Category: North America

Abrupt Kathleen Hunter exit from THS recalls “Toronto Massacre”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

TORONTO––Kathleen
Hunter, Toronto Humane Society
executive director since 1986,
departed on January 25 under undisclosed
circumstances.
“The board agreed with the
executive of the society that she is no
longer an employee,” Toronto city
councillor Steve Ellis told Toronto
Star reporter Phinjo Gombu.
“Before the meeting, she was an
employee, but after the meeting she
wasn’t.” Ellis, who holds a THS
board seat reserved for a city representative,
claimed he could say no
more because it was “a confidential
labor relations matter.”

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What the Strah Polls say about roadkill

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

MENTOR, Ohio––Shocked at the
carnage and curious about the impact on local
wildlife, transportation department employee
Cathy Strah some years back began counting
the roadkills collected for disposal by the
town crews of Mentor, Ohio. In 1993 Strah
began sending her data to ANIMAL PEOPLE,
as a participant in a single-year national
roadkill census we were doing, concurrent
with the separate start of the now nationally
recognized Dr. Splatt counts. The latter are
done by middle school students across the
U.S., coordinated by Brewster Bartlett, a
science teacher at Pinkerton Academy in
Essex, New Hampshire.

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The wild horse scandal that no one wants to face

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

DENVER––Wild horses rounded up by the Bureau
of Land Management and sold to slaughter hit the headlines on
January 4––again.
This time Associated Press reporter Martha Mendoza,
of Albuquerque, New Mexico, chased the perennial allegations
of BLM malfeasance by tracing paper trails, something
animal advocates have not done on any comparable scale.
“Using freeze-brand numbers and computer records,”
Mendoza reported, “the AP traced more than 57 former BLM
horses sold to slaughterhouses since September. Eighty percent
were less than 10 years old and 25% were less than five years
old.” Further, Mendoza alleged, “The AP matched computer
records of horse adoptions with a computerized list of federal
employees and found that more than 200 current BLM employees
have adopted more than 600 wild horses and burros.”

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Trying to save the Florida Keys

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

TALLAHASSEE––Florida governor Lawton
Chiles on January 28 approved a plan to restrict fishing and
keep large ships out of the 2,800-square-mile Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary, created by Congress in 1990 but
stalled in debate over management plans ever since. The
agreement to ban fishing in 19 specific sensitive areas completed
a pact that also includes restrictions on reckless boating,
protection of the sea grass beds that furnish habitat to
manatees, and the funding of research to find out why coral
around the Keys, forming the only living coral reef in the
Northern Hemisphere, is fast dying off.

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CANADA’S NOT THE THIRD WORLD, EH?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

VANCOUVER––Animal advocates in Canada often
liken the Canadian animal protection situation to that of the
Third World, noting scarce funding, weak laws, low public
awareness, and heavy government involvement in animal use
industries such as fur, sealing, and the production of Premarin,
based on pregnant mares’ urine.
Yet the Canadian humane dilemma is distinctly First
World, in that disagreements as to definitions of “humane” are
more often at issue than the basic idea that animals should be
treated humanely–– whatever that is.

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Wildlife thrill-killing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

Roberta “Robin” Ferrabee,
35, of Ohioville, Pennsylvania,
near Pittsburgh, stood up in
her living room on December 9 to
turn on the television––and was shot
through the neck with a deer slug,
falling dead in a gush of blood at the
feet of daughter Cassie, age 3.
Officials say they will charge the
hunter who killed her, but at deadline
had not yet said whether it
would be for homicide, carrying
felony penalties, or just violations
of hunting law. The hunter, not
named, was among a three-member
party who were on the land of the
victim’s brother-in-law without permission;
had been drinking; and
fired twice toward the victim’s
house, from inside the 150-yard no
hunting zone around houses stipulated
by Pennsyvlania law since 1937.

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A kinder, gentler seal hunt

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

by Captain Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Since 1993, the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society has
tried to work with the Canadian
Department of Fisheries and Oceans
to create an industry using naturally
molted baby harp seal hairs.
After four years of
research, we have discovered and
demonstrated the following results:
1. Molting hairs from harp
seals can be brushed or plucked from
three-week-old seals without causing
injury or trauma to the animals. This
observation is backed up by Dr.
David Lavigne of the University of
Guelph––one of the world’s foremost
experts on harp seals.

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Longlines and Gore

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

HONOLULU––If allegations
issued by former U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service special agent Carroll E. Cox stand
up, senior officials of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service have for at least six years
buried evidence of illegal threats to endangered
species on a scale that if exposed
could rattle trade relations, the primacy of
the Nature Conservancy in Western Pacific
conservation projects, and even the office
of U.S. vice president Albert Gore.
If Cox is lying, he says, “I’m a
zero, and my career is over. I’ll never work
in the wildlife or law enforcement fields
again, or any other field where people care
if you’re telling the truth.”

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101 Dalmatian stories and rumors of elephants flying

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1997:

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida––
If Walt Disney Inc. expected praise from animal
advocates for hitting the fur trade at the
outset of the winter sales season with a liveaction
edition of 101 Dalmatians, and for
offering a home to a family of African elephants
who might otherwise have been shot,
the corporate brass got an eye-opener in
November and early December.
Of the 27 nationally syndicated news
stories about 101 Dalmatians that ANIMAL
PEOPLE newswire editor Cathy Czapla forwarded
to our files during the 30 days after
101 Dalmatians debuted in theatres circa
November 14, 24 stories predicted the film
would generate such huge ill-informed
demand for the big, notoriously unruly dogs
that animal shelters would be overrun with
owner-surrendered Dalmatians within six
months to a year. Many asserted that the 1959
original had sparked just such a Dalmatian
boom––and then another, and another, with
each re-release, including the 1991 issue of a
home video version. At least six dog clubs
and 10 animal advocacy groups held press
conferences and/or faxed out press releases to
discuss the expected Dalmatian glut.

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