LETTERS [Sep 1995]

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

What’s best for Willy?

While I favor of moving Keiko the killer whale out of

Mexico City and into a better situation, it is obvious that

Warner Brothers opted for the easy, politically correct solution

rather than what is in the best interest of Keiko. Their decision

to turn him over to Earth Island Institute and the Oregon Coast

Aquarium was public relatons damage control at its best––or

worst, from Keiko’s perspective.

Although I’m sure the Oregon Coast Aquarium is a

fine institution, Keiko would have been much better off going

to a facility that had other killer whales for possible future

companionship, with experienced husbandry personnel who

recognize that training, although frowned upon by most animal

activists, is one of the key activities that helps maintain the

mental and physical well-being of cetaceans in oceanariums.

Keiko helped make over $100 million for Warner

Bros., and he deserves better. What’s worse, Earth Island

Institute’s Free Willy/Keiko Foundation is politicizing his

future for their own agenda, ignoring the fact that from a sci-

entific standpoint, Keiko is probably one of the poorest candi-

dates for release among all the cetaceans in North America.

Everything they’re doing is predicated on the short-term goal of

dumping him into the ocean and declaring victory. They have

not addressed his long-term needs if he remains in captivity.

Letters

LABORATORY ANIMALS

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

NYU sells LEMSIP chimps to Coulston

STERLING FOREST, N.Y.––The New York University

Medical Center on August 9 transferred ownership of the Laboratory

for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates to the Coulston

Foundation, headed by Frederick Coulston, 81.

A primate researcher since 1936, Coulston is accused of

multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act in pending cases,

which allegedly caused the deaths of five chimps from thirst and heat

stress in two separate incidents at other primate facilities he runs in

New Mexico. Coulston claims three of those deaths were due to

malfunctioning equipment inherited when he took over one of the

facilities from the University of New Mexico two months earlier.

Activist groups are meanwhile demanding reinvestigation of eight

other recent chimp deaths at Coulston facilities, which also may

have involved alleged negligence.

A sensible alternative to xenotransplants by Alan H. Berger

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Transplanting vital organs has become a rela-

tively common medical procedure, readily accepted by

the public, with about 12,000 such operations performed

each year in the United States. Patients who need organ

transplants can sign on to the waiting list of the United

Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond, Virginia, non-

profit group that under a federal contract allocates organs

nationally. But being listed does not guarantee receiving

an organ.

In 1993, of 50,169 patients who registered with

UNOS, 2,887 died while waiting to receive donor

organs. Of 7,039 candidates for liver transplants, 558

died waiting for a suitable liver. Nationally, mortality on

transplant lists is 8% for liver, 12.2% for heart, and 3.8%

for kidney.

These deaths occur because only about one per-

son in five has consented to donate organs at death. Thus

a chronic shortage of healthy human organs has led many

transplant centers to consider using substitute organs from

sheep, pigs, and nonhuman primates.

Editorials: Prepare for post-pet overpopulation

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Any defunct gas station could become a vibrant example of a new age in animal

care-and-control: a neighborhood humane outpost. Offering easy access and plenty of

parking, ex-gas stations can’t keep lots of animals, but that isn’t what they should do.

Their showrooms can display cats in all the decorator colors; they have garages able to keep

adoptable dogs in spacious runs, and park a van for the night; and they have adequate

office space for a small-scale operation, which could be either a satellite of a larger organi-

zation or an independent entity cooperating with other shelters of differing capabilities.

The van would be not just wheels, but an extension of the job. In normal configu-

ration, it would do animal pickup-and-delivery. A slide-in veterinary module would make

it a mobile neutering-and-vaccination clinic, or a rescue vehicle.

A humane outpost obviously couldn’t receive lots of drop-off litters and other

owner-surrendered animals. Nor could it house animals through a multi-day holding period,

or do any but emergency euthanasias. Those would remain the duties of central shelters.

Likewise, a humane outpost couldn’t do law enforcement. But it might hold drop-offs tem-

porarily, for exchange with adoptable animals from a central shelter. It might also do com-

munity liaison for anti-cruelty and animal control officers working out of a larger office.

A humane outpost would not be an animal shelter in the familiar sense. It would

exist not to collect, keep, or kill animals, nor to deal with pet overpopulation per se, the

main job of animal shelters for the past 120 years, but rather to facilitate responsible pet-

keeping in the post-pet overpopulation milieu, by arranging appropriate placements, help-

ing pets get essential care, and providing referrals for other services. In some towns, a

low-overhead, high-traffic humane outpost might even pay for itself.

Sealing their doom: Whale sanctuary may be last safe harbor

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE,

QUEBEC––The Canadian government got

the word about cod stocks on June 29, and it

wasn’t good. Having allowed northern cod to

be fished to commercial extinction before cut-

ting quotas and cracking down on foreign

dragnetters, Canada may have lost the greater

portion of its Atlantic fishery until at least a

decade into the 21st century, if not forever.

Scrambing to shift the blame, and

hoping to revive the global market for seal

pelts by way of tossing a bone to frustrated

fishers, Canadian fisheries minister Brian

Tobin claimed that evening on the CBC

Prime Time News that, “Whatever the role

seals have played in the collapse of ground-

fish stocks, seals are playing a far more

important and significant role in preventing,

in slowing down, a recovery.”

SHOWDOWN AT THE DOLPHIN PEN

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

SUGARLOAF KEY, Florida––The first anniversary of the arrival of the dolphins

Molly, Bogie, and Bacall at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary came and went with no resolu-

tion in sight of the impasse between Sugarloaf director of rehabilitation Ric O’Barry and oth-

ers involved in the rehab-and-release effort. Brought from the former Ocean Reef Club in

Key Largo on August 10, 1994, all three dolphins remain at Sugarloaf, for the time being,

along with three former U.S. Navy dolphins whom O’Barry is preparing for release in a sepa-

rate deal arranged by the Humane Society of the U.S.

YELLOWSTONE: The steam isn’t all from geysers

September 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––Filmed in Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, the 1952 western classic Shane depicted stubborn men who thought them-selves reasonable in a tragic clash over limited range. Alan Ladd, in the title role, won the big showdown, then rode away pledging there would be no more guns in the valley.

But more than a century after the Shane era, the Yellowstone range wars not only smoulder on, but have heated up. To the north, in rural Montana, at least three times this year armed wise-users have holed up for months, standing off bored cordons of sheriff’s deputies, who wait beyond bullet range to arrest them for not paying taxes and taking the law into their own hands.

One of the besieged, Gordon Sellner, 57, was wounded in an alleged shootout and arrested on July 19 near Condon. Sellner, who said he hadn’t filed a tax return in 20 years, was wanted for attempted murder, having allegedly shot a sheriff’s deputy in 1992. A similar siege goes on at Roundup, where Rodney Skurdahl and four others are wanted for allegedly issuing a “citizen’s declaration of war” against the state and federal governments and posting boun-ties on public officials. At Darby, near the Bitterroot National Forest, elk rancher Calvin Greenup threatens to shoot anyone who tries to arrest him for allegedly plotting to “arrest,” “try,” and hang local authorities. Greenup is Montana coordinator of the North American Volunteer Militia.

OBITUARIES

July 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

Ed Piukowsky, 52, died of a heart

attack on July 9, 2005, at home in Johnstown,

Pennsylvania. The son of a police dog han-

dler, Piukowsky and his wife Bonnie Lanzen-

dorfer Piukowsky founded the Jollyman

Animal Sanctuary in 2002. Blairsville

Dispatch reporter Jeff Himler in April 2005

listed the residents as “16 dogs, 50 cats, six

chickens, three goats, a dozen each of geese

and ducks, two peafowl, a rabbit and a par-

rot.” Recalled Dogs Deserve Better anti-

chaining group founder Tammy Grimes, “Ed

was very supportive of me and my work, and

had me speak at their fundraisers each of the

past three years. The first time was my first

time ever speaking, and I was so nervous I

thought I’d die. I spoke for a whole 30 sec-

onds, but it was enough to get me past the

point of trying. He told me each year, ‘See, I

knew you were going to go far, didn’t I tell

you that?’ He was so proud of me and the

progress we have made.”

Obituaries

BOOKS: First Friends

July 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:

First Friends

by Katherine M. Rogers

St. Martin’s Press

(175 Fifth Avenue, New York,

N.Y. 10010), 2005.

263 pages, paperback. $24.95.

The title is carefully chosen

for this history of the interaction of dogs

and humans. Note that it is “First

Friends‚” and not “Best Friends.”

Katherine M. Rogers, in this

erudite and sometimes repetitively thor-

ough treatise on the use and treatment of

dogs in English and classical literature,

deals in depth with the two extremes:

dog lovers and dog detesters.

« 1 … 530 531 532 533 534 … 648 »