ZOONOTIC DISEASE

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Ebola
The Philippines on June 10 lifted
a ban on monkey exports in effect since
March 21, when Ebola virus was discovered
in two out of 50 crab-eating macaques sold to
the South Texas Primate Center in Alice,
Texas, as one shipment of a lot of 100, by the
Philippine firm Ferlite Scientific Research Inc.
One macaque died of the disease, another was
definitely infected, and the remainder were
killed to keep the lethal virus from spreading.
Of the five Philippine monkey breeding companies,
only Ferlite remains under quarantine.
Ferlite, exporter of about 400 of the 2,500
monkeys the Philippines sells each year, was
also the source of the only previous Ebola outbreak
in the U.S., which was contained at a
primate center in Reston, Virgina, in 1989.

Animals in entertainment

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Circuses
Two circus-going children
were attacked by animals in Chile during
the first week of May. Rodrigo Silva, age
10, walked up to an elephant named Freda
on June 1. She slapped him to the ground
with her trunk, killing him. The elephant
reportedly remained agitated for hours. On
June 7, Stephanie Fuentealba, 3, was
severely mauled by a bear, who reached
through the bars of his cage to get her. In
between, a young male African lion
escaped from the Santiago zoo, but
prowled among the visitors without hurting
anyone.

Foreign zoos fight the budget crunch

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

MONTE CARLO, Monaco––
TV star Joanna Lumley led a May 8 protest
against conditions at the Animal Garden,
the private menagerie kept by Prince
Rainier of Monaco, which Born Free
Foundation president Virginia McKenna
describes as “a slum zoo stuck in the cliff
below the palace.”
According to John Gripper,
DVM, in a recent report to BFF, “tormented
and distressed” animals are kept in cages
far too small for their species. “The animals
are listless and showing stereotypical
behavior,” he wrote. “One monkey
chewed its own tail out of boredom,” and
at the time of Gripper’s visit, “had not been
treated. This suggests to me,” he continued,
“that vets are not regularly monitoring
the animals.”

News from abroad

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

A ferocious spring battered central Asia into May––and got
worse when Mongolia officials seeded clouds to produce unseasonable snow,
hoping would help quell at least 288 simultaneous grassfires that killed 17
people, injured 62, burned 31,000 square miles of forest and pasture, forcing
the immediate relocation of more than 1,600 families and 436,000 cattle,
with the evacuation of another 1,600 people and 588,000 cattle anticipated.
The snow––almost the first to hit Mongolia in more than a year––put out only
a few of the fires, but froze or drowned at least 4,900 cattle, along with two
shepherd boys and their 150 sheep. Just to the south, in China, 700,000 cattle
and yaks reportedly froze to death in February during a natural cold snap.
Cyprus SPCA president Toula Poyiadjis on May 18 led 100
CSPCA members and their dogs, donkeys, and a chicken to the palace of
Glafcos Clerides, president of Cyprus, demanding enforcement of humane
laws. “Cyprus lags behind other countries in its treatment of animals,”
Poyiadjis explained. “There is prejudice, fear, and an inexplicable mania for
killing animals.”

Ghosties, goblins, and bumping off whales in the night

June 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – The
June 24-28 annual meeting of the
International Whaling Commission might
appropriately open with the ancient Scots
prayer, “God keep us from ghosties and goblins
and things that go ‘bump’ in the night.”
Resurrecting the ghost of whaling
from longboats last done more than 70 years
ago, the Makah tribe of the outermost tip of
the Olympic peninsula in Washington will bid
to claim a subsistance quota on grey whales
and become the first legal whalers along the
Pacific coast of the U.S. mainland since the
whaling station at Point Richmond,
California closed more than 20 years ago.
The Makah will be supported, for reasons
pertaining to political correctness, by Greenpeace
and the U.S. government––and Japan,
whose whaling industry has cultivated a close
relationship with Makah minister of fisheries
Daniel Green.

International wildlife news

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

Africa
Rangers at Garamba
National Park in Zaire on March
28 reported the poaching kill of a
10-year-old pregnant female northern
white rhino, one of under 30 in
existence and the second to be
poached in 12 days. “This is a tragic
loss,” said World Wildlife Fund
director-general Claude Martin from
Geneva. As of February 14, when
WWF announced the vulnerability
of the rhinos to media, no endangered
animals of any kind had been
poached at Garamba since 1984,
despite heavy poaching of elephants
and hooved stock, blamed on
Sudanese rebels and refugees,
whose camps flank the park.

Religion & animals

May 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

A Sarajevan mob for reasons
unknown assaulted a Hare Krishna street
procession on April 20, injuring two members
from Britain, one from Australia, and a
young Bosnian recruit. “The clash was unexpected,”
reported Reuter. “The Hare Krishna
movement was very active in Sarajevo
throughout the war, performing their dance
and songs in the city streets even during the
worst of the shelling and winning sympathy
for their courage from the beseiged residents.”
In Sarajevo, Grozny, and other
wartorn cities behind the former Iron Curtain,
Hare Krishnas are also known for their bakeries
and vegetarian soup kitchens. “There
may be places in the world where simply seeing
a bunch of Hare Krishna members would
make people turn tail and run. But Grozny
isn’t one of them,” New York Times correspondent
Michael Specter recently reported.

International wildlife news

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Africa
Members of 840 Masai
families during the second week in
March opened Kimana Tikondo
Group Ranch, a 15-square-mile forprofit
wildlife sanctuary in southern
Kenya, under the shadow of Mount
Kilimanjaro. Just 17 visitors paid
the $10 entrance fee the first week,
most of them members of a delegation
from the Wildlife Conservation
Society, formerly the New York
Zoological Society. Start-up funding
came from the U.S. Agency for
International Development. Kenya
Wildlife Services director David
Western hopes Kimana Tikando and
similar parks can make enough
money to persuade the Masai that
keeping wildlife is more profitable
than killing it to graze more cattle.

Marine life

April 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

As expected, U.S. President Bill
Clinton announced February 9 that the U.S.
would “vigorously pursue high-level efforts to
persuade Japan to reduce the number of whales
killed in its research program,” but stopped
short of imposing trade sanctions, as he is
authorized to do in response to a Commerce
Department advisory issued in December that
Japan is violating the intent of the International
Whaling Commission moratorium on commercial
whaling by setting “research” quotas for
minke whales so high––now more than
400––that the “research” amounts to commercial
whaling.

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