From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

Vicki Moore, 44, founder of Fight Against Animal Cruelty in Europe, died in Liverpool, England, on December 6, from complications of a goring she suffered while videotaping a bull run through the streets of Coria, Spain, in July 1995. “It took one minute 36 seconds to get her to the hospital,” her husband Tony Moore said, “and then they operated for seven hours. The bull was shot immediately, which was good for the bull. They said he was too dangerous. They don’t like to be in too much danger when they do what they do. When I told Vicki, she burst into tears.” A former actress, Moore documented animal abuse undercover at Spanish fiestas for more than a decade before her injury, and rescued many of the animals she saw mistreated, including Blackie the Donkey, who as a longtime guest of The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth, Devon, became poster-animal for her cause. Blackie died in 1994. Moore’s longest battle was against the custom of throwing a goat from a 60-foot church tower during an annual festival in Manganeses de la Polverosa, Spain. Moore saw a nanny goat killed there in 1990, and won an order from the governor of Zamora that a goat not be thrown in 1991. Thereafter, defying such orders became part of the tradition––until this year, when the town council threatened to fine anyone who helped toss a goat. The festival was held on January 23, and the goat-toss was not done.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

Willie B., 41, a silverback gorilla, died from pneumonia at Zoo Atlanta on February 2. Captured in Africa as an infant, Willie B. spent 25 years in solitary confinement, with only a TV for company, at the former Atlanta-Fulton County Zoo, but made a rapid adjustment to a relatively normal gorilla life when the zoo––once considered the worst in the U.S.––was extensively renovated in 1988, and acquired other gorillas to live with him. During his last dozen years, he sired four daughters and a son, and showed the way toward rehabilitating many other long-isolated nonhuman primates. More than 2,500 people came to his funeral.

Alvin the Alligator, 40, resident at the Southwestern College science building in Winfield, Kansas, since 1960, was found dead in his cage in mid-January.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Alice Elizabeth Leigh Coldwell, 104, died November 5 in San Francisco. Born in Oakland, she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1917 and soon afterward married Cedric Sayle Coldwell, son of the founder of the Coldwell Banker real estate empire. A member of the St. Moritz Ice Skating Club, she cofounded the San Francisco Figure Skating Club; won the Women’s California Indoor Skating Championship in 1934, at age 39; and two years later won the California Indoor Figure Skating Pairs Championship. Her athletic energy carried over into her later interest in animal welfare. The Pets Unlimited adoption shelter and animal hospital she founded with her friend Carter Dowling in 1947 was the first no-kill shelter of serious size in San Francisco. It now has annual income of $4.3 million a year and assets of $2.7 million––making it, though only the third largest shelter in the city, larger than the biggest shelter in many other cities of comparable size.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

Ndyakira Amooti, longtime environmental
reporter for the Ugandan newspaper
New Vision, “died on August 25, 1999
after a protracted illness,” according to the
November 1999 edition of the International
Primate Protection League newsletter. IPPL
became aquainted with Amooti in 1988,
founder Shirley McGreal reecalled, “when
we contacted him about wildlife trafficking
issues. He showed outstanding courage in
driving a U.S. wildlife trafficker from the
country. Amooti also worked with us on a
case involving the smuggling of five baby
chimpanzees from Uganda to Russia.
Eventually the chimpanzees were returned to
Uganda. Amooti was the author of several
childrens’ books about animals,” McGreal
added. “In 1992 IPPL received a foundation
grant to sponsor Amooti’s attendance at the
CITES triennial meeting in Kyoto. He
dogged the Ugandan delegates, and faxed
home stories every day about how they
voted.” Amooti won the 1996 Goldman
Award for outstanding environmental work in
the African sector.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

Patricia Nelson, 94, died on
August 31 in Rancho Bernardo, California.
Born in Columbius, Ohio, Nelson was
daughter of a prominent neurologist. She
never married and never had children of her
own, but devoted much of her life to children,
running a nursery school in San Diego
for more than 30 years. She took up animal
rescue after selling the nursery in 1971.
Nelson met Cleveland Amory, the late
founder of the Fund for Animals, “in 1984,
in the midst of the San Clemente goat rescue,”
Fund president Marian Probst recalled,
“when she offered five acres she owned in
Ramona, California, as a place we could
bring some of the goats for veterinary care
and subsequent adoption. In 1985, she gave
us the five acres, which became the core of
our now 13-acre wildlife rehabilitation center.
Chuck and Cindi Traisi, who volunteered in
the goat rescue, moved to Ramona from San
Diego to establish the wildlife rehab center,
and as they say, the rest is history.” Nelson
also helped to form and fund the Ramona Pet
Awareness League, circa 1991, and also
started the Animal Trust Foundation, which
is reportedly setting up an Internet site to help
rehome lost pets and place shelter animals.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

#103, an eight-year-old puma who
was due to give birth within two weeks to four
cubs, died on August 20 of “metabolic complications”
related to the pregnancy, according
to wildlife biologist David Shindle, who
did a necropsy for the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission. #103 was
the third to die among eight “Texas cougars”
who were translocated to the Big Cypress
National Preserve in 1995 to replenish the
depleted “Florida panther” gene pool. Both
“Texas cougars” and officially endangered
“Florida panthers” are subspecies of puma.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

Michael “Rhino Man” Werikhe,
43, died on August 9 in Mombassa, Kenya,
“from injuries sustained in an assault by
gangsters three weeks ago,” The Nation o f
Nairobi reported. Werikhe in 1982 quit his
job with the Kenya Wildlife Service and
walked from Mombassa to Nairobi to protest
against rhino poaching. In 1985 he walked
1,250 miles across Uganda, Kenya, and
Tanzania, raising $54,000 for rhino help projects.
An 1,800-mile walk through western
Europe raised $1 million in 1988. In 1991
Werikhe raised additional funds with a 30-
city walking tour of the U.S. and Canada. His
walks earned a Goldman Environmental Prize
and a position on the Advisory Council to the
Rhino Trust. Between walks, he was a maintenance
supervisor at the Associated Vehicle
Assembly plant in Mombassa.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

George E. Brown Jr., 79, a liberal
Democrat who was elected 18 times to the
House of Representatives by the California
36th District, died on July 15 of postoperative
infection after heart surgery. Brown,
remembered Adele Douglass, Washington
D.C. director for the American Humane
Association, “was responsible for the 1985
amendments to the Animal Welfare Act.
With then-U.S. Senator Robert Dole, he had
introduced similar legislation in previous
Congresses. As chair of the Agriculture
Subcommittee that had oversight of the
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service, Brown held hearings on pet theft,
and was a strong supporter of Animal
Welfare Act enforcement. He was always a
friend to animals.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1999:

Garnet Monroe, 75, died of
pneumonic plague on May 27 in Fort Collins,
Colorado. Her husband Kenneth Monroe,
83, was hospitalized and treated for pneumonic
plague symptoms about two weeks
later, but recovered and resumed the activities
both had long enjoyed as volunteers for
wildlife-related programs of the Humane
Society of Larimer County, development
director Bonnie Baker told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Health officials believe the Monroes
and a 44-year-old female from Williamsburg,
Colorado, who also recovered, somehow
came into contact with plague-carrying fleas
from infested wild rodents.

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