The search goes on for a single-dose non-surgical way to sterilize dogs & cats

April 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2010:

DALLAS–More than 50 contenders for the
$25 million Michelson Prize for the invention of
a successful non-surgical method of sterilizing
dogs and cats registered for an intensive
briefing about how to win the money at the April
8-10, 2010 Alliance for Contra-ception of Dogs &
Cats conference in Dallas.
The first step, for most, will be
winning some of the $50 million research and
development funding offered by Found Animals
Foundation founder Gary K. Michelson, M.D., to
help the contenders approach the jackpot.
To do that, the contenders must present
ideas that clear rigorous screening for
feasibility, practicality, and safety by the
Found Animals Foundation scientific advisors.
As holder of more than 900 patents issued
or pending worldwide for medical instruments,
procedures, and other medical devices, mostly
used to treat back pain, Michelson has a clear
idea what he wants to see: a single-dose
treatment that will quickly, inexpensively
sterilize dogs and cats for life, and can win
regulatory approval for widespread use.

BOOKS: Ape

March 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Ape by John Sorensen
Reaktion Books Ltd.
(33 Great Sutton St., London EC1M 3JU, U.K.), 2009.
224 pages, illust. $19.95 paperback.

Ape, by Brock University sociologist and professor of
critical animal studies John Sorenson, is the 25th in a projected
series of 40 titles edited for Reaktion Books Ltd. by Jonathan Burt.
Burt himself produced the series template in Rat (2006). Each volume
is succinctly titled for the species or order of animals that it
covers. Each summarizes the state of knowledge about how the animals
behave, where they live, and how they evolved, but the focal topic
is the influence of the animals on human culture.

Killing owls in the name of saving owls

January 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

PORTLAND, Oregon– Public comment on a U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service proposal to shoot barred owls to see if killing them helps
spotted owl recovery closes on January 11, 2010.
Barred owls would be shot in spotted owl study areas near Cle
Elum, Washing-ton; the Oregon Coast Range mountains; and the Klamath
mountains of southwestern Oregon. The experiment would repeat on a
larger scale a 2005 study in which seven barred owls were shot in
habitat recently vacated by spotted owls in northern Calif-ornia.
After the larger and more aggressive barred owls were killed,
spotted owls returned. The California study became the rationale
for a rewrite of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan produced in mid-2008
by appointees of former U.S. President George W. Bush. Blaming
barred owls and wildfires rather than logging for the decline of
spotted owls, the Bush administration plan reduced the designated
critical habitat for spotted owls by 1.6 million acres, and would
have increased timber sales in the region fivefold.

Neuter/return requires impact study, says Los Angeles judge

January 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:

LOS ANGELES–California municipal governments may not
assist or promote neuter/return of feral cats without first
completing an environmental impact report, ruled Los Angeles
Superior Court Judge Thomas McKnew on December 4, 2009.
McKnew ruled on behalf of five organizations representing
birders that the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services was in
violation of the California Environmental Quality Act for issuing $30
sterilization vouchers to neuter/return practitioners and for
referring people who call to complain about feral cats to charities
that do neuter/return.
“Despite official denial, the implementation of the program
is pervasive, albeit informal and unspoken,” McKnew wrote.
McKnew did not address the value of neuter/return as a feral
cat control method, or the virtues of neuter/return as public
policy. The McKnew verdict lacks precedental weight until and unless
affirmed by appellate courts.

BOOKS: Search for the Golden Moon Bear

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

Search for the Golden Moon Bear

by Sy Montgomery
Chelsea Green Publishing (85 N. Main St., Suite 120, White River
Jct., Vermont 05001), 2002, 2009.
336 pages, paperback. $19.95.
No bear like the golden moon bear is known to science, says
Sy Montgomery–but science, so far, says the golden moon bear is
just a rare color morph of the Asiatic black bear, also known as the
moon bear for a crescent-shaped patch of light-colored chest fur.
Hoping that the golden moon bear might be a new species or a
subspecies, Montgomery and Northwestern University professor of
evolutionary biology Gary J. Galbreath in 1999 trekked through much
of Southeast Asia seeking material evidence. They found none, yet
Montgomery’s 2002 book Search for the Golden Moon Bear became a
cryptozoological classic. Rarely mentioned during the 40 years that
the U.S. had troops and aircraft in Southeast Asia, the golden moon
bear has become one of the best-known undocumented animals that
anyone still seriously contends might once have existed.

BOOKS: Walking with the Great Apes

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

Walking with the Great Apes
by Sy Montgomery
Chelsea Green Publishing (85 N. Main St., Suite 120,
White River Jct., Vermont 05001), 1991, 2009
264 pages, paperback. $17.95.

Jane Goodall, asserts Walking with the Great Apes author Sy
Montgomery, is the most easily recognizable living scientist in the
western world, primarily from her 50 years of researching and
advocating for chimpanzees.
Dian Fossey, who began her work at about the same time but
reached global prominence sooner, was murdered in 1985. Though her
killer has never been prosecuted, popular belief is that she was
killed in retaliation for her efforts to protect mountain gorillas
from poachers in Rwanda.

Monkey research moving abroad to escape stricter standards & activism

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

STILLWATER–Oklahoma State University
president Burns Hargis personally vetoed anthrax
experiments on baboons planned by the university
veterinary school and funded by the National
Institutes of Health, revealed Susan Simpson of
The Oklahoman on November 30, 2009
“This research was not in the best
interest of the university. Testing lethal
pathogens on primates would be a new area for
OSU, outside our current research programs,”
OSU spokesperson Gary Shutt told Simpson.

BOOKS: The Human Side of Animals

October 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:
The Human Side of Animals
by Royal Dixon
Project Gutenberg Ebook #19850, 2006.
Free download from
<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19850>.
Originally published by
Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1918.
254 pages, hardcover.
Royal Dixon, who in 1921 launched the
First Church of Animal Rights to great fanfare
but with no evident follow-up, was no Cleveland
Amory. Yet The Human Side of Animals, published
a year before Amory was born, sufficiently
presaged Amory’s 1974 opus Man Kind? that it
might have been among Amory’s early
influences–even though it does not appear in the
extensive Man Kind? index.

BOOKS: The Smartest Animals on the Planet

September 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

The Smartest Animals on the Planet: Extraordinary Tales of the
Natural World’s Cleverest Creatures
by Sally Boysen & Deborah Custance
Firefly Books (P.O. Box 1338, Ellicot Station, Buffalo, NY
14205), 2009. 192 pages, illustrated. $35.00, hardcover.

Ohio State University in February 2006 retired to Primarily
Primates a colony of seven chimpanzees kept since 1983 by researcher
Sally Boysen. Opposing the transfer, Boysen allied herself with
PETA. Ensuing litigation, ended by settlement in August 2009, led
to Friends of Animals annexing Primarily Primates later in 2006, and
appears to have cumulatively cost Primarily Primates, FoA, and PETA
approximately $1 million.
While all this was underway, Boysen was apparently writing
The Smartest Animals on the Planet.

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