Category: North America

Yellowknife and Connecticut incidents feed the “humane relocation” debate

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories, Canada–Overcrowded
with 64 dogs seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from
itinerant rescuers Harry and Pat Shermet, the 12-cage Yellowknife
SPCA on September 16, 2003 sent 25 puppies to the Edmonton SPCA.
First Air donated the 650-mile flight. The Great Slave
Animal Hospital donated the required vaccinations.
“We’re glad to help,” Melissa Boisvert of Edmonton SPCA
told Nathan VanderKlippe of the CanWest News Service.
The Edmonton SPCA had only six dogs in its 60 kennels before
the puppies arrived, a legacy of successful pet sterilization and
rehoming.
The Yellowknife rescue exemplified both the promise and the
problems associated with transferring shelter animals to match supply
to demand. The Shermets actually had almost the same idea, after
they were evicted from the cabin where they had amassed 66 dogs in
three years. Loading all the dogs into a trailer on September 5,
the Shermets hoped to find homes for them in Manitoba, but were
intercepted by the RCMP in Rae, just 100 miles down the road. Six
dogs escaped and two were shot during the ensuing chaos.

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Bush policy & bushmeat

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

WASHINGTON D.C., NAIROBI– Wildlife
policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–and backed by much of the same
money–threaten to replace the principle of
protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by
being hunted or captured alive for sale.
The proposed amendments represent such an
extreme interpretation of the “sustainable use”
philosophy advanced since 1936 by the National
Wildlife Federation and since 1961 by the World
Wildlife Fund that even WWF endangered species
program director Susan Lieberman was quick to
denounced the U.S. versions.
“Money doesn’t always mean conservation,”
Lieberman told Washington Post staff writer
Shankar Vedantam. “To me, the theme is allowing
industry to write the rules.”

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Mute swan defenders make their voices heard in court

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on
September 17, 2003 agreed to withdraw all permits allowing state and
federal agencies to kill mute swans, settling a lawsuit brought by
the Fund for Animals.
The settlement agreement also requires the Fish & Wildlife
Service to withdraw the Environmental Assessment and Finding of No
Significant Impact that endorsed killing mute swans in 17 states.
“It began with an ill-conceived permit to kill mute swans in
Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, but now the outcome has national
implications for tens of thousands of these graceful and majestic
birds,” Fund for Animals president Michael Markarian said. “The
federal government has pulled the plug on Governor Robert Ehrlich’s
attempt to bow down to Maryland’s corporate polluters and the massive
factory farms–the real causes of damage to Chesapeake Bay–and to
turn defenseless swans into corporate patsies.”
The Ehrlich administration in July 2003 proposed opening a
hunting season on mute swans, which would require U.S. Fish &
Wildlife Service approval. Meanwhile, characterizing the allegedly
non-native mute swans as a threat to the ecological integrity of
Chesapeake Bay, Maryland obtained U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
permission to kill up to 3,000 mute swans during the next 10 years.
That authorization is now revoked.

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Navy agrees to restrict use of SURTASS-LFA sonar

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

SAN FRANCISCO–U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth D. Laporte was at
press time for the October 2003 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE expected to
ratify an agreement by the U.S. Navy that will restrict peacetime
use of Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System-Low Frequency Active
(SURTASS-LFA) to protect whales.
Settling a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the Humane Society of the U.S., the pact follows a
permanent injunction issued by Laporte on August 26 against any use
of the new sonar system within a 14-million-square-mile area,
constituting 40% of the Pacific Ocean.
“Under the injunction,” said Washington Post staff writer
Marc Kaufman, “the Navy can use the new sonar–which emits
low-frequency sound waves that travel for hundreds of miles–only
off the eastern seaboard of Asia, an area of about 1.5 million
square miles. Both sides said they could not discuss the reasons for
that exception. The agreement prohibits the use of SURTASS-LFA
within 30 to 60 miles of the coastlines of the approved area,

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Horse farmers lose PMU contracts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

BRANDON, Manitoba–Five hundred representatives of the 409
farms that produce pregnant mare’s urine for use by Wyeth Organics on
October 10, 2003 were notified in person at the Keystone Center in
Brandon that the PMU industry may be just about finished.
A third of them were told during the following
weekend–Thanksgiving weekend in Canada–that their services will no
longer be required. Leaving 30 seasonal jobs unfilled due to
plummeting demand for PMU products, Wyeth plans to buy only half as
much PMU as last year.
PMU sales fell after publication of a series of studies
during the past year by the U.S. National Institutes of Health which
documented that hormonal therapy harms menopausal women’s health more
than it helps. Sales had already contracted somewhat under boycott
pressure from animal rights groups. The boycotts began about five
months after ANIMAL PEOPLE in April 2003 exposed the close
confinement of the PMU-producing mares and the sale to slaughter of
most of their foals. The ANIMAL PEOPLE report was based on
investigative findings by Canadian Farm Animal Trust founder Tom
Hughes.

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Ferrets for Schwarzenegger

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

“Ferret owners are rejoicing,” American Ferret Association
founder Freddie Ann Hoffman said of the October 7, 2003 election of
actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace recalled California Governor
Gray Davis.
Hoffman credited Schwarzenegger with helping to popularize
ferrets in his 1990 film Kindergarten Cop, while blasting Davis for
pledging to veto any bill to legalize the possession of ferrets that
might clear the state legislature.
Ferrets and many other non-native predators have been banned
in California for more than 70 years, initially as alleged threats
to the poultry industry.
The PawPAC political action committee was less enthusiastic
about Schwarzenegger.
“Like everyone else, we know nothing of Schwarzenegger’s
positions on animals,” said a pre-election PawPAC release. “Former
gubernatorial candidate Richard Riordan stated at a recent event that
his friend Arnold ‘loves his dogs.’ Schwarznegger has been endorsed
by the California Farm Bureau, an organization that regularly
opposes animal welfare legislation.”

HSUS rep Samantha Mullen is sued in N.Y. for knocking no-kill

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

PEARL RIVER, N.Y.– Friends of Rockland
Shelter Animals Inc. on June 20 sued the Humane
Society of the United States and HSUS program
coordinator Samantha Mullen for allegedly
interfering in a business relationship by making
“false and misleading statements” in a February
19, 2003 letter to C. Scott Vanderhoef, chief
executive for Rockland County, New York.
According to the complaint, Friends of
Rockland Shelter Inc. “with the assistance of the
American SPCA, was involved in valid, existing
and ongoing negotiations” to take over the county
shelter from Hi Tor Animal Care Center, a
private contractor.

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Cat killer thrown out of office

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

 

PALMYRA, Nebraska–Village chair Rex Schroder, 30, was
recalled on August 5, 130-55, a month after state attorney general
Jon Bruning charged him with cruelty for trapping and killing
neighbor Heather Bruns’ cat, trapping her dog, and killing a feral
cat. Schroder, a 15-year Palmyra resident and five-year elected
official, indicated that he believed rural values and property
rights would prevail, but after the vote, wrote Barbara Nordby of
the Lincoln Journal Star, “Attempts to find supporters of Schroder
in Palmyra were unsuccessful.”

Fates that really “scare the monkeys” of Guangzhou, China

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

GUANGZHOU, BOSTON– Among the less visible effects of the
2002-2003 SARS outbreak in China may be a claimed shortage of monkeys
in U.S. laboratories.
Of the 99,939 nonhuman primates imported into the U.S. from
1995 through 2002, 26,134 came from China, according to an analysis
of trade data by Linda Howard of the Aesop Project.
The total included almost exactly a third of the 78,903
crab-eating macaques acquired by U.S. labs and lab suppliers.
The U.S. bought more monkeys from China than from any other
nation. Next were Mauritius, furnishing 22,695 monkeys; Indonesia,
17,379; and Vietnam, 13,535. SARS put most of those sources at
least temporarily off limits.
Among the more horrifying possibilities raised by an
ambiguous description of the situation published on July 18 in the
South China Morning Post is that Chinese-reared crab-eating macaques,
if excluded from lab use, may be eaten.
Wrote South China Morning Post Guangzhou correspondent Leu
Siew Ying, “About 10,000 rhesus monkeys and thousands of snakes held
at wild animal farms in Guangzhou are waiting for health authorities
to determine their fate. Depending on whether or not they were
responsible for transmitting SARS, the inmates will head either to
laboratories or dinner tables.”

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