Courage, compassion required of Bengal coast animal rescuers

January 1, 2001 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

VISAKHAPATNAM, India– Street dogs and staff of the Visakha SPCA remained at risk from mob violence well into January, and the Visakha SPCA Animal Birth Control program remained suspended, after a Christmas Eve invasion of the ABC facilities by goondas who demanded that Visakhapatnam resume electrocuting dogs. A political patronage hiree named Bangaraya was reportedly paid about $1.75 a day to kill street dogs until Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep Kumar Nath won an Andhra Pradesh High Court order stopping the electrocutions in October 1998.

As Nath and Christine Townend of the Jaipur-based animal rescue charity Help In Suffering each documented in photos sent to ANIMAL PEOPLE, Bangaraya and helpers packed dogs brought by the municipal catchers into a steel cage mounted on a trailer. The dogs were left in the tropical sun, without food or water, until the cage was filled. Reaching the cage capacity of about 40 dogs usually took several days. Then Bangaraya hooked the cage to an extension cord, and hosed the dogs down. Dogs who were still not electrocuted after half an hour were dispatched with iron rods. Municipal records indicate that at least 86,400 dogs were electrocuted, speared, or beaten to death by Bangaraya and staff between 1986 and the cessation order.

Kenya update: anti-poaching gains and a shocking dispute

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

NAIROBI, Kenya–ANIMAL PEOPLE in January/February 2000 reported from Kenya about snare removal sweeps by Youth For Conservation in the Kenyan National Parks, anti-poaching projects funded by the British charity Care For The Wild, and the elephant-and-rhino orphanage at Nairobi National Park run by Daphne Sheldrick of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. All three are again in the news.

Youth For Conservation may be driving bushmeat poachers out of the parks, as a recent three-week sweep of the Mara Triangle found just 27 snares, far fewer than previous sweeps. YFC has removed 2,354 snares altogether, founder/director Josphat Ngonyo told ANIMAL PEOPLE.

The sweeps will continue, as bushmeat snaring is on the rise elsewhere in Africa, and it may be only the frequent presence of YFC volunteers along National Park perimeters that is suppressing it in Kenya.

Ngonyo, who started YFC as a Sheldrick Trust staffer, now works fulltime for YFC. The International Fund for Animal Welfare underwrote the YFC budget for 2000, but YFC now must become self-sustaining.

While YFC fights meat poaching, done mostly by Kenyans, Care For The Wild has long helped the Kenya Wildlife Service to fight ivory and rhino horn poachers, who are often associated with Somali private militias.

“Care For The Wild has built a new headquarters for KWS at Ithumba in the north of Tsavo East National Park,” CFW operations director Chris Jordan told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Ithumba is only 250 miles from the Somali border, and the poachers had a free hand during the recent rains and flooding. We built housing for 30 rangers, an armory, a radio room with photovoltaic cells for power, a workshop for vehicle maintenance, and an aircraft hanger. The project is the
largest that we have ever attempted. We built it in just five months, with no outside help.”

Daphne Sheldrick, widow of Tsavo National Park founding warden David Sheldrick, and herself founder of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, meanwhile clashed with longtime supporter William Jordan, DVM, over her occasional use of electric prods to discipline young elephants. Raising orphaned elephants and returning them to the wild for more than 40 years, as the first person to do so successfully, Sheldrick currently has 18 in her care.

Jordan, founder of Care For The Wild, and father of Chris Jordan, has helped Sheldrick with fundraising since the beginnings of both the Sheldrick Trust and CFW. But Jordan is also a director of the Captive Animals Preservation Society, which won a European Union ban on the use of electric prods in zoos, and recently exposed electroshocking at the Blackpool Zoo in England by guest elephant handler Scott Riddle, of Riddle’s Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary in Greenbriar, Arkansas.

Sheldrick in a letter to CAPS described using mild electric shocks to condition baby elephants who “tend to knock people down.” She believes the training reduces the risk that the elephants will be shot for menacing humans after release. Sheldrick said she did not shock angry elephants, which she said would be “a recipe for disaster.” William Jordan remained adamant in opposition to any use of electroshock. Sheldrick Trust spokesperson Diane Westwood said she would urge Sheldrick to stop using it.

Youth For Conservation may be reached c/o P.O. Box 27689, Nairobi, Kenya; phone 254-733-617286 or 254-2-606478; fax 254-2-606479; e-mail <y4c@alphanet.co.ke>.

Care For The Wild operates from 1 Ashfolds, Horsham Rd., Rusper, West Sussex, RH12 4QX, United Kingdom; telephone 44-1293-871-596; 44-1293-871-022.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust may be contacted c/o P.O. Box 15555, Nairobi, Kenya; telephone 254-2-891996; fax
254-2-890053.

New drug dart for deer

January 1, 2001 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

LONDON–Harmlessly tranquilizing or innoculating animals from many times the range of previous syringe guns, the new-design high-speed Ecodart will at last make practicable the administration of contraceptive drugs to deer, says inventor and deer management consultant Richard Price.

Conventional syringe darts land with such penetration force that they cannot be safely fired at a speed of more than 80 yards per second, Price recently told Daily Telegraph science correspondent David Derbyshire. That limits the delivery range to under 30 yards, with no crosswind–closer than deer can usually be approached.

The Ecodart flies at more than 1,500 feet per second. Made from carbon-bonded glass, the nose cone shatters on impact, releasing a gas bag which inflates to the size of a grapefruit, preventing deep penetration while propelling the drug dose into the animal.

Price unveiled the Ecodart two weeks before Humane Society of the U.S. researcher Alan Rutberg and Morris County, New Jersey, cancelled a three-year-old deer contraception study at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum. They had managed to dart only 14 deer in 1997. Just two were later relocated for examination.

A similar study underway at Irondequoit Park in Syracuse darted 65 deer, 1997-1999, but doing the job took researcher
William F. Porter and team 3,000 hours.

Coke quits rodeo; SHARK shows Dodge who builds tough trucks

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

CHICAGO, LAS VEGAS, COLORADO SPRINGS, DETROIT–Things went better with Coke for Steve Hindi and SHARK. Eleven months after Pepsi Cola withdrew from advertising in bullrings, yielding to an 18-month global boycott, Coca-Cola advised Hindi on November 16, 2000 that “While our products may be available at some arenas where
rodeos may take place, we are no longer a corporate sponsor of rodeos or any affiliated organizations, including the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.”

Explained Hindi, “A Coke representative announced the decision after viewing a documentary by the French public television station ARTE. ARTE field producer Uwe Muller and SHARK worked together in October to obtain video footage of three PRCA stock contractors abusing animals and violating even the PCRA’s loose humane regulations. The ARTE documentary was aired to over 33 million viewers in Europe.

“This is a huge development,” Hindi continued. “Coca-Cola is three times larger as a corporation than Pepsi, and rodeo is vastly more popular in the U.S. than bullfighting, but the Coke executives never needed to face a demonstration to recognize after they saw the video that continued support of rodeo would violate their corporate policy against animal abuse. Coke’s withdrawal poses a major public relations blow and financial blow to the rodeo industry.”

Hindi thanked Trillium Asset Management Corporation senior analyst Simon Billiness for facilitating negotiations with Coca-Cola, thanked Vermont veterinarian and former rodeo performer Peggy Larson for expert advice, and thanked ANIMAL PEOPLE for introductions.

Hit rodeo finals

Then Hindi headed back to the Chicago-area garage where he was finishing the first of an envisioned fleet of Tiger video protest trucks, featuring oversized TV screens on all four sides of the box, with digital signboards to tell viewers what they are seeing. The $150,000 prototype hit the road to the National Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas on November 28.

“By driving more hours than was prudent, we made the 1,800 miles in under two days,” Hindi said. “On December 1 the Tiger approached the arena where the rodeo was to be held and lit up the evening with the rotten truth about rodeo. The rodeo stooges were at first shocked, and then started going through the roof, flipping me their I.Q. from all directions. Real people were equally taken, but they suddenly had a whole different impression about the goofs strutting around like John Wayne.”

The Tiger was featured on two TV news stations and in both Las Vegas daily newspapers. “California activist Lucy Shelton had a lot to do with that, exhibiting persistence that went beyond the call” as volunteer publicist, Hindi acknowledged. The Tiger debut tour drove on to El Segundo, California. “Late that afternoon the Tiger screens lit up outside the Mattel buildings, near the Los Angeles International Airport,” Hindi recounted.

“Mattel took offense at inserts of their bullfighting Barbie doll among our bullfighting footage. First they had their security people tail me. Next they called the police, and an officer pulled me over. He said the Mattel people claimed that the truck and I were suspicious, and they feared I was casing the place. I never would have guessed that criminals cased intended targets in big trucks that light up the evening,” Hindi laughed.

“I explained that Mattel knows who I am, what SHARK is, and what the issue is. The officer knew he had been played for a fool. He didn’t like it a bit. He wished me well, and said he would let the other area cops know what was going on.”

Beats ratings fears

An ongoing handicap for the anti-dog-and-cat-eating campaign led by Kyenan Kum of International Aid to Korean Animals has been that mainstream TV in the U.S. and Europe will not show the public how the animals are routinely tortured to death because too many viewers would change the channel.

In mid-December Hindi took Kum into the cab for several evenings of demonstrating how the Tiger can take graphic depictions of abuse directly to the public, bypassing media gatekeepers. They called ANIMAL PEOPLE by cell telephone during a pass by the Los Angeles Korean Consultate, but talking proved impossible because so many pedestrians kept coming up to the open windows of the Tiger to take handouts telling what they could do to pressure the Korean government to halt dog-and-cat-eating.

Hindi then took the Tiger back to Chicago for its 6,500-mile oil change. Along the way he took an impromptu detour to see how it played in Colorado Springs, home of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. “The media jumped at the chance to cover the big truck when it challenged the rodeo animal abusers right where they live,” Hindi said. “And the cowboys? They huddled in their headquarters and hid! Korean government officials did the same thing. “When people see animal abuse, they agree with us that it has to stop. They join us. That’s what this movement needs to succeed.”

By the second week in January the Tiger was on the road again, this time to circle a Daimler-Chrysler auto show in Auburn Hills, Michigan, asking the Dodge truck division to cease spending $6.6 million a year on rodeo advertising. Hindi introduced the Tiger to Detroit media as a “concept vehicle,” and a “revolution in engineering”–which it is, involving applications of TV technology never before attempted.

Hindi and SHARK still have to raise the funds to pay off the prototype, before they build more. But compared to the cost of broadcast time to distribute a much weaker version of the message for just 15 to 30 seconds at a shot, Hindi’s conclusion from the first trials is that the Tiger is a bargain–and it hasn’t even been painted yet. “It’s the most effective tactic I’ve discovered in 11 years of campaigning,” Hindi said, a strong claim from the man who in 1992 stopped pigeon shoots in Illinois after 100 years of failures by others, and has rarely gone for long since without achieving a comparable lasting victory.

BOOKS: Build Me an Ark & Journey of the Pink Dolphin

January 1, 2001 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:
Build Me An Ark
A Life With Animals by Brenda Peterson
WW. Norton (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110-0017), 2000.
256 pages, hardcover. $23.95.

Journey Of The Pink Dolphin
An Amazon Quest by Sy Montgomery
Simon & Schuster (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2000.
320 pages, hardcover. $26.00.

Shelved side-by-side in bookstore nature sections, Build Me An Ark and Journey of the Pink Dolphins are each personal memoirs of a midlife vision quest by a distinguished female naturalist. Each centers upon encounters with dolphins, as a metaphor for the whole human/animal relationship. But Brenda Peterson and Sy Montgomery are not engaged in the same quest. Neither do they draw from their observations the same or even a similar perspective.

Montgomery pursues the highly endangered boto river dolphins deep into the Amazon rainforest. Peterson rarely ventures far from home. Yet Peterson is engaged in the more arduous journey. Her first memories are of a playpen surrounded by deer and elk heads. Her quest began with her gradual realization that the animals she mistook for beneficent guardians were in fact dead victims. Worse, they were killed by her father–and her father, not her “high-strung” and distant mother, was her primary caretaker during her infancy at a National Forest Service ranger post in the High Sierras.

Peterson tried to accept her father’s explanations of the need to kill to eat. But her only memories of her fifth year of
life, in San Diego, concern her repressed misgivings as she helped to kill slugs in the family garden.

Peterson’s family were fundamentalists. Southern Baptist faith held them together as they crisscrossed the U.S., following her father’s career advancement opportunities.But Peterson found no answers in religion. The story of Noah
seemed to speak to her, as she first heard it at a small church in Montana. Then her sister asked their father what the animals on the ark ate, if the lions truly did lie with the lambs.

The lions “probably ate rodents or small rabbits, which were multiplying faster than the ark could hold,” their father guessed. Recalls Peterson, “I was never again as easy in my mind. What were all those animals in the ark actually eating? If some of them were eating each other, then was Noah’s family also eating some of those animals, even though God told Noah to save them?”

In any event, Peterson realized, “There was no ark to be found atop these Rocky Mountains. My peers, children of farmers and ranchers, were at the advanced age of nine presented with guns. Animals were their targets. The hallowed predator/prey relationship my father spoke about with more reverence than any church sermon was
missing in my schoolmates’ relationships to other animals. Montana kids saw animals as just food–or worse, target practice.

“I could not fathom the neighbor girls who raised sheep for their 4-H projects,” Peterson continues. “Lambs like living,
delicate doll babies were loved, adored, even dressed up in silly fake flower hats. Then at the 4-H shows, these seeming members of the family were judged, awarded blue ribbons, given a tearful last embrace, shorn, and slaughtered. I kept my distance from these neighbor girls, knowing their affection and loyalty could never be
trusted.”

Eventually Peterson read the Biblical version of the Noah story, and was shattered by verse 9:20-22, which explains that Noah celebrated safely landing the ark on Mt. Ararat by sacrificing and burning the remains of one of each kind of animal he had saved.

Like millions of other American children, Peterson accepted Smokey the Bear as an icon, but that too proved disillusioning, when she met the sadly institutionalized real Smokey at the National Zoo, while her father headed the Forest Service in Washington D.C. When that ended, the Petersons moved to Berkeley, California. Thousands of youths then were running away to Berkeley. –but Peterson fled in the opposite direction, back to the more conservative ways and green hills of rural Virginia.

Brought back to Berkeley, Peterson became involved in building People’s Park, a symbolic patch of green in a city which was already among the greenest in the world. She successfully pursued her education; failed miserably in
one of the first attempts to organize lower-echelon Forest Service workers; struggled for five years to start a literary career in New York City; and–as her father became perhaps the most destructive sawmill owner in Montana–found her way to environmental reporting.

Many of Peterson’s stories have been heavily covered by ANIMAL PEOPLE, among them the anti-wolf purges repeatedly ordered by the Alaska Board of Game; the Makah whaling revival; and the marine mammal captivity debate, including the ill-fated saga of the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary (detailed by Ric O’Barry in his new book, To Free A Dolphin, reviewed by ANIMAL PEOPLE in December 2000.)

The facts Peterson recounts will be familiar, along with her experience in feral cat rescue. But Build Me An Ark is not just an autobiography, nor is it a political history. Rather, Peterson explores her own ever-growing appreciation of animals, and the evolution of others’ attitudes. Her relationships with her father and mother, improving in recent years, represent in microcosm the difficulties that all animal people have in coexisting with relatives and institutions to whom animals are objects, or have no value whatever.

Of special note is Peterson’s grace in describing painful conflict. She condemns deeds, not people. She feels her own
hypocrisy in easing acquaintance with Alaskan hunters and trappers by saying she eats game meat sometimes. She does not say whether the statement is true or false; either eating animals or lying about it, she appears to admit, would be equally false to her values.

Sy Montgomery, on the other hand, declares herself a vegetarian early in Journey of the Pink Dolphins. Yet a photo
displays “A red-bellied piranha, whom we later ate.” Nor is that her only lapse into meat-eating. Where Peterson savors insight, chiefly gained from animals, Montgomery revels in sensation, of any sort. Tasting an unfamiliar fruit, for instance, Montgomery describes “flesh slippery and bitter, like a mouthful of semen. I swallow the seeds.”

That passage is audacious even for Montgomery. But throughout Pink Dolphins she affects a brazen semblance of “magical realism,” the literary style popularized by Brazlian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is not Montgomery’s natural voice; neither does it lift her explorations above the level of an extended travelogue, even in her concluding apocalyptic revel:

“Out of the water, the dolphin-men emerge. Joyously, each joins his lover, re-enacting the promises by which we know the fullness of the world. The botos swim, the dancers dance. But in the western sky, the Amazon is burning.”

What “promises by which we know the fullness of the world?” Though the phrase may sound deep, there is no meaning in it.In the end, though Montgomery delivers some predictable hand-wringing about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the ongoing exploitation and abuse of forest-dwelling people, and the loss of rare species, all she arrives at–after several thousand miles of exploration–is a chance to swim with a few river dolphins before they disappear.

Peterson by contrast opens by explaining her conscientious decision to give up swimming with captive dolphins, her most treasured rite for many years. Her narrative proceeds in a style so unaffected that it never seems self-conscious.

Even the illustrations of the authors highlight their differences: Montgomery hugs and seemingly almost rides a small
dolphin, grinning toothily into the camera, while Peterson, depicted in a painting, hides her face behind a mass of dark hair to put the focus entirely upon the expression of the beluga whale in the foreground. She is there, her posture suggests, only to hear the whale sing.

Peterson reveals her soul while keeping her personal secrets; and while she makes no such claim for herself, it is evident that she has in her own way fulfilled her mother’s ambition that she should become a Southern lady. For even as Peterson challenges her guests to reappraise their beliefs about animals and nature, with hard-earned strength in her deceptively soft voice, she makes each one comfortable–much as she learned long ago to move quietly through a forest, so as to share more intimate moments with the wildlife.

Peterson concludes with her hope for a kinder and more tolerant future: “The sea lion surfaces far off, with fish spilling from both sides of his be-whiskered snout. I smile as in his wake seagulls skitter, dip, and steal some of his catch. Today there is enough for all of us on this beach, on this spinning, sea-encircled planet.”

Take care of the animals, Peterson seems to say, and their magic will take care of our souls–much as she imagined those ghost deer and elk took care of her, 50 years ago, as her imaginary friends. –M.C.
—

Reviews

Showdown at the not-okay corral

January 1, 2001 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

CHENNAI, India–When lives depend on the health of horses, you keep the horses healthy. Even Wild West desperados who broke all Ten Commandments on a daily basis knew that–because the penalty for failure was to be caught and hung.

Civilization thrived in Pune and Madras, now called Chennai, for at least 5,000 years before the U.S. west was tamed.
Yet Haffkine Bio-Pharma Limited of Pune and the King Insti-tute of Preventive Medicine, in the Chennai suburb of Guindy, apparently never learned what illiterate gunslingers knew about horse care.

The two labs are now Exhibits A and B for more stringent regulation of lab animal use in India, as demanded by federal
minster for social justice and empowerment Maneka Gandhi, in a head-on clash with Tamil Nadu health minister L.K. Tripathy and Indian Medical Association state chapter president P.K. Kesavan.

Tapping the wells of kindness in China and southern Asia

January 1, 2001 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

HONG KONG; PAN YU, Guangzhou, China; SEOUL, South Korea; KARACHI, Pakistan–Two burly Asiatic moon bears at a time lick strawberry jam from the hands of Jill Robinson, 42, at the prototype Animals Asia Foundation sanctuary in Pan Yu, China. Four more bright-eyed bears watch, as eager for their treat as any dog, yet with patience too. Another bear, the oldest, is blind. He follows with his nose each handful of jam, each apple, each grape, and each blueberry that Robinson dispenses. Only scars in the bears’ abdomens reveal their past.

Robinson met these bears in 1993 at a so-called “bile farm” behind a decrepit hospital in Hui Zhou, almost immobilized in small cages. There were 13 bears then. Metal shunts resembling those driven into trees to extract maple syrup were implanted in each bear’s belly, to collect bile. The bile, with medicinal qualities akin to corticosteroids, was used to make a variety of traditional drugs.

“It was absolutely devastating, almost unbelievable that sentient creatures were kept in such a way,” Robinson told
Australian reporter Lyn White. “The bears had scars along the length of their bodies from the pressure of the bars on the cages. They had ulcerated paws, ingrown claws, wounds from banging their heads against the bars, and gaping implant sites–inflamed and infected.”

The bears were crazed to the point of being deadly dangerous, and their keeper teated them brutally, to maintain dominance. Robinson became inflamed and infected with determination to get them out of there. But China at the time had 10,000 bears in similar cages with catheters poked into their stomachs, with plans to quadruple production by 2000.

How to keep mange out of shelters

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

Accompanying ANIMAL PEOPLE on shelter visits in the Chennai area was Ved Joshi, DVM, from far distant Himachal Pradesh, who rode the train for two days in each direction to discuss opportunities to take an advanced course of study in wildlife medicine in the U.S. this fall. Joshi would then return to India to teach others.

Joshi turned out to be a most valuable escort, because he knew an inexpensive way to keep mange out of animal shelters. “The insecticide Malathion can be safely used for mange control when recommended doses are employed on the animal and premises,” Joshi explained at each stop. “The product we use is Cythion, which contains 50% Malathion as its active component. The recommended dilution ratio for a dog-dipping solution or cleaning cages and floors is one part of Malathion to 1,000 parts of water, i.e., one millilitre of Malathion to each one litre of water. The
dog’s entire body is dipped in the solution until the hair and skin are wet, and the dog’s head is treated by sponging the solution over the head and face. Infections by sarcoptic and psoroptic mange mites will be cured with a single dip. Two or three dips, seven to ten days apart, should be sufficient for treatment of demodectic mange; however, while demodectic mange is not contagious, it is very hard to completely cure, and it can recur later. Collars, leashes, and bedding materials should also be dipped in the solution, to eliminate all possible sources of infection. Each newly arrived dog should be dipped before admission to the kennels to prevent reinfection outside.

“This dip will control other ecto-parasites, such as ticks and lice,” Joshi advises, “and can also be used with cattle,
buffalo, sheep, and goats.” If any animal accidentally ingests enough dip to become ill, a relatively rare occurrence, Joshi recommends administering atropine sulphate at a ratio of from 0.2 to 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. “A fourth of the dose should be given intravenously and the rest by the intramuscular route,” Joshi advises.

A shelter in India can be kept mange-free with Malathion dips and cage-and-floor-washing for as little as 50 rupees (under $1.00 U.S.) per week.

LETTERS [January-February 2001]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

Letters
Calgary

As of December 6, 2000, I am officially retired, after 25 years as director of Calgary Animal Services. We moved into our new Animal Services facility at the end of September, as you reported in October 2000, and all is well. The Calgary Humane Society had housed cats for Calgary Animal Services for the past decade, but Animal Services took back that job on January 1, 2001.

I am now chair of the newly formed Calgary Zero E Foundation. Our goal is to end the killing of adoptable cats and dogs in Calgary. We have joined with caring corporate citizens in the hope that we can carry out subsidized pet sterilization for needy Calgarians, primarily focusing on cats. It appears that we will have sufficient funding in place to alter at least 1,000 cats in 2001. If this reduces Calgary shelter killing by 2,000 cats during the year, our per capita rate of animal control killing will be nearly the best in North America.
–Jerry Aschenbrenner
Calgary, Alberta
New Zealand

Thank you kindly for forwarding us Animal People. We are an SPCA located in Thames, a small town of about 6,000 people on the Coromandel peninsula in New Zealand. You have opened our eyes to what is happening in other parts of the world regarding animal welfare, and by that widened our viewpoint on our progress here: your efforts do
make a difference.

–Perry Dovell
Thames SPCA
P.O. Box 306
Thames, NZ
Phone: 647-868-6830
Fax: 647-868-6668
<pj_farm@hotmail.com>
Disguise

I have a small costume shop. Recently I was called to do subcontract costume work for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. My first instinct was to say no, but the call came the same week that my cat Natasha died, and I
wanted to do something in her memory. I took the job, convinced myself that I was doing it on behalf of the elephants, charged the salary that the elephants should receive, and donated over 20% of the gross to PETA’s anti-Ringling campaign and to ANIMAL PEOPLE.

I know many others also run small businesses, are in a position where finances are tight, and do not have the luxury of always being able to choose “clean” clients. My approach may be a way for others to cope with this dilemma: accept the job only on behalf of an appropriate cause, and donate funds to an organization which actively fights your temporary employer. The job will be taken by someone anyway, so why not use the money to work against what the ethically problematic client does?

–Janet Bloor
New York, N.Y.
Dog-eating

Like all animal lovers, I am appalled at the Korean practice of eating the meat of dogs who die a cruel and tormented death. However, we should recognize that to many Asians, eating dog meat is no different that eating horsemeat is
to the French, or eating beef and pork is to North Americans. Traditionally the Japanese bred Chows and Akitas for food, as well as for work.

Sending letters to Korean officials and holding rallies against eating dog meat is unlikely to effect any meaningful change, I feel, since it does not address the reason why Korean men eat the meat of tortured dogs. In Korea, and maybe other nations too, many men believe that eating the meat of dogs who die a cruel and lingering death will enhance their sexual prowess and pleasure. The more the dog suffers, the more adrenalin will be in the tissue, and the greater the benefit to the men. The men who eat dog meat will not give it up because we find it barbaric: to them, their own pleasure comes first.

I don’t know what can be done to change their perspective. Perhaps educating children and young adults against dog-eating and cruelty is the way to go. Usually it is difficult, if not impossible, to change the views of the middle-aged and elderly, but children’s minds are open. Korean women do not favor dog-eating, in general, but Korea is very much male-dominated, and women have little influence. With the arrival of western influence in clothing, movies, music, etc., things are slowly changing, especially in the cities, so perhaps Korean women could help promote the idea that eating meat from dogs dying in agony is not sexy and does not improve male performance.

–Patricia Salt
Berea, Kentucky
High salaries

I very much appreciate that you publish the salaries that animal protection groups pay to their directors and officiers. It has certainly helped me to make smart-er choices in making my donations.

–Elektra Perkins
Fairfax, California

Animal Control Officer award

The Western Australia Rangers Association is proud to announce the New Millennium International Animal Control Officer Award. We know there are many people in the world working hard for the care and control of animals, and we
would like to honor someone special. The award will be presented as part of our first international conference, to be held on September 27-28 in Mandurah, Western Australia. Nominations are due by April 30. Further details are posted on the Information Page at <www.warangers.asn.au>.

The Western Australia Rangers Association is among the founding members of Compassion-ate Animal Control International, whose web site also just debuted, at <www.petfinder.org/caci>. Through CACI we and the other participating organizations of animal care and control workers hope to strengthen our international ties and share our know-how worldwide.

–Steve Elvidge
Vice President
Western Australia
Rangers Assn.
P.O. Box 334
North Beach 6920
Western Australia
Phone: 08-9448-7565
Fax: 08-9203-7565
<SteveE@subiaco.wa.gov.au>
Update on three caracal kittens
Your December edition has arrived and we have already had response to our guest column, “Apartheid and three caracal kittens,” about our battle to save some of the Kalahari predators from extinction. Action Volunteers for Animals
in Chicago sent a supportive letter with 200 signatures. That we get such support from people on the other side of the world is greatly encouraging.

As we wrote, the North-ern Cape Province Conservation Department laid criminal charges against me for transporting the caracals without a permit, and used this charge to confiscate them. We went straight to the High Court and the department was compelled to return the caracals to us at their own considerable expense. The bullying bureaucrats now find themselves in an impossible situation–and I am not in a forgiving frame of mind. If they withdraw charges, they virtually abandon any defense to my action for damages for malicious prosecution. Any attempt, on the other hand, to press the charges will oblige them to explain in public:

1) Why they protected from prosecution a hunter who tortured to death over an eight-hour period a tame white rhino cow, firing 16 or more shots into her during that time, yet they go to extraordinary lengths to prosecute a man who is
lovingly caring for three helpless orphaned caracals. The answer will then emerge that we publicised their failure to prosecute the rhino killer, and then did their job for them by taking statements from witnesses, handing the evidence over to the National SPCA and getting charges laid against the hunter for cruelty. (The rhino cow’s mate was shot by the Russian prime minister when he last visited South Africa.)

2) Why a racist and hopelessly unconstitutional law such as the Problem Animals Control Ordinance of 1957 is still being enforced when the Conservation Department knows it is obsolete.

–Chris Mercer
Kalahari Raptor Center
P.O. Box 1386
Kathu, Northern Cape
ZA 8446, South Africa
<krc@spg.co.za>

Fiona Macleod of the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian reported on January 5, 2001 that the Northern Cape Province Conservation Department recently broke from precedent to release 30 wild baboons who had been caught for sale to
laboratories but were confiscated in July 1999 from the premises of trapper Eric Venter, of Vaalwater, who had allegedly neglected them.

Baboons, like caracals, vervets, jackals, and bushpigs, are classified as vermin under the Problem Animals Control Ordinance. Northern Cape Prov-ince Conservation director Greg Knill told Macleod that his staff is rewriting the law to
require that specific problem animals must be identified and targeted by any control action, and that nonlethal relocation shall be the preferred response.
Grizzly bear

Our campaign to suspend grizzly bear hunting in British Columbia pending protection of adequate habitat and completion of population studies is almost at critical mass. In recent months:

* Acknowledging that the hunt threatens tourism, the B.C. tourism minister in August 2000 asked that the hunt be suspended. He is now the new B.C. environment minister, but has yet to act.

* The Canadian government has issued recommendations to B.C. regarding our effort to invoke the Convention on Inter-national Trade in Endangered Species to prevent foreign hunters from taking grizzly trophies out of Canada. The B.C. government is considering its response.

* The B.C.-based Raincoast Conservation Society is running a billboard and radio advertising campaign, in expectation of a spring election.

To maximize the chance that the B.C. government will curtail grizzly hunting somewhow before the election, we must show that such action would be popular. Therefore <www.WildCanada.net> has set up a free link to the Premier of B.C.: <www.wildcanada.net/action_centres/stgh/stgh.asp>.

–Martin Powell
Bear Campaigner
Environmental Investigation Agency
69-85 Old Street
London EC1V 9HX
United Kingdom
Phone: 44-20-7490-7040
Fax: 44)-20-7490-0436
<eiauk@pop.gn.apc.org>
<www.eia-international.org>
Rabies in Guatemala

Hi! We are the Guatemalan SPCA. We are writing because we need your help in maintaining our 50-year-old shelter. Our economic resources are very bad, because we don’t have the support of anyone. Not long ago we tried to communicate to the World Society for the Protection of Animals but they didn’t answer.

–Michelle Martinez
Ave. Elena C 14-65
Zone 1, Guatemala City
Guatemala
Phone: 502-230-2118
<agpa@intelnet.net.gt>

A rabies outbreak in October and November 2000 that killed four people in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, caused Guate-malan health minister Mario Bolanos to order a poisoning campaign against street dogs. After humane societies
pointed out that vaccinating at least 70% of a vulnerable population against rabies consistently halts outbreaks, while trying to kill the potential hosts does not, Guatemalan health ministry press officer Lucia Dubon announced in mid-December that the government suppy of strychnine was exhausted, and that instead, “The ministry will provide animal protection organizations with syringes and rabies vaccine, so that vaccination coverage will be increased, and will not kill the dogs.” ANIMAL PEOPLE has asked Martinez to keep us informed of the progress of the campaign.

Dog-shooting
Your November 2000 article “Dog-shooting passé in S.A.” cited the Cape Town Star in describing “the outrage of residents of Sutherland, Northern Cape, at discovering more than 100 dead unlicensed stray dogs in a pit at
the municipal dump,” and stating that “The dogs were apparently shot with captive bolt guns by the staff of the Worcester SPCA, upon request of Sutherland municipality.” The dogs were not killed by SPCA staff.

The SPCA Worcester was only present to ensure that the killing was done properly. The SPCA presence was requested by the municipality. The killing was carried out by a person authorised by the South African Veterinary Council–who was also charged with ensuring that the dead animals were buried properly. No dead animals were left
in a pit, as was alleged, but all were buried in a communal grave.

–Christine Kuch
SPCA of South Africa
P.O. Box 1320
Alberton 1450
Gauteng, South Africa
Phone: 27-11-907-3590
Fax: 27-11-907-4013
<spca@global.co.za>

Depo-provera
I am a veterinarian practicing in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka we faced the same problem of public officials wanting to kill dogs because of the money to be made by doing it. Fortunately the regional director of health gave us permission to give contraceptive injections of depo-provera to dogs, together with antirabies vaccination. This is very economical as one depo-provera vial costing about $l.00 can be used to prevent three female dogs from having litters. A 50 milligram intramuscular injection is enough.

My mother and I donated the injections used in our own city last March. Now Colombo Municipality (our national capital) is using the contraceptive injections too.

Using an injectible contraceptive has lots of advantages. For instance, it can be given with vaccination; it reduces the cost of anti-rabies vaccinations for future generations of dogs, since there will be fewer of them; and it is cheap. After-care is unnecessary. The only disadvantage is that depo-provera is effective for only six to eight months per injection, requiring that dogs much be caught and re-injected at regular intervals.

–Kala Santha, DVM
615 B Nawala Road
Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka
<santhak@sltnet.lk>
Rabies in Skopje

On December 7 a woman here in Skopje was bitten by a feral cat. The cat injured five other people prior to death. The cat was found to have had so-called “silent rabies.” This was the first officially recognized rabies case in Skopje in more than 30 years, so huge panic and hysteria followed. Making matters worse, the medical clinics did not have either pre-exposure or post-exposure innoculations in adequate supply.

The local government and the state veterinary institute formed a so-called Crisis council to deal with the outbreak. They decided to exterminate all homeless dogs and cats in Skopje by hiring professional hunters. More than 200 dogs were shot dead on the streets and taken somewhere. But, two weeks later, the Crisis Council still had not found a proper way to dispose of the corpses.

Meanwhile, many citizens also killed animals. Local animal protection organizations pleaded for a massive vaccination campaign instead, but it became obvious that the city officials just wanted to cleanse the city of homeless animals.

I am frustrated and helpless. So are many other people who love animals. The only thing I can do is vaccinate my pets and hope and pray that all this agony will end, and that a proper and effective way of dealing with this problem will be found.

–Marija Kostovska
Skopje, Macedonia
<mkostovska@yahoo.co.uk>
Corrections, clarifications

Summer

Your December edition obituary for Summer, the pygmy sperm whale who stranded in June and died on November 21 in Key West, Florida, contained five inaccuracies: we do not know what her age was, as every report gave a different guess; other stranded juvenile pygmy sperm whales have survived over 100 days, though none survived longer than 153 days; she suffocated rather than drowned; she was not found near the remains of her mother (there was never a sighting of her mother or any other whales); and to say that her mother suffocated from ingesting plastic is to state a near impossiblity. Another whale was found a few weeks after her, but of a different species and 70 miles away. Where did you get your information?

–Becky Arnold
Wildlife Rescue of the Florida Keys
P.O. Box 5449
Key West, FL 33045
<BeckyArn@aol.com>

The points that Arnold disputes were all mentioned in the November 1 Associated Press report, “Pygmy Sperm Whale, Survivor of Florida Keys Stranding, Dies.” Our obituary summarized that item. Rick Trout of the Marine Mammal Conservancy alleged in a January 16, 2001 complaint to the Florida members of Congress that mishandling by rescuers contributed to the May 2000 death of a female pygmy sperm whale at Fiesta Key, not long before Summer was found.
Trout & dolphins

Thank you for the kind words in your December review of my books To Free A Dolphin and Behind The Dolphin Smile. But you made a mistake in the next-to-last paragraph: Rick Trout no longer has any of the Sugarloaf dolphins. Molly
and Buck went to the Dolphin Research Center. Luther and Jake went back to the Navy. Trout filed a lawsuit seeking to get Molly from DRC, but lost. This is all in the book.

–Ric O’Barry
The Dolphin Project
P.O. Box 224
Coconut Grove, FL 33233
<RicOBarry@cs.com>
<www.dolphinproject.org>

Owens note

“Who gets the money?” compensation note #13 in the December edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE stated that, “Since 1998 Mark and Delia Owens [of the Owens Foundation] have done surveying for the proposed reintroduction of grizzly bears to the Bitterroot region of Idaho.” Owens Foundation executive director Mary Dykes confirms that Mark and Delia Owens are surveying grizzly bear habitat in the Selkirk range, which is the northern end of the Bitterroots and is part of
the proposed reintroduction area, but adds, “We are not associated with the reintroduction project. We do not have the resources to enter that arena, and do not want to be painted as being fully briefed on the Selway-Bitterroot issue.”

Letters

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