Category: Reviews

REVIEWS: Sakae Hemmi

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

A Report on the 1996 Dolphin Catch-Quota Violation
at Futo Fishing Harbor, Shizuoka Prefecture
Wild Orca Capture: Right or Wrong?
both by Sakae Hemmi
Elsa Nature Conservancy (POB 2, Tsukuba-Gakuen Post Office,
Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8691, Japan.) No prices listed.

 

A Report on the 1996 Dolphin
Catch-Quota Violation at Futo Fishing
Harbor, Shizuoka Prefecture, initially published
in Japanese, now translated, details
how in October 1996 the Elsa Nature
Conservancy forced the Futo Fishing
Cooperative to release more than 100 dolphins
who were captured in excess of a “drive
fishery” kill quota, and a week later obliged
two aquariums to release six psuedorcas who
had been taken from the excess for exhibition.
“The protest movement against the
dolphin capture was the first of its kind,”
author Sakei Hemmi explains. Previous
opposition to drive fisheries came from foreign
activists, notably filmmaker Hardin
Jones, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
founder Paul Watson, and Steve Sipman,
who invented the name “Animal Liberation
Front” in connection with releasing two dolphins
from a Hawaiian laboratory in 1976.

Read more

BOOKS: Taking Wing

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Taking Wing: Archaeopterix and the Evolution of Bird Flight
by Pat Shipman
Touchstone (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 1998. 336 pages, paperback; $15.00.

Pennsylvania State University
anthropologist Pat Shipman in Taking Wing
presents the most comprehensive, fair-minded
overview we’ve seen of the many controversies
surrounding Archaeopteryx and evolution.
As she entertainingly outlines, Archaeopteryx
in the 19th century emerged as the most convincing
fossil evidence for evolution itself. In
the late 20th century, Archaeopteryx is focal
point of a raging battle among theorists over
whether birds evolved from therapod dinosaurs
or much earlier, from a common ancestor
shared with the rest of dinosauria.

Read more

MORE VIDEO REVIEWS

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

Straw Bale Dog House
DELTA Rescue
(POB 9, Glendale, CA 91209)
$6.00 requested for copying and postage.

Perhaps the most obvious yet least
remarked of all the changes that humans have
imposed on the canine lifestyle is that dogs in
the wild never choose to live in anything that
resembles the quarters we tend to give them.
Throughout the world, given their choice,
dogs live in dugouts. Fox, wolf, dingo, jackal,
coyote, African wild dog or Carolina dog,
they all either enlarge the burrows of prey or
dig their own.
The first virtue of Leo Grillo’s Straw
Bale Dog House technique is not that it provides
cheap and durable shelter, though
DELTA Rescue builds each house for $400
including stucco finish. Nor is it that straw
bale building is quick, though with practice
each house can be made it less time than it
takes to watch the video. Nor is it that straw
bale dog houses save space: the roof of each
house becomes a patio/balcony as big as the
area the house occupies.

Read more

REVIEWS: A Cow At My Table

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

A Cow At My Table
Directed and edited by Jennifer Abbott
Flying Eye Productions
(Denman Place Postal Outlet, POB 47053
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6G 3E1), 1998. 90 minutes. $35/Canadian, $30/U.S

 

Billed as “a feature documentary
about culture, meat and animals,” A Cow At
My Table is an idiosyncratic and often refreshingly
unpredictable mix of interviews,
excerpts from agriculture industry teachingand-training
films, early 20th century silent
comedies, and undercover videos of abusive
practices mostly made by director/editor
Jennifer Abbott herself.

Read more

BOOKS: The Whole Horse Catalog & The Horse

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1998:

The Whole Horse Catalog
(REVISED AND UPDATED)
Steven D. Price, Editorial Director, with Barbara Burn,
Gail Rentsch, and David A. Spector. Illustrations by Werner Rentsch.
Fireside Books (Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 1998. 351 oversized pages, paperback, $20.00.

The Horse: The Most Abused Domestic Animal
by Greta Bunting
(POB 12195, St. Petersburg, FL 33733-2195), 1998.
68 pages, paperback, $13.86.

 

I write a lot about horse protection
issues, especially pertaining to wild horses,
and have for many years, but I don’t ride,
never have, never wanted to, and will freely
admit that what I know about the practical
aspects of horsekeeping is chiefly jackdookey––i.e.
the stuff I shovel each morning.

Read more

BOOKS: Ratzo

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Ratzo

by Marty Crisp
Rising Moon (c/o Northland
Publishing, POB 1389, Flagstaff, AZ
86002-1389), 1998. 160 pages,
hardcover $12.95; paperback $6.95.

“While digging for dinosaur bones
in the desert,” the back cover of Ratzo
explains, “an awful stench leads 13-yearold
Josh Marks and his best friend Bernie to
discover a shed full of abandoned greyhounds.
Bernie goes for help while Josh
stays behind to free the surviving dogs from
their prison. Josh becomes attached to a
blue-eyed greyhound named Ratzo, who is
starving and far too sick to race. But that
doesn’t keep Josh from dreaming of turning
this rescued greyhound into a champion.”

Read more

BOOKS: Problem Solving

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Problem Solving
by Marty Marten
Western Horseman (POB 7980, Colorado Springs, CO 80933),
1998. 247 pages, paperback;
$17.95 plus $2.00 postage and handling

Marty Marten, a Colorado
horse trainer, has worked around
horses for almost as long as he has
been alive––but unlike the authors of
other recent popular horse how-to
books, he does not waste time and
pages telling his life story.
Instead, he presents workable
and humane approaches to the
seven problems which tend to generate
the most complaints to humane
organizations about horse abuse:
crossing water, spooking, hard-tocatch
and herd-bound horses, barn
sourness, pulling back while tied,
and the most stressful issue of all,
trailer loading.

Read more

BOOKS: Puss in Books

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

Puss in Books:
Adventures of the Library Cat
Video by Gary Roma
Iron Frog Productions (9 Townsend Street, Waltham,
MA 02453-6026), 1998.
30 minutes. $24.95 plus $3.00 p&h.

Taking a fluffy look at the lives of several cats
who inhabit or formerly inhabited public libraries, documentarian
Gary Roma raises but pussyfoots around the serious
issue of tolerance of animals in public places.
Indoors or out, wild or domestic, animals are
appreciated by most of library-goers, park-goers, and users
of other public space, but are often banished by the demands
of a vocal minority who claim allergies to cat dander, or terror
of cats, as Roma’s video discusses––or protest against
the presence of other species because they poop, make
noise, or eat gardens.

Read more

BOOKS: What The Parrot Told Alice

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1998:

What The Parrot Told Alice
by Dale Smith
Illustrated by John Bardwell
Deer Creek Publishing (POB 2402, Nevada City, CA
95959), 1996. 125 pages. $11.95, paperback.

Loosely structured after Alice In Wonderland, with
black-and-white art instead of the color a book about parrots
would seem to demand, What The Parrot Told Alice owes more
to John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, than to
Lewis Carroll, the vicar who broke from the tradition of “entertaining”
children with thinly disguised sermons.
Like both pre-Carroll children’s books and many
other recent ecologically sensitive titles, What The Parrot Told
Alice is unrelentingly preachy, albeit more sensitive to the
complexities of issues than most works of the genre, and
packed with information about parrots. It’s good enough to
wish it was more fully developed.

Read more

1 … 66 67 68 69 70 … 95