International animal legislation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Twenty-three nations with native chimpanzees, bonobos,
gorillas, and orangutans on September 9, 2005 signed a Declar-ation
on Great Apes in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, committing
themselves to protecting great apes and ape habitat in terms similar
to the language of the 1982 global moratorium on commercial whaling
and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change.
The treaty was brokered through four years of negotiation by
the Great Apes Survival Project, formed by the United Nations
Environment Program and the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation. “GRASP has convinced nearly all of the range states
that saving great apes is very much in their interests, by stressing
that apes can bring enormous economic benefit to poor communities
through eco-tourism,” summarized Michael McCarthy, envronment
editor of the London Independent. “The new agreement places ape
conservation squarely in the context of strategies for poverty
reduction and developing sustainable livelihoods.”

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Slidell rooftop rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

The first widely publicized post-Katrina animal rescue was
managed as a Labor Day photo op for Sahara star Matthew McConaughey.
McConaughey helped to evacuate anesthesiologist James
Riopell, 50 dogs, 18 cats, and two hamsters from the roof of the
Lindy Boggs Medical Center in Slidell, Louisiana, isolated for a
week by high water.
“A day before McConaughey’s mercy mission,” a press release
recounted, “another helicopter trying to rescue the animals and
their guardian crashed outside the hospital.”
While awaiting rescue, “The doctor euthanized some animals
at the request of their owners, who feared they would be abandoned
and starve. He made a small gas chamber out of a plastic-wrapped dog
kennel,” wrote Mike Stobbe of Associated Press.
“The bigger dogs were fighting it. When I saw that, I said
‘I can’t do it,'” said Lorne Bennett. His wife Valerie Bennett had
offered boat rescuers her wedding ring and her mother’s wedding ring
to save their four dogs, Stobbe reported. They were eventually
among the saved.

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Reunions & adoptions

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Reunions with lost pets occurred as far away as the Marin
County Humane Society, north of San Francisco, where pediatrician
Brenda Singh on September 16 found her nine-year-old Welsh springer
spaniel Lady, two weeks after the dog bolted from a friend at a
Baton Rouge evacuation center.
In all, San Francisco Bay area shelters fostered at least 14
planeloads of animals, mostly flown from Louisiana and Mississippi
by Operation Orphans of the Storm, coordinated by real estate
developer Bill McLaughlin.
Other participants included Countryside Rescue, the
Berkeley/East Bay Humane Society, the East Bay SPCA, the Peninsula
Humane Society, Pets Lifeline, the SPCA of Monterey County, the
Sacramento SPCA, the San Francisco SPCA, the San Jose Animal Care
Center, the Humane Society of Sonoma County, and personnel from the
San Francisco Department of Animal Care & Control.

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Rescuers fight pet thieves & pet theft allegations

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

GONZALES, Louisiana–Rumors flew at the Hurricane
Katrina/Rita animal care centers about dogfighters trucking away pit
bull terriers by the dozen, but rescuers Walter and Faye Peters of
Contented Critters in Makinen, Minnesota, were apparently the first
suspected “pet thieves” apprehended by law enforcement.
Walter and Faye Peters “could face charges of possessing
stolen property or transporting stolen goods across state lines,”
Duluth News-Tribune staff writer Janna Goerdt reported on September
22, after the Duluth Animal Shelter seized 12 dogs and a kitten that
they allegedly took out of Louisiana without authorization.
Another Contended Critters volunteer who had misgivings
called the Duluth police, who intercepted the Peterses as they
entered town, Goerdt wrote.
North Shore Animal League America operations director Paul
Greene on September 14 had a somewhat similar experience, albeit
more rapidly resolved.

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South China kills dogs to send a message

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

GUANGZHOU–The Guangdong provincial government seized the
2005 National Day weekend, the first in October, to send messages
to both pet keepers and Beijing.
The message for pet keepers was that the rising popularity of
pet dogs will not be allowed to jeopardize the dog meat industry,
either by spreading rabies, the pretext used for killing pet dogs in
the streets, or by building a human constituency for treating dogs
kindly.
“The Guangzhou campaign follows similar crackdowns in
Shanghai and other cities across the mainland, as dog attacks and
rabies cases increase and more urban dwellers keep pets,” noted
Simon Parry of the South China Morning Post. But Parry failed to
note that the dogs most at risk from rabies are so-called “meat
dogs,” raised in close confinement and not required to be vaccinated.
The Guangdong message for Beijing was that even as the
central government strives to build a more animal-friendly image in
advance of the 2008 Olympic Games, in the part of China where dogs,
cats, and wildlife are relatively rarely eaten, the Cantonese
southern and coastal regions are quite capable of spoiling the effort.

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New Orleans pet evacuation crisis brings hope of rescue mandate

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., NEW ORLEANS–U.S. Representatives
Chris-topher Shays (R-Connecticut) and Tom Lantos (D-California),
co-chairing the Congressional Friends of Animals caucus, on
September 22, 2005 introduced legislation that would require the
Federal Emergency Management Agency to withhold grant funding from
communities that fail to develop pet evacuation and transport
standards.
U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) indicated that
there will also be Senate attention to animal rescue in disasters.
“It is heartbreaking to hear of families forced to leave pets
behind as they followed instructions to evacuate or were being
rescued,” Lieberman said. “As the ranking member of the Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, I have joined the chair,
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), in calling for an investigation of
this immense failure in the government’s response to the Hurricane
Katrina tragedy.”
Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) said he had lobbied the White
House to “name someone to take charge of dealing with animals left
behind by people fleeing the storms, as well as countless strays,”
wrote Benjamin Grove of the Las Vegas Sun.

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Israeli Rescuers remove about 400 animals from Gaza & Northern Samaria

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

JERUSALEM–Tension accompanying the Israeli withdrawal from
Northern Samaria and Gaza spilled over into the animal rescue work
that followed in the 24 vacated Jewish settlements.
About half the reports reaching animal people descr-ibed
animal rescues. The rest accused other rescuers of performing
publicity stunts and acts of sabotage.
Settlers resisting the withdrawal were often removed forcibly
by Israeli soldiers and police, leaving pets, livestock, and feral
cat colonies behind.
If the 15,000 former residents of the evacuated villages kept
pets and fed feral cats at European rates per household, up to 3,000
pets and 600 feral cats might have been affected. The Israeli Army
and Israeli Veterinary Services allowed some rescuers to enter Gaza
and Northern Samaria on August 16. Accounts forwarded to ANIMAL
PEOPLE indicate that the rescuers evacuated about 400 animals,
mostly cats, but also some dogs, parakeets, lizards, and goats.
Concern for Helping Animals in Israel and Hakol Chai, an
affiliate, worked in Gaza with representatives of the Tel Aviv,
Beersheva, and Jerusalem SPCAs, CHAI founder Nina Natelson told
ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We had veterinarians Sarah Levine and Tsachi Nevo
spelling each other, plus one more who helped as needed,” Natelson
added. “Two drivers took turns, day after day. Hakol Chai staff
worked 15 hour days. We had no lack of volunteers.”

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Shelter killing drops after upward spike

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

The numbers of dogs and cats killed in U.S. animal shelters
appears to have resumed a 35-year decline after a brief spike upward,
according to the 12th annual ANIMAL PEOPLE review of shelter exit
data. The overall rate of shelter killing per 1,000 Americans now
stands at 15.5.
Shelter killing is coming down in all parts of the U.S., but
progress remains most apparent where low-cost and early-age dog and
cat sterilization programs started first, decades ago, followed by
aggressive neuter/return feral cat sterilization, introduced on a
large scale during the early 1990s.
Regions with harsh winters that inhibit the survival of stray
and feral kittens were usually killing more than 100 dogs and cats
per 1,000 humans circa 1970. The U.S. average was 115, and the
Southern toll (where known) soared above 250.
Current regional norms vary from 3.6 in the Northeast to 27.5
along the Gulf Coast and 29.2 in Appalachia.
The Northeast toll is as low as it is partly because most
animal control agencies in Connecticut still do not actively pick up
cats, although they were authorized to do so in 1991–but even if
Connecticut agencies collected two or three times as many cats as
dogs, the overall Northeast rate of shelter killing would be less
than 4.5 dogs and cats per 1,000 humans.

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BOOKS: First Friends

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

First Friends
by Katherine M. Rogers
St. Martin’s Press
(175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010), 2005.
263 pages, paperback. $24.95.

The title is carefully chosen for this
history of the interaction of dogs and humans.
Note that it is “First Friends’” and not “Best
Friends.”
Katherine M. Rogers, in this erudite and
sometimes repetitively thorough treatise on the
use and treatment of dogs in English and
classical literature, deals in depth with the
two extremes: dog lovers and dog detesters.
“For some people dogs are no more than
beasts, and it is fatuous, if not impious,”
Rogers writes, “to value them in anything like
human terms.”
Rogers places herself between the two
extremes, adopting the phrase “dog interested,”
meaning that she believes dogs should be well
treated but that it is better for both dogs and
humans if dogs are kept a subordinate place.

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