Category: North America

ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Fixing the problem
Vancouver, British Columbia,
officially went to no-kill animal control
effective October 1, after killing only 74
dogs in 1997. The announcement brought
the surge of owner surrenders that typically
follows publicity about a no-kill policy,
causing crowding which pound director
Barbara Fellnermayr predicted would be
only temporary. The volunteer group
Animal Advocates has pledged to expand a
fostering program to handle the overflow.
Animal Advocates reportedly already has
about 50 active fostering families, who
have enabled the West Vancouver SPCA
to “virtually stop killing adoptable dogs,”
wrote Robert Sarti of the Vancouver Sun.
The Vancouver pound does not handle cats.

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COVERT INFILTRATION AGENCY?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

ANIMAL PEOPLE paranoia
about suspected infiltration, disruption, and
possible use of international animal protection
organizations as cover for Central
Intelligence Agency projects surged on
October 1 when Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch
shared a set of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Division of Law Enforcement conference
notes from a meeting of May 18-20, 1993,
in Reno, Nevada.
Cox obtained the notes through a
recent Freedom of Information Act request.
Twelve attendees, none below the
rank of assistant regional director for law
enforcement, were told that “CIA has
expressed an interest in working with the
Division at the national and international levels.
A CIA section chief,” they were told,
“will speak to the agents at this summer’s
undercover school and SABS.”

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Vail, the “Earth Liberation Front” and the search for the missing lynx

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

VAIL, Colorado––”On behalf of
the lynx,” the October 21 e-mail to KCFR-FM
Colorado Public Radio in Denver said, “five
buildings and four ski lifts at Vail were
reduced to ashes on the night of Sunday,
October 18. Vail Inc. is already the largest ski
operation in North America, and now wants to
expand even further. The 12 miles of roads
and 885 acres of clearcuts will ruin the last,
best lynx habitat in the state. Putting profits
ahead of Colorado’s wildlife will not be tolerated.
This action is just a warning.”
The e-mail was signed “Earth
Liberation Front.”
The arson came exactly one month
after U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham
dismissed a lawsuit against the Vail expansion
based on the possible presence of lynx,
brought jointly by the Colorado Environmental
Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife, the
Wilderness Society, Sinapu, the Sierra Club,
and the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project.
Lynx haven’t been seen in Colorado
since 1973, but the last one appeared in the
Vail Mountain area, and a track found there in
1991 was said to have been that of a lynx.

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COURT CALENDAR

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Rodeo protester Marla Rose was arrested for alleged felonious possession of a deadly weapon on October 4 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on the complaint of an as yet unidentified rodeo person, Chicago Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi report- ed. The “deadly weapon,” Hindi said, “was an electrical shocking device identical to those used by some of the stock handlers at the rodeo to jolt bulls as they exited the chutes during the bullriding events. So let’s see if I understand this, ” Hindi continued. “A prod used on defenseless animals by phony cowboys does not hurt, is not a weapon, and is not the same as a stun-gun. Conversely, the same prod in the hands of an activist who is merely display- ing it does hurt, is a weapon, and magically becomes a stun-gun? ” Rose was held overnight, then released on a signature bond.

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Monsanto accused of coercion

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

OTTAWA––Members of the
Canadian Senate Standing Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry “sat dumbfounded”
on October 22, wrote Ottawa Citizen reporter
James Baxter, “as Dr. Margaret Haydon told
of a meeting when officials from Monsanto
Inc.,” maker of the milk production stimulant
rBST, “made an offer of between $1 million
and $2 million to the scientists from Health
Canada––an offer that she told the senators
could only have been interpreted as a bribe.
Dr. Haydon,” Baxter wrote, “also recounted
how notes and files critical of scientific data
provided by Monsanto were stolen from a
locked filing cabinet in her office.”
Reportedly responded Senator
Eugene Whelan, “I can’t even believe I’m in
Canada––what the hell kind of a system do we
have here?”

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Endangered species updates

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Created by a 1997 act of
Congress, the U.S. Institute for Environmental
Conflict Resolution on October 22
opened for business in Tucson––but was not
warmly welcomed by Southwest Center for
Biological Diversity executive director
Kieran Suckling, whose lawsuits seeking to
implement the Endangered Species Act were
among the major reasons the institute exists.
“It’s only when loggers and developers start
to lose their grip and environmental protection
starts to really gain that they suddenly
say, ‘Oh, let’s get out of the courts, it’s too
expensive, let’s have more discussions,’”
Suckling said. “I’m very, very cynical.
They can’t stand the legal system because it
protects the environment. Why is it expensive?
Because we win.”

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Too many disasters even before Mitch

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

LA CIEBA, SAN JUAN, MIAMI, NEW
ORLEANS––Tracking a two-year-old female falcon by satellite
transmitter, as she migrated from Wood Buffalo National
Park in central Alberta, Canadian Wildlife Service ornithologist
Geoff Holroyd on October 23-24 watched her gain 300
miles between Haiti and South America, only to be whirled
backward by Hurricane Mitch.
Twelve hours later the exhausted falcon landed back
in Haiti, almost where she’d begun the day’s journey.
She was among the luckier victims of Mitch––and the
winds were the least of the storm, which raged off Central
America for four days, causing unprecedented torrential rain,
mud slides, and flooding. Altogether, Mitch killed an estimated
minimum of 9,000 people in Honduras, 2,000 in Nicaragua,
and hundreds of others in Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico,
and on missing ships. Thousands more were missing.
The toll on animals, both wild and domestic, was
incalculable.

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Born to be wild, big cats break loose

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

ALACHUA, Fla.–– Responding
to a “Help!” call from Doris Guay, co-owner
of Ron and Judy Holiday’s Cat Dancers
Ranch in Alachua, Florida, tiger trainer
Charles Edward “Chuck” Lizza III, 34, was
killed on October 7 by a bite to the neck.
Reported staff writer Karen Voyles
of the Gainesville Sun, “It was about 7:45
a.m. when Ron Guay began walking Jupiter,”
a 400-pound, three-and-a-half-year-old white
tiger tom, “from a night cage to a day kennel.
Workers arriving to install fencing for a new
kennel apparently startled the big cat. Ron
Guay,” Doris’ husband, “said he called to
Doris to bring out a couple of chicken necks
to take Jupiter’s mind off his anxiety. When
that failed, Guay asked his wife to wake
Lizza, but without his glasses or contacts, he
(Lizza) was unable to see which animal Guay
had on a leash. Wearing a pair of slightly too
big mocassins as slippers, Lizza stumbled
over a scrap of chain link fencing and fell to
the ground. The tiger attacked him,” as Ron
and Doris Guay togther were unable to hold
the animal back.

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Action but no whaling––yet

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

NEAH BAY, Washington– – Makah
Tribal Council plans to kill grey whales
appeared in disarray in mid-November––but the
hunt was still definitely on, Makah Whaling
Commission president Keith Johnson told
increasingly skeptical media.
“Instead of engaging its first whale in
70 years,” Seattle Times reporter Lynda V.
Mapes wrote on November 9, “the tribe has
only tangled with whaling opponents and the
press. Instead of answering questions about the
hunt, the tribe is being grilled about arrests by
tribal police of whaling protesters on November
1. Tribal members are asked why their youngsters
threw rocks at nonviolent whaling protesters.
And they are questioned about their police
chief’s fitness for duty.”

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