Category: North America

Panic, not disease, killed Auburn raptors

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

AUBURN, Alabama–A purported deadly outbreak of the avian
bacterial disease mycoplasma galliseptum in mid-2003 caused the
South-eastern Raptor Rehabilitation Center at Auburn University to
kill 17 rare birds after eight others died, halted the tradition of
a golden eagle named Tiger flying at Auburn home football games, and
led to the June 2003 firing of raptor center director Joe
Shelnutt–but there never were any actual cases of mycoplasma
galliseptum, Associated Press writer Kyle Wingfield revealed on
August 24, 2004.
Wingfield obtained a copy of a report on the incident by
University of Minnesota Raptor Center director Patrick Redig. The
report was shared with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Auburn
officials in January 2004 but was not previously made public.
“Instead of a microorganism, the report blames faulty
laboratory techniques and poor decision-making,” Wingfield disclosed.
Tiger is again going to football games, with two understudies.

AVMA strengthens position against forced molts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

PHILADELPHIA–The American Veterinary Medical Association
house of delegates on July 28, 2004 adopted a resolution against
forced molting that resolves one of the major issues between the AVMA
and the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights.
On June 21, AVAR co-sponsored a full-page ad in the New York
Times asking “Has anyone betrayed more animals than the American
Veterinary Medical Association?’
Similar to an ad published in April in ANIMAL PEOPLE by the
Coalition for Nonviolent Food, the New York Times ad targeted the
AVMA positions on forced molting, gestation crates for pregnant
sows, veal crating, and “the inexplicable retention of Dr. Gregg
Cutler on the AVMA Animal Welfare Committee,” explained AVAR vice
president Holly Cheever, “despite the fact that he was shown in
three separate affidavits, including his own sworn deposition, to
have ordered the mass slaughter of 30,000 chickens in California by
throwing them alive into a wood chipper.”
Furious over the ad, AVMA executive vice president Bruce
Little on July 21 barred the Association of Veterinarians for Animal
Rights from tabling at a booth it had already reserved and paid for
during the five-day AVMA annual conference, July 24-28. This was
reported in the July/August 2004 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, which
went to press while the conference itself was just underway.

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Judge upholds tuna/dolphin standard–again–and raps Bush cabinet “meddling”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

SAN FRANCISCO–U.S. District Judge
Thelton Henderson on August 10, 2004 upheld the
“dolphin-safe” tuna labeling standard against
government attempts to weaken or scrap it for the
fifth time in 14 years.
Ordered Henderson, “Dolphin-safe shall
continue to mean that ‘no tuna were caughtŠusing
a purse seine net intentionally deployed on or to
encircle dolphins, and that no dolphins were
killed or seriously injured,'” on the voyage that
caught the tuna.
Henderson rapped Commerce Secretary
Donald Evans and the George W. Bush
administration for “a pattern of delay and
inattention” in failing to enforce the
dolphin-safe labeling standard.
“The record is replete with evidence that
the secretary was influenced by policy concerns
unrelated to the best available scientific
evidence,” Henderson wrote.
“This court has never, in its 24 years,
reviewed a record of agency action that contained
such a compelling portrait of political meddling.”

Sanctuaries sue Powerball lottery winner over unpaid pledges

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

EPPING, N.H.–Mary Ellen Sanderson, co-winner of a $66
million Powerball lottery in 1997, has been sued by a second animal
charity to which she pledged annual funding. Sued earlier by the
Oasis Sanctuary Foundation, a tropical bird sanctuary located at
Cascabel, Arizona, Sanderson was also sued in July 2004 by Equine
Protection of North America–which Sanderson helped to create,
reported Manchester Union Leader correspondent Toby Henry.
The original EPONA directors, Henry indicated, were
president Susan Fockler and director Ronald Levesque, both of
Epping, New Hampshire, and Mary Ellen and James Sanderson, then a
married couple. As with the Oasis Sanctuary, Mary Ellen Sanderson
helped EPONA to obtain a sanctuary site. The EPONA facility, near
Dover, New Hampshire, houses about 25 horses at a time, Hnery said.
According to Henry, the lawsuit alleges that Mary Ellen
Sanderson agreed to give EPONA $70,000 a year, amounting to more
than 80% of the organization’s entire budget. The Oasis Sanctuary
suit claims Mary Ellen Sanderson was to donate $100,000 a year.
Both organizations were cut off at the end of 2003, after
the Sandersons divorced.

Standardizing microchips

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

ORLANDO–Iams company spokesperson Kelly Vanasse, addressing
the 2004 Conference on Homeless Animal Management & Policy in
Orlando, Florida, announced on August 22 that Iams is prepared to
donate 30,000 microchip scanners to humane societies, animal control
agencies, and veterinarians throughout the U.S.–if the makers will
cooperate to produce a scanner that reads both the 125-kilohertz
chips that are most used in the U.S. and the 134-kilohertz chips that
are recommended by the International Standards Organization.
The 125-kv chips are made by Avid Identification Systems and
Digital Angel Inc., and are used by the Schering Plough Animal
Health “Home Again” program. The 134-kv ISO chips are distributed in
the U.S. by PetHealth Services and Crystal Tag. The latter is the
chip provider to Banfield, The Pet Hospital Inc., but Banfield has
suspended microchipping pets until it is convinced that an adequate
number of 134-kv scanners are in use in the U.S. to make the program
effective.
Avid has sued PetHealth Services and Banfield, and has been
countersued by PetHealth acting through the Coalition for Reuniting
Pets & Families, over issues including alleged patent infringement,
unfair competition, and false advertising.
Vanasse told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the Iams proposal could be
worth about $5 million in equipment costs to the humane community,
and that the scanner purchases could be allocated among the various
chip makers so that each gets a fair share of the income.

Judge rules against mining in Florida panther habitat

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

FORT MYERS–Ruling that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and Army Corps of Engineers improperly issued a finding of “no
jeopardy” to the endangered Florida panther, U.S. District Judge
James Robertson on August 20, 2004 invalidated the federal permits
issued to Florida Rock Industries Inc. to develop a 6,000-acre mine
site in Lee County.
“In isolation, most individual projects would impact only
small portions of potential panther habitat,” Robertson wrote.
“Multiplied by many projects over a long time, the cumulative impact
on the panther might be significant.”
The lawsuit against the mine was filed by the National
Wildlife Federation, the Florida Wildlife Federation, and the
Florida Panther Society.
Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel staff writer David Fleshler
reported that the case “received support in May 2004 when Andrew
Eller, a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service, filed a
formal complaint accusing his own agency of knowingly using bad data
on panther habitat, reproduction, and survival to approve eight
construction projects.”

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Oasis in a storm

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

BENSON, Arizona–Since the high-tech stock crash of
2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, hundreds
of charities have coped with abrupt losses of income, but the ups
and downs of the Oasis Sanctuary Foundation have occurred for other
reasons.
Sybil Erden in 1997 started Oasis from her home in Phoenix to
provide lifetime care to cast-off tropical birds. Also in 1997,
two strangers, Mary and Jason Sanderson, of Nashua, New Hampshire,
won a $66 million Powerball lottery. They became acquainted with
Erden in 1998.
Struggling with a cumulative deficit of almost $80,000,
Erden in 1999 moved Oasis to a 72-acre former pecan orchard beside
the San Pedro River at Cascabel, Arizona, secured on a five-year
mortgage with a pledge from the Sandersons to donate $100,000 a year
for 24 years. In January 2004, however, the Sandersons told Erden
that their pending divorce would end the payments. Oasis is now
suing them for the unpaid balance.

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USAid pushes Zimbabwean “wise use” wildlife management model in Kenya

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

HARARE, NAIROBI–The future of wildlife in Zimbabwe and
Kenya may depend on the outcome of the November 2004 U.S.
Presidential election–or may be decided sooner, as officials in a
position to cash in on consumptive use rush to do it.
U.S. President George W. Bush brought to the White House a
renewed commitment to the wildlife policies of his father George H.
Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Echoing the “sustainable use” rhetoric of the World Wildlife
Fund and African Wildlife Foundation, all three Presidents have
actually been more closely aligned with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and Safari Club International–and none more so than George
W., who was the Safari Club “Governor of the Year” in 1999 for
vetoing a Texas bill to restrain canned hunts.
Operative assumptions of the George W. Bush administration
African wildlife policy, are that wildlife should pay its own way;
that trophy hunting is the best ecological and economic use for large
wildlife; that breeding huntable populations of wildlife in
captivity is an acceptable alternative to protecting habitat; that
conservation is best motivated by profit rather than altruism; and
that his Republican forebears knew what they were doing, since none
of the Big Five trophy species–African elephant, rhino, lion,
leopard, and Cape buffalo–went extinct on their watch.
The Center for Private Conservation, a Competitive
Enterprise Institute subsidiary, touted Zimbabwe as the showplace
for successful “wise use” wildlife policy during the 2000 U.S.
election campaign. Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, an avowed
Marxist just a few years earlier, seduced the Reagan and George H.
Bush administrations by turning conservation over almost entirely to
the private sector.

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Post-9/11 shelter killing hits 4.9 million a year

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004

Entering 2004, ANIMAL PEOPLE hoped that 2003 would prove to
have been the year when U.S. shelter killing of dogs and cats fell
below four million for the first time since the first national
estimates of the toll were developed circa 1960.
Instead, surging intakes of pit bull terriers,
Rottweilers, and mixed breed dogs with pit bull or Rottweiler traits
appear to have more than offset all the reductions achieved since
1997 in feral cat intake, accidental litters of puppies and kittens,
and surrenders of unruly year-old purebred dogs of other types.
Thus the estimated U.S. shelter death toll soared by 17%, to
4.9 million.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate is based on data from every
shelter in cities, counties, or sometimes whole states containing
more than a third of the U.S. human population, and is
proportionately weighted to get regional balance. It includes data
collected only in the three preceding years.
Thus the 2004 ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate is the first to consist
predominantly of data reflecting the economic conditions following
the high-tech stock collapse of 2000-2001 and the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001.

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