Author: Dylan Forest

Alabama animals need help

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

As an avid reader of ANIMAL PEOPLE, I truly appreciate the work that your paper does. That is the reason I feel compelled to write to you now.

Our organization, Friends for Animal Welfare of Randolph County, is in desperate need of assistance. Randolph County is rural, filled with chicken farms, good old boys, and elderly retirees. The two counties bordering us are practically the same. None have ever had any type of animal control, shelter, animal laws, or public sympathy for animals.

Our local dog and cat population in 1998 was over 10,000–– half our human population––but only a third of those animals had been vaccinated against rabies.

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SOMETHING THAT WORKS IN LOS ANGELES

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

It has been my experience
as a director for three major
humane societies and animal control
agencies over the past 35 years
that there are two basic approaches
to animal welfare: you can attempt
to compel compliance through
punitive measures, or you can
encourage compliance by creating
incentive programs.
I have found that incentives
work better than punishment,
although the punishment option
needs to be available because some
pet owners simply will not comply
with the most basic animal care
laws unless they are forced to do so.

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Humane Society of Indianapolis was indifferent, so FACE fixes them

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

IDIANAPOLIS––The Foundation Against Companion Animal Euthanasia (FACE) altered 7,000 dogs and cats at $20 to $30 apiece within a year of opening, and then picked up the pace.

Reaching 10,000 in just three more months, FACE set in motion plans to add more veterinary staff and build a pet adoption center. Founders Scott Robinson, M.D., and wife Ellen––expecting their first child any day but continuing to manage the FACE clinic–– were also investigating possible expansion into Bloomington, and/or adding a mobile clinic to serve rural Indiana.

As a specialist in human internal medicine who works in a Zionsville hospital emergency room, Scott Robinson wasn’t seeking a parallel career in veterinary humane work back in 1993 when he began bringing FACE together. He and Ellen, an animal rights activist since high school, had not yet met. All Robinson set out to do, he says, was encourage Humane Society of Indianapolis executive director Marsha Spring to look into some of the breaking-edge techniques that were and are knocking down the shelter killing toll elsewhere around the U.S.––notably the Animal Foundation high-volume low-cost neutering clinic in Las Vegas.

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LETTERS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

Golf: facing nature with a club

Since I started golfing
about a year ago, I have often wondered
why no one has ever done
anything about preventing injuries to
animals from balls. Some are killed;
lots are maimed. I move ducks and
geese into ponds away from golfers
when I am playing––and I let the
course management know I will take
the injured ones. Some golfers brag
about injuring birds and doing nothing
or killing them—this is something
that should be exploded! And
we don’t know how many foul balls
end up clunking a bunny or squirrel
over the head. Balls are bullets flying
at over 200 miles per hour. It is
very sad to see beautiful animals
walking with a dangling broken leg.

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Editorial: No-kills have no cause to smirk

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

“Too many animal control departments and humane societies which still hold animal
control contracts have a vested interest in doing what they have always done,” ANIMAL PEOPLE editorialized in May 2000. “Going a different and more successful way would
mean accepting some of the blame for causing barrels to fill, day after day, with furry bodies.
Complain though many animal control and humane society people might about the stress of
killing, they still find killing animals easier than doing what is necessary to stop it.”
But proponents of no-kill sheltering had no cause to smirk. Unfortunately, even as
too many conventional sheltering organizations resist change, too many no-kill advocates conduct
themselves and their own operations as cases of arrested development––and in some
instances deserve arrest on criminal charges for warehousing animals in filthy, noisy, overcrowded
kennels, where they enjoy neither a good life nor any prospect of adoption.
Those people may be a minority of the no-kill community, but they are a conspicuous,
ubiquitous, and problematic minority, collectively constituting the strongest case that
opponents of no-kill sheltering such as PETA and the Humane Society of the U.S. can make.

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Endangered great apes seek life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

KAMPALA, Uganda; LISLE ,
Illinois––Can another group seeking to save
wild African primates make a difference?
Already, more nonprofit would-be
saviours are trying to save nonhuman primates
than there are members of some rare
species jeopardized by logging and the bushmeat
trade.
Sketchy Panafrican News Agency
reports about the June 22 debut of Friends of
the Mountain Gorilla Society at the International
Conference Centre in Kampala,
Uganda, hint that it may be among a small
but growing number of African conservation
groups founded and run by Africans of
African descent. At deadline no other information
was available.

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Inspectors are killed––cattle are not

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

WALLULA, Wash.; WILMINGTON,
N.C.; LONDON, U.K.; SAN LEANDRO,
Calif.––Undercover video obtained by
the Humane Farming Association of shackled
and hoisted cattle having their legs hacked off
and being skinned alive at the Iowa Beef
Processors [IBP] slaughterhouse in Wallula,
Washington, showed KING-TV/Seattle and
KRON-TV/San Francisco viewers on May 24
that high-speed production methods may have
made the Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 more
an unenforced suggestion than a rule.
USDA inspector Gary Dahl and
retired USDA inspector Joe Doyle confirmed
on KING-TV camera that the video showed
exactly what it seemed to show.

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Fighting animal control canon in the wild west

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000:

KANAB, Utah; ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico
––A statewide animal care-and-control coalition headed by the
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary of Kanab, Utah, on June 22,
2000 received $1.3 million from Maddie’s Fund, as first
installment of $8 million to be paid over the next five years in
grant assistance toward making Utah the first U.S. state to practice
statewide no-kill animal control.
The Utah coalition qualified for Maddie’s Fund help,
Maddie’s Fund executive director Richard Avanzino told ANIMAL
PEOPLE, by enlisting the participation of 54 animal
control agencies, 18 no-kill organizations, two traditional shelters,
52 private-practice veterinarians, and 70 veterinarians
who were already participating in neutering voucher programs
administered by 14 different organizations.

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NIH “reclaims” 288 chimpanzees from Coulston Foundation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

ALAMOGORDO, N.M.––Bailing the Coulston Foundation out of yet another jam––although Coulston spokesperson Don McKinney denied that the foundation was actually in a jam––the National Institutes of Health on May 11 reclaimed title to 288 of the 650 chimpanzees at the Coulston primate care facility on the grounds of Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

As recently as March 20, In Defense of Animals recommended such a takeover, claiming in a press release that “Coulston is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, with at least $800,000 in unpaid bills and $2.6 million in outstanding loans.”

But IDA president Elliot Katz was not happy with the deal. “Because it does not call for retirement, does not prevent more research, and does not guarantee the removal of the chimps from Coulston’s control, the NIH plan is a shocking betrayal,” charged Katz, whose staff has closely monitored Coulston dealings for years.

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