Category: Activists & Organizations

Case vs. ALF flak dropped

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

VANCOUVER, B.C.– – The
Royal Canadian Mounted Police on
September 25 withdrew charges that frequent
Animal Liberation Front spokesperson
David Barbarash, 36, and his
longtime associate Darren Todd
Thurston, 30, sent more than 20 razor
blade-rigged letters to hunters, furriers,
and a newspaper columnist.
R C M P spokespersons told
media that they remain confident that
Barbarash and Thurston were rightly
accused, but felt an order from British
Columbia Supreme Court Justice
Kenneth Lysyk to fully disclose the evidence
against them would jeopardize
confidential sources and agreements
with other law enforcement agencies to
protect the other agencies’ sources.

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000:

A Faroe Islands court recently convicted
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
founder Paul Watson in absentia of alleged
illegal entry into Faroese waters, and ordered
him to pay a fine of $37,000 or serve 60 days
in jail, Watson and the Sea Shepherds learned
on September 27 from the Ritzau news agency
of Denmark. “Captain Watson has a clear
defense for all charges, but was not allowed to
present it,” said a Sea Shepherd release.
“Captain Watson did not choose to be tried in
absentia,” the release continued, adding that
Watson didn’t even know he had been charged
until after the trial.

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Campaigns & Organizations

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

The Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society, often pursued by law enforcement,
announced on August 21 that on August 19
its Brazilian affiliate, Instituto Sea
S h e p h e r d, had joined with “members of
Brazil’s environmental law enforcement
agency IBAMA and military police” to conduct
“a high-seas raid against four illegal
driftnetting vessels.” The Sea Shepherds
said they spotted the outlaw fishers from an
airplane, kept them under observation from a
helicopter, and used a speedboat to approach
and mark the vessels for identification and
possible confiscation by the Brazilian Navy.

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PEOPLE & DEEDS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

Appointments
Meryl Harrison, formerly general
manager of the Bulawayo Branch SPCA,
was in August named national coordinator for
the Zimbabwe National SPCA. The
Zimbabwe Standard noted that Harrison “rose
to prominence when she successfully challenged
a visiting Egyptian circus whose animals
were in a terrible state.” She was also
prominently involved, said the S t a n d a r d, in
relocating a female chimpanzee from a substandard
zoo to the Chimfunshi sanctuary in
Zambia, improving rail transport conditions
for cattle, and obtaining a Department of
National Parks and Wildlife Management
edict against hunting leopards with coonhounds.

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Mississippi sanctuarian tries to quit “sharecropping” for fundraiser

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

CALEDONIA, Miss.– – Cedarhill
Animal Sanctuary founder Kay McElroy, of
Caledonia, Mississipi, on September 1 notified
Virginia-based fundraiser Bruce Eberle
that she wants nothing more to do with him.
A week later, however, as A N IMAL
PEOPLE went to press, McElroy and
Cedarhill were still ensnarled in a contract
which has already paid huge sums to Eberle
and has him claiming he is owed still more,
while producing little benefit to Cedarhill.
“I haven’t had one comfortable day
since I signed with Eberle,” McElroy told
ANIMAL PEOPLE. “It has been eight
months of misery,” during which Eberle has
identified Cedarhill as Tiger Tracks in mailings
very similar to those he sent in representing
Tiger Haven, of Tennessee, and Tiger
Creek, of Texas.

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SHELTERING AND THE VALUE OF WELCOMING COMPANY

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

WALTHAM, Massachusetts– – ” It
has often been observed,” New Hampshire
state neutering program architect Peter Marsh
told Spay/USA conference attendees recently,
“that people tend to resemble the animals they
choose as companions. I submit,” Marsh
added, “that people who rescue feral or abandoned
or abused animals also tend to resemble
the animals they choose, not in physical
appearance but in the psychological sense.
“Just as feral or abandoned animals
or animals who have been abused tend to be
frightened and furtive,” March continued, “so
we ourselves are often frightened and furtive,
and fear the public will think badly of us
because we have too many animals, or must
euthanize some animals. We don’t invite people
into our shelters because we think they
won’t understand what they see. Therefore
they don’t understand why we can’t give lifetime
care to every animal someone dumps on
us, or why we are always stressed out and
blaming pet keepers for being irresponsible––
and we don’t get the help we need to change
things. I further submit,” Marsh finished,
“that it is time we opened the doors.”

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Disaster relief teams are fired up and burned out by hellish summer

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

HAMILTON, Montana––With at least five national
animal disaster relief teams now on the job, and increasingly
well-prepared local disaster relief plans covering most of the
more populated portions of the U.S., members of the United
Animal Nations’ Emergency Animal Services entered August
feeling a bit like Maytag repairmen: nobody calling, nothing
much to do except hold more seminars to train more help to
assist the 3,400 UAN-trained volunteers already available to
respond when all hell breaks loose.
”There have been no disasters where we were needed
so far,” UAN president Jeanne Westin remarked to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on August 7.
Thirteen western states were gripped by some of the
hottest droughts in years––but neither UAN nor any of the other
national animal rescue outfits do rainmaking.

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Hindi isn’t eavesdropper, Kane County judge rules

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

CHICAGO––Judge James T. Boyle of the
Circuit Court of Kane County, Illinois, on September 6
acquitted SHARK founder Steve Hindi of alleged felony
eavesdropping. Hindi was charged in a case drawing
widespread attention from civil libertarians for having
taped the July 1999 refusal of St. Charles County police
to lay cruelty charges against participants in the Kane
County Fair rodeo––in a public place, and making no
effort to conceal that he was recording the discussion.
The verdict came two weeks after Hindi and
SHARK videotaped extensive use of electroshock, tailraking,
and other techniques which appeared to violate
National High School Rodeo Association rules during the
NHSRA Finals in Springfield, Illinois.
The NHSRA Finals were co-hosted by the
Illinois Department of Agriculture, which also has jurisdiction
over Illinois anti-cruelty law enforcement.

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Editorial: The advantages of being seen

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2000:

From Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent Paul Salopek came word on August
6 that brothers Antonio and Luis Faceira of Angola are working with Wouter van Hoven of
the University of Pretoria Center for Wildlife Management in South Africa to restore
wildlife to the 3.5-million-acre Quicama National Park, near the capital city of Luanda.
Each a military general in the regime headed since 1979 by President Jose Eduardo
Santos, the Faceira brothers have fought Jona Savimbi and his UNITA insurgency for 25
years. Altogether, counting the last years of Portuguese rule, Angola has been almost continuously
at war since 1961.
Both sides have reputedly ravaged wildlife––for meat, target practice, and
money. Salopek mentioned reports of government officials strafing antelope from helicopters.
Craig Van Note, executive director of the World Wildlife Fund trade-monitoring
subsidiary TRAFFIC, in 1988 accused UNITA of killing as many as 100,000 elephants
over the preceding 12 years, in order to trade ivory for arms with the former apartheid government
of South Africa.

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