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

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.

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Editorial: The cause of the homeless

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%.

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Guest opinion: Hunting, violence, and child molestation

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.

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Editorial: Zoo issue isn’t individual vs. species

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.

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Editorial: Wanted: vets on wheels at combat pay

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.

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

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.

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Editorial: Culture is no excuse for cruelty

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.

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Editorial: Reclaim the cause from the terrorists

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.

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Editorial: When hunters come out of the closet

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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