Fixing the street dog problem in Costa Rica by Herb Morrison

June 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2000:

ALAJUELA, Costa Rica––Dawn and Sid Scott, immigrants to Costa Rica from Chicago, have seen the tough side of Guanacaste from ground level, traveling the poorly maintained roads of this northwestern province to round up dogs for veterinary care at frequent intervals since mid-1998. They have sterilized more than 225 dogs at their own expense, paying about $20 U.S. per surgery.

Most dogs they meet belong to human families but live outside. Though Costa Rica has had no canine rabies since 1987, dogs commonly suffer from mange, internal parasites, and distemper. National veterinary licensing board member Gerardo Vicente, DVM, estimates that only about a third of the half million dogs in Costa Rica are given proper medical care. Most receive food but little else.

A win for whales

April 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

MEXICO CITY––Grupo de la Cien founder Homero Aridjis, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and Earth Island Institute all claimed victory on March 4 when Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo cancelled a long-pending plan to build a solar salt extraction plant at San Ignacio Lagoon, an important gray whale calving area. The plant was to have been operated in partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation, of Japan.

But celebration was brief for the Sea Shepherds and IFAW, as the annual Atlantic Canadian offshore seal hunt, another of their longtime campaign focuses, was soon to start. The 2000 sealing quota is 275,000––almost as high as it ever has been.

Where else dogs and cats are eaten

July 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

The ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate
that dogs and sometimes cats are also
eaten in parts of Cambodia, China, Japan,
Laos, the Philippines, the Asian portions of
the former Soviet Union, Taiwan, Thailand,
and Vietnam––but almost exclusively by
either members of an ethnic Chinese minority,
or by remote indigenous groups.
Tibetan and Thai Buddhists especially
disapprove of dog-and-cat-eating,
because dogs and cats are believed likely to
possess reincarnated human souls. Resettled
in Tibet as part of the ongoing Beijing government
effort to subvert Buddhist influence,
ethnic Chinese immigrants are at times
accused of deliberately provoking outrage by
butchering and cooking dogs in the streets of
Lhasa. Dog-eating among refugees from
Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam likewise
exascerbates ethnic strife in northern Thailand.

In a place where they said it couldn’t be done

June 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1999:

ROSARITO, Mexico– – Disting-
uished since 1926 by the presence of the landmark
Rosarito Beach Hotel, one of the first
facilities built to draw tourists to the Baja
California coast, Rosarito recently acquired
another landmark: the first no-kill animal
shelter serving northern Mexico.
But the Baja Animal Sanctuary isn’t
yet a visible landmark, and that is perhaps the
biggest problem the two-and-a-half-year-old
shelter has. To get there from Boulevard
Benito Juarez, the main street of Rosarito,
you have to cross the tollway to Ensenada,
turn a tight hairpin turn at the old town graveyard,
and follow the bulldozed but otherwise
unimproved future route of a long-rumored
four-lane highway out through three miles of
developments that don’t yet exist. You turn
off in the middle of nowhere, continue past a
bankrupt and unoccupied condominium complex
whose scenic vistas of sea and mesa evidently
couldn’t compensate for inaccessibility
and lack of water, and descend a steep hill
down a road that threatens to become a gully. Read more

Parrots, too

April 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:

CARACAS––”Sustainable use”
as preached by the World Wildlife Fund and
endorsed by the Bill Clinton/Albert Gore
White House will hit Venezuelan parrots
from April 15 to July 15, when members of
the Guarao tribe and other eastern Managas
and Delta Amacuro states will be allowed to
capture up to 2,000 guaro parrots, 200 redbellied
macaws, 50 royal parrots, and 50
blue-and-gold macaws.
Venezuelan wildlife authorities
“say they can’t control the thousands of people
who hunt exotic birds and sell them on
the black market,” Bart Jones of Associated
Press reported, “so they’ve decided to let
them hunt some species in the hope that
they’ll leave alone the birds who are most
endangered.”

Predators, reintroductions, and harsh reality

April 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:

DENVER, EUGENE––Three of
the first four Canadian lynx who were released
into the Rio Grande National Forest of southcentral
Colorado by the state Division of
Wildlife during the first days of February
starved to death by March 23.
C-DoW had confidently predicted
that the reintroduction would succeed, and
would keep lynx off the federal endangered
species list. C-DoW biologist Gene Byrne
even suggested that the department might reintroduce
wolverines, too, as early as next year.
By mid-March, however, C-DoW
had recaptured the last of the released lynx, to
avoid losing her to starvation, and was holding
eight more until later in the year, when
prey might be more abundant.

Bullfeathers

March 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

PURCHASE, N.Y.– – With
Pepsi-Cola signs and banners still
prominent in major Mexican bullrings,
Pepsi is conceding nothing to the boycott
called in late 1998 by SHARC and
Last Chance for Animals––not even that
Pepsi advertising is a significant source
of revenue for the bullring operators.
Insisted Pepsi corporate
spokesperson Brad Shaw to ANIMAL
PEOPLE on February 10, “Pepsi does
not sponsor or endorse bullfighting.
Our position in that has not changed.”
Other Pepsi representatives
have told protesters that the Pepsi ads in
bullrings are placed by Mexican distributors,
over whom Pepsi has no control.

Editorial: Amazing Amazon rainforest reality

March 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Chugging up the Rio Tambopata, one of the major Amazon tributaries, in a
motorized canoe, we were struck during a January 1999 visit to the Tambopata-Candama
Reserved Area in southeastern Peru by the contrast between the Amazonian rainforest as it
is and the image most people have of it––an image crafted over the past few decades chiefly
by conservation groups.
Funding rainforest research, documentary film-making, lobbying, and even the
start-up of ecotourism, most of these organizations have also rather blindly stumbled down
the tangled trail blazed since 1961 by the World Wildlife Fund.
WWF, as ANIMAL PEOPLE has often pointed out, is not just the world’s
wealthiest and most influential wildlife advocacy group: it also happens to be the world’s
best-disguised lobby for sport hunting and other consumptive wildlife use.
WWF founder Peter Scott was the duck-shooter who introduced the North
American ruddy duck to England; WWF and allies now clamor for an expanded ruddy
duck season and no bag limit, on the bio-xenophobic claim that ruddy ducks are miscegenating
English white-headed ducks into illegitimate hybrids.

Bullfeathers

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Madrid regional government
children’s rights ombudsman
Javier Urra on January 5 told media
that he will soon formally ask the
regional assembly to bar children under
age 14 from bullrings. “We do not
object to bullfighting as such,” Urra
stated. “It is part of our culture and
some say it is an art. But there are ages
at which it should not be viewed.”
Urra’s request will have precedent: the
Catalona regional government barred
children from bullrings in December
1998. Concern about children at bullfights
may have been prompted, indirectly,
when a man was spotted carrying
a baby in a August 1998 running-ofthe-bulls
at Leganes, near Madrid,
accompanyied by a man who hand-led
children of approximately ages three
and five.

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