U.S. to phase out animal testing

March 1, 2008 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:

BETHESDA, Maryland–Animal testing to meet U.S. federal
regulatory requirements is officially on the way out at last.
“The Environmental Protection Agency, the National Toxicology
Program and the National Institutes of Health have signed a
memorandum of understanding to begin developing the new methods,”
reported Elizabeth Weise of USA Today on February 14, 2008,
scooping most other media by about 24 hours. “The collaboration is
described in a paper in the February 15 edition of the journal
Science.”
“We propose a shift from primarily in vivo animal studies to
in vitro assays, in vivo assays with lower organisms, and
computational modeling for toxicity assessments,” wrote National
Humane Genome Research Institute director Francis S. Collins, EPA
research and development director George M. Gray, and National
Toxicology Program associate director John R. Bucher.

BOOKS: Schaller & Bekoff

July 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:

A Naturalist & Other Beasts: Tales From A Life In The Field
by George B. Schaller
Sierra Club Books (85 2nd St., San Francisco, CA 94105), 2007.
272 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

The Emotional Lives of Animals
by Marc Bekoff
New World Library (14 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949), 2007.
214 pages, hardcover. $23.95.

“I was fortunate to have been part of the golden age of
wildlife studies, from the 1950s to the end of the 20th century,
when many large mammals–even such familiar and spectacular ones as
the elephant and jaguar–for the first time became the focus of
intensive research,” writes George Schaller.
Schaller also had the good fortune to be hired in 1956 as a
field biologist for the New York Zoological Society, and to work his
way up as it grew into the Wildlife Conservation Society, for which
he is now vice president and director of field operations.

BOOKS: Whalewatcher: A global guide to watching whales, dolphins and porpoises in the wild

May 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2007:

Whalewatcher:
A global guide to watching whales, dolphins and porpoises in the wild
by Trevor Day
Firefly Books Ltd.
(66 Leek Crescent, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada L4B 1H1), 2006.
204 pp., paperback, illustrated. $19.95.

Though Whalewatcher is structured as a field guide, armchair
travelers will probably spend more time with it than marine mammal
observers seeking to compile a life list.
More than 10 million people per year watch whales, dolphins,
and porpoises or about as many as watched birds a generation ago,
before the recent global explosion of interest in birding.
However, while anyone can watch birds from anywhere, few
people have any opportunity to watch marine mammals from their homes,
workplaces, or during a commute, and even those of us who do have
the opportunity rarely manage many sightings.

Cane toads are champion skeeter eaters

January 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
SYDNEY–The 1935 introduction of African cane toads to
Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji was not quite the ecological
disaster that cane toad foes claim, Sydney University biologists
Rick Shine and Mattias Hagman have discovered.
While cane toads did not control the sugar cane-eating
insects that they were supposed to devour, and have voraciously
consumed some small Australian wildlife, especially goanna lizards,
Shine and Hagman discovered through a series of controlled
experiments that cane toad tadpoles are exceptionally capable
predators of mosquito larvae.

Are pit bulls the problem, or their people? Study raises the question

January 1, 2007 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
CINCINNATI–The view that pit bull terriers get into trouble
chiefly because the wrong people have them was reinforced on November
16, 2006 when a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of
Interpersonal Violence revealed that among a sampling of 355 people
who keep pet dogs, all who keep pit bulls turned out to have had
some sort of trouble with the law.
Thirty percent of the people in the sampling who had been
cited at least once for failing to license a pit bull were found to
have had at least five criminal convictions or traffic citations.
Only 1% of the people who keep dogs with a low risk of being involved
in an attack legally defined by Ohio municipal ordinances as
“vicious” had five or more convictions or traffic citations, the
researchers found.

Gunfire no aphrodisiac for African elephants

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force chair Johnny Rodrigues and
Presidential Elephant Conservation Project elephant fertility
researcher Sharon Pincott contend that the stress associated with
gunfire has actually suppressed elephant fecundity–a finding which,
if verified, would contradict other studies showing that wildlife
populations tend to increase their fecundity under hunting pressure.
Both coyotes and deer, for example, notoriously raise more
young successfully when hunting has thinned their populations,
making more food available to the survivors.
But different mechanisms are at work.
While coyotes are hunted year-round, intensive hunting
pressure on coyotes tends to be limited to the spring birthing season
for cattle and sheep, and the fall deer hunting season, when deer
hunters often shoot coyotes as well.

Injectible female chemosterilant goes to field trials

October 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006:
PORTLAND, Oregon–Among the last actions of the Doris Day
Animal League before it was absorbed on August 31, 2006 by the
Humane Society of the U.S. was funding a grant issued on July 26 by
the Alliance for Contraception for Cats and Dogs to help underwrite
tests of a chemosterilant for female animals called ChemSpay, now
underway on the Navajo Nation.
Headquartered in Windowrock, Arizona, near the junction of
Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah, the Navajo Nation presently
has the highest rate of animal control killing of any incorporated
entity in the U.S., at 135 dogs and cats killed per 1,000 humans per
year, nearly 10 times the U.S. average of 14.5.

Hong Kong dog dumping study

September 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

HONG KONG–A survey of pet abandonment published in August
2006 by My Pet magazine of Hong Kong found that among 303 people who
admitted dumping pet dogs, 63.4% did so after the Housing Authority
or private landlords enforced “no pets” rules. The only other major
reason for abandonment was disliking the animal.
More than half of the people who dumped dogs dumped more than
one, My Pet learned. About 20% replaced an abandoned dog, only to
abandon that dog too.
The Agriculture, Fisheries, & Conservation Department,
responsible for animal control in Hong Kong, impounded 13,100 dogs
in 2005, killing 11,900 who were neither claimed nor adopted within
four days. With almost the same human population as New York City,
Hong Kong had an almost identical rate of shelter dog killing.

BOOKS: Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey

September 1, 2006 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2006:

Two views of–

Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey
by Georgianne Nienaber
Universe (2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100,
Lincoln, NE 68512), 2006. 255 pages
paperback. $19.95.

Fearless fighter for gorillas

Gorilla Dreams purports to be
posthumously narrated by the late gorilla
researcher Dian Fossey herself. Georgianne
Nienaber writes from what she believes to be
Fossey’s own perspective about how she believed
she was abused, swindled, maligned,
manipulated, used, harassed and obstructed by
cruel and corrupt people, many of them
representatives of respected mainstream
conservation charities.
Asks Nienaber in the Fossey persona,
“How much of my legacy has been used by
fraudulent conservation authorities to collect
funds from those least able to afford them, only
to have those moneys flow into corrupt coffers,
never to reach the gorillas?”

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