CAMPAIGNS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

The Schad Foundation and IFAW
on May 12 announced that they will donate
$200,000 for nonlethal bear control in northern
Ontario. Community bear control was formerly
done by 18 volunteer trappers associated
with North Bay Fur Harvesters Auction
I n c., who withdrew their services in April
after Ontario banned spring bear hunting.
Humane Society of Canada executive
director Michael O’Sullivan said on May
24 that HSC “is prepared to devote $1 million
to assist with the funding, expertise, and
delivery needed to incorporate” a dogbite prevention
curriculum “into mainstream public
education initiatives and school curricula in
every community across Canada,” providing
HSC is allowed to direct the campaign.
O’Sullivan also said he would ask each
province to match the HSC commitment.

Read more

Making bucks out of bison

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

MILWAUKEE, WASHINGTON
D.C.––Former bison rancher and promoter
James O’Hearn, 60, drew a six-year
sentence on May 11 for fraud, illegally acting
as a stockbroker, forging client signatures,
and converting assets to personal use.
Claiming investments in bison
meat, hides, manure, and embryo transplants
would bring riches, O’Hearn allegedly
bilked 40 people of about $2.5 million.
“If I had the option of imposing a
longer sentence, I would,” said U.S. District
Judge Charles N. Clevert, likening O’Hearn
to bank robbers and drug dealers.
The USDA meanwhile outlined a
safer way to make money from bison.
Reported Associated Press, “Bison
ranching is growing so fast that there is no
longer a market for all the meat, processors
say. As a result, the USDA will buy $6 million
in surplus ground bison this year, one
quarter of the industry’s ground meat production.
The biggest beneficiary of the purchases
likely would be billionaire Ted Turner,
the industry’s largest producer and most
prominent proponent.”
Turner owns about 17,000 of the
estimated 250,000 bison in the U.S.

Shooting dogs as if it’s going out of style

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

PETERSON, N.J.; MEBANE,
N . C .––Firing three shots into a pit bull/
Labrador mix named Disciple, as the dog
mauled Terrance Tate, 4, police officer
Edwin Rodrieguez on June 9 accidentally hit
Tarik Beach, 12, in the left leg with a richochetting
bullet fragment.
Tate’s mother, Christchelle Tate,
indicated to the Hackensack Record that
Beach was the real hero, was already restraining
Disciple before Rodrieguez fired, and that
the gunplay menaced both boys more than the
dog did. Disciple survived all three shots, but
was euthanized later by a veterinarian.
Almost simultaneously, in Mebane,
North Carolina, police sergeant Terance
Caldwell, 33, fired three shots at an alleged
pack of stray dogs. One shot hit Little League
outfielder Nathaniel Tilley, 11, in the calf.
Tilley, not seriously injured, was standing at
the Mebane Arts and Community Center baseball
diamond drinking fountain, a quarter of a
mile away.

Read more

LETTERS [July/Aug 1999]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Down Under
Thank you for your coverage
of the often cruel treatment of
wild introduced animals and native
animals in Australia and New
Zealand (“Chocolate bunnies threaten
down-under biosecurity”, ANIMAL
PEOPLE, May 1999). The
RCD saga is continuing. Those
such as myself who continue to
campaign to have RCD de-registered
as a biocontrol agent of rabbits
in Australia are extremely greatful
to publications such as ANIMAL
PEOPLE for alerting the rest
of the world to the shameful and
cruel behaviour of Australian
authorities in allowing RCD to be
legalised as a biological control
agent of the wild introduced rabbit
in Australia. As for New Zealand, it
is amazing that RCD live virus was
apparently approved by authorities
for sale by the bottle.

Read more

Editorial: Cruelty cannot be stopped by one-party politics

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Our July/August 1999 cover feature on the Korean failure to enforce often promised
bans on torturing dogs and cats to death as human food notes that the “victory” the humane
community thought was long ago won in Korea was unusual among global issues––because it
did not come through linking the abolition of cruelty to protecting an endangered species.
The only similar example coming quickly to mind was the 1991 European
Community passage of a ban on imports of leghold-trapped fur. To have taken effect on
January 1, 1995, the ban was repeatedly delayed and finally killed on the pretext that it would
hurt Native Americans––who have never in the 20th century accounted for more than 5% of
the total North American trapped fur volume. Yet as early as 1985 the Native American argument
caused Greenpeace to scrap opposition to trapping, sealing, and indigenous whaling,
showing the wildlife use industries how to hide behind so-called “endangered cultures.”

Read more

Loving the monkeys, too

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

BASTROP, Texas––Perhaps it
was just coincidence that just as the 1999
Primate Freedom Tour got the only seriously
bad press of its first three weeks on the road,
the Disney Network began broadcasting frequent
“Vault Disney” intermission clips of
Annette Funicello singing “I love the monkey’s
uncle,” backed by The Beachboys.
Then again, from Dumbo (1941)
and Bambi (1942) on, Walt Disney Studios
has given humane causes many a big surprise
boost in the guise of innocent entertainment.
Whatever the case, the Primate
Freedom Tour had by the end of the July 4
weekend brought the cause of nonhuman primates
in laboratories more media attention
than any other event or series of events since
the 1985 passage of Animal Welfare Act
amendments requiring labs to provide for the
psychological well-being of nonhuman primates
and dogs.

Read more

The most misleading mailing ever?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

MUDUMALAI, Tamil Nadu;
NEW DELHI––”The Story of Loki,” the
Performing Animal Welfare Society and India
Project for Animals and Nature boldly headlined
in a joint special report mailed in May
with an appeal to donors, is “the worst case of
animal abuse ever documented.”
And, PAWS and IPAN intimated,
the plight of the elephant Loki was largely the
fault of Maneka Gandhi, the Indian minister of
state for social welfare and empowerment since
April 1998, but best known as founder of
People For Animals, India’s most prominent
animal rights group.
According to the PAWS/IPAN mailing,
Maneka “published a report about Loki
which is full of incorrect information,” allegedly
covering up the purported “worst case of animal
abuse ever documented,” thwarting IPAN
founder Deanna Krantz and PAWS representative
Ed Stewart in their efforts to obtain custody
of both Loki and an orphaned elephant calf.

Read more

EC warns France re hunting

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1998:

BRUSSELS––The European Commission on June 24 asked
the European Court to fine France more than $100,000 per day for
exempting itself from a 1979 EC directive which limits hunting seasons
to protect migratory birds.
The coalition-led French parliament on June 19 defied
French environment minister and Green Party leader Dominique
Voynet by voting 92-20 to extend the current five-month bird shooting
season––already the longest in Europe––to seven months. Of the 577-
member parliament, 465 did not vote, but no quorum was needed.

Read more

Where men are mean and dogs are scared

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

SEOUL, Republic of Korea––Yet another of the
reputed international victories of the animal protection movement
during the 1980s has collapsed––and this one, the abolition
of dog-and-cat-eating in the Republic of Korea, was for
many activists the most important of all.
It was supposedly achieved in 1978, 1980, 1984,
1986, 1988, and in 1991, according to statements by Korean
officials and premature declarations of victory issued by the
International Fund for Animal Welfare, the World Society for
the Protection of Animals, and many other organizations which
joined in a threat to embarrass the Korean government with
protests against dog-and-cat-eating during the 1988 Olympic
Games, held in Seoul.
Sunnan Kum, 54, informally founded the first
Korean humane society, Koreans for Animal Protection, in
1981. The international groups backed her efforts in 1983,
after she sent them videotapes showing exactly what goes on.

Read more

1 380 381 382 383 384 648