From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

Richard Charter, 53, of Johannesburg, South Africa, drowned
on February 1, 2004 while trying to rescue a white water rafting
companion who had fallen into the Orange River near Glen Lion, and
also drowned. “After a successful business and sporting career, in
which he captained the South African skydiving team, Charter set
about buying degraded farmland and rehabilitating it back to its
natural beauty. His most recent and ambitious project was Glen Lion
in the southern Kalahari,” recalled Chris Mercer of the Kalahari
Raptor Centre, “where Charter and his partner, entrepreneur Pat
Quirk, bought 26 contiguous farms to create a private nature reserve
of some 70,000 hectares (about 180,000 acres) to provide pristine
sanctuary for Kalahari wildlife and in particular, the desert lion
and black rhino. We hope Charter’s untimely death will not end the
Glen Lion project,” Mercer added, “because of the need for suitable
habitat into which rescued predators such as caracals, jackals and
hyenas can be released.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

Stumpy, age 40+, an 80-ton pregnant North Atlantic right
whale, familiar to New England Aquarium, Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute, and Center for Coastal Studies researchers since 1975,
was found dead from a ship strike off Virginia in early February.
Wrote Cape Cod Times staff writer Emily C. Dooley, “From 1975
through 2002 there were 292 documented cases of ships striking large
whales across the globe. Of these, 38 strikes involved North
Atlantic right whales, according to the Large Whale ship Strike
Database compiled by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric
Administration.” North Atlantic right whales are the rarest of the
great whales, with only about 325 surviving.

Wolf #42, alpha female of the Druid Peak Pack in Yellowstone
National Park, was found dead on February 3 atop Specimen Ridge
after a fight with Mollie’s Pack, also called the Crystal Creek
Pack. #42 became the Druid Peak Pack alpha after killing her
tyrannical sister, #40, who may have earlier killed one of #42’s
first litters. Her more benign sister, #41, left the Druid Peak
Pack in 1998 to become founding alpha female of the Sunlight Basin
Pack. Suffering from mange and a broken foot, #41 and another wolf
recently left the pack. Seen feeding on a freshly killed calf on
private land on February 6, #41 was shot by a U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service agent on February 15. #42 and #41 were the last of the 31
wolves brought to Yellowstone as part of the 1995-1996 species
reintroduction.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

Arif Mahmood Qureshi, 59, died on November 21, 2003 in
Multan, Pakistan. An attorney who defended democracy against a
succession of dictatorial governments, Qureshi published the human
rights newspaper The Lord. He was imprisoned in 1970, 1973 -1977,
1979, 1981, 1983, 1986, and 1988. Despite spending much of the
prime of his life in prison, forbidden family visits, for
protesting against the 1971-1977 regime of Z.A. Bhutto, Qureshi as a
matter of principle led demonstations against Bhutto’s hanging after
General Zia ul-Haq deposed Bhutto in a coup-d’etat. “In 1981,”
recalled Qureshi’s younger brother Khalid Mahmood, who publishes
the newspaper The Tension to promote both human rights and animal
rights, “Arif was sent to Lahore Fort, the ugly torture cell of
Pakistan. He was kept in cells where daylight and fresh air cannot
peep through. This and untold body tortures resulted in complete
deterioration of his health.” Wrongly accused of involvement in a
failed coup attempt, Qureshi survived a crude attempt at execution
by lethal injection of an unknown toxin or pathogen, but developed a
skin disease so severe that he was sent home to die. “The history of
Arif’s achievements and struggle will not be complete without
mentioning his true love and concern for the welfare of animals and
birds,” Mahmood continued. Hearing of Animal Rights International,
founded in 1976 by longtime U.S. human rights and animal rights
crusader Henry Spira, Qureshi started a Pakistani group of the same
name, parallel to an Indian Animal Rights International founded by
Laxmi Modi. “After forming ARI, Arif gave up eating the meat of
animals and birds,” despite the advice of his physicians, Mahmood
told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “He wrote many articles about the welfare of
animals and birds. He also arranged many meetings to promote
awareness of animal protection. He was found fighting for the rights
of the suppressed citizens not only in Pakistan or belonging to some
specific class, sect, race or tribe but of the world at large,”
Mahmood concluded. “He left a son, Babar Soekarno, and a daughter,
Pakiza Arif,” both of whom also practice law.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2004:

Echo, 32, who survived a 1982 Irish
Republican Army bombing that killed seven horses
and four members of the British Royal guard,
died on December 18, 2003 at the Home of Rest
for Horses near Speen, Buckshire, U.K. Two
other horses survived the blast: Sefton, who
died in 1993, and Yetti, 34, who was Echo’s
stablemate.

Pharos, a corgi belonging to Queen
Elizabeth II, was euthanized on Dccember 23,
2003 due to injuries inflicted by Dotty, a bull
terrier belonging to Princess Anne. Dotty
previously attacked two children in Windsor in
April 2002. Princess Anne was fined £500 in for
the attack in November 2003.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, 74, died on November 11 in
Westport, Massachusetts. The first and perhaps only veterinary
anthropologist in the U.S., Lawrence for 20 years taught a course on
animal/human relations at Tufts University, and authored five books,
but was most often quoted from a 1997 autobiographical essay
published in the journal Anthrozoos: “I gave no credence to numerous
individuals stressing the value of human medicine over veterinary
medicine, those who said women did not have the strength and stamina
to treat animals, nor to those who asserted that women’s only proper
destiny was devoting full time to marriage and family life.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Kin, 36, the last wild crested ibis to hatch in Japan, on
October 10 hurled herself headfirst into a door at the Sado Crested
Ibis Preservation Center, 190 miles northwest of Tokyo, and died of
a brain hemorrhage. Removed from the wild in 1968 for captive
breeding, Kin never produced offspring, and had been the last
wild-hatched crested ibis in Japan since her mate Midori died in
1995. Hunted to the verge of extinction, crested ibises won legal
protection in 1934. In 1999 the Sado Center received a pair of
crested ibises as a gift from former Chinese president Jiang Zemin.
The Chinese crested ibises have now fledged 21 offspring, some of
whom are to be reintroduced to the wild in 2007.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Virginia Gillas, 82, died on October 5 in Hermitage,
Missouri, after an 8-year battle with lung cancer. Born in Orange,
New Jersey, raised in Kansas City, Gillas was daughter of Catherine
Basett Cornwell, R.N., longtime president of the Dade County Branch
of the Florida League for Humane Progress.
Gillas herself began helping animals at about age 12, she
told ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1995, recalling that she first saw animal
hoarding about five years later, when she met a girl her own age who
had accumulated an impossible number of cats.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Kin, 36, the last wild crested ibis to hatch in Japan, on
October 10 hurled herself headfirst into a door at the Sado Crested
Ibis Preservation Center, 190 miles northwest of Tokyo, and died of
a brain hemorrhage. Removed from the wild in 1968 for captive
breeding, Kin never produced offspring, and had been the last
wild-hatched crested ibis in Japan since her mate Midori died in
1995. Hunted to the verge of extinction, crested ibises won legal
protection in 1934. In 1999 the Sado Center received a pair of
crested ibises as a gift from former Chinese president Jiang Zemin.
The Chinese crested ibises have now fledged 21 offspring, some of
whom are to be reintroduced to the wild in 2007.

Tammy, 53, one of three elephants deemed surplus by the
Milwaukee County Zoo and housed under allegedly abusive conditions by
the Hawthorne Corporation until a 1994 transfer to the Performing
Animal Welfare Society, died in September at the PAWS sanctuary in
Galt, California.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Virginia Gillas, 82, died on October 5 in Hermitage,
Missouri, after an 8-year battle with lung cancer. Born in Orange,
New Jersey, raised in Kansas City, Gillas was daughter of Catherine
Basett Cornwell, R.N., longtime president of the Dade County Branch
of the Florida League for Humane Progress.
Gillas herself began helping animals at about age 12, she
told ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1995, recalling that she first saw animal
hoarding about five years later, when she met a girl her own age who
had accumulated an impossible number of cats.
Gillas showed sufficient talent at ballet that in 1940 her
mother relocated to San Francisco to enable her to perform
professionally. Gillas danced primarily in the Spanish classical
style until the early 1950s, appearing in London and Paris as well
as throughout the U.S., also developing skill as a watercolorist.
A stenographer after her dancing career, Gillas may have
been among the first employees of the Humane Society of the U.S.,
formed in 1954, then worked for the National Audubon Society in New
York City, where in 1959 she founded International Defenders of
Animals. Relocating to Hialeah, Florida, in 1961, after a brief
marriage and divorce, Gillas merged her group into the Florida
League for Humane Progress and rented a dog breeding kennel and
grooming facility that she converted into an animal shelter.

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