Four thousand acres––and 600 emus

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

ELK CREEK, Calif.––”Our object
in obtaining this land,” explained Humane
Farming Association Founder and president
Brad Miller, greeting the first outside visitors
to the 4,000-acre Suwanna Ranch after the
1998 No-Kill Conference, “was to see how
long we could maintain our policy of never
turning away a farm animal who had been
involved in a cruelty case, who had been
referred to us by a humane society, animal
control department, police department, fire
department, or county sheriff’s office.”
HFA guarantees farm animals who
have endured prosecutable cruelty a caring
home for life in a semi-natural environment.
But, Miller continues, “After many years of
doing this, our original HFA Farm Animal
Refuge in Fairfield,” just north of San
Francisco, “was becoming a little crowded.
We think, with this extra space, we’ll now be
able to keep going for quite a long time.”

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Wearing the black hat well

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

GREENSBORO, N.C.––Sheriff B.J. Barnes
of Guilford County, North Carolina, on September 10
relievedly turned the county animal shelter over to the
United Animal Coalition, a consortium of 13 local
organizations including both the Guilford County
Humane Society and the Greensboro SPCA.
Forced to run the shelter temporarily through
the summer, when no one else wanted the contract,
Barnes on August 7 jolted viewers of his weekly
“Sheriff’s Beat” cable TV program with a 35-second
clip of himself killing a homeless dog.
Over the next six weeks, the Guilford
County adoption rate jumped 300%, and the UAC
formed in response to public outcry.

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ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Newly appointed City of Los
Angeles Animal Services chief Dan
Knapp in September opted against retaining
Animal Foundation International t o
provide low-cost neutering under a city
contract. AFI opened a neutering clinic by
agreement with L.A. Animal Services in
November 1997, modeled after the AFI
clinic in Las Vegas, which has fixed more
than 100,000 animals since 1989. After
complaints about the quality of care at the
Los Angeles branch surfaced in May 1998,
amplified by local activists, AFI president
Mary Herro shut the clinic and dismissed
the whole staff––although clinic statistics
indicated the AFI clinic had no higher a rate
of post-operative complications than the
average (4%) for all U.S. veterinary hospitals.

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RABIES UPDATES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Afflicting the Atlantic seaboard
and New England since 1976, the midAtlantic
raccoon rabies pandemic shows signs
of containment through the escalating use of
Raboral, an oral vaccine developed by the
Wistar Institute of Philadelphia. Used successfuly
against fox rabies in Europe for more
than 20 years, Raboral has kept Cape Cod
free of rabies since 1993, Alison Robbins,
DVM, of the Tufts University School of
Veterinary Medicine announced in late
August. Earlier, Texas officials credited
Raboral with stopping the only recorded mass
outbreak of rabies in coyotes. The Tufts program
is now expanding to vaccinate the raccoons
of Plymouth, Wareham, and Carver,
and as funding becomes available, Massa –
chusetts Department of Public Health

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Wild tails about Wildlife Waystation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST,
California––Three people from ANIMAL
PEOPLE spent nearly seven hours at Wildlife
Waystation recently, including five hours of
hiking up hill and down dale behind the seemingly
inexhaustible founder, Martine Colette,
viewing more than 1,000 animals. Yet we still
saw the most remote paddock for hooved animals
only from a distance.
The scale of the Waystation is overwhelming
to those who may be familiar only
with sanctuaries of ordinary size. Near
Sacramento, California, the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, for instance, reportedly
sheltered 38 animals as of September
1997, while the Farm Sanctuary site at Orlans,
California, had 47.

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The history of D.E.L.T.A. Rescue

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

The history of D.E.L.T.A. Rescue
Adapted from “Is This The Place?”, by Leo Grillo
[Additional editorial notes are in brackets.]

1 9 7 9 – Leo Grillo, a Hollywood
actor, found 35 dogs starving in the wilderness
outside of Los Angeles. Without food or
shelter, their lives depended on his daily
feeding. Grillo learned to medicate these
dogs in the field when they were sick.
(Oscar, the last of those dogs, died in 1995.)
1 9 8 0 – Grillo leased kennel space.
He rescued those 35 dogs and about three
dozen more who were abandoned during that
first year. He found homes for most, but
kept about 20 because they were abused and
unwanted. He realized that most shelters
would kill them, but he refused, saying
“These animals are people too!”

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ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Former Assembly of God pastor
Dan Knapp, 42, well regarded for his
administration of the Humboldt County
Humane Society and Humane Society of
Sonoma County at past stops, in July was
named new chief of Animal Services of the
city of Los Angeles. He inherits a difficult
situation, including shelters reportedly
holding half again as many animals as they
were built for, 180 employees but an undersized
veterinary department, and a per
capita killing ratio which while good by
national and even California standards, is
still three times higher than that of San
Francisco. The job also comes with vocal
public critics of the whole Los Angeles animal
care and control apparatus.

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WHO’S FIXING PET OVERPOPULATION?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

The following table lists the number
of dogs and cats killed per thousand
human residents of North American cities,
counties, and states for which complete
recent counts are available.
Immense regional differences are
readily apparent, with the lowest ratios clustered
in the Northeast and the highest in the
South. The low Northeastern figures would
appear to be associated with high urban populations,
apartment living and resultant low
pet ownership rates; cold winters, depressing
the survival rate of feral kittens; a relatively
strong humane infrastructure to encourage
neutering; and animal control agencies which
have historically not had a mandate to pick up
free-roaming cats. The high Southern figures
conversely reflect suburban populations, high
pet ownership, warm winters, and a general
lack of access to low-cost neutering.

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Bear bladders become political football for the AZA, HSUS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

WASHINGTON, D.C.– –
Humane Society of the U.S. vice president
for legislation Wayne Pacelle
claimed a small victory on July 21
when the Senate Committee of
Environment and Public Works
approved S.263, the proposed Bear
Protection Act, which would ban sales
of U.S. bear viscera to foreign buyers.
“Unfortunately,” Pacelle
lamented, “the committee removed
one of the main provisions: a ban on
interstate trade in bear gall bladders
and bile. The weakening was pushed
by Senator Dirk Kempthorne,” also
behind numerous attempts to weaken
the Endangered Species Act, “who is
leaving the Senate to run for governor
of Idaho.”

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