CHILDREN & ANIMALS

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

$40 million in public funds are

used to teach “hunter education” to

700,000 U.S. school children a year. The

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts up $32.2

million, while the balance comes from the

states; all 50 states participate. “They’re

teaching hunting as ‘gun safety,’ ‘physical

education,’ and any other excuse they cna

think of,” says Katherine Trimnal of

Columbia, South Carolina, who has been

investigating the program for some time.

This program is completely separate from

Project Wild, which also promotes a pro-

hunting message at cost of $23 million a

year.

Diet & Health

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

Responding to public panic over

tainted meat, President Bill Clinton on

February 11 ordered the USDA to hire 160

more meat inspectors, while Agriculture

Secretary Mike Espy promised a complete

overhaul of the meat inspection

system––which the Ronald Reagan and

George Bush presidential administrations

had streamlined by reducing the number of

inspectors. The panic began in December

when a six-year-old girl in San Diego

County, California, died after eating a

tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburger, and

escalated January 22, when a two-year-old

boy died in Seattle, Washington, from the

same cause. More than 400 people who ate

Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers developed E.

Gene and Diana Chontos: Helping the tough and stubborn

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

“Talking to someone about myself beyond my life

with burros seems abstract to me now,” Diana Chontos told

ANIMAL PEOPLE, “since my life has become burros and

their continued survival. I am a daughter of the pioneers of

Washington, and continue to live by many of the same val-

ues as my great-grandparents, except that during my child-

hood I found the practice of slaughtering and eating animals

abhorent. As soon as I possibly could, I became a vegetari-

an.” Her first animal rescue may have been at age 13,

when, “I rode my horse, galloping bareback, between a

gun-happy bounty hunter and a beautiful coyote I had been

watching as she caught and ate grasshoppers.”

Gene Chontos, Diana’s partner of 18 years, came

to animal rescue later in life, but no less dramatically. “I

was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1937,” he

remembers, “son to Hungarian immigrants. My father and

all his kin served the Bethlehem Steel Company as cheap

labor and resided in lower class poverty, replete with ethnic

prejudice, hatred, and violence. I escaped at age 17

through a four-year enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Guest column: Stop the war on wild horses! by Anna Charlton

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

A modern-day range war is underway on the vast

prairies of Nevada. Unless there is drastic and immediate

action, the casualty of this war will be the wild horse,

whom ranchers and bureaucrats seem determined to exter-

minate.

The wild horse is an enduring symbol of the

American west. The sight of a herd of these magnificent,

proud animals thundering across the open range evokes the

image of freedom. Responding to public outrage over the

slaughter of wild horses, Congress in 1971 passed the Free

and Roaming Wild Horse and Burro Act, which calls for

the protection, management, and control of all wild horses

and burros on public land. But despite this legislative pro-

tection, wild horses are still shot, poisoned, and rustled.

The greatest threat to their survival, however, comes from

the Bureau of Land Management––the agency Congress

entrusted as their guardian. The BLM appears intent upon

“managing” wild horses out of existence, to increase the

profits of cattle and sheep ranchers.

Editorial: How do you tell Brooklyn from the Balkans––or the Berkshires?

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

The editor, the publisher, and the animal control officer were perplexed. Sipping

mugs of coffee on a recent frozen afternoon, they compared notes.

“Jogging up the road here a few minutes ago,” the editor said, “I ran into a young

guy in camoflauge, carrying a gun. It’s not hunting season. There’s nothing he could legal-

ly shoot that would be out at this time of day. Then I saw three kids coming the other direc-

tion, and every one of them had a BB gun. The only animals they could be shooting at are

animals they’re killing just because they’re alive.”

“I moved my family up here from Brooklyn,” said the animal control officer, “to

get away from an environment of poverty and stress and kids with guns. But now that I’m

here, it looks just like the Balkans.”

Reprieve for Alaskan wolves, But the Yukon opens fire; Tourist boycott of Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta underway

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

WHITEHORSE, Yukon, Canada –– Dispatched in near-secrecy circa

February 5 by the Yukon territorial government, a helicopter attack team will have killed

150 of the estimated 200 wolves in the Aishihik Lake region, and be heading home again

as ANIMAL PEOPLEgoes to press.

The scheduled 20-day mission was undertaken in direct defiance of international

appeals and threats of a tourism boycott. Protests held at various points in Canada and the

U.S. on February 8 were ignored by Yukon minister of renewable resources Bill Brewster.

Cutting euthanasia rates and choking puppy mills: THE CONTROVERSIAL CASE FOR THE NORTH SHORE ANIMAL LEAGUE’S UNCONVENTIONAL METHODS

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

PORT WASHINGTON, New York ––

According to the most recent tax records available from

New York state and the Internal Revenue Service, the

North Shore Animal League in 1991 contributed more than

$3.5 million toward the cost of neutering more than 220,000

cats and dogs; donated $2.4 million to 21 other animal shel-

ters and two veterinary schools; adopted out more than

43,000 animals; issued more than 41,000 free 30-day health

insurance policies to guarantee the well-being of animals

adopted out; vaccinated more than 41,000 animals; treated

more than 17,000 animals at an in-house veterinary clinic

(open 16 hours a day, seven days a week); and made

71,000 post-adoption contacts to insure that the animals

were neutered, well cared for, and well-adjusted in their

adoptive homes.

Wildlife

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill contin-

ues to kill Alaskan wildlife, researchers revealed

February 5 at a symposium hosted by the

University of Alaska and the American Fisheries

Society. Among the victims are 14 orcas, who dis-

appeared and are presumed dead; 300,000 murres,

a bird species that hasn’t nested successfully since

the spill; and sea otters and ducks, who are still

being poisoned by mussels who in turn have been

poisoned by oil.

Zimbabwe is trying to raise $2 million

to spend on culling 5,000 elephants from a nation-

al herd officially estimated at 80,000.

Reindeer wasted

March 1, 1993 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1993:

While Alaskan officials pretend-

ed wolves had to be massacred so that

there would be enough caribou to feed

natives, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service in December quietly massacred

790 reindeer on Hagemeister Island, a

wildlife refuge 300 miles south of

Anchorage. Introduced by an Eskimo

rancher in 1965, the reindeer were endan-

gering native lichen. Nome medical doc-

tor Donald Olson (also an Eskimo) hired a

team to fly another 120 reindeer to safety

at an abandoned dairy farm. Natives were

given 172 reindeer carcasses; the rest

were left to rot. “It’s the worst wanton

waste case since the buffalo,” said tribal

elder Moses Kritz. At deadline, another

193 reindeer were slated for killing.

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