In Religion: Our relationship with animals in a Multi-Faith Society
Shopping with CARE: A Classroom Guide to Ethical Consumerism
New Words for a New World * We Care About Cats * We Care About Dogs
Goosie’s Story * Heroes & Lionhearts — all from The Humane
Education Trust:
P.O. Box 825, Somerset West, 7129, South Africa;
27-21-852-8160; <avoice@yebo.co.za>; <www.animal-voice.org>.

Long before South African education minister Kader Asmal
endorsed the addition of humane education to the national curriculum,
beginning this year, Louise Van Der Merwe formed the Humane
Education Trust and began developing materials in hope of such an
eventuality.
The South African introduction of humane education is much too young
yet to begin to assess outcomes, or even which materials will gain
the most classroom favor. The All-Africa Humane Education Summit
hosted by Van Der Merwe in Cape Town in September 2003 was only the
beginning of the in-service training that will be necessary to
inspire and enable South African teachers to fulfill the new mandate.

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EU adopts transport limit

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

BRUSSELS–The European Parliament on March 30, 2004 endorsed
a nine-hour limit on how long animals may be trucked en route to
slaughter.
“It is now up to the Agriculture Council,” now headed by
Ireland, “to finalize the regulation,” said the Eurogroup for
Animal Welfare in a prepared statement.
The nine-hour recommendation was introduced in July 2003 with
the backing of Eurogroup, a consortium representing numerous leading
animal welfare organizations.
“Compassion in World Farming welcomes today’s vote,”
commented CIWF president Joyce D’Silva. “However CIWF still has
grave concerns about the exclusion of animals destined for further
fattening from this limit and the lack of provision for these animals
to rest off the vehicle.”
The nine-hour limit was approved three weeks after the
European Parliament on March 9 voted 287-194 to include animal
welfare considerations in proposed improvements to the European Union
food safety standards.

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BOOKS: The Ivory Markets of East Asia

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

The Ivory Markets of East Asia by Esmond Martin & Daniel Stiles
Save the Elephants (POB 54667, Nairobi, Kenya), 2003. 112 pages,
paperback.

A week-long meeting of the 50th Standing Committee for the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species concluded on
March 19, 2004 in Geneva, Switzerland, without authorizing South
Africa, Namibia and Botswana to sell 60 tons of stockpiled elephant
ivory.
CITES in November 2002 approved the sales in principle, but
required that the ivory not actually go to the auction block before
May 2004, and not then unless a control system called Monitoring the
Illegal Killing of Elephants could be shown to be working properly.
The goal of MIKE is to prevent elephant poaching by identifying and
intercepting sales of ivory other than from the authorized stocks.
Uganda, Ethiopia, Mali, Cameroon, Tunisia and Ghana joined
Kenya in successfully resisting pressure from South Africa, Namibia,
and Botswana to allow the sales. Among the many Kenyans who had a
distinguished part in the successful outcome for elephants were
Esmond Martin and Daniel Stiles. Martin has been investigating
illegal wildlife trafficking in Kenya and Tanzania for nearly 40
years. The Ivory Markets of East Asia is at least his fifth book
about the rhino horn and elephant ivory traffic. Stiles’ relevant
experience spans more than 30 years.

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L.A. city animal control chief Greenwalt retires

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

LOS ANGELES–Mayor James K. Hahn on March 2 announced that
Los Angeles Animal Services general manager Jerry Greenwalt, 63, a
33-year city employee, is to retire on April 12.
Greenwalt had headed L.A. Animal Services since October 2001.
During his tenure, coinciding with the tenure of Los Angeles County
Animal Services chief Marcia Mayeda, Los Angeles city and county
dropped their rate of shelter dog and cat killing to just 8.7 per
1,000 residents, by far the lowest since L.A. records have been kept
and about 40% better than the California and U.S. norms.
Since June 2003, however, wrote Los Angeles Times staff
writer Jessica Garrison, the Animal Defense League “waged a
relentless, bitter campaign against Greenwalt that included
demonstrations at his home, City Hall, local animal shelters, and
Hahn’s home.”
Greenwalt previously was interim director of the Los Angeles Zoo.
SPCA/LA president Madeleine Bernstein was named to head a
committee to seek Greenwalt’s successor.

Animal Fighting, 1997-2003

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Dogfighting
Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Headline busts 11 24 54 66 75 48 48
Related drugs/homicide 3 9 13 12 16 12 5
People involved 76 136 237 297 282 306 426
Dogs seized 95 365 791 896 869 428 549
Felony convictions 1 2 7 25 18 14 35

Cockfighting
Year 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Headline busts 10 15 18 19 35 32 32
Related drugs/homicide 0 6 6 3 5 6 5
People involved 350 498 389 874 1508 497 458
Birds seized 725 763 1023 876 7995 3390 4113
Felony convictions 0 0 3 9 0 1 8

Data collected by ANIMAL PEOPLE on dogfighting and
cockfighting arrests during the past seven years offers hope that the
boom in animal fighting of the past two decades may have crested–but
only just barely, and only in response to increasingly effective law
enforcement. The trends indicate a leveling off at somewhat less
than the peak volume of activity, yet still a very high volume
compared to the pre-peak years.

REVIEWS: A World of Butterflies

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

A World of Butterflies
by Brian Cassie, with photos by Kjell Sandved
and extended preface by Robert Michael Pyle
Bulfinch Press (c/o Times Warner Book Group,
1275 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2004.
420 pages, hardcover. $22.50.

A World of Butterflies is an odd hybrid of field guide and
coffee table book, pocket-sized and consisting chiefly of
illustrations, but having the feel of being something to be paged
through indoors, not a quick reference to be packed along on hikes.
It comes with a dust-jacket, sure to be shredded on any field
expedition, and locating any particular butterfly seen on the wing
without already knowing the name of it will be slow going, since the
specimens are not grouped in any manner lending itself to quick
reference.
The girdled silk moth and the giant silk moth appear next to
each other, for example, with some superficial logic, but since
they live on different continents and look nothing alike, there is
little risk of them being confused in observation. What they have
most in common is frequently meeting their demise in boiling water,
the most common method of separating their silken cocoons from the
insect larvae within. Waiting until the larvae have hatched and left
is perfectly possible, but few producers exercise that much
patience, because few buyers insist that they must.

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Human obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Shelby Dow, 56, died on December 24, 2003 in Teaneck, New
Jersey, of a coronary occlusion. Starting as a sheriff’s deputy in
Salt Lake County, Utah, Dow transferred to animal control and in
1978 became animal control director. “Shelby and I worked together
when the National Animal Control Association was getting organized,
and collaborated on a 1981 research study of why people relinquish
animals to shelters,” recalled longtime friend Phil Arkow. After a
stint as vice president of NACA, Dow spent two years with the
American Humane Association. “In 1985, he was recruited as vice
president of the American SPCA in New York City,” the Salt Lake
City Deseret News recalled. “There he oversaw operations in all five
boroughs.” Dow eventually left employment in animal welfare, but his
“commitment to animals continued until his death,” the Deseret News
continued. “He was a consultant to Psychologists for the Ethical
Treat-ment of Animals, and had just organized Animal PAC,” to
promote pro-animal condidates. “His family will continue Animal PAC
in his memory,” the Deseret News said.

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