Editorials: Doing wolves no favors

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Experts estimate the world wolf population never exceeded 500,000. Humans
have had wolves outnumbered and on the run since Neanderthal times. Those who couldn’t
be killed were pushed into the most inhospitable corners of the globe––for if there’s one
thing a human hunter can’t stand, it’s the idea that something else might kill his game, his
livestock, perhaps even his family if he fails to “keep the wolf from the door.”
If there’s another thing hunters hate about wolves, it’s the reminder wolves con-
vey that predatory skills and a strict dominance hierarchy do not equate with fitness for sur-
vival in the human-made world. Most fears about wolves are unfounded––North American
wolves have never eaten people––but to your average hunter no other animal so symbolizes
male inadequacy. The men with guns are now more frightened than ever. In Alaska, gov-
ernor Tony Knowles on February 4 made permanent his December 3 suspension of prede-
cessor Walter Hickel’s campaign to kill wolves in order to make more moose and caribou
available to human hunters in the region southwest of Fairbanks. In Yellowstone, the like-
lihood that wolves will soon thin out an estimated 60,000 elk, 30,000 deer, and 4,000
bison, after a 60-year absence, deals a political blow to the hope of the hunting lobby that
they might open the National Parks to hunting––the only federal lands that now exclude
hunting, and therefore the last refuge of many beasts with trophy-sized horns.

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BOOKS: The War Against The Greens

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

The War Against The Greens, by David Helvarg. Sierra Club
Books (100 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA 94104), 1994. 502 pages,
hardback, $25.00.
David Helvarg brought to The War
Against The Greens a background as a war
correspondent in Northern Ireland and
Central America. It serves him well as he
explains how unwitting followers of Che
Guevarra organize in logged-out U.S.
forests, revering not Karl Marx but Ronald
Reagan. Their hatred of “greenies” and
“yuppies” is a paradigm of class struggle,
pitting themselves as workers against bour-
geois “preservationists,” yet they remain as
blind to their own manipulation by rich for-
eign interests as the Marxists of decades past
were to manipulation by Moscow.
The War Against The Greens lives
up to the cover promise that it will expose,
“The ‘wise use’ movement, the new right,
and anti-environmental violence,” docu-
menting a staggering number of attacks––far
more, for instance, than the mere 313 inci-
dents, more than half of them petty vandal-
ism, that the FBI attributes to animal rights
activists over the past 15 years. Many of the
anti-green attacks also go well beyond any
deed of “animal rights terrorists” in degree
of violence toward human beings. Yet
except for the apparent murder of Karen
Silkwood as she tried to expose radiation
hazards at the Kerr-McGree uranium pro-
cessing plant in Oklahoma, anti-green
attacks have rarely drawn media attention.
For example, though I interviewed Vermont
and New Hampshire Earth First!ers Jeff
Elliot, Jamie Sayen, and Michael Vernon
several times between mid-1989 and mid-
1991, following up on stories that made the
regional news wires, I was previously
unaware that all three were burnt out of their
homes by arson during the same interval.
Strangely, Helvarg ignores vio-
lence against animal rights activists––and
takes no note of the Fran Trutt case, perhaps
the best-documented example of an alleged
corporate act of false provocation in many
years. In November 1988, Trutt was arrest-
ed while placing a pipe bomb in the U.S.
Surgical Corporation parking lot. A long-
time target of protest over use of dogs in
demonstrations of surgical staples, U.S.
Surgical publicized the deed as an act of
“animal rights terrorism,” but Trutt turned
out to have only peripheral involvement with
animal rights; was given the money to buy
the bomb and driven to the site by Marc
Mead, an undercover agent for a private
security firm employed by U.S. Surgical;
and was actively encouraged in the plot
since the preceding April by Marylou
Sapone, another agent of the same firm.
Earlier, Sapone had tried unsuccessfully to
interest a variety of other animal lovers,
anarchists, Earth First!ers, and just plain
nuts in bombing U.S. Surgical.
Helvarg’s omission of this and
other animal-related cases is ultimately as
disturbing as his recitation of attacks on peo-
ple addressing land use conflicts and toxic
waste disposal. It seems to signify that the
wise-users have convinced mainstream envi-
ronmentalists to disassociate themselves
from animal people even when animal peo-
ple take the heat for environmentalist goals
and tactics, as in many conflicts involving
endangered species.
“To date the Wise Use / Property
Rights backlash has been a bracing if dan-
gerous reminder to environmentalists that
power concedes nothing without a demand,”
Helvarg concludes. “Only in the cynical
argot of Washington where ‘perception is
realtiy’ could a corporate-sponsored envi-
ronmental backlash successfully sell itself as
a populist movement. Despite an intimidat-
ing combination of local thugs and national
phone/fax guerillas, the anti-enviros lack
the broad middle, either ideologically or in
terms of real numbers.”
Yet since The War Against The
G r e e n s appeared, the anti-enviros at least
think they’ve captured Congress. Helvarg
may be right that the public will ultimately
reject Wise Use, but now it’s open season
on the Endangered Species Act. One hopes
the enviros won’t consider it as expendible
as they apparently consider the animal pro-
tection movement.

COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Humane enforcement
The Alabama Office of the Attorney
General’s probe of the affairs of the Love and Care
for God’s Animalife no-kill shelter in Andalusia,
Alabama, was apparently lost in the shuffle when
newly elected Republican attorney general Jeff
Sessions purged the staff of Democrats, including
Greg Locklier of the consumer affairs division, who
had been assigned to the case. A “Mr. Billings” pur-
portedly inherited the dossier, but failed to return
calls pertaining to it.
The SWAT team in East Cleveland,
Ohio, on January 10 killed a Rottweiler and skirted
a pit bull terrier plus numerous snakes, baby alliga-
tors, tarantulas, and lizards while arresting Savalas
Crosby, 19, and Shawntel Gibson, 21, in connec-
tion with a December 29 drive-by shooting. Police
commander Charles Teel said the animals were
apparently being raised for sale to drug dealers as
“protection.”

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What’s with the guns?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

LOS ANGELES––A series of exposes of alleged
misconduct by California humane officers by Josh Meyer
of the Los Angeles Times is bringing calls for reform of the
system of appointing officers, but Barbara Fabricant of
the Humane Task Force, a target of the series, claims
Meyer almost completely inverted her position on one of
the central issues, the right to bear sidearms. Belatedly
responding to ANIMAL PEOPLE’s request for comment
on Meyer’s story, published in November, Fabricant
explained that she’d been so shocked and embarrassed at
her depiction as a gun-toting vigilante that she didn’t even
want to face her friends for some weeks. The full-page
article, illustrated with a photo of Fabricant in full uni-
form, six-gun at her hip, recorded her many clashes with
other humane organizations, and made much of her admit-
tedly colorful background, but failed to acknowledge that
she wore the gun and uniform only at the request of Meyer
and his photographer.

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Birds

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:
Pennsylvania Game Commission ornithologist Dan
Brauning has a simple explanation for the increasing abundance
and diversity of bird species around Philadelphia: “Human toler-
ance of wildlife is changing. People aren’t shooting things like
they were 50 years ago. Wild turkeys [for example] would not sur-
vive if kids in the suburbs all had pellet guns.”
Talking Talons Youth Leadership, formed by
Albuquerque raptor rehabilitator and retired school nurse Wendy
Aeschliman, teaches teenagers to do public presentations on civic
and environmental issues, using the birds in her permanent care to
illustrate their various points. According to Modern Maturity,
“Last year approximately 80 young educators appeared before
105,000 people,” tutored by about 50 adult volunteers.

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PROGRESS IN ISRAEL

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Nina Natelson of Concern for
Helping Animals in Israel saw “a lot of
improvement” in animal care and control
arrangements this winter compared with
last winter, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
An experienced shelter manager,
South African emigre Glenda Ford, now
heads the Beresheva shelter, Natelson
said, and has cut the number of resident
dogs from 500 to 100, “which is still too
many for the facilities,” Natelson contin-
ued, “but it’s going in the right direction.”
Earlier the shelter fended off a takeover
bid from Benny Schesinger of Let The
Animals Live (see Court Calendar).

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Two million $$ for neutering

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

BEVERLY HILLS––Television personality Bob Barker, who ends his Price Is
Right show with a message urging viewers to neuter their pets, has formed a foundation to
fund low-cost or free neutering clinics nationwide with an initial donation of $2 million.
Barker named the DJ&T Foundation in memory of his wife Dorothy Jo and his mother
Matilda (Tilly) Valandra, both of whom shared his affection for animals. Barker pledged to
make annual contributions throughout the rest of his lifetime, and to leave the bulk of his
estate to the foundation upon his death.
Grant proposals for the creation and operation of low-cost or free neighborhood
and/or mobile neutering clinics should be directed to the DJ&T Foundation at 9201 Wilshire
Blvd., Suite 204, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Animal control & rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Abroad
A 1988 law forbidding population
control euthanasia at the city pound in Rome,
Italy, “leaves many a beast to serve a life sen-
tence without hope of reprieve in the city ken-
nels,” reports Celestine Bohlen of The New
York Times, but has also encouraged
neuter/release. Rome has an estimated 200,000
feral cats in about 10,000 colonies; about 500
colonies including 7,000 to 8,000 cats are now
under official veterinary supervision.
Villagers displaced by Turkish
attacks on Kurd rebels left behind as many as
1,000 sheepdogs and 150 donkeys near the
town of Tunceli in early January. Authorities
who have shown little hesitation about killing
human enemies, real or suspected, were
reportedly reluctant to put the animals down
and were investigating the possibility of truck-
ing them elsewhere for adoption.

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Disasters!

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

I. California
The fast-improving response capabilities of humane groups
were tested in early 1995 by flooding in northern California, the
January 17 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, and heavier flooding in western
Europe––while a quake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale that hit
Pereira, Colombia, on February 9 was likely to illustrate the conse-
quences of a lack of humane services. In between, a big quake shook
New Zealand but missed population centers.
Information on animal aspects of the Colombian quake was
unavailable at deadline. Northern California was by contrast about as
well-prepared for disaster as anywhere could be. The early January
flooding centered on Sacramento, home of both United Animal Nations
and the California Veterinary Medical Association disaster relief task
force, headed by local vets Kerrie Marshall and Larry Buntrock.
“It was convenient disaster,” laughed Terri Crisp of UAN.
“We already had our base, and we’d already done our training work-
shops in Sacramento and Placerville. It was a textbook example of how
well things can go when you’re prepared.”
“Northern California didn’t need outside help,” agreed
American Humane Association disaster relief coordinator Nick Gilman.
UAN-trained rescuer Stacy Adams of Rio Linda had a difficult
time, though. Living on relatively high ground, she took in the pets of
neighbors who were on lower ground, and had two dogs, three cats,
and two rabbits in her care when she was forcibly evacuated by heli-
copter. Adams called Crisp upon landing; Crisp convinced the National
Guard to take her in a convoy of trucks to evacuate the animals, too.
Farther north, the Humane Society of Sonoma County tem-
porarily housed 29 cats, 20 dogs, two mice, and a rabbit whose homes
were flooded, while Sonoma County Animal Control took in 22 cats
and 10 dogs. Animal control officers used a boat to distribute half a ton
of pet food to people who were trapped with their pets in flooded areas
along the Russian River. High water menaced horses and poultry in
several locations, but the biggest concern, said Sonoma County Animal
Control director Barry Evans, was “getting people reunited with their
animals.” His shelter was assisted by the Pet Savers Foundation, a divi-
sion of the North Shore Animal League, which sent stainless steel
cages, portable pet carriers, leashes, and collars.
The San Francisco SPCA dispatched a rescue team into the
flood zone and welcomed transfers of animals who were already in shel-
ters when the flooding hit, to help make room for animals needing
emergency housing.
Livestock and wildlife took the hardest hits. Near Ferndale,
ranchers Jim Becker and Richard Ambrosini lost 51 pregnant heifers.
At Lolita Bottoms, across the Eel River from Ferndale, Fred Fearrien
reportedly lost more than 500 sheep. Burrowing mammals from field
mice to foxes were either forced from their holes or drowned. Seagulls
flocked north by the thousands to feast on the easy pickings.
Expecting flooding to follow in southern California, the Los
Angeles SPCA’s “Caring for Animals Network” advertised a special
number, 1-800-730-4CAN, to help disaster victims, promising free
veterinary care for injured animals, two weeks of free kenneling for dis-
placed pets, and free pet food to those in need. But demand was mini-
mal, said LASPCA president Madeline Bernstein, estimating that her
shelters handled no more than 25 to 50 displaced animals.
II. Kobe quake
The Japan Animal Welfare Society estimated that more than
130,000 dogs and cats were in the Kobe quake zone. Another organiza-
tion on the scene, Animal Refuge Kansai, managed by British-born
Elizabeth Oliver, told the International Fund for Animal Welfare that
immediately after the earthquake the streets were full of loose and dis-
oriented dogs. “There were also reports of damage at the Oji Zoo in
Kobe,” according to an IFAW internal memo.
As luck would have it, World Society for Animal Protection
international projects director John Walsh had visited Japan to discuss
disaster planning only 12 days earlier. He was joined by Wim de Kok,
a native of The Netherlands who now works out of Boston and “has
worked extensively in animal welfare in Japan,” according to WSPA
press officer Laura Salter. IFAW sent Keynan Kum and Annemieke
Roell, also of The Netherlands, and provided funding to enable ARK to
set up two prefabricated buildings––an animal relief coordination center
and temporary housing for displaced animals. More help arrived when
United Animal Nations International sent Crisp to the scene.
But help wasn’t necessarily welcome, for political and cultur-
al reasons, as France learned when the Japanese Agriculture Ministry
tried to quarantine four rescue dogs who were sent to help find buried
quake survivors. After four days of red tape, the dogs were released in
time to help locate nine dead bodies.
“It was difficult,” Crisp told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “because
we didn’t have all the resources that we usually have in this country.
We didn’t have a whole crew of volunteers, or a plan. We were back to
where we were a couple of years ago.” On the positive side, she noted,
“People were very responsible about their animals. People who lost
their homes were allowed to take pets with them to the temporary shel-
ters, and a lot of people were willing to adopt and care for strays.”
Working with veterinarians Hajime Murata of the Mominoki Animal
Clinic in Nada City, and Shigetoshi Ishida and his wife Chiharu, a vet
tech, of Osaka, Crisp observed “a steady flow of dogs and cats, pri-
marily as result of the earthquake, mostly with behavioral problems or
diarrhea” attributed to stress and drinking polluted water. Serious
injuries to animals were surprisingly few; Crisp saw only two dogs with
broken legs, and no dead dogs or cats.
The Japanese branches of Pedigree and Iams “donated lots of
food,” Crisp continued. “We loaded up carts and went through the
neighborhoods distributing food. It was very difficult for most of the

people to accept charity. They felt often that they had to give something
back. We didn’t want to take their things, but we didn’t want the peo-
ple to feel bad, so a lot of times we couldn’t say no.”
The biggest problem Crisp saw, she said, was the very effi-
ciency of the Japanese pound system, set up to protect human health.
Despite the crisis, strays were held no longer than 72 to 80 hours before
euthanasia. None of the shelters Crisp visited did adoption promotion or
did much to promote neutering. Extreme concern about avoiding
zoonoses kept Crisp from setting up a temporary holding center for
strays, as she has after other disasters. Some veterinarians, she found,
didn’t even want to touch stray kittens, from fear of getting germs.
WSPA, however, set up a temporary shelter in Nishinomiya, where a
200-animal permanent shelter is in planning.
Animals were found alive in the ruins as late as February 6,
17 days after the last living human victim was unearthed, when Teruko
Kimura heard barking deep within the rubble of her home while trying
to recover personal possessions. Thirty-four firefighters and police
worked for four hours to help Kimura extricate Dick, a six-month-old
golden retriever, believed to have been killed along with Kimura’s
daughter Hitomi, 20, when the house collapsed. Kimura herself and
another daughter, Kazumi, 18, were dug out shortly after the quake.
Dick was dehydrated and weak but otherwise in good condition.
The most serious animal losses in Kobe were cockroach-eating
hunter wasps, Kobe University entomologists Makoto Matsuura and Yo
Hamanishi told media on February 9. Brought to Japan by merchant
ships at some point between 1603 and 1868, the wasps lived in older
wooden structures that were mostly destroyed by the earthquake and
fire. Without hunter wasps, the Kobe cockroach population will have
no natural control, possibly resulting in more intensive use of pesticides,
which could in turn affect birds and fish.
For Crisp, the major achievement of the trip was setting up a
disaster training workshop for Japanese veterinarians and volunteers, to
be held late this spring.
III. The Netherlands
The biggest animal evacuations––perhaps of all time––took
place in The Netherlands, where beginning circa January 30, farmers
moved more than 1.5 million chickens, 50,000 sheep, 400,000 pigs, and
half a million cows, along with essential paraphernalia such as milking
machines. “You can bet your bottom dollar that no farmer will leave his
animals in fields threatened by the dikes breaking,” said spokesman Peter
Stoel of an agricultural crisis center set up in Arnheim. Despite the
unprecedented size of the operation, it reportedly went smoothly.
International animal protection groups apparently were not involved.
Of the 58 known human deaths in the European flooding, which
also hit France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, and Luxembourg, the first
two in The Netherlands were animal-related: two sisters, ages 52 and 62,
drowned on January 31 while walking their dog atop a dike in the village
of Winssen, beside the Waal river.
What’s a VMAT?
The global spate of disasters occurred just as the Americian
Veterinary Medical Association was organizing three Veterinary
Medical Assistance Teams to work with the U.S. Public Health Service
as “special needs federal employees” in presidentially declared national
emergencies. Two VMAT teams were already partially staffed with vol-
unteers, but neither was activated to assist in California, said coordina-
tor Lyle Vogel, DVM, because “The California VMA was well-pre-
pared and performed notably. Luckily that was true, because the
VMATs are not ready and will probably not be ready for at least one
year. We are identifying training opportunities,” Vogel continued,
“and then the teams need to be equipped to be self-sufficient during
deployment. These efforts will require significant funding.”
Meanwhile, Vogel said, “The American Veterinary Medical
Health Foundation has created a Disaster Relief Emergency Fund which
can be used for emergency preparedness in addition to health care for
animals, expenses of the response teams, and grants or loans to veteri-
narians so they can rapidly recover [from disasters] and provide care for
animals. The fund has helped defray the costs of caring for some of the
animals displaced by the recent Texas floods,” which hit in October.
The AVMA Emergency Preparedness and Response Guide, a
340-page looseleaf manual, is $25 from the AVMA, 1931 N. Meacham
Road, Suite 100, Schaumburg, IL 60173-4360.
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