REVIEWS: Living With Tigers

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Living With Tigers
Discovery Channel Video (www.discovery.com), 2003.
Two hours. $19.95.

Among the many “sanctuary” projects involving tigers that
appear to have more entertainment and fundraising value than either
humane or conservation merit, possibly the most bizarre is the
effort of South African wildlife film makers John and Dave Varty to
“save” tigers by introducing captive-born specimens to the “wild” at
their game ranch.
The idea, supposedly, is to prepare the tigers and their
descendants to return to freedom in China, on the eve of the 2008
Olympic Games, if China can protect enough habitat and prey for the
tigers to survive.

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BOOKS: Animal Control Management: A Guide for Local Governments

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Animal Control Management: A Guide for Local Governments
by Geoffrey L. Handy
International City/County Management Association (777 North Capitol
St. N.E., Suite 500, Washington, DC 20002), 2001. 107 pages.
Order c/o <http:/bookstore.icma.org>.

Animal Control Management: A Guide for Local Governments has
been much expanded and updated since the 1993 report of the same
title on which the current edition is based, but the most
significant expansion is a broadening of mind, toward accepting the
roles of privately funded no-kill animal shelters and neuter/return
feral cat control.
Compiled by Geoffrey L. Handy and other personnel at the
Humane Society of the United States, Animal Control Management is
not an official HSUS publication, yet may be seen as the HSUS
“gospel” on animal care-and-control. At least until the next edition
appears, it will stand with the 2001 revision of the National Animal
Control Association Training Guide as “the book” for the animal
control field.

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BOOKS: Sea Turtles of the World

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Sea Turtles of the World by Doug Perrine
Voyageur Press (123 N. 2nd St., Stillwater, MN 55082), 2003.
144 pages, 100 color photos, hardcover. $29.95.

The Voyageur Press standard of accuracy applies even to back
cover descriptions, to the point that improving on them can be
frustratingly difficult.
“Through vivid photographs and engaging text, Sea Turtles of
the World provides an in-depth look at the natural history and
conservation issues of these prehistoric-looking reptiles,” says the
back cover of this one, noting chapters on green sea turtles,
loggerheads, hawksbills, olive ridley and Kemp’s ridley turtles,
Australian flatbacks, and leatherbacks.
The only possible argument is that sea turtles are not just
prehistoric-looking. They are in fact prehistoric. Ancestral sea
turtles go back at least 200 million years, and many more varieties
have come and gone than are still with us.

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BOOKS: Justice on Earth

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

 

Justice on Earth:

Earthjustice and
the people it has served
by Tom Turner
Chelsea Green Publishing
(distributed by Earthjustice,
416 17th St., Oakland, CA 94161), 2002.
224 pages, hardcover. $40.00.

Originating from a 1971 internal split within the Sierra
Club, Earthjustice called itself the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
until 1997. Essentially an environmental law firm structured as a
nonprofit activist group, Earthjustice mostly sues government
agencies to seek enforcement of legislation including the habitat
protection provisions of the Endangered Species Act and Migratory
Bird Treaty Act.

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BOOKS: The man who talks to dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

The man who talks to dogs:
The story of America’s wild street dogs and their unlikely savior
by Melinda Roth
Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press (175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010), 2002. 232 pages. $24.95, hardcover.

“To be a stray dog in most major cities is to be a dead dog
walking,” believes Randy Grim, founder of Stray Rescue of St.
Louis. The dogs Grim and his team rescue may be few compared to the
many in need, but Randy believes in the value of every life, and
strives to save every dog he can, no matter how sick, estranged,
or aggressive.
Though Grim always loved animals, he used to have a “normal”
life, running a successful grooming shop. Bonnie changed his life.
She appeared one day in front of Grim’s shop: a pregnant stray, all
skin and bones, sick and crippled. She trusted Grim and followed
him.
Soon Bonnie gave birth to thirteen puppies. Unfortunately
Bonnie developed mastitis, and could not breast-feed her pups. For
six weeks Grim hand-fed all 13 pups, every two hours, twenty-four
hours a day. Puppy care left him no time for anything else. Most of
his friends turned away, but Grim continued until each of the pups
were weaned.

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BOOKS: The Story of My Life

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

The Story of My Life by Shayna
As Told to Greta
by Greta Marsh
1st World Library (8014 Shoal Creek Blvd., Suite
100, Austin, TX 78757), 2001. 221 pages,
paperback. $24.50

Ex-racing greyhounds tend to be quiet,
despite the frustrations of their often muzzled
former lives. Horse and greyhound rescuer Greta
Marsh, on the other hand, has much to say on
their behalf, and on behalf of all abused and
exploited creatures, including disadvantaged
humans.
Thus the decision by Marsh to write The
Story of My Life through the imagined voice of
her deceased first greyhound Shayna was not
fortuitious. Because Shayna sounds much more
like Marsh than like a dog, The Story of My Life
never quite transcends disbelief. We supposedly
have a dog here who pays little attention to most
subjects of concern to dogs, but can sometimes
talk to her former racing handler and Marsh, as
well as fellow dogs, and is familiar with both
animal rights and human rights issues.

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REVIEWS: Humane education videos

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

Proudly Human
Compassion In World Farming [South Africa] c/o Humane Education Trust (P.O. Box 825, Somerset West, 7129,
South Africa; <avoice@yebo.co.za>), 2003. 20 minutes.
60 rand ($7.50), plus postage & handling (inquire).

Desert Dogs
Hilder Productions (1617 Taylor Gaines St., Austin, TX 78741),
2002. 42 minutes. $15/video, $20/DVD.

Produced by the same team who made the 15-minute video Saving
Baby Ubuntu, reviewed in the May 2003 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE,
Proudly Human presents a similar but farther reaching anti-meat and
pro-vegetarian message.
While Saving Baby Ubuntu offers a story suitable for grade schoolers,
Proudly Human may be preferred by teens.
Narrator Mantsadi Molotlegi, 23, is just far enough out of
her teens to have childhood memories of the last days of the South
African apartheid era. She observes that “The way we treat animals
has the hallmarks of apartheid–prejudice, callous disregard for
suffering, and a misguided sense of supremacy. I have a message for
my brother and sister South Africans,” she continues. “The struggle
is not over yet. Please join me,” she asks, “in putting things
right for the animals.”

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BOOKS: Wind-of-Fire

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

Wind-of-Fire:
The Story of an Untouchable
by Joan Beth Clair
Wind-of-Fire Press (P.O. Box 523, Berkeley, CA 94701), 1999.
150 pages, paperback. $10.95.

Portland (Oregon) Animal Affairs Ministry director Roger
Troen submitted to ANIMAL PEOPLE an effusive review of Wind-of-Fire:
The Story of an Untouchable, by Joan Beth Clair, which
unfortunately omitted any factual description of the content.
Raising hell on behalf of animals for more than 30 years,
sometimes taking hard lumps for it, Troen is an otherwise quiet
fellow who reads books. Suspecting that his critical judgement might
be better grounded than expressed, I read Wind-of-Fire myself.
Wind-of-Fire is a collection of vignettes centering on a dog
named Wind-of-Fire. Opening as a personal journal about the author’s
thoughts as she pursued a divinity degree in Berkeley, California,
during the early 1980s, Wind-of-Fire concludes as a tract arguing for
the incorporation of concepts about animal rights into Christianity.
“For those in the animal rights movement who have abandoned
their churches,” Troen wrote, “Wind-of-Fire may offer hope of
revival. Father Richard Mapplebeck-palmer, pastor of Grace
North Church in Berkeley, was inspired by Clair’s book to affirm the
religious worth of animals. He organized a discussion of the book
with members of his congregation.”

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BOOKS: In My Family Tree & In the Kingdom of Gorillas

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:

In My Family Tree:
A Life With Chimpanzees
by Sheila Siddle, with Doug Cress
Grove Press (841 Broadway, New York, NY
10003), 2002. 284 pages, hardcover. $25.00.

In The Kingdom of Gorillas:
Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land
by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas,

New York, NY 10020), 2001
.
370 pages, hardcover. $27.00.

Sheila Siddle, cofounder with her
husband David of the Chimfunshi Wildlife
Orphanage in central Zambia, never seems to have
doubted her calling, once she found it.
Certainly she never lacked the courage to accept
a challenge.
At age 16, in 1947, Siddle traveled
with her family by ferry and truck from England
to South Africa. When one of her brothers fell
ill, the brother and both of her parents
returned to England for a year, but Siddle
remained behind in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe), to study toward becoming a nurse.

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