BOOKS: RANCH OF DREAMS

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

RANCH OF DREAMS
by Cleveland Amory
Viking Press (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 1997. 288 pages, hardcover,
$22.95.

Cleveland Amory’s Ranch of Dreams is a pleasant stroll through the informative,
adventurous corridors of his memories of evolving from the child who adored his Aunt Lu
and all the strays she took in to become one of the founders of the modern animal rights
movement. It’s a sweet, often moving tale.
Amory begins with fond childhood recollections of both his Aunt Lu and his
grandmother (a personal favorite of mine), and the pivotal influence they and Anna
Sewell’s classic novel Black Beauty had on young Amory’s developing values and sensibilities.
From there Amory moves ahead to his acquisition of the Texas acreage which
became the Black Beauty Ranch sanctuary. He details his decades-long fight to rescue wild
burros, his raison d’etre for establishing the ranch. The chapter, like the entire book, is
packed with laughs, tears, excitement, frustration, and best of all, success.

Asia

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

With the help of Hilary Koprowski,
inventor of the oral rabies vaccine used successfully
against fox, raccoon, and coyote rabies in Europe
and the U.S., the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and
Animal Sciences University in Chennai, India, is
reportedly close to perfecting oral rabies vaccines to
protect both humans and street dogs. The human dose
would be embedded in a spinach roll; the dog dose
would be embedded in tobacco, which street dogs
avidly consume but humans rarely keep down even if
they do swallow some by accident. Chennai was previously
scene of a major humane innovation when in
1968 the Blue Cross of India introduced the Animal
Birth Control program there, now so successful in
so many cities that the Animal Welfare Board of
India in November 1997 declared as a national goal
the abolition of animal control dog-killing by 2005.

ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Fixing the problem

During the first decade that the
Humane Society of Charlotte ran a lowcost
neutering clinc, 1985-1996, it fixed
71,000 animals, reports president P a t t i
L e w i s, achieving a cumulative drop of
60,295 dogs received by Charlotte Animal
C o n t r o l, with continuing declines. Cat
intakes, peaking in 1989, are down 16%.
Doing Things For Animals,
publisher of the No-Kill Directory and organizer
of the annual No-Kill Conference
series, began providing direct animal care
as well in February, when director of animal
services Christine French won foundation
support to start a neutering assistance
project in the Verde Valley of Arizona.

Trouble in River City

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.– – T u t i
DeMaagd, chair of a Humane Society of Kent
County drive to raise $1.5 million toward the
estimated $2.5 million cost of a new shelter,
told Doug Guthrie of the Grand Rapids Press
on March 3 that she welcomes a forthcoming
probe of the campaign by the Michigan
Consumer Protection and Charitable Trust
Unit. DeMaagd began the campaign in mid1997
with $1 million already in the kitty.
Donors have since pledged $1.02 million, but
only $450,000 was actually received by midFebruary
1998.
Since DeMaagd began fundraising,
nine of the 18 HSKC board members have
resigned, often alleging irregularities, among
them attorney Ginny Makita, who specializes
in animal law, WZZM TV-13 news anchor
Catherine Behrendt, and assistant U.S. attorney
Edith Landman. Also resigning were
Humane Society Guild president Frank Ladd,
and board secretary Norma Brink.

Activists & Organizations

NATURE CONS

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Burning prairie annually to keep
woody brush down, aggressively promoted
by The Nature Conservancy on public
lands in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and
Wisconsin, may be counterproductive,
wildlife biologist Ann Swengel of Baraboo,
Wisconsin, recently told Mark Ward of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. After a decade
of studying prairie butterflies, Swengel has
reportedly discovered that frequent burning
may be driving the most specialized and
habitat-specific species to extinction. Her
findings are supported by University of
Wisconsin at Green Bay plant ecologist
Jeff Nekola, who has found that burning
grasslands to keep out non-native plants also
tends to destroy the rare habitat-specific
species he most wants to keep. Swengel and
Nekola spoke to Ward about 18 months after
Voice for Wildlife director Davida Terry
documented Nature Conservancy duplicity
in attempted prairie restoration within the
Chicago greenbelt. TNC volunteers, Terry
found, were girdling trees and setting fires
on public lands with official approval but little
or no public awareness and consultation.

Political Animals

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

“Political Animals has merged
with ROAR, founded in the mid-1980s by
the all-time legislative champion of animal
protection, former president pro tempore of
the California state senate David Roberti,”
Political Animals founder Sherry DeBoer
announced on March 1.
“Roberti has been on our advisory
board since inception,” DeBoer added “We
are thrilled to welcome to the board former
ROAR director Catherine Smith.”
Political Animals and the C a l i f –
ornia Equine Council are cosponsoring a
proposed California initiative to legally
define horses as companion animals rather
than livestock, which would make selling
them to slaughter illegal.

Body Shop skeletons rattle

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

LONDON––London Greenpeace,
whose pamphleteers David Morris and Helen
Steel were vindicated in 1997 after an eightyear
battle with McDonald’s restaurants when
a British court found McDonald’s “culpably
responsible” for animal abuse by patronizing
factory farms, on February 27 attacked a new
target: The Body Shop cosmetics empire,
already fighting lawsuits from franchisees and
suppliers alleging fraud in Brazil, Canada,
France, Spain, Great Britain, and the U.S.
“The Body Shop has manufactured
an image of being a caring company that is
helping to protect the environment and indigenous
peoples, and preventing the suffering of
animals,” London Greenpeace said. “They do
not help the plight of animals or indigenous
peoples, and their products are far from what
they’re cracked up to be.”

Recruiting failure

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

CAMBRIDGE, U.K.––A heads-up for the U.S.
animal rights movement comes from researchers Shelley L.
Galvin of Mars Hill College in North Carolina, and Harold
A. Herzog, of Western Carolina University, whose findings
about movement participation appear in the spring/summer
1998 edition of Society & Animals, a sociological journal
published by The White Horse Press of Cambridge, England.
(10 High St., Knapwell, Cambridge CB3 8NR, U.K.)
Galvin and Herzog distributed questionaires to participants
in the 1990 and 1996 Marches for the Animals in
Washington D.C., getting back 231 responses in 1996––as
much as 10% of total March participation.

ASPCA board member shot sitting ducks

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

NEW YORK, N.Y.––Three months after allegedly
shotgunning a flock of sitting ducks at a private hunting club in
a fit of pique, New York Daily News and U.S. News & World
Report chief executive officer Fred Drasner has apparently quietly
left the American SPCA board of directors, with no public
apology and––perhaps protected by his media clout––no public
statement from ASPCA president Roger Caras.
Neither did other New York animal protection groups
openly object, after the duck killing, to Drasner’s presence on
the 20-member board of the oldest U.S. humane society.
The ASPCA did not respond to either A N I M A L
PEOPLE or Chicago Animal Rights Coalition president Steve
Hindi when asked to clarify Drasner’s board status, including
the circumstances of his departure if as we were unofficially
informed he did depart.

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