Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary animals seized in Thai crackdown

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Phop Phra, Tak, Thailand–Thai forestry officials trying to
halt illegal wildlife farming on November 27, 2002 raided the
Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary, where on May 10 cofounder William
Emeral Deters, 69, housekeeper Ratchanee Sonkhamleu, 26, her
three-year-old daughter, Hmong worker Laeng sae Yang, and a Thai
worker known only as Subin were massacred during a botched robbery.
The forestry department on November 28 seized 126 sambar elk
from an alleged illegal antler farm in Kanchanburi province, and may
have been confused by the use of the word “farm” in the name of the
Highland Farm sanctuary.

Bonus for failure?

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

LOS ANGELES-The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association kept $7.3
million over the past five years that should have been given to the
city-operated zoo, Los Angeles city controller Laura Chick reported
in December 2002 after completing an audit. GLAZA is the independent
nonprofit entity that conducts fundraising activities for the zoo.
“Chick is seeking a legal opinion from the City Attorney as
to whether the city should try to recover the funds,” Los Angeles
Daily News staff writer Harrison Sheppard reported.
Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
brought a nationwide collapse of nonprofit fundraising, GLAZA
“missed its fundraising goals twice since 1998 and a third time this
year,” Sheppard wrote.
The 2001-2002 fundraising goal was $7.5 million, but GLAZA
raised just $2.2 million, falling 71% short.
However, Chick revealed, ex-GLAZA president Don Youpa was
given a performance bonus of $20,000 on top of his $175,000 salary.

SHARK bites Nature Conservancy

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

CHICAGO-“We are going to expose The Nature Conservancy for
allowing hunting, especially canned hunting, on its land,” SHARK
founder Steve Hindi declared as his 2003 New Year’s resolution.
Hindi followed up by deploying the SHARK video truck against
TNC activities at Wilder Farms, near Lewistown, Illinois.
TNC bought the 7,500-acre site from Maurice Wilder in 2000,
but leased 200 acres used to keep about 400 elk back to Wilder under
a contract expiring in 2009. Wilder in November 2001 sold the elk to
Kevin Williams of Breeds, Illinois.
Unable to move live elk due to state restrictions meant to
prevent the spread of chronic wasting syndrome, Williams has
reportedly allowed paying customers to shoot them in their pens and
butcher them on site.

Protesting is good for you!

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

LONDON-“People should get more involved in campaigns,
struggles, and social movements, for their own personal good,”
University of Sussex psychologist Dr. John Drury recently told
Reuters Health. Interviewing nearly 40 activists on issues including
fox hunting, the environment, and labor relations, Drury found
that protesting helped them overcome feelings of personal stress,
pain, anxiety, and depression.

McDonald’s settlement challenged by 6 of 7 original plaintiffs

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

CHICAGO–“We are not being besieged by thousands of angry
vegetarians,” Houston attorney Cory S. Fein told Cook County Judge
Richard Siebel on January 13.
But Fein may have invited such a response. Fein was in court
to defend the list of 26 proposed grant recipients offered by
McDonald’s Restaurants in settlement of class action lawsuits brought
by Hindus and vegetarians who unwittingly ate French fries seasoned
in a mist of beef broth. McDonald’s advertised that its fries were
cooked in pure vegetable oil from 1990 until after Seattle attorney
Harish Bharti filed the first of a series of related cases in May
2001.

St. Francis Day in Lithuania

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

VILNIUS, Lithuania– Dr. Albina Aniuliene, who revived the
Lithuanian Society for the Protection of Animals in 1991 after a
decades-long hiatus, and U.S.-educated Ben Noreikis, DVM, of
Kauna, believe animal advocates in a small nation should think big.
Lithuania has approximately the same human population as
Chicago. Therefore, Noreikis told ANIMAL PEOPLE, they reasoned
that if they could organize an event that if done in Chicago would
warrant TV coverage, in Lithuania it could become a national
celebration.
With the help of State Food and Veterinary Service chief Dr.
Kazimieras Lukauskas, Aniuliene and Noreikis proclaimed St. Francis
of Assisi Day, October 4, to be Compassion Day in Lithuania.
“On this day,” they declared, “animals are not to be
slaughtered, loaded, or transported to be killed, hunted, fished,
experimented upon, nor euthanized at shelters unless deemed
necessary by a physician or veterinarian” to relieve incurable pain.
“Draft horses, circus animals, and other working animals
are to be given a day of rest,” they added.

Croatian actor slams fur

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

ZAGREB, Croatia-Born in Sibenik, Croatia, actor Goran
Visnjic posed with his dog for anti-fur billboards posted in Zagreb
and Split on January 3 by Animal Friends Croatia and PETA.
“Civilization is advancing but some people are going
backward,” said Visnjic of fur-wearers. Visnjic has played the
immigrant doctor “Luka Kovac” on the NBC drama ER since 1999.
PETA spokesperson Michael McGraw described the billboard
campaign as the first PETA anti-fur effort in eastern Europe, but
two PETA staffers and a volunteer from the Russian office of
Greenpeace stripped in 1991 for a brief anti-fur protest in Moscow.
Like other nude anti-fur protests outside the U.S., including a
first-ever nude protest in Beijing in October 2002, that effort may
have attracted more attention in U.S. and British media than where it
occurred.

Attempt to save fighting cattle comes to grief

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

MOSCOW-2003 opened miserably for sisters Lena and Tanja
Marou-eva, who had to tell fellow members of People for
Animals/Russia and their supporters abroad that their August 2001
success in banning bullfights from Moscow had nonetheless ended with
the deaths of all 30 of the imported fighting bulls and cows they
struggled for two years to save.
In the end, they managed to bring just one of the cattle
into sanctuary care. Received in November, while ANMAL PEOPLE was
in Moscow, she was named Dinara, after the late ANIMAL PEOPLE
office cat Dennis the Menace, whose memorial appeared in the
November 2002 edition. A specially built paddock for Dinara was
nearly done when she succumbed to suspected poisoning.

Editorial: Fighting the fur-clad spectre of Attila the Hun

January 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

The importance of fur-wearing, apart
from the lives of up to 40 million animals killed
for fur each year, is that after meat-eating it
is the most visibly conspicuous public symbol of
attitudes toward animals. Mass media and the
general public began to view animal advocacy as
an authentic socially transformative force after
fur garments abruptly vanished from the streets
of much of the U.S. and Europe in 1988-1989-and
perceive the cause as waning if they see more
fur, whether or not fur is actually the focus of
much active campaigning.
Today more fur is visible, and that should be cause for worry.
U.S. retail fur sales fell from a high of
$1.85 billion in 1987-1988 to $950 million in
1991-1992. In 2000 and 2001, sales recovered to
$1.69 billion, then dipped to $1.53 billion.
Adjusted for inflation, the real increase from
the low point to the recent high was barely 20%,
and the trend is apparently again downward, but
perhaps mostly because of two years of economic
recession.

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