Animal racing

June 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:

Alaska governor Tony Knowles on

May 2 signed a bill to allow the 1,049-mile

Iditarod Trail dog sled race to raise an estimated

$1 million a year via “mushing sweepstakes,”

i.e. betting on aspects of the race that purportedly

can’t be fixed, such as the number of dogs who fin-

ish or the best and worst times. The sweepstakes

are to replace sponsorship lost due to protest––

meaning that the net effect of activism led by the

Humane Society of the U.S. since circa 1988 has

been to bring the Iditarod unprecedented economic

independence. Some types of gambling on dog sled

races were already legal, and are used to support

other races that don’t attract big sponsorship.

COURT CALENDAR

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Humane Enforcement

American SPCA humane enforcement chief Robert

O’Neill led the biggest cockfighting raid in U.S. history on March

25, arresting 289 alleged spectators and seven alleged organizers in a

Bronx theatre building modified so that the cockpit could be disguised

as a boxing ring at a moment’s notice. Ninety cocks were seized for

euthanasia, along with 20 dead cocks. The ASPCA had already made

240 arrests and seized 1,550 cocks in a series of previous raids that

began in June 1994. The raids caused The New York Times to editorial-

ly demand that judges begin imposing the fines for cockfighting of up

to $25,000 and prison terms of up to four years that New York law

allows, instead of the token fines of about $200 that are usually given.

Scotland Yard on March 19 arrested six men and an

eight-year-old boy in the first cockfighting raid in Britain since 1985.

Another dozen suspects escaped.

High Court undoes transport victories

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

LONDON––The British High Court on April 12

reignited the five-month controversy over the export of live-

stock to European veal finishers and slaughterhouses with a

ruling that Dover, Plymouth, and Coventry had no jurisdic-

tion to ban live animal transport through their docks and air-

ports. The High Court rapped the civic authorities for acting

out of “narrow self-interest” in a “surrender to mob rule.”

The ruling undoes at a stroke the major gain from a

struggle backed by up to 92% of the public, according to

independent polls.

Anti-live export demonstrations commenced in

December 1994 after the European Union failed to adopt

rules of humane transport, and erupted into rioting at several

sites when, blockaded at ports, cattle exporters turned to fly-

ing animals to market. The conflict claimed six human lives:

two British livestock handlers and three Algerian crew mem-

bers aboard a chartered Air Algerie Boeing 737 that crashed

December 21 while returning from a night run to the

Netherlands, plus demonstrator Jill Phipps, 31, who was

crushed beneath a cattle truck on February 1, leaving behind

a nine-year-old son and a private animal sanctuary. Violence

continued into April on both sides, as the Animal Liberation

Front and pro-live export goons hit back and forth at each

other with vandalism and beatings.

An anti-wise use Weiss guy

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

SANTA ROSA, California– – ” In

a former life,” says Larry Weiss, “I prac-

ticed criminal law for 18 years. Eventually I

grew tired of making the streets safe for drug

dealers. Then, in 1985, I providentially

encountered a book, Peter Singer’s Animal

Liberation, which convinced me that I could

remain a lawyer and be proud of my work.”

Ten years later, Weiss grins, “I

mostly defend dog criminals. Or dogs who

are accused of criminal behavior,” he cor-

rects himself. “Especially those of whom it

is suspected they might eventually commit a

crime because someone thinks they resemble

a dog that might have a criminal disposition

under some other circumstance.”

Religion

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

The Miami county courthouse

maintenance staff has created a “Voodoo

Squad” to pick up the dead chickens, goats,

and other relics of Santeria sacrifice found

there each morning, remnants of Caribbean

immigrants’ attempts to influence justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 1993

that municipalities may not ban Santeria, but

they may enforce nondiscriminatory restric-

tions on it for reasons of health, sanitation,

and prevention of cruelty to animals.

The Rabbi Mayer Krucfeld,

assistant director of supervision for Star K

Kosher Certification, of Baltimore, recently

spent two days in La Jara, Colorado,

explaining how to start a kosher slaughter-

house to about 50 potential investors.

Currently the westernmost kosher slaughter-

house in the U.S. is Empire Meats, of Iowa.

Animal Collecting

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Camille Hankins, 41, of Chester, South Carolina, was

fined $200 on March 22 for ill-treatment of animals at her Animal Save

no-kill shelter, closed last June through the intervention of PETA and

K. Jones, editor of the Charlotte-based animal newspaper T h e

Animality. Eighty animals were taken from Hankins’ trailer home and

yard, of whom about a dozen were euthanized due to illness. Hankins,

a former PETA volunteer, told ANIMAL PEOPLE she was framed

because of PETA’s opposition to no-kill shelters, after she made the

mistake of asking PETA to help her with adoptions. Responded Jones,

“I testified to the conditions I saw several months before the arrest. I

also testified that I tried to get Hankins to give me some of the animals

so that I could get them to a vet, care for them, and adopt them out. I at

one time offered to take them all. She invited PETA down a few weeks

later. I think the town of Chester gave her a fair and just trial, and had

no problem proving her guilt.”

Birds

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

“The only good great horned owl is a dead

one,” says Minnesota state senator Charles Berg, who has

introduced a bill to allow free range turkey farmers to catch

the owls with padded leghold traps––which can easily

crush an owl’s foot––as well as a bill to allow mourning

dove hunting. Letters asking that either bill be vetoed if

passed may be sent to Governor Arne Carlson, 130

Capitol, St. Paul, MN 55155.

“Small nature preserves, which work fine for

preserving plants, don’t work for migratory birds,”

Illinois Natural History Survey scientist Scott Robinson

says, after an extensive study of the relationship between

vanishing songbirds and cowbirds, who lay their faster-

hatching eggs ino other birds’ nests. While cowbirds are a

short-term cause of species decline, the longterm cause is

shrinking habitat, as deep forests where the songbirds are

safe give way to the edge habitat that cowbirds prefer.

ESA ROUNDUP

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Senator Slade Gorton (R-Washington)

on April 12 promised a gathering of timber indus-

try executives in Stevenson, Washington, that he

would soon introduce a bill to replace the present

Endangered Species Act mandate to save all

species with a process by which by a political

appointee––probably the Secretary of the

Interior––would decide whether and how a species

should be saved. The bill was drafted by the

National Endangered Species Reform Coalition,

representing 185 corporations and so-called wise-

use groups, who gave Gorton’s re-election cam-

paign $34,000 last fall.

WILDLIFE

May 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1995:

Wolves

Mandated by the state legislature to implement

predator control before cutting either the length of the moose and

caribou season or the bag limits, the Alaska Board of Game during

the week of March 27 ordered the Alaska Department of Fish and

Game to prepare wolf control plans for much of the inhabited part

of the state by October. It also extended the bear season in two

regions by four weeks, while upping the bag limit from one bear

per four years to one bear every year. “It’s impossible to say what

the ADF&G will present,” said Sandra Arnold of the Alaska

Wildlife Alliance. “We also don’t know if the Board approves a

wolf control plan in October, if that means control will begin

immediately or in October 1996. The bear control measures are

proving controversial. ADF&G refuses to comment, but are clear-

ly concerned because all their reports indicate that bears are

already being killed above sustainable levels, especially in Unit

13,” which is the heavily hunted Nelchina Basin.

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