Who you gonna call? Pet Savers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

PORT WASHINGTON, New York––If $35 could save
each and every shelter animal’s life, how many would you save?
“We’ll save them all,” longtime North Shore Animal
League board chairperson Elisabeth Lewyt decided six years ago,
committing North Shore resources to saving not only the animals
coming through its own shelter, but also those handled by other
shelters around the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Since then, North Shore and the two-year-old Pet Savers
Foundation it created with a $6.3 million start-up grant have helped
arrange nearly 170,000 extra adoptions, above and beyond the annu-
al totals the participating shelters achieved prior to North Shore
involvement. By itself, the North Shore/Pet Savers adoption pro-
gram has achieved a cumulative 3% drop in the U.S. euthanasia
rate––an even more impressive figure considering that, big as it is,
it involves barely 1% of U.S. shelters.

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LEMSIP’S LAST STAND: MOOR-JANKOWSKI FIGHTS FOR CHIMPS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

STERLING FOREST, New York––One would think New York University

wouldn’t want to fight with Jan Moor-Jankowski. As a youth, he fought the Nazis in occu-

pied Poland. As a researcher, he’s battled disease for 30 years at his Laboratory for

Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), widely considered the world’s

most advanced in primate care––and the most accessible to people who care about primates.

As a humanitarian, he was among the first researchers to adopt the principles of “reduction,

refinement, and replacement” as his laboratory policy toward animals. As editor of the pres-

tigious International Journal of Primatology, Moor-Jankowski from 1983 until 1991 battled

a libel suit filed by the Austrian pharmaceutical firm Immuno AG, in response to a letter-to-

the-editor authored by Shirley McGreal of the International Primate Protection League.

Paying expenses largely from his own pocket, Moor-Jankowski won landmark victories for

press freedom in the Supreme Court and New York Court of Appeals.

Yet despite Moor-Jankowski’s for-

midable reputation, NYU has moved to dis-

mantle LEMSIP in apparent retaliation for his

criticism of drug addiction experiments con

ducted by fellow NYU primate researcher

Ronald Wood. Moor-Jankowski in turn has

delayed his scheduled retirement for at least a

year to fight for the lives of the 225 chim-

panzees in LEMSIP custody.

Smouldering for months, the con-

flict erupted on August 16, 1994, when

Moor-Jankowski resigned from the

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee

that oversees Wood’s work, in protest of what

he terms “highly reprehensible” conduct that

“must be stopped.” Moor-Jankowski isn’t

allowed to discuss details, under IACUC rules

of confidentiality, but according to the fal

1994 edition of the American SPCA magazine

Animal Watch, “NYU sources claim Wood’s

studies involve extreme negligence and animal

cruelty, and have prompted temporary sus-

pension of Wood’s experiments last spring,

the resignation of former NYU head veterinar-

ian Dr. Wendell Niemann, the firing of sever-

al people with direct knowledge of wrongdo-

ing possibly because of their ‘whistleblower’

status, and two federal investigations.”

Weeks later, Moor-Jankowski

recalls, “I was shocked to learn that NYU

intended to dispose of LEMSIP,” which he

founded in 1965 and had run under NYU aus-

pices since 1967. On August 23, 1994, NYU

had without Moor-Jankowski’s knowledge

informed the USDA, which enforces the

Animal Welfare Act, that LEMSIP was no

longer a “site of the NYU Medical Center.”

The import of that, Moor-Jankowski

explains, is that while he personally raises

LEMSIP’s annual budget of $4 million, mostly

from industry, “The money goes through NYU.

As soon as I started opposing Wood’s experi-

ments, the money was withheld, jeopardizing

our ability to meet USDA standards.”

Elaborates Suzanne Roy of In

Defense of Animals, “Moor-Jankowski had

arranged for over $450,000 in funds from the

U.S. Army to underwrite the establishment of a

chimpanzee retirement facility in South Texas.”

Also to house retired LEMSIP chimps, the

facility was to be run by the Buckshire

Corporation, whose president, Glen Wrigley,

rattled the research establishment by filing a

brief in support of Moor-Jankowski and

McGreal during the Immuno case. The contract

was to cover lifetime care for 12 chimps, all

over 30 years old, formerly used in military

experiments at the Delta Regional Primate

Center in Louisiana. Those projects ceased in

1991. Three of the chimps are now at the

Buckshire headquarters in Pennsyvlania, while

LEMSIP has five; four remain at Delta.

“But NYU wouldn’t sign the deal,”

Moor-Jankowski continues. “They wanted to

keep the money. And they wanted to fire me,

but they couldn’t, so they fired the lab.”

While Moor-Jankowski pursued the

transfer of LEMSIP to the Aaron Diamond

Foundation, a longtime sponsor, preparatory to

his own retirement, NYU associate dean David

Scotch “appears to have actively courted the

participation of Fred Coulston in a takeover

plan,” Wisconsin Regional Primate Center

librarian Larry Jacobsen charged in a February

9 posting on Primate-talk, an Internet bulletin

board for primatologists. University of

California at San Diego anthropologist Jim

Moore backed the posting on February 14 with

an extensive bibliography of sources.

Neither NYU representatives nor

Coulston have been willing to discuss the situa-

tion in detail with media.

Coulston

Coulston, 80, is owner of the White

Sands Research Center in Alamogordo, New

Mexico, and founder of the Coulston Found-

ation, sited at nearby Holloman Air Force Base,

which keeps 140 chimps left over or descended

from the NASA “space monkey” program of the

1950s and early 1960s. Since Coulston took

over the Holloman facility in June 1993, three

chimps died from overheating on October 31,

1993; four macaques died of bloat and vomit-

ing on June 14, 1994, their first day in outdoor

housing; two chimps died in July 1994, one of

apparent untreated pneumonia and meningitis,

the other of apparent oversedation for a routine

physical; and in December 1994, according to

Jacobsen, “An as yet unrevealed number of

monkeys died of thirst and dehydration in a

room where the water was shut off.”

A staffing ratio of one person per 33

primates, criticized by the National Institutes of

Health in a June 1994 site visit report, may

have contributed to the deaths. “The report also

notes that the Coulston

Foundation veterinary

staff is too small, largely

undertrained and inexpe-

rienced,” Jacobsen said.

Between his two

facilities, Coulston

already has about 540

Chimps and

800 macaques. He reportedly

offered NYU $1 million

for LEMSIP, the acquisi-

tion of which would give

him more than half the lab chimps in the U.S.

“This,” observed Jacobsen, “despite the fact

the Coulston’s enterprises in New Mexico are

marginal financially.”

At deadline, Moor-Jankowski hoped

criticism of a possible deal with Coulston from

other scientists might make NYU back off.

PETA

Meanwhile, according to Roy, “a

PETA undercover investigation has shown

Buckshire is in serious violation of the Animal

Welfare Act in both its chimpanzee housing

area, where conditions are at best bleak, and its

cat colony.” In February, the USDA cited

Buckshire for housing chimps in undersized

cages and failing to provide adequate medical

care––situations Moor-Jankowski attributes to

the NYU hold on the funding.

In mid-March, Army Medical

Research Acquisition Department director

Gregory Doyle ordered NYU to remove the

chimps from Buckshire.

In between, on February 24, Wrigley

offered to sell PETA all the chimps to which

Buckshire holds title. PETA refused the offer

on February 27. However, wrote PETA direc-

tor of research, investigations, and rescue

Mary Beth Sweetland, “We are always willing,

in conjunction with the Great Ape Project and

the Chimpanzee Rescue Centre [an English

s a n c t u a r y ] , to talk about a donative transfer.

Perhaps a condition under which Buckshire is

released from providing for the chimpanzees’

lifetime care would make such a transfer more

attractive to you.”

“We have 40 adult chimps,”

Buckshire spokesperson Sharon Hersh told

ANIMAL PEOPLE, “ranging from 13 to 35

years of age, who would be able to leave their

current situation for residence outside of the

research community. We have assigned costs

ranging from $12,000 to $18,000, depending

upon their breeding status. Many are ex-per-

forming chimps who had worked with trainers.

Some were part of a large group imported from

Africa for breeding in the late 1960s. Others

were born within the research community. We

would entertain selling specific animals.”

Neuter/release proves cost-effective: City fixing to fix feral cats

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

SAN JOSE, California––”Are you feeding stray cats?”
the fliers ask. “The City of San Jose will give you FREE spay/neuter
vouchers to alter either your own cats or the strays you are feeding.
Simply take the voucher with the cat to a participating veterinarian.
Your owned or stray cat will be altered for free.”
Initially printed and distributed in December by the San
Jose-based National Pet Alliance, the fliers drew the attention of
reporter Linda Goldston, who amplified word of the free neutering
offer in the February 21 edition of the San Jose Mercury-News.
More than 1,000 vouchers were distributed during the next three
weeks, while voucher redemptions shot up from 575 during the first
two months of the program to 1,032 by March 13. The vouchers
were used to neuter 631 female cats and 401 toms.
“At least half of the cats were strays, according to the
questionaires attached to the vouchers in the last month,” NPA
board member Karen Johnson told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Almost a
third of respondents claim to be feeding stray cats in their neighbor-
hood. Not everyone fills out the questionaire. There is still some
suspicion about getting something free, and those who are feeding
multiple cats are understandably nervous, since there is a two-cat
limit in San Jose and the program is run out of the dog licensing
office,” which enforces the pet limit.
Johnson’s goal is to emulate the success of the San Diego-
ased Feral Cat Coalition in lowering the local euthanasia rate by fix-
ing feral cats. City of San Jose animal control records indicate, as
the neutering program announcement explains, that “More than 37%
of the cats euthanized at the shelter are either wild, or their
unweaned offspring.” And the numbers could go up, for while NPA
survey data indicates 86% of the owned cats in the San Jose area
have already been neutered, about 10% of the households also feed
unowned cats––an average of 3.4 cats apiece, of whom 97% have
not been neutered. In the rural district south of San Jose,
including Morgan Hill, San Martin, and Gilroy, 17.8% of
households feed an average of 5.25 unowned cats apiece,
amounting to 62% of the known cat population. In all,
unowned cats are 41% of the known cat population of the
Santa Clara Valley, in which San Jose is the principal city.
“Handling these wild cats and kittens costs tax
money,” the neutering program fliers continue. “Altering
one pair of stray cats now will save the cost of handling thou-
sands of their offspring over the next 10 years.”
Indeed, Johnson’s cost/benefit analysis shows that
neuter/release not only cuts the numbers of homeless cats
faster than conventional trap-and-kill, but is also more cost-
effective. Setting the cost of testing cats for common conta-
gious diseases, vaccinating them against rabies, and neuter-
ing them at $52 apiece, substantially more than the $21.11
average cost per cat in the San Jose program (which covers
only neutering), Johnson discovers savings of $18 per cat
over the cost of keeping a cat for the mandatory three days in
a shelter prior to euthanasia.
Will pay for itself
“Looking at the figures from San Diego,” she says,
“one can readily see that for a cost of $163,956, they have
reduced the expenses at their shelter by at least 6,500 cats, or
$455,000 over a two-year timespan.” Thus the San Jose pro-
gram “will pay for itself through less shelter costs.”
As Johnson recounts in the current edition of the
Cat Fanciers Association Almanac, “The nonprofit Feral Cat
Coalition has trapped, altered, and released in excess of
3,100 cats over the past two years. Prior to this project, the
San Diego County Animal Management Information System
reported an increase of roughly 10% per year in the number
of cats handled by San Diego Animal Control shelters from
1988 to 1992. The increase peaked at 13% from fiscal year
1991 to fiscal year 1992, with a total of 19,077 cats handled.
After just two years, with no other explanation for the drop,
only 12,446 cats were handled––a drop of 35%. Instead of
another 10% annual increase, euthanasias plunged 40% from
1991-1992 to 1993-1994. Clearly, the project to trap, alter,
and release cats in San Diego County has had a dramatic
effect on the number of cats handled and euthanized at their
shelters, which even historical or nationwide downward
trends cannot explain.”
Closer to home, Johnson and San Jose officials are
impressed at the accomplishments of the Stanford Cat
Network, formed in 1989 in response to a Stanford
University plan to exterminate an estimated 500 feral cats liv-
ing on campus. Among the first organizations to openly
administrate a neuter/release program in the U.S., SCN
picked up, socialized, and adopted out 60 kittens in its first
year. “By 1994,” Johnson reports, “only four kittens were
found.” The total Stanford cat population is down to 300.
The San Jose policy has also been influenced by the
example of the San Francisco SPCA, which since giving up
the city animal control contract in 1989 has promoted neuter-
ing so successfully, including neutering thousands of feral
cats for free, that a year ago San Francisco became the first
city in the U.S. to embrace a no-kill animal control policy.
Under the Adoption Pact, more fully described in the March
1995 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, the SFSPCA accepts
and guarantees placement of all dogs and cats not placed by
S.F. Animal Care and Control, including the aged and the
recoverable sick and injured. Only the unrecoverable, the
vicious, and animals requiring rabies testing are euthanized.
Precedent
But the San Jose program differs from those of San
Diego, Stanford, and San Francisco, whose neuter/release
activity has been wholly funded and managed under private
auspices. Although other cities have funded no-questions-
asked low-cost neutering, including Los Angeles city and
county for more than 15 years, San Jose is the first major
city in the U.S. to actively endorse and promote
neuter/release as part of official animal control policy. The
initial budget of $100,000 came from a surplus in animal
license division revenue. “There is expected to be another
surplus for the next fiscal year,” Johnson says, “so the pro-
gram can be continued. At this point it is estimated at over
$60,000. There has been some discussion re vouchers for
dogs and allocating a portion of the funding in that direc-
tion,” Johnson adds. But it probably won’t happen. “Costs
for dogs would run approximately $40 each, so two cats
could be done for each dog,” she explains. In addition,
records kept by Chris Arnold, executive director of the
Humane Society of the Santa Clara Valley, show that only
5% of dogs received are puppies under four months of age,
while kittens under four months of age account for over half
of all incoming felines. “There is not a problem with too
many puppies,” Johnson concludes, “so the need for altering
more dogs is not as urgent.”
The San Jose initiative is apt to draw fire from the
Humane Society of the U.S., People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals, and the Fund for Animals, which
favor regulatory approaches to pet overpopulation; hold that
outdoor life is inherently cruel to cats; hold that euthanasia is
more humane than allowing unowned cats to remain out-
doors; and are already aggressively critical of both private
neuter/release programs and the Adoption Pact.
But San Jose isn’t alone in its position, even in the
Santa Clara Valley. The Palo Alto Humane Society is also
actively encouraging neuter/release, likewise influenced by
NPA and the SFSPCA. Providing free neutering to the needy
for 15 years, PAHS recently formed CatWorks, to expand
the service throughout the San Francisco Bay area. “We
want to make sure people don’t feel as if they’re working
alone,” president Carole Hyde told Goldston, “and we want
to provide a way to help those who would prefer to make
donations” to a neuter/release program, rather than a humane
society practicing trap-and-kill.
Other Bay area agencies practicing and/or assisting
neuter/release include Animal Birth Control Assistance Inc.,
Companion Animal Rescue, the Nike Animal Resource
Foundation, Friends of the Feral Cats, the Ohlone Humane
Society, the Oakland SPCA, and the Santa Cruz SPCA.
[NPA memberships fund pet overpopulation
research. Write to POB 53385, San Jose, CA 95153.]

BOOKS: The Endangered Species Act: Time for a Change

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

The Endangered Species Act: Time for a Change, by Thomas Lambert and Robert J. Smith.
Center for the Study of American Business (Washington University, Campus Box 1208, One Brookings Drive, St.
Louis, MO 63130-4899), 1994. 63 pages. Free on request.
Thomas Lambert and Robert J. Smith evidently
subscribe to the theory that the Endangered Species Act “is
being used for little more than the achievement of de facto
national land use control and the regulation of economic
development.” Though they avoid saying so themselves,
they quote and paraphrase others to this effect so often that
one is inclined to start looking under the bed for the “out-of-
work Soviet economists” that they suggest through another
quotation might be influencing U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service data analysis. Either that, or bolt the door against
the National Biological Survey, which is––again through
unrefuted quotations––equated with an “eco-Gestapo.”

Read more

BOOKS: Love, Miracles, and Animal Healing

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Love, Miracles, and Animal Healing: A Veterinarian’s Journey from
Physical Medicine to Spiritual Understanding, by Allen M. Schoen, DVM,
and Pam Proctor. Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020), 1995. 236 pages, $22.00.
I didn’t know what to expect when I
saw a testimonial by Henry Kissinger on the
cover of Love, Miracles, and Animal
H e a l i n g. It was so bizarre as to pique by
interest immediately. When did Henry
Kissinger begin to concern himself with the
“emotional as well as the physical needs” of
animals? Allen Schoen, the New England
veterinarian who authored the book with Pam
Proctor, sounded like the Norman Vincent
Peale of the finned and fuzzy. In fact, I sus-
pected Dr. Schoen himself was a bit fuzzy.

Read more

OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Veterinarian James Alfred
Wright, 78, known to the world as author
James Herriot, died of prostate cancer on
February 23 in Thirsk, Yorkshire. Deciding
to become a vet at age 13, Wright studied
small animal medicine, but under financial
duress became junior partner in an agricultural
practice in Thirsk, where he continued to treat
animals until 1990. Adopting as pseudonym
the name of a Scots soccer goalie, Wright
wrote unsuccessfully, as a hobby, for many
years before producing two successful vol-
umes of reminiscences of his veterinary career
at age 53. Sales were initially slow, but they
inspired a hit BBC television series, even
more popular in the U.S. than in Britain, and
combined into a single volume, retitled A l l
Creatures Great And Small, became a best-
seller. Wright went on to produce six more
books, including Every Living Thing, which
at his death had been on The New York Times
bestseller list for 22 weeks.

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BOOKS: Reflections of Eden

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Reflections of Eden:
My Years With the Orangutans of Borneo, by Birute M.F. Galdikas.
Little, Brown & Co. (1271 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1995.
403 pages; 16 pages of photos. $24.95; $29.95 in Canada.
Birute Galdikas is less known than
her colleagues Jane Goodall and the late Dian
Fossey, but her reminiscences of field
research on primates are no less colorful and
interesting. Paleoanthropologist Louis
Leakey and his handpicked trio of female
researchers spent decades documenting the
lives of apes in the wild, and campaigning to
preserve primates and their natural habitat.

Read more

BOOKS: The World Beyond The Waves

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

The World Beyond The Waves, by Kate Kempton, illustrated by
Larry Salk. Portunus Publishing Co. (3435 Ocean Park Blvd. #203, Santa Monica,
CA 90405; 1-800-548-3518), 1995; 88 pages. Cloth, $14.95; paper $8.95.
Strange things happen even before
the recently orphaned Sam, a 12-year-old
girl, is swept off the sailboat by storm
waves. A trio of dolphins appears just before
the hurricane, one of them seriously wound-
ed and needing medical attention. Sam’s
aunt and uncle, both marine biologists, are
able to administer an antibiotic, but can do
little else. A tropical bird lands on the life-
lines next to Sam, seeming to communicate
something of importance to the dolphins.
Later, after being washed overboard, Sam
wakes up in a dim, dark place, only to be
greeted by the bird. Almost drowned, Sam
has been rescued by sea creatures and
brought to The World Beyond The Waves, a
sanitarium for sick and injured marine life of
all kinds, all suffering from things humans
have done—some deliberate cruelties, but
mostly careless or unthinking acts.

Read more

COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:

Humane Enforcement

Gamecock breeder John Brown, of Corbin, Kentucky, on
March 17 sued the Knox County Humane Society, executive director
Vicky Crosetti, and operations manager Debbie Clark for $2.1 million
because they euthanized five cocks seized from him on June 30, 1993,
by the Knox County Animal Control Unit, while a Tennessee Highway
Patrol trooper was citing him for drunk driving and speeding. Those
charges were reduced to one count of reckless driving, for which
Brown paid a fine. KCHS records indicate the cocks were badly dehy-
drated. Cockfighting is legal in Kentucky, but not in Tennessee.
Brown had just purchased the cocks in North Carolina.
Animal collector Vikki Kittles, 47, on February 3 drew six
months in jail and five years on probation, during which time she may
not keep animals, after being convicted of all 42 cruelty and neglect
counts brought against her in Clatsop County, Oregon. She also for-
feited 39 dogs, was given 30 days in which to place 61 more, and was
ordered to undergo psychological evaluation and counseling. Arrested
in April 1993, Kittles served as her own attorney during a two-week
trial, after going through eight court-appointed attorneys and six
judges in nearly two years of preliminary motions. The case cost
Clatsop County $100,000; citizens also donated $40,000 in cash and
supplies to the county animal shelter, to provide for the dogs. Kittles
was previously in trouble for animal collecting in Broward County,
Florida, from 1985 into 1988, and in Missisippi and Washington later
in 1988. Kittles is also suspected in the disappearance of her mother,
who was last seen in 1988, living in a van guarded by Kittles’ dogs.
Poodle breeder Charlotte Speegel, 56, dodging cruelty
charges in various northern California jurisdictions since December
1990, was convicted on March 15 of eight felony counts of cruelty and
one misdemeanor count of neglect. She faces up to six years in prison
and has forfeited claim to 350 dogs seized by the Northwest SPCA in
two 1993 raids, of whom 30 remained at the shelter.
The American SPCA on March 1 seized 91 fighting cocks
in a raid on a Suffolk County home where 47 people were caught
attending a cockfight. “From June to this raid,” ASPCA investigator
Robert O’Neill told Evelyn Nieves of The New York Times, “we’ve
seized 1,450 birds and arrested something like 190 people. We’ve
forced cockfighting out of the city.” The maximum penalty for cock-
fighting is four years in prison, but so far, O’Neill said, no defendant
has received more than three months in jail.
Raiding a dogfight held just two blocks from City Hall,
San Francisco Animal Care and Control officers on March 16 arrested
75 people and seized seven live dogs along with two dead dogs and
$50,000 in alleged gambling stakes. Two more live dogs were recov-
ered in a follow-up raid on another location.
The Los Angeles SPCA on February 27 seized 39 allegedly
neglected animals from the Elias Pet Shop in East Los Angeles. “We
hope this will send a message to all pet shop owners that every animal
in their care must be provided for properly,” said LASPCA executive
director Madeline Bernstein.
After Eric Kiernan, 19, of Belfast, Maine, was jailed on
January 12 for alleged burglary and theft, acquaintances revealed how
he severely abused a kitten––who lived, with 24-hour-a-day care from
Sonja Berenyl and Corine Fitzjurls of the Claude Clement Animal
Shelter. On February 17, Kiernan was charged with cruelty, too.
Ingrid Leonovs and John Diehl, each 24, of Bucks
County, Pa., were fined $300 apiece on February 15 for starving their
18-month-old Dalmatian to death. Just a month earlier, three Bucks
County men were convicted of the torture-killing and mutilation of a
Dalmatian named Duke. Jason Tapper, 21 drew 18 to 36 months in
jail for the deed; Jan Pyatt, 23, got six to 23 months; and R o y
Elliott, 21, got nine to 23 months. The number of Dalmatians
involved in cruelty cases and received by shelters has soared since the
1991 re-release of the Disney video 101 Dalmatians touched off a
Dalmatian breeding boom.
Washington D.C. postal worker Robert Boggs on March 6
copped a plea on a single count of postal theft. Boggs was arrested last
fall after investigators found thousands of pieces of undelivered mail,
20 dead turtles, 10 dead birds, a severely neglected dog, 43 neglected
turtles, and 15 neglected birds in his Maclean, Virginia apartment.
The Washington Humane Society laid no charges, believing Boggs to
be mentally ill and therefore not culpable for intentional cruelty.
A court in Munich, West Germany, on February 27 ruled
that use of remote-controlled electric shock collars in dog training isn’t
cruel. The case is believed to be the first of its kind to go to trial.
Prosecutors on February 8 filed stiffer charges a g a i n s t
Alameda Naval Air Station personnel Christopher Bishop, 24, Kevin
Johnson, 23, and Stephen LeBlanc, 27, for the October 3 videotaped
torture-killing of a cat named Boots, whom LeBlanc’s wife abandoned
when she left LeBlanc earlier in the day. LeBlanc and Bishop have
been held in lieu of $50,000 bail since their October arrest, while
Johnson is out on bond.
Activism
Rod Coronado, 28, pleaded guilty o n
March 3 to aiding and abetting the February 28,
1992 fire at Michigan State University that razed the
offices of Richard Auerlich, who does USDA
research on behalf of the mink industry, and Karen
Chou, who was researching alternatives to animal
testing. Coronado also pleaded guilty to the
February 1992 theft and destruction of a cavalry-
man’s journal, take from a museum at the Little
Bighorn Battlefield. In exchange for the plea, feder-
al charges against Coronado in connection with a
series of alleged Animal Liberation Front actions
against mink-related facilities in Oregon,
Washington, and Utah during 1991 and 1992 were
dropped. Coronado said he took the deal rather than
risk impeaching others through testimony presented
at a trial. He faces from 41 to 51 months in prison.
The 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic
Entrances Act was invoked for apparently the first
time on February 15 in Cleveland, as Dr. Gerald
Applegate won a preliminary order barring anti-abor-
tion activist Alan M. Smith of Youngstown from
speaking to or harassing him or his family.
Applegate testified that someone had stabbed his dog
to death, leaving the remains on his porch with a
note saying, “From your pro-life friends.” There has
been speculation that the act could set a precedent for
ordering animal rights activists away from laborato-
ries and researchers’ homes.
Crimes against humans
Thomas William McCluskey, 39, “ter-
rorized friends and family with knives, axes, and
guns, and forced them to listen to his bloody, grisly
tales of torturing cats and dogs,” Donna M. de la
Cruz of the Nashville Sentinel reported on March 14.
On March 12, McCluskey went berserk with a
chainsaw, without apparent provocation, and dis-
membered his cousin, Jason Bowen, on a city side-
walk in Pulaski, Tennessee. He was charged with
murder, while undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
British Columbia parole officials in
mid-February relocated former Sooke school
principal Harold Irving Banks, 59, from Nanaimo
to Victoria, after his daughter Bree Smith went pub-
lic with the charges that sent him to prison, previ-
ously concealed to protect her identity. Banks
copped a plea in 1988 after being accused of more
han 1,000 sexual assaults against children, which he
logged on a calendar, including acts of buggery and
attempted bestiality. Smith testified that she was sex-
ually assaulted from age 18 months, when Banks
broke her jaw, until age 16, when she ran away from
home. Most traumatic, she said, was being forced
to eat her pet rabbits.
As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, a
verdict was due in the Roseburg, Oregon trial of avid
hunter and former deputy sheriff Larry Gibson for
allegedly murdering his two-and-a-half-year-old son
Timothy by abuse on March 18, 1991. After his
wife Judy fled frequent beatings last year, daughter
Karen, now 8, came forward to testify that she saw
Gibson beat Timothy, stuff him into a plastic bag,
and drive away. No body has ever been found.
Police believe Gibson dispatched Timothy with a pis-
tol; Gibson admits firing the shot that neighbors
heard, but claims he was killing a cat.
Abdalah Benhajra, 28, of Casablanca,
Morocco, on March 7 drew eight years in prison and
a fine of $349 for selling dog meat sausages.
Benhajra butchered about three stray dogs per week.
That was legal; selling the meat to humans wasn’t.
Animal Welfare Act
The feral rhesus monkeys at Silver Springs,
Florida, are all to be trapped by June 1 and held for life in
one-acre pens inaccessible to visitors, under a plan approved
by the USDA, which had threatened to charge the town of
Silver Springs with violating the Animal Welfare Act for
keeping the monkeys as a tourist attraction while failing to
keep them properly caged. The monkeys were apparently
released on an island in the Silver Spring river circa 1937 by
one Captain Colonel Tooey, promoter of a “jungle cruise”
boat ride. In 1984 the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish
Commission ordered Silver Springs to curb colony growth,
but 25,000 citizens petitioned to have the monkeys left alone
after 217 were captured and sold for laboratory use. A steri-
lization program followed, but was stopped when the mon-
keys were found to be carrying the simian herpes B virus,
usually fatal to human victims. The Florida Department of
Natural Resources, Centers for Disease Control, Humane
Society of the U.S., and Florida Audubon Society all urged
that the monkeys be euthanized, but that plan also met pro-
longed resistance.
Endangered species act
The Sierra Club on February 16 sued the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento, California, for
failing to add the peninsular desert bighorn sheep to the
endangered species list. The USFWS determined that the
sheep were eligible for listing in 1992. Coveted by hunters
and poachers, they numbered circa 1,200 in 1980, but fewer
than 400 remain in the mountains of San Diego, Riverside,
and Imperial counties. The listing is opposed by cattle ranch-
ers, who will probably try to claim cash compensation if it
goes through.
The USFWS on February 17 declined to list the
Alexander Archipelago wolf, an Alaskan subspecies of 600 to
1,000 members, as threatened. Logging on 600,000 acres of
the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest had been held up
while the status of the wolf was under review.
The Fund for Animals announced February 15 that
the USFWS has now proposed endangered species listings for
154 of the 443 species for which listing decisions are to be
made by 1996, according to the 1992 settlement of a suit filed
against former Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan by the Fund
and Defenders of Wildlife.
The Biodiversity Legal Foundation has asked the
USFWS to list the fisher as a threatened species in the western
U.S., “due to isolated, low population levels, direct and acci-
dental trapping pressures, loss of habitat through destructive
timber practices, restricted range, and inadequate govern-
ment protection,” according to petitioner Jasper Carlton.
Carlton has also pledged to sue the USFWS and Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt for refusing to protect the lynx. “This
case is of particular concern to conservationists,” he said,
“since it is one of the few times the Washington office of the
USFWS has reversed recommendations from biologists in
both its Montana field office and its regional office in Denver,
both of which recommended the listing of the lynx.”
U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle on February 26
issued a permanent injunction under the Endangered Species
act to keep the Pacific Lumber company from logging a 237-
acre portion of the Owl Creek Forest in Humboldt County,
California, which may host the rare marbeled murrelet.
Judge Yoichi Ono of the Kagoshima District Court
in Japan on March 8 threw out a suit filed by the Environment
Network Amami on behalf of the Amami hare, Lidth’s Jay,
White’s ground thrush, and Amami woodcock, on grounds
the four endangered species have no legal names and address-
es. “We knew the court would do something like this,” said
ENA leader Hiroaki Sono. “We just wanted to point out the
huge gaps in the law.” The four are among 100 species Japan
protects as “national monuments,” forbidding their killing or
sale, but not preventing the destruction of their habitat.
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