A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
BANGALORE–Responding to posters hung by Naxalist Maoist
rebels warning “Leave the forest if you wish to remain safe,”
Wildlife SOS cofounder Kartick Satyanarayan during the second week of
November 2010 led the evacuation of 22 former dancing bears from a
rescue center in Purulia, West Bengal, to the Bannerghatta Rescue
Center on the outskirts of Bangalore in Karnataka state, 1,200 miles
south.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
HAMBURG, Pennsylvania–Showing Animals Respect and Kindness
will try again to find a way to pursue legal action against pigeon
shoots at the Wing Pointe resort in Hamburg, SHARK founder Steve
Hindi told ANIMAL PEOPLE on December 6, 2010, after rescuing 21
wounded pigeons from a “dead” pile following a shoot the day before.
SHARK in November 2010 found three surviving pigeons in the
same heap, “but Berks County district attorney John Adams, who has
received campaign donations from pigeon shooters, has so far killed
any attempt to have cruelty citations filed against pigeon shoots,”
Hindi said.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
“Money is an acceptable substitute for a chicken,”
explains Hasidic rabbi Yonassam Gershon
Washington Post photojournalist Carol Guzy in her October 9,
2010 coverage of Kaporos mentioned that the participants “cover the
blood” of the chickens they kill as a purported sign of respect for
victims. This has occasioned question about what covering the blood
means, and why it is part of the Kaporos ritual.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
BURNSVILLE–The Minnesota Valley Humane Society, founded in
1981, is to close and disband at the end of 2010, board chair Cathy
McCoy announced in a December 2, 2010 news release. The society
claimed 450 volunteers and to have rehomed more than 50,000 animals,
including 1,927 in 2009.
Despite raising more than $1 million in 2008, the Minnesota
Valley Humane Society lost nearly $200,000. In 2009, reported the
Minneapolis Star Tribune, “The society sold its Burnsville building,
which it said was too small,” and agreed to pay $925,000 for a new
location in Eagan, planning to spend $1 million more on renovations.
Instead, rising costs and falling income caused the society
to quit doing animal sterilizations in October 2009, and to close to
the public on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Remaining funds will be “used to settle the organization’s
remaining financial obligations and assist with contingency plans for
employees and transitions for shelter animals,” said McCoy.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
ALBUQUERQUE–New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson scrambled as his
term ended to save his September 2010 initiatives to create
sanctuaries for wild horses and chimpanzees.
Richardson on September 17, 2010 announced a plan to use
$2.9 million in federal economic stimulus money to add the former
Ortiz Mountain Ranch to Cerrillos Hills State Park, 20 miles south
of Santa Fe, turning it into the largest wild horse sanctuary in the
world.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
TOKYO, HOBART–The Jap-anese whaling fleet sailed on
December 2, 2010 to kill whales in Antarctic waters declared off
limits by the International Whaling Commission since 2004. The Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society fleet sailed the same day for a seventh
winter of trying to stop the whalers, and a fourth winter of hosting
the Animal Planet crew that produces the documentary hit series Whale
Wars.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
WASHINGTON D.C.–The American Bird
Conservancy did not come right out and say on
December 1, 2010 that it favors shooting and
lethally trapping feral cats. But ABC did issue
a media release steering reporters to a newly
published University of Nebraska at Lincoln
extension service report that made those
suggestions.
The release quoted ABC vice present for
conservation advocacy Darin Schroeder stating,
“The report validates everything American Bird
Conservancy has been saying about the feral cat
issue for many years.”‘
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
DENPASAR, HANOI–Just seven years after
China banned civet farming because of the
association of civet consumption with more than
800 human deaths from Sudden Acute Respiratory
Syndrome, a vogue for pricy civet coffee has
brought the industry back perhaps bigger than
ever–and certainly in many more places.
Sold to coffee snobs as kopi luwak, the
Indonesian word for it, civet coffee is brewed
from the beans that civets excrete after eating
coffee berries, one of their favorite foods.
Civet coffee is by reputation stronger and
usually more aromatic than most coffees.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
ANIMAL PEOPLE has never circulated a petition, online or
otherwise. Yet one of our frequent functions in recent years is
helping to inform and inspire online petition drives–and,
sometimes, to point out that a petition may do more harm than good.
The popularity of petitions as a protest tactic perhaps began
with the success of English nobility in obliging King John to assent
to the Magna Carta at Runnymede in June 1215. The Declaration of
Independence, addressed by American colonists to King George III,
reinforced the lesson on July 4, 1776. Subsequent petitioners have
often lost sight of the two elements that made these petitions
memorably effective. The first was that in either case the signers
were influential constituents of the king whom they sought to
persuade. The second was that their actions had consequence. When
John Hancock stepped forward to become first to sign the Declaration
of Independence, his action had moral force because he put more than
just his name on the line. This is what inspired others to add their
signatures to his and then tax themselves heavily to back their words
with the effort to introduce a new regime.