Wildlife is taking over deserted New Orleans

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
new Orleans–Louisiana SPCA executive director Laura Maloney
and Audubon Zoo staff warned in repeated media statements, beginning
on January 23, 2006, that food left by dog and cat rescuers in
communities hit by Hurricane Katrina could help cause an urban
wildlife crisis. And it did.
“In 20 years of trapping animals here, I’ve never seen
anything like it,” nuisance wildlife trapper Greg duTreil told
Associated Press in mid-October 2006.
Alligators, armadillos, coyotes, foxes, nutria, rabbits,
raccoons, and especially rats are reportedly abundant as never
before in the Riverbend and Uptown districts of New Orleans, still
deserted more than a year after the early September 2005 flooding.
“They have more to eat than before the storm. Just look at
the garbage, the stuff lying around, the empty buildings. This is a
rat’s paradise,” Audubon Pest Control owner Erick Kinchke confirmed.
The Humane Society of the U.S. responded to the Associated
Press coverage by recommending removal of food sources from locations
where wild animals are problematic.

PETA, Friends of Animals clash over future of Primarily Primates

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
AUSTIN, SAN ANTONIO– Longtime Primarily Primates board and
staff member Stephen Tello, elected president of the sanctuary on
October 25, testified and was cross-examined for more than three
hours at an October 30, 2006 hearing in Austin that may determine
Primarily Primates’ future. The hearing, the first opportunity
Primarily Primates has had to respond to PETA allegations of
mismanagement in a legal forum, was to resume on November 7.
Witnesses supporting the PETA position testified on October
27, cross-examined by a Primarily Primates defense team funded by
Friends of Animals. The Primarily Primates board on August 28
accepted the resignation of former president Wally Swett, who headed
the sanctuary for 28 years, and voted to accept an FoA offer of
merger.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife will continue operating

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
The Rocky Mountain Wildlife Conservation Center, in
Keenesburg, Colorado, on October 16, 2006 announced that it had
received enough funding to stay open. “We’re still not out of the
woods,” founder Pat Craig told Denver Post staff writer Christine
Tatum. The 26-year-old sanctuary houses about 150 animals,
including 75 tigers and 30 bears, on 140 acres. Craig warned on
August 15, 2006 that it was out of money and might close, then
closed to public visits on September 2.

Tethering restrained in Scotland, California

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
The Animal Health & Welfare Scotland Act,
taking effect on October 6, 2006, increases the
potential penalty for cruelty to a fine of up to
£20,000 plus a year in jail; authorizes animal
health officers, state veterinary officers, and
Scottish SPCA inspectors to warn suspected
violators and initiate animal seizure
proceedings; restricts tethering dogs; and
prohibits docking dogs’ tails. “Let us hope
that the new obligation on animal owners will
mean no more animals kept in conditions which are
barely tolerable,” Advocates for Animals
spokesperson Libby Anderson told BBC News.

Legislation to require pet evac plans

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
WASHINGTON D.C.–U.S. President George W. Bush in early October
2006 signed into law the Pets Evacuation and Transportation
Stand-ards Act, requiring all states to produce pet evacuation plans
in order to qualify for Federal Emerg-ency Management Agency funding
for disaster preparedness.
“The law also authorizes FEMA to provide additional money
to create pet-friendly shelters and provide special assistance to pet
owners,” said American SPCA spokes-person Shonali Burke.
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco signed a bill implementing
pet evacuation planning on June 23, 2006. The bill was passed
unanimously by both houses of the Louisiana legislation.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger authorized a similar
bill on September 27, 2006.

Chicago pioneered urban wildlife habitat conservation, but not “be kind to animals”

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:

CHICAGO–Urban wildlife habitat conservation is often traced
to the 1914 creation of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.
Foresighted planning bequeathed to Chicago and surrounding suburbs a
protected greenbelt and wildlife migration corridors that today hosts
an abundance of animals of most species common to the midwest.
Unlike in Milwaukee, however, an hour’s drive or train ride
to the north, the major Chicago-area humane societies and animal
control agencies have yet to become deeply involved with wildlife.
Focusing on dogs and cats is still enough to keep them busy.
Yet this means ceding the primary role in responding to public
concerns about wildlife to other institutions, whose focal message
is not “be kind to animals,” of all species, and whose agendas are
often at odds with humane concerns.
Henry Bergh, who founded the American SPCA in New York City
in 1866, also inspired through correspondence the 1879 formation of
the Wisconsin Humane Society. The only known statute of Bergh stands
in front of the Wisconsin Humane shelter.

The 28-Hour Law & timely influence

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
Among the most encouraging regulatory developments for farmed
animals ever was the USDA disclosure on September 28, 2006, in a
letter to the Humane Society of the U.S., that since 2003 it has
recognized that Congress meant the Twenty-Eight Hour Law of 1873 to
limit the time that any hooved animals could be kept aboard any kind
of vehicle.
Less encouraging was that the USDA for three years avoided
having to enforce the reinterpretation of the Twenty-Eight Hour Act,
and 1906 and 1994 amendments, by keeping knowledge that it had been
reinterpreted to themselves.
“The USDA clarified its position in a 2003 internal memo
distributed to government veterinarians,” explained Cristal Cody of
the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “The policy change came to light in
response to a legal petition that HSUS filed in October 2005 to
extend the law to trucks.”
Said USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service
spokesperson Jim Rogers, “We never considered the 1906 law as being
applicable to the transport of animals by truck,” Rogers said. “Now
we see that the meaning of the statutory term ‘vehicles’ means
vehicle.”

Hunting ranch breakout may bring elk farming ban to Idaho

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
BOISE–Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer on October 25, 2006
joined Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal in asking Idaho Governor Jim
Risch to pursue a legislative ban on hunting captive-bred elk.
“In Montana, we said it’s a bad idea to pen up elk, feed
them oats, and have fat bankers from New York City shoot them with
their heads in a grain bucket,” Schweitzer told Associated Press
writer Christopher Smith.
Risch, whose term will end in January 2007, has said he would
support the legislation that Schweitzer and Freudenthal requested.
Wrote Smith, “The two major party candidates running for Idaho
governor, Republican Representative C.L. “Butch” Otter and Democrat
Jerry Brady, have said they would sign legislation prohibiting
domestic elk businesses.”
Risch on September 7 signed an executive order decreeing the
“immediate destruction” of about 160 captive-bred elk who escaped in
August from a private hunting ranch operated by Rex Rammel, DVM, of
Ashton.
“While special hunts by state agents and the public killed 33
of the escaped elk,” along with seven wild elk found among them,
“Idaho Fish and Game biologists believe the domesticated animals have
already crossbred with wild herds,” wrote Smith. “Elk farming and
‘shooter bull’ hunting are banned in Wyoming and Montana.” The
Wyoming ban was adopted in the 1970s. The Montana voters approved a
ban in 2000. Idaho, however, has 78 elk farms and 14 penned
hunting camps, according to Associated Press.

The wildlife program that might make Milwaukee famous

November 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2006:
MILWAUKEE–The Wisconsin Humane Society handles 5,000 wild
animals of as many as 145 species per year, among total intake of
about 18,000 animals. Almost as much cage space houses recuperating
wild creatures as houses dogs and cats.
Present trends indicate that Wisconsin Humane will within
another few years receive more wild animals than either dogs or
cats–indicative of the success of local initiatives to reduce dog
and cat overpopulation.
Among major U.S. humane societies, only the Progressive
Animal Welfare Society, of Lynnwood, Washington, in the greater
Seattle area, appears to have as rapidly transitioned into
addressing the issues that will affect the most animals– and
people–in a post-pet overpopulation environment, in which
relatively few dogs and cats are either at large or killed for
reasons other than incurable illness, injury, or dangerous behavior.

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