Fixing the street dog problem in Costa Rica by Herb Morrison

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

ALAJUELA, Costa Rica––Dawn and Sid Scott, immigrants to Costa Rica from Chicago, have seen the tough side of Guanacaste from ground level, traveling the poorly maintained roads of this northwestern province to round up dogs for veterinary care at frequent intervals since mid-1998. They have sterilized more than 225 dogs at their own expense, paying about $20 U.S. per surgery.

Most dogs they meet belong to human families but live outside. Though Costa Rica has had no canine rabies since 1987, dogs commonly suffer from mange, internal parasites, and distemper. National veterinary licensing board member Gerardo Vicente, DVM, estimates that only about a third of the half million dogs in Costa Rica are given proper medical care. Most receive food but little else.

Editorial: Small primates on a limb

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

“Culture,” says the National Geographic Desk Reference, “provides the identity that links members of one society together and can also divide those members from other cultures.” In other words, culture is the learned behavior that separates the sheep from the goats, and also determines in which order the sheep and goats march. Culture could be defined as a collective term for the variety of social, economic, and political methods that humans use to form and maintain what we would recognize in other species as a dominance hierarchy.

Culturally entrenched cruelties resist abolition because the evolution of culture itself is often driven by the motives underlying the cruelty, so much so that the whole cultural selfidentification of some societies becomes preoccupied with establishing who may abuse whom. The more basic the society, meaning the most absorbed in constant struggle for both personal and collective survival, the more likely it is to be organized around “might makes right,” like a tribe of chimpanzees––and the more likely the culture of the society will consist chiefly of activities meant to remind members of their rank. The hazing practiced by social clubs and athletic teams serves such a purpose, for example, and is seldom far removed from cruelty because it is central to a culture whose whole purpose is defining the dominance of the incrowd or the winners, and excluding others from the exhalted inner circle.

Golf: Facing nature with a club

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

SEAL BEACH, AUBURN, SANTA BARBARA, California; LAKEWOOD, Colorado––Already poisoning cottontail rabbits at the Leisure World golf course in Seal Beach, the exterminating firm California Agri-Control in early May asked the Seal Beach Police Department for permission to shoot rabbits as well. Seal Beach police chief Mike Sellers on May 9 refused to waive the city policy against firing guns within city limits––which meant that the poisoning would continue.

In Defense of Animals offered to relocate the rabbits to a privately owned 40-acre site near Lake Elsinore, without much hope that the offer would be accepted.

“In 1992, an offer to relocate rabbits” from Leisure World “was rejected by the California Department of Fish and Game,” IDA representative Bill Dyer said. “Yet for $40,000, the cost of building one green” claimed by Leisure World, “all of the rabbits could be trapped, sterilized, and released.”

Prakash Shah–– martyr for cattle

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

RAJPUR, Gujarat, India– – Prakash Amrutlal Shah, 28, an anti-cattle slaughter activist for eight years, was fatally bludgeoned on April 2, allegedly by three butchers who ambushed Shah with staves as he walked from his home in Rajpur, Gujarat, to the p i n j a r a p o l e (cow shelter) in nearby Disa. Found by a passer-by, Shah reportedly identified his attackers to local police, who arrested two suspects but told the newspaper G u j a r a t Samachar that they had lost Shah’s statement.

”Prakash Shah died on April 10 at Shrye Hospital in Ahmendabad,” said Gujarat Samachar. “Thousands of people attended his cremation,” including representatives of the Viniyog Parivar Trust. The Trust sponsors many individuals who like Shah fight illegal cattle slaughter and export with little more than copies of the Indian Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and hope for reincarnation.

Alex Pacheco forms Humane America

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

LOS ANGELES––Alex Pacheco, who with Ingrid Newkirk cofounded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1981, left PETA at the end of 1999 to head the newly formed Humane America Foundation, billed–– in a distinct break from PETA policy––as focusing on dogs and cats, intending to help make the U.S. a no-kill nation. PETA has always been highly critical of no-kill sheltering.

Other key figures with Humane America include executive director David Meyer, who was executive director at Last Chance for Animals, 1995-1998, and research director Doug Mckee, of Virginia. Various celebrities have also lent their names to it.

The first Humane America project was a survey of 517 Los Angeles residents about pets and attitudes toward petkeeping. It mostly confirmed the findings of surveys of San Jose and San Diego residents done in 1995 and 1996 by Karen Johnson of the National Pet Alliance. L.A. residents kept fewer cats than expected, however, and opposite to Johnson’s findings had fixed 80% of their dogs but only 67% of their cats.

People

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Vegetarian actor James Cromwell, who played Farmer Hoggett in Babe, told viewers of an Easter-season TV ad sponsored by P E T A that, “Pigs are sensitive, intelligent animals. Please do your part. Stop eating pigs.” PETA is also sponsoring signs on which actresses Sandra Bernhard, Elizabeth Hurley, Judi Dench, and Bea Arthur ask women to “Join us in saying ‘neigh’ to Premarin,” which is based on urine from pregnant mares kept in close confinement. Their foals are mostly sold for slaughter.

Harvey Jacobson, of Austin, Texas, who recently sold Jacobson Manufacturing f o r $270 million, gave $1 million to Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation of Bourne, Texas, sanctuary manager Tim Ajax told ANIMAL PEOPLE. WRR used the money to buy a 187-acre new site near Kendalia––six times larger than the present facility, located near fast-growing San Antonio.

Retired biology professor H a r o l d “Catman” Sims, of Cashiers, North Carolina, was appalled that the Jackson County shelter killed 657 of the 755 cats it had received in 1994 ––so he built his own 55-cat shelter and began arranging adoptions. By March 2000, Sims had placed more than 600 cats, while Jackson County cat intake fell to 469 and cat killing to 202.

Activists & Organizations

Corrections

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Shelter stats

The article “Shelter killing: how low can you go?”, in the March 2000 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, accurately stated that, “The dog and cat killing ratio in San Francisco shelters, already the lowest of any major U.S. city, fell 24% in 1999, to just 3.9 animals killed per 1,000 human residents.”

Extra zeros were somehow added to the number 1,000 in two later sentences, which should have read, “The San Francisco data significantly lowered the floor ratios below which dog and cat euthanasias per 1,000 human residents have never gone. The table below shows in the first column the 1999 San Francisco ratios of dog and cat euthanasias per 1,000 human residents for each major cause.”

Instead, the number “1,000” came out “100,000.”

The number 1,000 and the ratios based upon it were accurately stated throughout the rest of the article.

WILDLIFE AGENCY UPDATES

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

A December 1998 training exercise came back to haunt the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement data base (LEMIS) when Tennessee activist Don Elroy in March 2000 found a data entry indicating that 1,012 orangutans valued at $850,000 had come through Miami on a single day, en route from the fictitious firm “Quong’s Orangutans” to an address which turned out to belong to a real-life leather goods importer in Hershey, Pennsylvania. USFWS Office of Law Enforcement Branch of Technical and Field Support chief Circee Pieters told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the alleged deal was one of 29 included in the exercise, with hidden red flags indicating that they were to be deleted when the exercise was done––and they were, she said, but were later restored to the system when a power failure obliged LEMIS to restore files from a backup tape.

The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters in March 2000 sent to secondary schools across the province a 300-page hunter education manual produced in 1982 by the Ontario Natural Resources Ministry and the U.S.-based National Rifle Association. It includes about 50 pages showing how to load, aim, and fire weapons including handguns. “If the schools don’t like it, they can just send it back,” said OFAH spokesperson M a r k Holmes, denying that it might help students to commit murder.

Did Animal Fair blow a cool million $$ in just six months?!

May 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2000:

Animal Fair, a glitzy magazine and web site created by celebrity cookbook co-author Wendy Diamond, “has raised about $1 million in capital since its launch last fall,” reports Keith J. Kelly of the New York Post, but is already in trouble due to “an exodus of staffers, board members and top executives,” after a split between Diamond and former boyfriend Chris Innis.

Innis formerly chaired the Animal Fair board, following the September 1999 resignation of Reciprocal Records president Larry Miller, but “has a day job as worldwide corporate planning director for magazine giant Emap Petersen, owners of Hot Rod, Teen and Motor Trend,” said Kelly, adding that Emap Petersen was not involved in funding Animal Fair.

Diamond, who claims to have raised $500,000 for charity through cookbook collaborations with rock stars Michael Jackson and Madonna, touts Animal Fair as “the first lifestyle web site and magazine for pet owners and animal lovers, bringing pets to the forefront of education, fashion, and entertainment, while creating awareness for protecting their welfare.”

Paige Powell, former editor of Interview magazine and companion to the late artist Andy Warhol, had similar ambitions for , an electronic magazine she launched from Portland, Oregon in 1996. It continues on a lower key, with a Pacific Northwest focus.

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