Author: Dylan Forest

Pickens bids to save BLM wild horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2008:
RENO–Just as the Bureau of Land
Management seemed poised to kill 2,000 healthy
mustangs, due to lack of adoptive homes,
Madeleine Pickens “arrived on a white horse,” as
Washington Post staff writer Lyndsey Layton put
it.
Pickens on November 17, 2008 turned a
public hearing in Reno from a perfunctory
condemnation ritual to a celebration.
“Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone
Pickens, made known her intentions to adopt not
just the doomed wild horses but most or all of
the 30,000 horses and burros kept in federal
holding pens,” reported Layton. “Lifelong
animal lovers, the Pickenses just a few years
ago led the fight to close the last horse
slaughterhouse in the United States.”
Posted Pickens afterward to her personal
web site, “Wild horses on federal land are
living symbols of the history of the American
West and must be protected. My view is for a
wild horse sanctuary that will be a tourist
destination where Americans and tourists from
around the world can observe this great part of
American history.”

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Dogfighting resurfaces in Iran

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
TEHRAN A fluffy white lap dog displayed at the Farzi web site Meydan Dog might hint that Iranian hostility toward dogs is lifting. But multiple muzzle views of fighting dogs send a different message.
Meydan Dog belongs to someone who sells puppies and fighting dogs in Iran, Center for Animal Lovers founder Fatehmah Motamedi told ANIMAL PEOPLE. There were people in Iran who arranged dog fights in secret, but now they are advertising.

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Letters [Oct 2008]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)

 
Animal welfare vs. conservation

I really enjoyed your September 2008 editorial feature Animal welfare & conservation in conflict. It certainly raised some interesting discussion points in the welfare vs. conservation debate. As an animal welfarist and conservationist is it possible to be both?! I find myself conflicted over such topics. I think its great to raise awareness of these conflicts and hopefully work toward solutions.
Heather Bacon, DVM
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Please help ANIMAL PEOPLE to keep the humane cause on message!

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
What if the U.S. humane community had not made the catastrophic mistakes that it did in response to the Great Depression and the recessions that followed each of the major mid-20th century wars?
What if a strong independent voice had helped humane leadership to cope with financial crunches with a combination of practical help and reminders of the importance of remaining focused on mission?
What if humane work had continued to emphasize outreach, advocacy, prosecuting cruelty, and education, at a time when humane education was forthrightly presented as moral education, when state wildlife agencies were not yet dependent upon funding from the sale of hunting licenses, and when Americans consumed less than half as much meat per capita as today?
We cannot know what might have happened, but we can certainly contemplate the possibilities.

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Remembering Marco

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
Remembering Marco by Geeta Seshamani
The September 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE included a photograph of a donkey named Marco, with a memorial for him from ANIMAL PEOPLE artist Wolf Clifton and president Kim Bartlett.
An editor s note on page six mentioned that after rescuing Marco while traveling in India in January 2007, Bartlett funded an equine care mobile unit to help the working donkeys and horses along the heavily traveled Agra/Delhi corridor, and added that the unit is operated by Friendicoes SECA, which already had an equine unit in Delhi.
There was much more to the story.

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$75 million offered to further non-surgical sterilization

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
CHICAGO For $75 million, can someone invent a vaccine against canine and feline pregnancy? Or a chemosterilant that will be widely accepted by the humane and veterinary communities?
If an effective immunocontraceptive or chemosterilant for dogs and cats existed, would it be used where most needed?
Might the money be more productively used in extending high volume, low cost, best practice dog and cat sterilization surgery to all parts of the world and in keeping existing low-cost sterilization programs operating, at a time of plummeting donations?
The headline item at the mid-October 2008 Spay USA national conference was the $75 million incentive package offered by Found Animal Foundation founder Gary K. Michelson, M.D., to encourage the development of nonsurgical dog and cat contraception.

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RSPCA & Dogs Trust convince the Kennel Club to revise breed norms

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
LONDON The Kennel Club, the world s first and oldest purebred dog registry, is redrafting the show standards for 209 breeds to eliminate rules that favor dogs with extreme and unnatural characteristics which might impair their health.
The Kennel Club, founded in 1873 and regarded in the show dog world as the most prestigious guardian of pedigrees, quietly disclosed the revisions of rules barely six weeks after complaining to the Office of Communication, the British television regulatory agency, that it was unfairly treated by the producers of the British Broadcasting Corporation exposé Pedigree Dogs Exposed, aired in August 2008.
Among the dogs featured in the documentary were boxers with epilepsy, pugs with breathing problems, and bulldogs who were unable to mate or give birth unassisted, reported Associated Press writer Jill Lawless. After the show was broadcast, Lawless added, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Dogs Trust withdrew their support for Crufts, the annual Kennel Club show, begun in 1891.

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Editorial feature: The humane community can handle hard times

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)

 

Writing only for SPCA Los Angeles, SPCA/L.A. president Madeline Bernstein might have spoken for the whole humane community worldwide in an early October 2008 appeal expressing deep concern with the state of our economy, food costs, gas prices, Wall Street woes and its negative trickledown effect.
SPCA/L.A. is struggling to feed and tend to the ever-increasing number of homeless animals in our care, Bernstein said, many a direct result of foreclosures and financial hardship. Worse, fewer adoptions are occurring for the same reasons.  This puts us in the untenable position of having to bear higher costs while donations, corporate funding and even the bestowal of in-kind gifts is shrinking. Natural disasters and an expensive presidential election have also put a claim on limited resources.  The bottom line is that there is less discretionary and disposable income for charities less funds to give and more difficult choices to make.
SPCA/L.A., with an annual budget of $6 million and estimated assets of $16 million, according to IRS Form 990, is among the most affluent 1% of all humane societies.

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Animal Obituaries

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
Scarlett, a calico cat believed to be about 15, was euthanized on October 11, 2008 due to incurably painful conditions of age. Initially a Brooklyn alley cat, Scarlett lived with her kittens in a Brooklyn warehouse until March 29, 1996 when the warehouse caught fire. Firefighter David Giannelli of Ladder Company 175, involved in several other animal rescues of note during his long career, saw Scarlett dash five times into the blaze despite increasingly severe burns to rescue each of her four-week-old kittens. Giannelli took Scarlett and her kittens to the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington. There Scarlett was named in honor of Rhett Butler s line to Scarlett O Hara in the film Gone With The Wind: A cat s a better mother than you are. One kitten died from a virus about a month after the fire, but Scarlett and the others were adopted out after three months of treatment and socialization. Karen Wellen of Brooklyn kept Scarlett for the rest of Scarlett s life. In her prime Scarlett was a regal 19 pounds, with only severely scarred ears hinting at her traumatic past.

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