Editorial feature: Putting a practical face on breed-specific legislation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

On Sunday, November 27, 2005, surgeons Jean-Michel
Dubernard of the Hopital Edouard-Herriot in Lyon, France, Benoit
Lengele of Belgium, and Universite de Amiens chief of face and jaw
surgery Bernard Devauchelle collabaorated to perform the first-ever
partial face transplant. Taking the nose, lips, and chin of
brain-dead organ donor Maryline St. Aubert, 46, of Cambrai, the
team restored the most prominent features of Isabelle Dinoire, 38,
who in May 2005 was severely mauled by a Labrador retriever she had
recently adopted from a pound near her home in Valenciennes.
The pound dog involved in that case was neither a pit bull
terrier nor a Rottweiler, both breeds continuing to glut U.S.
shelters at a rate exceeding by more than fivefold their proportion
in the pet population. Nonetheless, the French face transplant
helped to focus attention on the increasingly vexing question of what
to about dogs who are easily capable of killing or maiming someone
with their first-ever bite.
ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton has since September 1982
maintained a breed-specific log of life-threatening and fatal attacks
by dogs kept as pets. Guard dogs, fighting dogs, and police dogs
are excluded. As of December 6, 2005, 2,048 attacks had qualified
for listing, including 318 since the January/February 2004 edition
of ANIMAL PEOPLE editorially called on lawmakers to “Bring breeders
of high-risk dogs to heel.”

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Editorial: Mainstream no longer accepts meat at humane events

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

“With friends like theseŠ” was the first
thing that came to mind after reading the Carbon
County Friends of Animals raffle ticket I’d just
bought,” wrote Michael J. Frendak of Lansford,
Pennsylvania, in the August 2005 edition of
Reader’s Digest.
“I could win one of the following, it
said: a 10-pound box of chicken legs, one
smoked ham, four T-bone steaks, five pounds of
fresh sausage or hot dogs, or a box of pork
chops.”

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Editorial: Fighting sinking feelings of failure in an inundated city

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Of the many stresses that Hurricane Katrina and Rita rescuers
had to deal with, perhaps the most ubiquitous was the feeling among
exhausted volunteers that no matter what they did, they had not done
enough.
“I have personally pulled hundreds of animals from roof tops,
attics, and houses,” HSUS food and water team leader Jane Garrison
e-mailed to Karen Dawn of DawnWatch on September 19. “It is amazing
to me that these animals are still alive. I got a dog off a roof who
should have weighed 90 pounds, but was down to 40 pounds from being
stuck with no food and water. These animals want to live and are
showing us this every day.”
But Garrison hardly felt uplifted.

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Editorial: Donations & disaster

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Disasters requiring monumental animal relief efforts are
likely to happen increasingly often in coming years, as climatic
instability increases due to global warming. Thus the lessons
learned from the response to the evacuation of New Orleans, many of
them still just beginning to be absorbed, may appear to be as
important 13 years from now as the lessons from Hurricane Andrew in
1992 were to enabling the humane community to respond to Katrina and
Rita with markedly more efficacy than the governmental and nonprofit
human services sectors.
The animals’ need has been great after the devastating storm,
and there is rebuilding to follow in Louisiana and Mississippi. On
the positive side, there is now the possibility of improving
conditions for animals in the Deep South in many ways, through the
infusion of new interest, new energy, and new capital. Many of the
disaster relief workers who ventured south to help had never seen the
“Third World of the U.S.” before. Many vowed to return, to help
follow through with the rebuilding, and all who served or donated
are likely to have an enduring intensified interest in animal welfare
in parts of rural Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that only six
weeks ago were seldom noticed.

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British fur seller quits

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

LONDON–“Selfridges has reviewed its policy on fur and will
no longer be selling any fur products,” the upscale department store
chain announced in mid-May 2005.
“Selfridges closed its fur department in 1990 but continued
to sell items such as rabbit fur-trimmed gloves and clothes,” wrote
social affairs correspondent Maxine Frith of The Independent.
The strategy of claiming to sell only fur produced as a
byproduct of the meat industry worked for 15 years, until awareness
spread that much “rabbit fur” coming into Europe from China might
actually be dog or cat fur.
Selfridges, with stores in London, Glasgow, Birmingham,
and Manchester, was among the last major British retailers to sell
fur goods.

Editorial: Lessons from finding the ivory-billed woodpecker

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

At least one ivory-billed woodpecker still inhabits the Big
Woods region of Arkansas, the world learned on April 28, 2005.
Yet, 60 years after the brightly colored big bird was believed to
have been hunted to extinction, it is almost certainly still on the
brink.
Gene Sparling, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, first saw the
officially rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker on February 2, 2004
in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, a relatively dense and
impenetrable swamp, not far from U.S. I-40, which runs in an almost
straight line from Memphis southwest to Little Rock.
Ornithologists Tim Gallagher of Cornell University and Bobby
Harrison of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, confirmed the
Sparling sighting after accompanying him to the vicinity. David
Luneau, of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, on April 25,
2004 videotaped the ivory-billed woodpecker taking off from the trunk
of a tree.
Before announcing the find, the scientists enlisted the help
of The Nature Conservancy to purchase more habitat.

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Editorial feature: National character & the quality of compassion

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Editorial feature:
National character & the quality of compassion

Josphat Ngonyo of Nairobi, Kenya, in 1999 founded Youth for
Conservation to clear poachers’ snares from the Kenyan national
parks. In 2004 Ngonyo helped to create the Kenya Coalition for
Wildlife Conservation, including YfC, which persuaded Kenya
President Mawi Kibaki to veto a bill heavily backed by Safari Club
International and USAid that would have reopened sport hunting in
Kenya, after a 27-year hiatus.
Novalis Yao of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 2000 formed Monde
Animal En Passion, in response to conditions at the Abidjan National
Zoo, once among the best in Africa but now a neglected ruin. While
Yao cannot yet claim big victories, he has continued his efforts for
quite long enough to confirm his dedication, under diffficult
conditions, and has managed to build a small but visible animal
welfare movement where formerly there was none.
Educated, outgoing, articulate, and multilingual, both
Ngonyo and Yao could have sought personal fortune elsewhere long ago,
had this been among their ambitions.
Instead, their common goal is to improve African treatment
of animals. Ngonyo and Yao emphasize wildlife conservation, because
the people of Kenya and Ivory Coast have unique opportunities to
conserve rare species and enjoy the benefits of ecotourism, but they
are also concerned about dogs, cats, and livestock, and can
explain to anyone who will listen how improving the treatment of
animals tends to improve the treatment of woman and children too.

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Why animal advocates’ “war on terror” must be nonviolent

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

Why animal advocates’ “war on terror” must be nonviolent
by Steve Hindi, founder, SHARK

It has happened again. Thugs misappropriating the name of
“animal rights activism” have struck another blow against all animal
advocates and the animals for whom we toil. This time the crime
occurred in Villa Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, where during
the first weekend in February 2003 someone reportedly cut the brake
lines of as many as 40 trucks owned by a company that sells live
lobsters.
The people responsible for this act have again allowed those
who abuse animals to paint all who care about animals as terrorists.
I hope these criminals, whoever they are, are caught and convicted.
And I hope they were not actually involved in animal defense.
Fourteen years ago my rage over the use of captive live
pigeons as targets at the annual Labor Day shoot in Hegins,
Pennsyl-vania completely transformed my life.
Since then I have watched, documented and exposed more
animal abuse then I want to think about. I live with horror at what
I have witnessed, with the knowledge that my past as a former hunter
embraced a world of abuse for which I was personally responsible.

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Editorial: The missing link in murder

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Voting Republican by a two-to-one margin in each election of
this decade, Frankfort, Indiana, will never be mistaken for a
bastion of bleeding-heart liberalism. The phrase “animal rights” has
appeared in the hometown newspaper, the Frankfort Times, on only
three occasions since 1997, according to an electronic search–and
has never been used in a positive context.
Yet no one in Frankfort seemed even mildly surprised on
December 21, 2004, when Clinton Superior Court Judge Kathy Smith
jailed convicted dog shooter William Pierce, 55, for nine months.
Pierce on Halloween 2004 shot his own Basset hound puppy. The police
said Pierce did it because the puppy defecated on the floor. Pierce
said he did it because the pup was barking. Either way, Pierce then
wrapped the wounded puppy in plastic and tossed him into a trash can.
“Studies show that a person who tortures an animal is likely
to hurt a human being. We want to make sure we get a handle on
this,” said Judge Smith.
Following his jail time, Pierce is to serve 21 months on
probation, during which he must refrain from all contact with
alcohol, pets, firearms, and three persons including his estranged
wife.

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