Woofs and Growls

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Greenpeace and the Doris Day Animal League are
among the major clients of Electronic Banking System Inc., target
of a December 1 Wall Street Journal expose as an especially notori-
ous example of an “electronic sweatshop,” a term coined by inves-
tigative writer Barbara Garson in a book by that title, indicating low
wage work under intensive electronic supervision. EBS recently
settled several complaints filed by the National Labor Relations
Board pertaining to alleged union-busting.

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Storm in a seapen

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Three of five ex-Navy dolphins scheduled for return to the
sea in a deal arranged by the Humane Society of the U.S. arrived
November 30 at the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary near Key West,
Florida, after an all-day flight from San Diego. Two more dolphins
were to be flown to Sugarloaf after recovering from minor ailments.
But jubilation was short-lived. Within two weeks,
Sugarloaf owner Lloyd Good III fired director of husbandry Rick
Trout and dolphin trainer Lynne Stringer, reportedly due to conflicts
with director of rehabilitation and release Ric O’Barry of the
Dolphin Project. Trout and Stringer responded by asking the USDA
to investigate the sanctuary.
Objected Stringer, “Volunteer staff and onlookers were
hovering over the dolphins, petting and rubbing them, and encour-
aging the very behaviors that they had come to the sanctuary to
extinguish.” Various accounts indicated at least eight different peo-
ple were working with the dolphins.

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Dirty Pool III: Keiko

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

ANIMAL PEOPLE hadn’t scheduled a third part
of our “Dirty Pool” series on propaganda interfering with
marine mammal protection, but as the second part went to
press on November 22, Warner Brothers and New Regency
Productions donated $2 million to a new Free Willy/Keiko
Foundation formed by Earth Island Institute, the purpose of
which is to raise $10 million to buy Keiko, the orca star of
both the 1993 film Free Willy! and a forthcoming sequel
made with out-takes; fly him to a yet-to-be-built rehabilita-
tion site in Newport, Oregon; and prepare him for eventual
release. But Keiko’s owner, the Reino Aventura amuse-
ment park in Mexico City, is apparently not yet commited.
The Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor,
Washington, made the matter look a bit like a re-run with a
November bulletin headlined “How is Keiko, and what can
be done to help?” CWR claims to have struck a verbal deal
in August 1993 with Reino Aventura, to fly him to a reha-
bilitation center in the Bahamas and prepare him for release.
However, the story goes, the Alliance of Marine Mammal
Parks and Aquariums got wind of it and dispatched execu-
tives to Mexico City in the Sea World jet to keep it from
happening. CWR gave up on the deal in May 1994.

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BOOKS: The Animal Rights Movement In The United States, 1975-1990

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

The Animal Rights Movement
In The United States, 1975-1990:
An Annotated Bibliography, by Bettina Manzo. Scarecrow Press (POB
4167, Metuchen, NJ 08840), 1994. 306 pages, $39.50 hardcover.
The evolution of mass movements
is defined by bibliography. By organizing
the literature of a cause over a specified
timespan, bibliographers create landmarks:
works included become a canon, while
works overlooked tend to elude historical
notice.

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BOOKS: So, You Love Animals: An Action-Packed, Fun-Filled Book To Help Kids Help Animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

So, You Love Animals: An Action-Packed,
Fun-Filled Book To Help Kids Help
A n i m a l s, by Zoe We i l. Animalearn (c/o The
American Anti-Vivisection Society, 801 Old York
Road, #204, Jenkintown, PA 19046-1685), 1994.
190 pages, paperback, $14.95.
It is generally agreed that reaching young people
with a humane message is among the most important goals
of the animal protection community. Unfortunately and
inexplicably, proportionate resources are not directed into
humane education by either national or local humane organ-
izations. Because of this, materials intended for general
distribution to children and teenagers are of special utility.
So, You Love Animals is just such a tool. One
needn’t wait for a humane education program to materialize
in the local elementary school: you can simply donate a
copy of So, You Love Animals to the school library. Along
with Ingrid Newkirk’s Kids Can Save The Animals, it ought
to be in all libraries.

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Why shelters and sanctuaries get stoned from within

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

As Lynn Cuny’s Wildlife Rescue and
Rehabilitation sanctuary has expanded, the incoming presi-
dent of the Association of Sanctuaries has learned to study
human as well as animal behavior. After absorbing a
media bashing led by former volunteers in late 1992,
between similar bashings endured by distant neighbor
Wally Swett of Primarily Primates, Cuny shared some the-
ories with ANIMAL PEOPLE that have subsequently
proved valid in many other sanctuary and shelter blow-ups.
“Problems don’t begin because of just one per-
son,” she said. “They begin with a particular combination.
You may have a potential problem smouldering for years in
someone who’s otherwise a very good employee or volun-
teer. This will be someone with low self-esteem, a pro-
found poverty mentality, who needs and wants an inordi-
nate amount of encouragement and recognition. If you are
a successful sanctuary or shelter, your success at animal
care can make these people crazy. They see the animals
being loved and appreciated, and money being spent on
care and medicine, and they don’t believe they could ever
have these things in their own lives. They become jealous.

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Everybody must get stoned, even Wildlife W aystation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, California––
Wildlife Waystation, founded by former Hollywood costume
designer Martine Colette, is the biggest wildlife rehabilitation
center and sanctuary in the U.S.––and perhaps the world.
Forty of the most recognized names in show business help
Colette raise the annual budget of circa $1.5 million.
Occupying 160 acres in Tujunga Canyon, Wildlife
Waystation has 14 paid staffers, 32 volunteers who live on
the premises, and 175 commuting volunteers, of whom
about 35 are active regulars. It answers 50,000 telephone
calls a year, handling more than 4,000 animals annually,
including wildlife and exotics picked up by many local and
regional animal control departments. The biggest of these is
the Los Angeles Board of Animal Regulation, serving the
third largest human population of any animal control depart-
ment in the country.

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“If God gives you something on this earth, it’s up to you to be responsible for it.”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

SHARON, Wisconsin––The JES Exotics
Sanctuary isn’t a member of the Association of Sanctuaries,
Jill Shumak explains, because after attending one TAOS
meeting as a guest, Jill and her husband E.J. were “not con-
vinced that it had anything to offer us.”
Explains E.J., “They were coming on like another
regulatory body, and we already have regulators up to here,
with the state, county, local, and federal. Any time you
have a sanctuary, you have everybody looking over your
shoulder.”
The Shumaks had no objection to the TAOS
accreditation requirements, but they weren’t interested in any
more red tape. They would have been interested, E.J. says,
if TAOS had appeared as if it would develop the clout for
membership and accreditation to be meaningful in reducing
governmental hassles.

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Can Wild Animal Orphanage be brought up to par?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas––Keeping perhaps the
biggest collection of former crackhouse guard-cats in Texas,
Carol Azvestus’ Wild Animal Orphanage lies beside a nar-
row, lightly traveled road on the extreme northwestern edge
of the city, just down a low grade from an old-fashioned
Pentecostal church that still holds Sunday picnics. Scrub oaks
and grazing horses across the road complete a superficially
tranquil vista. In fact, WAO is only minutes from a major
shopping center, Sea World San Antonio, and several trans-
portation arteries, some of them being widened in anticipa-
tion of rapid development.
Already Azvestus has used almost all the land she
has. A quarantine area is going up in one of the few vacant
corners. Yet her menagerie is still rapidly growing. In addi-
tion to the 150-odd animals on site when ANIMAL PEOPLE
paid an incognito visit, another 13 big cats were to arrive
within a week from a defunct roadside zoo in North Carolina.

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