Category: Activists & Organizations

Adoption Pact working

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

SAN FRANCISCO––”We predicted
that impounds would increase as the public
became aware of the Pact’s lifesaving guaran-
tee,” recounts the newly published SF/SPCA
report covering the first year of the revolutionary
no-kill animal control agreement. “The theory at
the heart of the Adoption Pact is that more peo-
ple will surrender their unwanted pets to shelters,
as opposed to abandoning or neglecting them, if
they know the animal is going to be placed in a
loving home rather than be killed. Total
impounds of San Francisco dogs and cats did
rise, by 1,314 animals.”
The SF/SPCA placed 5,054 animals
during the first 12 months of the Adoption Pact,
including 3,382 animals who required medical or
behavioral rehabilitation, 2,314 of whom would
have been euthanized at the city shelter before
the Adoption Pact, under which the SF/SPCA
accepts all healthy or recoverable animals
received by the city.

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Woofs & growls

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

People
The American Humane Assoc-
iation on July 19 announced the appointment
of Ed Sayres as head of the AHA Animal
Protection Division, and Patricia Olson,
DVM, to direct a new subdivision,
Veterinary Medical Affairs and Studies.
Sayres formerly was president of S t .
Hubert’s Giralda, a shelter based in
Madison, New Jersey, which he joined as
director of humane education in 1974. He is
also on the board of the Delta Society a n d
Society of Animal Welfare Administrators.
Olson is on the faculty of the University of
Minnesota School of Veterinary Medicine.
* William W. Howard, CEO since 1989,
has been named interim president of the
National Wildlife Federation, succeeding
Jay D. Hair, who resigned his $257,000-a-
year post in July amid a dispute with the
board over deficits totaling about $800,000
over the past two years. The NWF is a
national umbrella for 49 state hunting associa-
tions. * Longtime World Society for the
Protection of Animals representative W i m
de Kok quit at the end of July, declining to
state a reason or mention future plans.

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TRIPLE TROUBLE FOR HUMANE SOCIETY OF US

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

WASHINGTON D.C.––August 10 dawned bright
for the Humane Society of the U.S., as newspapers across the
country carried a photo of HSUS director of legislative affairs
Wayne Pacelle and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) decrying
puppy mills at a press conference held the day before to
announce that Santorum and 14 other Senators had jointly
signed a letter to Agriculture Secretary Daniel Glickman,
seeking stiffer enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act.
Then someone noticed that the letter Santorum sent
was markedly different from the letter sent by 110 House
members and three Senators in the same cause––and the
effect of Santorum’s letter was to undercut the House letter,
whose signers were rallied by Rep. Glenn Poshard (D-Ill.)
The Poshard letter, circulated to potential signers
on June 27 and delivered to Glickman on August 8, asked for
Glickman’s “strong support” in imposing ten specific new
standards for puppy and kitten breeding facilities: “Increase
basic cage size for companion animals permanently housed in
the facilities; improve flooring within the primary enclosures
by requiring plastic-coated wire of a specific width; increase
the size and material of the resting surface for each animal in
a primary enclosure; require constant access to potable water
for all animals housed in the facility; limit the number of
times/frequency breeding stock can be bred over a certain
time period; strengthen the sanitation requirements for the
primary enclosure; eliminate the ability to tether animals;
reexamine temperature guidelines; require more specific
daily exercise of animals at the facilities; exclude ‘another
dog’ as acceptable exercise.”

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Hunting & trapping

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Results of a major public
opinion survey commissioned by
the Colorado Division of Wildlife
“indicate that a substantial major-
ity of Coloradans would vote to
ban wildlife trapping,” human
dimensions coordinator Linda
Sikorowski advised the brass on
July 13. “A substantial proportion
of Colorado residents are positively
oriented toward wildlife rights and
wildlife welfare values,” she contin-
ued. “Trapping solely for the pur-
pose of recreation or for economic
gain is not adequate justification for
trapping to the Colorado public.”
The survey found that trapping
could best be sold as a means of
rabies prevention and wildlife popu-
lation control––but this might not be
for long, as the advent of oral rabies
vaccination of wildlife reinforces the
22-year-old position of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
that trapping is neither effective
against rabies nor in lastingly
depressing wildlife populations.

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Humane education with Jane Goodall by Carol A. Connare

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

In moments, she went from sipping
coffee with patrolmen to getting a surprise
audience with the top 100 captains of the Los
Angeles Police Department. Adrenaline
pumping, Dr. Jane Goodall thought fast. “I
said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get their attention,
or they won’t hear a thing I say.’” Deputy
Chief Kroeker introduced Goodall to the men.
She stood up and said, “If I were a female
chimpanzee and I walked into a room of
high-ranking male chimpanzees, it would be
foolish if I didn’t greet them with a submis-
sive pant-grunt,” which she proceeded to do.
All eyes looked up, the men lis-
tened intently to her ten-minute talk, and
Chief Willie Williams agreed to endorse her
educational program––Roots and Shoots––
and help introduce it to inner city kids.
As humans, we take superiority for
granted. But Goodall feels strongly, based
on years in the bush, doing zoological
research, that we are not as different from
other animals as many of us think.

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LABORATORY ANIMALS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

NYU sells LEMSIP chimps to Coulston
STERLING FOREST, N.Y.––The New York University
Medical Center on August 9 transferred ownership of the Laboratory
for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates to the Coulston
Foundation, headed by Frederick Coulston, 81.
A primate researcher since 1936, Coulston is accused of
multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act in pending cases,
which allegedly caused the deaths of five chimps from thirst and heat
stress in two separate incidents at other primate facilities he runs in
New Mexico. Coulston claims three of those deaths were due to
malfunctioning equipment inherited when he took over one of the
facilities from the University of New Mexico two months earlier.
Activist groups are meanwhile demanding reinvestigation of eight
other recent chimp deaths at Coulston facilities, which also may
have involved alleged negligence.

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Editorials: Prepare for post-pet overpopulation

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Any defunct gas station could become a vibrant example of a new age in animal
care-and-control: a neighborhood humane outpost. Offering easy access and plenty of
parking, ex-gas stations can’t keep lots of animals, but that isn’t what they should do.
Their showrooms can display cats in all the decorator colors; they have garages able to keep
adoptable dogs in spacious runs, and park a van for the night; and they have adequate
office space for a small-scale operation, which could be either a satellite of a larger organi-
zation or an independent entity cooperating with other shelters of differing capabilities.
The van would be not just wheels, but an extension of the job. In normal configu-
ration, it would do animal pickup-and-delivery. A slide-in veterinary module would make
it a mobile neutering-and-vaccination clinic, or a rescue vehicle.
A humane outpost obviously couldn’t receive lots of drop-off litters and other
owner-surrendered animals. Nor could it house animals through a multi-day holding period,
or do any but emergency euthanasias. Those would remain the duties of central shelters.
Likewise, a humane outpost couldn’t do law enforcement. But it might hold drop-offs tem-
porarily, for exchange with adoptable animals from a central shelter. It might also do com-
munity liaison for anti-cruelty and animal control officers working out of a larger office.
A humane outpost would not be an animal shelter in the familiar sense. It would
exist not to collect, keep, or kill animals, nor to deal with pet overpopulation per se, the
main job of animal shelters for the past 120 years, but rather to facilitate responsible pet-
keeping in the post-pet overpopulation milieu, by arranging appropriate placements, help-
ing pets get essential care, and providing referrals for other services. In some towns, a
low-overhead, high-traffic humane outpost might even pay for itself.

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SHOWDOWN AT THE DOLPHIN PEN

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

SUGARLOAF KEY, Florida––The first anniversary of the arrival of the dolphins
Molly, Bogie, and Bacall at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary came and went with no resolu-
tion in sight of the impasse between Sugarloaf director of rehabilitation Ric O’Barry and oth-
ers involved in the rehab-and-release effort. Brought from the former Ocean Reef Club in
Key Largo on August 10, 1994, all three dolphins remain at Sugarloaf, for the time being,
along with three former U.S. Navy dolphins whom O’Barry is preparing for release in a sepa-
rate deal arranged by the Humane Society of the U.S.

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YELLOWSTONE: The steam isn’t all from geysers

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––Filmed in Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, the 1952 western classic Shane depicted stubborn men who thought them-selves reasonable in a tragic clash over limited range. Alan Ladd, in the title role, won the big showdown, then rode away pledging there would be no more guns in the valley.

But more than a century after the Shane era, the Yellowstone range wars not only smoulder on, but have heated up. To the north, in rural Montana, at least three times this year armed wise-users have holed up for months, standing off bored cordons of sheriff’s deputies, who wait beyond bullet range to arrest them for not paying taxes and taking the law into their own hands.

One of the besieged, Gordon Sellner, 57, was wounded in an alleged shootout and arrested on July 19 near Condon. Sellner, who said he hadn’t filed a tax return in 20 years, was wanted for attempted murder, having allegedly shot a sheriff’s deputy in 1992. A similar siege goes on at Roundup, where Rodney Skurdahl and four others are wanted for allegedly issuing a “citizen’s declaration of war” against the state and federal governments and posting boun-ties on public officials. At Darby, near the Bitterroot National Forest, elk rancher Calvin Greenup threatens to shoot anyone who tries to arrest him for allegedly plotting to “arrest,” “try,” and hang local authorities. Greenup is Montana coordinator of the North American Volunteer Militia.

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