Editorial: What’s wrong with “sustainable use”?

June 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1994:

U.S. World Wildlife Fund president Kathryn Fuller didn’t just rattle the Clinton

administration with her May 12 declaration of opposition to any “first step toward the

resumption of commercial whaling.” More significant was her statement that, “Even if

commercial whaling could be sustainable, it cannot be justified,” a welcome marked depar-

ture from 35 years of WWF policy, which essentially has endorsed any use of wildlife that

even promised to be sustainable.

The most influential of all animal and habitat protection groups internationally,

WWF has been problematic since 1961, when founder Sir Peter Scott, a trophy hunter,

recruited the leadership elite from among fellow hunters who feared that African indepen-

dence would lead to the rapid loss of target species. The elite included longtime WWF

International president Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, who escaped punishment for

allegedly overshooting bird quotas in Italy in the early 1970s to resign, finally, in 1987,

after being implicated in a Dutch bribery scandal. Bernhard was succeeded by another of

the founding elite, Prince Philip, long the honorary head of the British chapter. One of the

world’s most prolific tiger-killers when tigers were abundant, Philip showed his allegiance

to conservation ethics that Christmas by leading his sons Charles, Andrew, and Edward in

killing 10,000 pigeons, 7,000 pheasants, 300 partridges, and several hundred ducks,

geese, and rabbits––all captive-raised––in a six-week vacation bloodbath. This slightly

exceeded Philip’s previous record of 15,500 captive birds killed during a five-week spree.

Editorial: The cause of the homeless

May 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1994:

The ink wasn’t even dry on the New York Times edition of April 4 when we

received our first outraged call from a dog rescuer. A full-page advertisement placed by the

Coalition for the Homeless showed a forlorn-looking dog at the top. “According to statis-

tics,” the caption read, “his chances of finding a home are 70%.” Below, the photo

expanded to include the homeless woman sitting beside the dog. “Now they’re next to

zero,” said the caption. “Some might say the homeless are treated like dogs. But actually,

a homeless dog is better off than a homeless person. Over 100,000 people bedded down on

New York City’s streets and in shelters last year. But only 2,000 homeless single adults

ended up in homes of their own.”

The statistics cited are accurate, but out of context. As we pointed out to the

Coalition for the Homeless on behalf of our upset readers, the 30% of New York City stray

dogs who don’t find a home within a week to 10 days of pickup are euthanized at one of the

American SPCA shelters. The numbers of stray dogs euthanized are falling much faster

than the number of homeless people on the streets, but the ASPCA still killed 16,760 dogs

in 1991, the most recent year for which we have complete statistics, plus 22,595 cats,

whose chance of adoption ran around 20%.

Guest opinion: Hunting, violence, and child molestation

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

by Dr. Emmanuel Bernstein, psychologist

Adirondack Counseling, Saranac Lake, New York

The March 1994 issue of ANIMAL PEOPLE pre-

sented New York state hunting participation and crime statis-

tics that clearly show an association between incidence of

hunting and child molestation. This is especially impressive

since the statistics were presented in a manner that took into

account the possible influence of population density––and the

apparent influence of hunting proved stronger.

As ANIMAL PEOPLE noted, University of New

Hampshire director of family research Dr. Murray Strauss in

1987 found the number of hunting licenses sold to be a major

indicator of regions “culturally disposed toward violence.”

He also found that the states most culturally disposed toward

violence were the states with the highest rates of teen homi-

cide.

Editorial: Zoo issue isn’t individual vs. species

April 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1994:

A unique attempt to cut through mutual mistrust will occur in late April as 10 top

officials of major zoos, aquariums, and species survival plans, five delegates from animal

protection groups, and 14 academics, veterinarians, and journalists––including the Editor

of ANIMAL PEOPLE––gather at the White Oaks Conservation Center, near Jacksonville,

Florida, for a summit organized by the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy, with

the support of the Gilman Foundation.

Zoos and humane advocates have major interests in common, and should be work-

ing together to protect endangered species; improve public knowledge of animals; close

abusive roadside zoos; and perhaps most urgent, deal with the growing problem of wildlife

being bought, bred, and sold as pets by generally unqualified individuals whose ani-

mals––after outgrowing backyard quarters––are frequently either anonymously tossed over

a zoo fence at midnight or left tethered to the front door of an animal shelter.

Editorial: Wanted: vets on wheels at combat pay

March 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1994:

Just over two years ago ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett disregarded

warnings that she was taking her life in her hands and took an experimental neuter/release

project into inner city Bridgeport, Connecticut––the city with the highest per capita murder

rate and greatest rate of drug-related violence of any in North America. Among the burned-

out, abandoned shells of factories and tenements where families lived six or eight people to

a room on welfare, Kim found a community who for the most part already knew about pet

overpopulation, were worried about the homeless animals they fed at their doorsteps, and

were readily receptive to her help in obtaining neutering and vaccination. Bridgeport had

and probably still has a high density of feral cats not primarily because anyone was ignorant

or indifferent, nor because even the poorest of the poor were unwilling to pay for neutering

their pets––albeit that most couldn’t afford to pay anything close to the going veterinary

rates. On the contrary, Kim was welcomed as “the cat lady” where even police feared to

walk. Children ran up and down the shabby side streets knocking on doors, asking neigh-

bors to bring out their animals. Elderly women without even a warm coat and third genera-

tion welfare mothers produced tattered and painstakingly preserved ten-dollar bills to make

the most generous contribution they could to assist the effort. The nun whose tiny convent

school was among the last outposts of hope in the inner city gave Kim her full support.

Editorial: No tears for this croc––well, cayman

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

The call came late November 16. Westchester Wildlife Sanctuary rehabilitator

Barry Rothfuss needed help in placing a five-foot-long, cross-tempered female cayman, a

close relative of a crocodile, who’d spent her whole life in a pet store aquarium. He’d taken

her in to keep the proprietor from shooting her, as she’d grown too dangerous to handle.

“I can keep her maybe 24 hours,” Rothfuss explained, his six-month-old daughter

in his lap and the cayman nearby, her mouth held shut with duct tape. “I’m not set up to

keep a high-risk animal, or any animal who needs a heated environment, and I don’t know

anything about caymans, but I thought I could at least give her one more chance.”

Two years ago Rothfuss spent a month dodging the law with a few dozen orphaned

raccoons he had immunized against rabies. The New York wildlife department had ordered

rehabilitators to euthanize all raccoons in their possession, ostensibly to slow the spread of

rabies. Rothfuss hid out until he could get the message across that his raccoons were no

threat––and wound up appointed to the state advisory commission on rabies.

Editorial: Culture is no excuse for cruelty

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

It is with further disgust that we note the opobrium cast upon Afro-American nov-

elist Alice Walker, a distinguished defender of animals, abused women, and children, for

attacking ritual female genital mutilation in her new books Possessing The Secret of Joy and

Warrior Marks. From 85 to 114 million women alive today, mostly black African

Muslims, have suffered the excision of all or part of their clitoris and labia minor in a rite

performed by elder women, without anesthetic or antiseptics, when girls of their culture

reach adolescence. Millions more suffer this procedure each year. Many die of resultant

infection. The purpose of the abuse is to make young women marriageable in a genuinely

patriarchal society by insuring virginity at marriage and chastity thereafter through making

sexual intercourse painful or uninteresting.

Editorial: Reclaim the cause from the terrorists

January 1, 1994 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1994:

One cannot make peace by waging war––a truth that should seem self-evident.

The cause of animal protection is essentially the cause of peace, extended to all sentient

beings: of preventing suffering through preventing violence. As conscientious and consid-

erate people, we should all understand by now that one cannot prevent suffering by causing

suffering, nor can one prevent violence by causing violence. That much should be obvious

to anyone who has ever either held or beheld a cruelly wounded and frightened victim of

anyone’s violence, animal or human. Pain and fear know no bounds of age, sex, species,

or ideology.

Editorial: When hunters come out of the closet

December 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1993:

On Sunday, November 14, at about noon, I was showing our three-year-old

son Wolf the difference between oak and maple leaves, near our home on the New

York/Vermont border, when two four-wheel-drive vehicles filled with hunters came up

behind us and slowed down as the occupants yelled sexually explicit threats. They

began with whistles, proceeded to observe that Wolf has blond hair and I have a pony-

tail, and when we ignored them, advanced to suggestions that they should stop and

sodomize us. I listened in initial disbelief––I’m used to locker room humor, having

spent much of my life as an amateur athlete––but I’d never heard a jock proposing to

rape a three-year-old, even in jest. The encounter came to an abrupt end when I rather

unwisely turned, faced them directly, and used an emphatic variant of sign language to

invite them to get out of their vehicles and debate the subject. They accelerated away in

a cloud of flying mud and gravel.

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