COURT CALENDAR

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Pet theft
The Oregon Court of Appeals o n
May 18 overturned a $100,000 defamation
award to former laboratory animal supplier
James Joseph Hickey, issued by a Linn
County Circuit Court jury in July 1994 against
his godmother Merthal Settlemier, over
remarks she made to the ABC television program
2 0 / 2 0 in a 1990 episode about pet theft
called “Pet Bandits.” Hickey lost a similar suit
against ABC, heard in federal court. The
appellate court ruled that Hickey, as a public
figure, had the burden of proving that Settlemier’s
claim that his animal care was “inhumane”
was false, and that he “presented no
evidence that the conditions defendant
described did not exist on the day she visited.”

Vegan fired for not pushing meat

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

COSTA MESA, California––Bus
driver Bruce Anderson, 38, an ethical vegan
for two years and a five-year employee of the
Orange County Transportation Authority,
was ordered off his bus in mid-route on June
4 and fired from his $16.60-an-hour job on
June 7 for refusing to hand out coupons to
riders good for free hamburgers at Carl’s Jr.
restaurants.
“I told them that I don’t eat dead
cows and no one else needs to, either,”
Anderson recounted to Los Angeles Times
reporter David Haldane. “I told them that I
wouldn’t support Carl’s Jr. in slaughtering
cows. I’m paid to drive a bus, not sit there
and hand out coupons for something I don’t
believe in.”

The faithful do sheep

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Traditional celebrations of the Islamic version of the
Feast of Sacrifice were held in more U.S. and European communities
than ever before this year––and apparently provoked
more protest, too.
More as a matter of custom than of religious teaching,
the feast is marked by male heads of households slashing
the throats of sheep, reprising Abraham’s slaughter of a ram
instead of his son Isaac, who is said to have been sire of both
the Hebrew and Arab people. Extra meat is supposed to be
given to the poor, but so many sheep are killed at pilgrimage
sites that most of the meat reportedly goes to waste.
In France, Islamic leaders called Brigitte Bardot
“racist” for her annual criticism of the practice. Responded
Bardot, “If tomorrow Muslims stop slitting sheeps’ throats, I
will find them the most wonderful people in the world.”

Dogged pursuit

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

HOPKINTON, Mass.––Louise Coleman, founding
director of Greyhound Friends, is the only alleged dog
thief ever honored with the Peace Abbey’s Courage of
Conscience award, accepted from the multi-faith vegetarian
organization at a commemorative ceremony in Sherborn,
Massachusetts, on February 16.
But Coleman and friends may also be the only
alleged dog thieves who ever did the deed in front of television
cameras, with the full cooperation of law-and-order.
Six months later, related crossfiled lawsuits are
still before the Superior Court in Montreal, Quebec, and
may be far from trial. Dog breeder Richard Valiquette, of
Ste. Sophie, Quebec, contends eight of his dogs were taken
illegally last December 19 by Coleman, Greyhound Friends
volunteer Fred Fontaine, and Linda Miranda of the Frontier
Animal Society, located in Beebe, Quebec.

Religion & animals

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The first deed of the shortlived Hindu fundamentalist
government of India, inaugurated May 24 only to
resign five days later, was to introduce a bill to ban cow
slaughter. Killing cows is against the Hindu religion, practiced
by 750 million Indians, but 110 million Moslem citizens
eat beef. Paradoxically, though Moslems are only 14%
of the total Indian population of 930 million, 10% of all the
Moslems in the world live in India; only Pakistan has more.
The Shaolin Temple, in central Henan province,
C h i n a, on June 6 won a lawsuit against the Luohe Canned
Food Factory, which had used actors depicting the Buddhist
monks of Shaolin in a TV plug for ham. Devout vegetarians,
the Shaolin monks devised and still teach the martial art of
kung-fu to avoid using lethal weapons in self-defense.

Hopi eagle sacrifice offends Navajo

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona––Members of the
Hopi Tribe must report their eaglet and hawk gathering activities
every five days to federal judge Earl Carroll and the
Navajo Nation until June 30, Carroll ruled on June 13, reaffirming
his May 8 preliminary verdict––and may take no
more than 12 golden eaglets and two red-tailed hawks from
Navajo land.
Carroll also refused a Hopi request to drop individual
criminal complaints against each of 11 Hopis who were
cited on May 2 for collecting two eaglets at Twin Horn Butte
without a permit from the Navajo Fish and Wildlife bureau.
The Hopi had asked Carroll for unlimited eaglet and
hawk gathering privileges. At issue were the customs and
ceremonies surrounding traditional Hopi eaglet and hawk sacrifice,
abhored by many Navajo, which may have begun
before recorded history in connection with Hopi resistance to
Navajo predation. The Hopi, descended from the cliffdwelling
Anasazi, are the northernmost people of the Aztec
linguistic family. The Navajo, related to the Shoshone, were
nomads before European settlement, who frequently raided
Hopi villages. The Navajo were and are by far the larger and
politically more powerful tribe.

Deer roundup

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Urban deer problems spread to Manhattan for
the first time on June 1, when a two-year-old whitetailed
doe startled passengers exiting the 190th Street
subway station. The Center for Animal Care and
Control tranquilized her in nearby Port Tryon Park and
relocated her to the 150-acre Green Chimneys Farm
and Wildlife Center in suburban Brewster.
That approach wouldn’t be legal in
Cincinnati or Cleveland, according to an April directive
from the Ohio Department of Wildlife. Noting that
sport hunting is ineffective and impractical in populated
areas, the directive urges habitat modification to
discourage deer, and lethal culling when deer must be
removed. Any deer who is tranquilized must be killed.

The system sucks

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

DENVER––Gay Balfour, 54, and David
Honaker, 34, of Cortez, Colorado, are in their fifth
year on the road with Dog Gone, a device that vaccuums
unwanted prairie dogs out of their holes and
into a padded cage without harming them. Dog
Gone itself has been certified humane by all investigators
to date, including Animal Rights Mobilization
president Robin Duxbury.
But then there’s the question of what to do
with the prairie dogs, known to ecologists as the
most important species in maintaining nutritious
grasslands along the Rocky Mountain ridge, yet
widely considered a pest and even subject to bounties
by ranchers who don’t understand that a field full of
prairie dogs and biodiversity produces more calories
for cattle than a field of undisturbed grass.

Conflicts with wildlife

July 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The fourth annual Dr. Splatt
roadkill survey, coordinated by
Brewster Bartlett of Pinkerton
Academy in Derry, New Hampshire,
found a marked decrease in roadkill
frequency, for the third year in a row,
but a sharp rise in roadkilled beavers
––especially in the Derry area. Forty
schools participated in the nine-week
roadkill count this year. The distribution
and participation level is sufficient
to produce credible roadkill estimates
for the northeast, with just
enough information from other
regions to make crude national projections
possible, which are nonetheless
the best supported by data of any
made to date. The northeast is
believed to have the greatest roadkill
frequency because it has the most
wildlife habitat in close proximity to
large human populations, with the
most heavily traveled roads and also
the most old, narrow, and winding
roads. The overall roadkill frequency
is probably down primarily because
the unusually long winter depressed
wildlife breeding populations, while
beaver kills were up, Bartlett
believes, in part because beavers had
a successful breeding season last year
in heavily surveyed parts of New
Hampshire where busy roads cut
through wetlands. Most of the dead
beavers in that area, Bartlett told
ANIMAL PEOPLE, appeared to be
young, apparently just setting out to
find their own territory.

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