Pro-hunting Nature Conservancy president quits

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
ARLINGTON, Va.–Steven J. McCormick,
56, president of The Nature Conservancy since
December 2000, abruptly resigned on October 1,
2007, effective immediately. His successor has
not been selected.
A 30-year Nature Conservancy employee,
McCormick took over the national organization
after his predecessor, John Sawhill, died from
diabetes. While Nature Conservancy policies have
always favored hunting, fishing, and trapping,
McCormick –himself an avid hunter–moved TNC
into closer alignment with hunting, fishing,
and trapping advocacy organizations.
McCormick previously directed the Nature
Conservancy of California for 16 years,
presiding over the acquisition of Santa Cruz
Island to become a part of Channel Island
National Park and efforts to exterminate
non-native animals on the island.

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Greenpeace says “Eat roos.”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:
VICTORIA–Greenpeace Aust-ralia on October 10, 2007 endorsed
slaughtering kangaroos instead of cattle as a purported way to fight
global warming.
The argument for eating kangaroos was prominently featured in
the Greenpeace Australia press release promoting Paths to a
Low-Carbon Future, a Greenpeace-commissioned report released on
October 10 and made available for downloading from the top of the
Greenpeace Australia web site.
Kangaroos were actually mentioned in only two sentences of
the 30-page report, but the press release mention– which omitted
half the context–won mentions of Paths to a Low-Carbon Future in
more than 200 newspapers worldwide within the next 24 hours.
Wrote report author Mark Diesendorf at the bottom of page 16,
“This report proposes to reduce beef consumption by 20%, as this
agricultural sector makes the biggest contribution to Australia’s
methane emissions. This could be accomplished by shifting to
kangaroo meat and/or lower-meat diets.”

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Editorial feature: Why animal charities need to learn to pass the hat

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2007:

 

Among the outcomes of sending ANIMAL
PEOPLE to nearly 11,000 animal protection
organizations worldwide, as often as we can
afford the postage, is that we receive constant
inquiries from people who hope we can help fund
proposed projects, or provide introductions to
others who might, or at least publicize a
proposed project in hopes of attracting funders,
even though more than 80% of our readers are
themselves trying to raise funds for their own
worthwhile pro-animal projects.
Probably every reader of ANIMAL PEOPLE
has at least one brilliant idea about things that
could and should be done to help animals, if
only the money was available.
Some of the ideas we hear about are
impractical, ill-conceived, or have already
been tried in other times and places with
disappointing results. Yet many other ideas
presented to us are eminently practical, and
could succeed with adequate investment. The only
obstacle is that the necessary funding is not
easily or immediately available. Someone needs
to go out and raise the funds, by persuading
donors to put their contributions into this
particular project, rather than any of the
myriad others that the typical donor will hear
about between now and the next time the person
has money to give.

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Wildlife Waystation founder Martine Colette says sanctuary is broke

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

LOS ANGELES–The Los Angeles Daily News and KNBC-4 television
on August 30, 2007 amplified emergency appeals from Wildlife
Waystation founder Martine Colette for funding she said was urgently
needed to keep the 31-year-old sanctuary operating.
“We are $1 million in debt, and we have no funds left,”
Colette told Daily News staff writer Dana Bartholomew. “Things as
they are today will not continue for the next week, or two weeks,
without help.”
Colette suggested that if an immediate infusion of cash was
not forthcoming, the 400 Waystation animals would “become the
county’s problem, the state’s problem,” a threat she has issued
before in years of disputes with regulatory agencies.
Closed for 110 days by the Calif-ornia Department of Fish &
Game in 2000, Wildlife Waystation never fully regained the permits
it needed to host donors’ visits, which until then were the
sanctuary’s chief revenue engine. More than just generating
on-the-spot donations, visits tended to inspire new donors to give
regularly, and established donors to give more.
“Trying to obtain a permit is a long process,” Colette told
KNBC. “There are many regulations we have to meet in order to get a
permit, and we cannot meet those regulations at all. In the
meantime we have gone broke trying to run the sanctuary without being
open to the public.”
Colette estimated that Wildlife Waystation operating costs
currently run at about $5,000 a day. This is consistent with the
most recent Waystation filings of IRS Form 990. ANIMAL PEOPLE has
found that determining the balance of Waystation program expense,
fundraising costs, and administrative expenditures has been
difficult, however, because of idiosyncracies in how the forms have
been completed.
“Last month,” wrote Bartholomew, “five of the eight
Waystation board members quit, apparently burned out over troubles
at the beleaguered agency.”
Colette at the end of August laid off general manager Alfred
J. Durtschi, who was paid $107,153 in the most recently reported
fiscal year, and also laid off half of the 48 Waystation caretakers
and groundskeepers.
Colette told news media that Southern California Edison had
threatened to cut off the sanctuary electricity due to unpaid bills,
and that the Waystation was also about to lose propane delivery.
Former Waystation board chair Robert Lorsch resigned on July
1, 2007, after five years of intense involvement.

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National dogfighting crackdown vindicates Laura Maloney

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

NEW ORLEANS–Pronouncing herself “Extremely disheartened” by
alleged judicial and mainstream law enforcement indifference toward
dogfighting on April 17, 2007, former Louisiana SPCA executive
director Laura Maloney saw attitudes change abruptly before her
August 31, 2007 departure to join her husband Dan in Australia.
Previously curator at the Audubon Park Zoo in New Orleans,
Dan Maloney now heads Zoos Victoria in Melbourne.
Laura Maloney left the Louisiana SPCA two days after the
second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina destroyed the
Louisiana SPCA shelter, and drove much of the organization’s donor
base out of New Orleans. Yet, while rebuilding the Louisiana SPCA
was Maloney’s biggest challenge, combating dogfighting was her
passion and greatest frustration.

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Court awards no fees to Primarily Primates receiver

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

AUSTIN–Travis County Probate Court Judge Guy Herman on
September 10, 2007 denied the request of Lee Theisen-Watt for
“Payment of Receiver Fees and Reimbursement of Attorneys’ Fees” for
the time she spent as court-appointed receiver at the Primarily
Primates sanctuary near San Antonio, Texas, from October 15, 2006
until May 1, 2007.
Herman noted that Theisen-Watt testified “she had agreed to
offer her services pro bono, that her original attorney would
represent her pro bono, that she assumed her original attorney would
pay for the fees of her other attorneys, and that she gave a
charitable receipt from Primarily Primates to the original attorney
for the $42,000 the original attorney said he paid” to another law
firm.

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More U.S. animal shelter data by city, county, state, and region

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:
The printed edition of the table “U.S. animal shelter data
broken down by city, county, state, and region” published on page
19 of the July/August 2007 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE inadvertently
omitted the portions covering the interior western states, the state
of Delaware, and Huntington Beach, California, and omitted a
decimal place in stating the rate of shelter killing per 1,000 humans
residents of Santa Cruz, California. The missing data, below, was
taken into account in producing the ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate that a low
for the past half century of 3.7 million animals were killed in U.S.
shelters in 2006, and was included in the electronic edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE.

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Animals Australia seeks to bring livestock transporters to justice

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:

MELBOURNE, SYDNEY–Ob-taining Australian Quarantine &
Inspection Service reports on five 2006 shipments of live sheep and
cattle to the Middle East through the national Freedom of Information
Act, Animals Australia on August 22 charged two shippers with
violating the Western Australia Animal Welfare Act.
Animals Australia executive director Glynis Oogjes warned
that live exports from Tasmania might “be a potential breach of the
Tasmanian Animal Welfare Act,” and asked the Australian Government
to prosecute live exporters for “numerous examples of breaches of the
Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock,” documented by the
AQIS reports.
“We provided the material to the Melbourne Age, and it is in
the paper,” Oogjes e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Full details of the
high mortality shipments are now available on the Animals Australia
website,” Oogjes added.
“The AQIS reports on the two worst incidents–the deaths of
1,683 sheep during a shipment from Tasmania to the Middle East in
February 2006, and 247 cattle enroute to the Middle East in October
2006–reveal non-compliance with live export standards,” Oogjes
alleged.

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Norwegian whaler scuttled at dock

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2007:
OSLO–Sabotage was suspected in the August 30, 2007 dockside
sinking of the whaling vessel Willassen Senior in the northern
Norwegian port city of Svolvaer. No injuries were reported.
“On the night of August 30th we decided to celebrate the end
of commercial whaling in Iceland by removing a large section of
cooling pipe in the engine room of the Norweigan whaler Willassen
Senior,” said an anonymous e-mail forwarded on September 11, 2007
from Norwegian activist Daniel Rolke to Dolphin Project founder Ric
O’Barry, who shared it with ANIMAL PEOPLE.
The e-mail was signed “Agenda 21,” the name of a United
Nations Environmental Program protocol.
“This is the fifth Norwegian whaler that has come under
attack for illegal whaling activities since 1992,” e-mailed Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson from Friday Harbor,
Washington. “The others were the Nybraena, scuttled at dockside in
December 1992; the Senet, scuttled at dockside in January 1994;
the Elin-Toril, severely damaged in 1997; and the Morild, sunk in
1998.”
All were refloated and repaired.

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