Rhino babies bring hope to Zimbabwe

October 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
WEDZA, Zimbabwe Two bottle-fed orphaned Zimbabwean black rhino babies may live happily ever after, if the uneasy power-sharing pact between president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai brings stability and economic recovery to the nation.
Signed on September 15, 2008, the agreement was jeopardized as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press by Mugabe s determination to retain control over key cabinet posts. Members of Mugabe s ZANU-PF party still roam the countryside, poaching wildlife, intimidating political opponents, looting aid convoys and invading farms, claiming privilege as war veterans whether or not they had anything to do with the revolution that brought Zimbabwe into being and brought Mugabe to power in 1980.

WSPA president loses bid for Parliament

October 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
OTTAWA Canadian voters on October 14, 2008 re-elected the Conservative national government headed by prime minister Stephen Harper, an outspoken defender of the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt, but the voters of the Beauharnois-Salaberry district in Quebec for the third time rejected Conservative candidate Dominique Bellemare.
Bellemare, board president of the World Society for the Protection of Animals since June 2008, was previously defeated in the 1997 and 2004 Parliamentary elections. He received 20.2% of the vote, placing a distant second in a five-candidate race to Claude Debellefeuille of the Quebec nationalist Bloc Quebecois, who received 50.1%.

Addis Ababa inks s/n pact

October 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
ADDIS ABABA Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, home to three million people and as many as 750,000 dogs, on November 4, 2008 agreed to cooperate with the Amsale Gessesse Memorial Foundation, Best Friends Animal Society, and Humane Society International to control the dog population through sterilization instead of poisoning.
The project is to begin on March 1, 2009. The pact was reached after more than a year of negotiation involving half a dozen Ethiopian government agencies, Best Friends cofounder Gregory Castle and rapid response team manager Rich Crook, DVM, and Anteneh Roba, an Ethiopian-born Houston physician who founded the Amsale Gessesse Memorial Foundation to honor his deceased mother and enlisted Best Friends involvement.

Big U.S. election wins for farm animals, greyhounds & pro-animal candidates

October 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
SACRAMENTO, BOSTON, WASHINGTON D.C. Animals won big on November 4, 2008 on all political fronts.
California voters approved giving battery-caged chickens room to spread their wings, and banned veal crates and sow gestation stalls.
Massachusetts voters banned greyhound racing making Massachusetts the first state to ban greyhound racing while still hosting active greyhound tracks.
Arizona voters crushed a proposition which would have made it nearly impossible to pass any future ballot initiative dealing with animal protection, exulted Humane Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian.
At 12:47 a.m. on November 5, with ballots in many close races still being counted, 248 candidates endorsed by the Humane Society Legislative Fund had won seats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Only 10 had lost.

Appalled by Palin, Humane Society Legislative Fund endorses Obama

September 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 200*:

WASHINGTON D.C.-The Republican nomination
of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to run for U.S.
vice president alongside presidential candidate
John McCain inspired the Humane Society
Legislative Fund to break with precedent in
unanimously endorsing Democratic presidential
nominee Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe
Biden.
The Humane Society Legislative Fund board
includes prominent Republicans as well as
Democrats.
“While we have endorsed hundreds of
Congressional candidates for election, both
Democrats and Republicans, we have never before
endorsed a presidential candidate,” wrote Humane
Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian
in his September 22, 2008 blog.

Rise of Quebec politician to WSPA board presidency raises questions

June 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2008:
LONDON–The World Society for the
Protection of Animals board on June 5, 2008
elected Montreal attorney and 20-year WSPA board
member Dominique Bellemare to serve as board
president. This might have occasioned little
notice, except that Bellemare is a prominent
Canadian politician, who has no visible record
on such prominent Canadian political topics as
the Atlantic Canada seal hunt and efforts to
update the 1893 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Act.
Bellemare’s web site,
<dominiquebellemare.com>, as of his ascent to
the WSPA board presidency made no mention of
either animal issues or WSPA, but his 2004
campaign biography, distributed as part of an
unsuccessful run for Parliament, mentioned
involvement with the pro-hunting organization
Ducks Unlimited, as well as with WSPA and the
Humane Society of Canada.

Addenda to Swinging Canadian elections keeps the sealers swinging clubs: Animal Alliance of Canada pursues electoral strategy

June 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2008:
Addenda to Swinging Canadian elections keeps the sealers swinging clubs:
Animal Alliance of Canada pursues electoral strategy

Commentary by Merritt Clifton
Long before University of Texas at El Paso philosophy
department chair Steven Best became a popular speaker at animal
rights conferences, noted for fiery defenses of “direct action”
vandalism, film maker Stephen Best of Shelburne, Ontario became
quietly known to animal advocacy insiders–and the political
opposition–as one of the most astute strategists in the cause. When
defenders of the seal hunt produced strategy papers, obtained
eventually by news media, Best was repeatedly identified as one of
the voices most essential to isolate and neutralize, even though few
grassroots activists had ever heard his name.
Grassroots activists knew his work. Best’s 1973 documentary
Seal Song, commissioned by the International Fund for Animal
Welfare, “became part of the long-running British television series
Survival,” he remembers. More than that, Seal Song put the annual
Atlantic Canada seal hunt into living rooms worldwide. Eighteen
years earlier, film maker Harry Lillie brought back the first film
of the seal hunt, inspiring an informed few to revive anti-sealing
campaigns that had previously been waged in the early 1900s, late
1920s, and late 1930s, but it was Seal Song that turned the cause
into a cultural phenomenon.

Swinging Canadian elections keeps the sealers swinging clubs

May 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:
Swinging Canadian elections keeps the sealers swinging clubs
Commentary by Merritt Clifton

Thirty years ago, when I first wrote
about the Atlantic Canadian seal hunt as a rural
Quebec newspaper reporter, both the hunt and
protests against it already seemed to have gone
on forever–but I had hopes that the efforts of
Brigitte Bardot and Paul Watson would soon end
it. Bardot brought global celebrity status to
the campaign; Watson had just introduced the
then new tactic of actually confronting the
sealers on the ice, as cameras rolled.
I had known about the hunt and the
protests for close to 10 years, first hearing
of it soon after Brian Davies moved his Save The
Seals Fund to the U.S. from New Brunswick and
retitled it the International Fund for Animal
Welfare.
When the U.S. Postal Service introduced
nonprofit bulk mail discounts in 1969, the seal
hunt was among the topics that built IFAW, the
Animal Protection Institute, Greenpeace, and
the Fund for Animals. The seal hunt was already
a cause celebré before Bardot gave up acting to
start the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, before
Watson formed the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society while Greenpeace retreated from the
sealing issue.

Wildlife Direct leaders express conflicting views of South African elephant policy

May 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:

NAIROBI, JOHANNESBURG–Wildlife Direct chief executive
Emmanuel de Merode on May 1, 2008 partially blamed a new South
African elephant management policy for the poaching massacre of 14
elephants in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, just six
weeks after Wildlife Direct founding chair Richard Leakey endorsed
the policy.
“The upsurge in elephant killings in Virunga is part of a
widespread slaughter across the Congo Basin,” de Merode told Agence
France-Presse, “and is driven by developments on the international
scene: the liberalisation of the ivory trade, pushed by South
Africa, and the increased presence of Chinese operators who feed a
massive domestic demand for ivory in their home country.”
Reported Agence France-Presse, “The killings were announced
as South Africa lifted a 13-year moratorium on elephant culling,
raising concern about a return to the international trade in ivory
seen in the 1970s and 1980s, Wildlife Direct said.”‘

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