Wildlife

July 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:

Media accounts widely misrepresented

an alleged disparity between $21,000 donated to

help the orphaned cub of the mountain lion who

killed California runner Barbara Schoener in May,

and the $9,000 donated to help Schoener’s children.

In fact, $15,000 of the amount “given” to the cub

came from the Folsom County Zoo’s dedicated

building fund for creating a mountain lion exhibit,

which the cub will occupy. An attempt by hunters to

use the fatal attack as pretext to reverse a hunting

moratorium imposed in 1971 and made permanent

by the passage of the 1990 Mountain Lion Initiative

was rebuffed June 14 by committees of both the

California state senate and assembly. In Montana,

meanwhile, the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks

Commission delayed until August a decision on

whether to deliberately cause a mountain lion popu-

lation crash by raising the kill quota from 436 to 479,

of whom at least 328 would have to be females.

Agricultural veterinary medicine

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

The trade journal Beef Today and the

Colorado Cattlemen’s Association have urged the beef

industry to join animal protection groups in urging the

USDA to abolish face-branding cattle imported from

Mexico. The cattle are painfully face-branded––and cows

are spayed without anesthesia––as part of an anti-bovine

tuberculosis program. Of 438 cases of bovine TB found in

1993, 427 were in cattle of Mexican origin. Exposed in an

ongoing series of newspaper ads by the Coalition for Non-

Violent Food, face-branding was also discussed recently by

the Animal Welfare Committee of the AVMA. AVMA

policy presently supports face-branding, but related pro-

posed policy amendments are up for review by the AVMA

executive board.

Wildlife

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

Hope rose for the endangered

Florida panther in late May when volunteers

from the Coryi Foundation discovered a car-

cass, a single pawprint, and clumps of fur on

the grill of a car that struck an unknown animal

in the St. Johns and Kissimmee River water-

sheds––far outside the Big Cypress Swamp

area of Lake Okeechobee, which was previ-

ously the panther’s only known habitat.

A coalition of U.S. environmental

groups has petitioned the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service to add koalas to the endan-

gered species list. The koala population of

eastern Australia has fallen lately due to habi-

tat loss, caused by the combination of devel-

opment, logging, wildfires, and drought.

Animal Control & Rescue

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

International

Police in the East City dis-

trict of Beijing, China, beat 351 dogs

to death during the second week of

February. “Our policy is to annihilate

them,” said district deputy chief of pub-

lic security Li Wenrui. Some other dis-

trict police bureaus spared smaller pure-

breds––if their owners could find homes

for them outside the city. Still others

killed dogs by strangulation, electrocu-

tion, and dragging them behind jeeps.

Press releases said the dogs were taken

to a shelter run by the Public Security

Ministry, but Jan Wong of the Toronto

Globe and Mail’s China Bureau reported

there is no such place. The Communist

government banned dogs as a nuisance

and a waste of food when it came to

power in 1949. Dogs have been hunted

out and killed every few years since

1951. Despite the killing, stepped up

since 1986, an estimated 100,000 dogs

inhabit Beijing, where a black market

dog can cost as much as many workers’

annual income. Foreigners and others

who can get dogs licensed and vaccinat-

ed may keep them––but rabies vaccine is

so scarce that the disease has killed as

many as 60,000 Chinese since 1980,

and most license applications are denied.

ANIMAL HEALTH

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Rabies update

New Hampshire state veterinarian

Clifford McGinniss warned January

15––after a rabid kitten was found in a

Merrimack College dormitory––that feral cats

must be exterminated to protect Hampton

Beach visitors. Disagreeing, Hampton Beach

is pursung a $24,000 cat control plan combin-

ing catch-and-kill with selective neuter/

release. The plan is also opposed by New

Hampshire SPCA executive director Bonnie

Roberts, who told the Boston Globe that the

feral cats “are going to tangle with rabid ani-

mals and spread the disease.” In fact, rabies

vaccination is a prerequisite of the Hampton

Beach plan, and of all properly managed

neuter/release programs. There are no reports

on record of any cat in any recognized

neuter/release program anywhere ever con-

tracting rabies, while several neuter/release

programs including one coordinated in 1991-

1992 by ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim

Bartlett have been credited by public safety

officials with creating an immunized barrier

between rabid wildlife and family pets.

Animal Control & Rescue

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

The Canadian SPCA

was stunned February 3 when it

lost the Montreal pound contract

to a private bidder, Berger Blanc,

for at least a two-month trial period.

Berger Blanc handles animal control

for several Montreal suburbs, but

has been accused of selling animals

to biomedical research. The

Montreal contract forbids such sales.

The CSPCA was nearly bankrupted

under its previous two-year pound

contract, loosely modeled after the

contract New York City has long

had with the ASPCA, under which

it was expected to provide pound

service at a substantial loss––

$450,000 in 1993––in exchange for

the proceeds from all dog licenses

sold after the first 10,000.

Animal Control & Rescue

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The value of publicity was

underscored in Cleveland, Ohio,

after county humane officer Tony

Brand rescued a pair of starving dogs

from a rooftop on December 11.

Notice of the rescue in the Cleveland

Plain Dealer brought nearly 100 calls

to the Cuyahoga County Kennel from

would-be adopters, of whom more

than 20 took dogs––five times the

usual adoption rate. Adoptions also

rose at other local shelters.

Horse Tips

September 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:

Reporters Rans Pierson of The New York Post and Phillip

Nalbone of the Wall Street Journal recently followed Phyllis Orrick of

the New York Press in amplifying ANIMAL PEOPLE’s April and

July/August exposes of the treatment of horses in making the estrogen

supplement Premarin. Up to 75,000 pregnant mares spend half of each

year catheterized for urine collection and confined to narrow stalls;

most of their foals are sold to slaughter. Their numbers could triple

when the manufacturer, Ayerst Organics Inc., completes expansion of

its urine processing plant in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. According

to Pierson, more than eight million American women take Premarin

for menopausal symptoms. Costing half as much as synthetic alterna-

tives made by Ciba Pharmaceuticals, Mead Johnson, and Abbott

Labs, Premarin holds 80% of the estrogen supplement market, and is

now the most prescribed drug in the U.S. An Ayerst spokesperson said

the number of horses involved is much lower than the 75,000 estimate

produced by longtime estrogen industry observer Tom Hughes of the

Canadian Farm Animal Care Trust, adding that the firm isn’t responsi-

ble for the fate of the foals anyhow. Medical columnist Zoltan Rona,

M.D., meanwhile argued in the July issue of Alive magazine that

menopausal women could avoid needing estrogen supplements by

avoiding meat and taking appropriate vitamins, minerals, and herbs.

Animal Health & Behavior

July 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1993:

CDC goes to rat-@#$%

The Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention blame an unknown Hantaan virus probably

transmitted by rodents for causing flu-like symptoms that

killed 19 residents of the Four Corners region of New

Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado during May and

June. Most of the victims were Native Americans.

Hantaan viruses are typically transmitted through inhala-

tion, after becoming airborne with evaporated urine.

The transmission route for this as yet unidentified virus

has not been found, and investigators have been thwarted

by the reluctance of Navajo victims’ families, in particu-

lar, to speak either of the dead or of matters involving

their religion and rituals. However, Nevada paleoenvi-

ronmental researcher Peter E. Wigand, who seeks clues

to ecological history in ancient deposits of crystalized rat

urine, may have unwittingly provided a clue to the out-

break last January, before it actually occurred. Wigand

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