Category: Activists & Organizations

Washington Humane back in D.C.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––The Washington Humane Society on
March 1 reacquired the Washington D.C. animal control contract for at
least 120 days, after the contract was held for four months by Animal
Link, an upstart rival headed by local activist Dee Atwell. WHS had provided
animal control service since 1980, but was unhappy with short-term
contracts and late payments due to the city’s shaky financial status.
WHS executive director Mary Healy told ANIMAL PEOPLE
that her staff found it was as hard to police Animal Link––whose operation
WHS raided at one point––as to do animal control itself. She added that
WHS is now resigned to doing animal control at a loss.

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Animal control & rescue

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

No-kills
The International Fund for
Animal Welfare in an April mailing asserted
that it needs “to raise over $10,000 each month
to continue providing vital support to local
shelters worldwide who cannot exist on their
own.” IFAW is well-known for many programs,
but assisting animal shelters isn’t even
mentioned as a program activity on the IFAW
filings of IRS Form 990. “During 1994 and
1995, IFAW contributed approximately
$190,000 to some 40 animal protection groups
with a no-kill policy,” IFAW director of field
activities Paul Seigal told ANIMAL PEOPLE
on April 12. “We are now selecting the
spring 1996 recipients, who will share
$200,000.” Among the 1994-1995 recipients
were shelters in Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, the United
Kingdom, the U.S., and South Africa.

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Port in a storm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

ELLICOTT, Colorado––A ninemonth
battle with Elbert County officials over
health and zoning code violations ended in
February when, under 30-day notice to either
move, get rid of her animals, or else, Mary
Port, 71, moved the grandiosly named but
essentially makeshift Colorado Animal Refuge
from an allegedly overcrowded 80-acre site
near Simla, where she founded the facility in
1983, to a 44-acre former dairy farm in El Paso
County, a few miles southeast.
El Paso County has no zoning, but
Port is still in violation of the state Pet Animal
Facilities Act, Colorado state veterinarian
Keith Roehr recently told D’Arcy Fallon of the
Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph.

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WOOFS & GROWLS (NATIONAL LEVEL)

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Fund for Animals president Cleveland Amory
made the cover of the April 18 Chronicle of Philanthropy,
which explored the ethics of keeping large reserves. The
National Charities Information Bureau holds that reserves
normally should not be greater than twice a charity’s annual
budget. The Fund has reserves of about $10 million, built
mainly through receipt of recent bequests, against a budget of
$3.6 million––the most assets relative to budget of any group
whose IRS Form 990 filings ANIMAL PEOPLE reviews.
“A huge endowment is out of place in certain instances,”
Amory said. “But with as many animals as we have in our
care, it comes close to being a necessity.” Amory said he
hopes to build an endowment able to maintain the Black
Beauty Ranch and other Fund animal care facilities on interest.
Campaigns would still run on direct donations.

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Wise-use wiseguys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Putting People First was reportedly set to link
Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski, Earth First!, and
animal rights activism at an early-April press conference in
Montana––but the Unabomber’s manifesto, published last year
by The New York Times, described animal rights activists as
delusionary; the San Jose Mercury-News on April 8 published an
interview with Jo Ann DeYoung, a former high school classmate
of Kaczynski, who remembered that he once slipped the
pelt of a dissected cat into her locker; and on April 10 The New
York Times published letters Kacynski wrote to a friend, describing
how he hunted rabbits. Kacynski’s brother David, who
turned the suspect in to the FBI, was meanwhile described by
The New York Times as a vegetarian “bunny-hugger.” PPF cancelled
the press conference, allegedly because it received anonymous
threats but couldn’t get police protection. The purported
Earth First! link was made, however, on April 9 by ABC World
News Tonight. Kacynski had no known association with Earth
First! itself, but of the three people killed and 23 hurt in the 17-
year string of Unabomber attacks, two victims worked for firms
named on a “hit list” issued in 1992 by Live Wild Or Die,
newsletter of a splinter group led by Mike Jakubal, which broke
away in 1989, after Earth First! renounced tree-spiking. The list
was in fact the list of co-sponsors of a 1989 wise-use conference.

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Why no photographs?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

That this feature appears without illustrations in itself illustrates one of the
most difficult aspects of the research debate: in the absence of openness and honesty
about just what is going on, it is difficult to fairly and accurately interpret much of the
evidence. ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton wished to show this point with
two photographs, shocking at a glance, and definitely depicting situations unacceptable
to people who care about animals, which nonetheless may not have shown the atrocities
they seemed to show, a possibility Clifton postulated after blowing them up to four
times their original size for study on a computer screen.
ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett vetoed inclusion of the photos in
keeping with our policy against using photos which may be too painful for people who
care about animals to to view while also reading potentially disturbing text.
The photographs in question depicted rhesus macaques, and were apparently
taken at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center in Madison, or predecessor
facilities, at some point prior to the founding of ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1992. They
were mailed to us anonymously, among a group of eight related photos, without explanation,
in response to our first publication announcement.

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IT WORKS IN SAN FRANCISCO–– WHAT ABOUT MILWAUKEE?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

MILWAUKEE––Wisconsin
Humane Society executive director Victoria
Wellens isn’t worried about the flak she’s
catching for giving up 19 animal control
contracts over the next year and a half. She’s
been shot at since she was hired in 1994.
Formerly executive director of the
Chistophe Memorial YMCA in Waukesha,
Wellens inherited a dilapidated shelter, a
building fund that wasn’t growing fast
enough to build much soon, a falling adoption
rate, plunging donations, a demoralized
staff, and perhaps the most militant cadre of
critics between New York and San
Francisco–– despite overall intake, adoption,
and euthanasia statistics that couldn’t
have been closer to the U.S. norms.

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I was a fish killer by Steve Hindi

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

I first fished at age five, with my
brother Greg, who is one year younger.
Each of us caught a perch out of a lake in St.
Paul, Minnesota. Fascinated, we watched
the two perch swim around in a small bucket
until first one and then the other died. I don’t
remember what happened to their bodies, but
I know they were not large enough to eat.
Perch are plentiful, and easy to
hook, and are therefore considered to be a
good species for practice fishing.
Many members from both sides of
my family were fishers, as well as hunters,
trappers, and ranchers. A couple of dead
perch didn’t rate much concern. Like most
children, we learned what we were taught,
setting aside whatever qualms we may have
felt. Our mother raised us to care for cats and
dogs, and we regularly took in strays,
despite housing project rules which forbade
it. However, we were told that fish had no
feelings, and we killed them with abandon.

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Editorial: Peace talk

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

One of our cover stories this month deals with the ongoing process of strategic disengagement,
on both sides, from the 200-year-old battle over animal use in laboratory
research––not as a matter of either side abandoning goals, but as a matter of recognizing
that common goals may be achieved more readily if the conflict is less intense.
ANIMAL PEOPLE over the past year has advanced 10 suggestions for strategic
disengagement in a manner which would simultaneously meet the major practical demands
of the animal rights community and the major needs of biomedical research. They are based
largely on inclinations already evident among both activists and researchers.
ANIMAL PEOPLE does not pretend that these suggestions can resolve the
inescapable conflict over the rightness or wrongness of animal use per se. But they might
form a mutually acceptable protocol for progress.

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