BOOKS: The Pet Surplus

October 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2002:

The Pet Surplus:
What Every Dog and Cat Owner
Can Do to Help Reduce It
by Susan M. Seidman
Xlibris Corporation
(www.xlibris.com; 1-888-795-4274), 2001.
234 pages, paperback.

Written for average U.S. petkeepers, The Pet Surplus sums up
the basics about pet overpopulation and other preventable causes of
dog and cat killing by animal shelters. Susan Seidman emphasizes the
need for pet sterilization, adopting animals from shelters, and
correcting misbehavior that often leads to owner surrenders. She
also discusses finding pet-friendly housing, finding lost pets, and
how to return strays to their homes.

Look at what sea otters & dogs eat

September 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

SAN FRANCISCO, LONDON– Cats were accused of spreading
toxoplasmosis to California sea otters and dogs were accused of
spreading campylobacter bacteria throughout Britain in new studies
released in early July 2002–but while the allegations were quickly
amplified by mainstream news media and picked up by anti-feral cat
and anti-street dog activists, the research behind each study
overlooked key dietary factors in the transmission of the diseases.
Marine biologist Melissa Miller and colleagues with the
Wildlife Health Center at the Davis campus of the University of
California claimed in the July edition of the International Journal
for Parasitology to have traced an ongoing seven-year decline in the
population of endangered California sea otters to the fecal parasite
Toxoplasma gondi. They found the microscopic parasite in 66 of the
107 sea otter carcasses they examined.

Latest U.S. data shows shelter killing down to 4.4 million a year

September 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

Rapid progress against pet overpopulation in some of the
fastest-growing parts of the Sunbelt and the Midwest combined with
continued low shelter killing volume in the Northeast and Northwest
to bring estimated total U.S. shelter killing in 2001 down to 4.4
million–the lowest toll on record.
Our 2001 estimate is projected from data covering every major
shelter in cities and states including 42% of the current U.S. human
population of 281 million. The shelter tolls in 1999 and 2000 were
almost identical, at 4.5 million and 4.6 million, with the
difference being in how numbers were rounded off.

New laws abroad

September 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

The Bulgarian Parliament on July 10 declared brown bears a
protected species, who may no longer be hunted, bought, sold, or
displayed to a paying audience. About 800 bears inhabit the
Bulgarian mountains, 30 bears are in zoos, 21 are kept by gypsy
exhibitors of “dancing bears,” 11 are in breeding colonies set up to
maintain the zoo population, and four belong to circuses, according
to the International Bear Foundation. The Dutch-based IBF in 2000
paid for microchipping all 66 captive bears, while the Fondation
Brigitte Bardot and the Austrian group Vier Pfoten founded a 2.7-acre
bear sanctuary near the Rila monastary, founded in the 13th century
at the reputed site of the grotto of the 10th century animal-loving
vegetarian saint John of Rila.

No-kill success and fiscal reality collide in Reno

September 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2002:

Succeeding the No-Kill Conference, after seven annual events
that transformed the ambitions of the global animal care and control
community, will be the much less provocatively named Conference on
Homeless Animal Management and Policy, convening in Reno on August
22, 2002.
Retiring the term “no-kill” in deference to the sensitivities
of conventional shelter directors, CHAMP hopes to attract a broader
constituency to learn new approaches, and join the worldwide trend
away from accepting high-volume killing of homeless animals as an
inevitable part of animal control and humane work.

BOOKS: Maverick Cats

July 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2002:
&nbsp
Maverick Cats: Encounters with Feral Cats
Expanded and Updated Edition
by Ellen Perry Berkeley
with illustrations by Sandra Westford
The New England Press (P.O. Box 573, Shelburne, VT 05482), 2001.
159 pages, paperback. $14.95.

“Fewer than a dozen research papers had been published by the
mid-1970s” about feral cats, recalls Ellen Perry Berkeley in a new
final chapter of her 1982 classic Maverick Cats. “We now have more
than 20 times that number.”

When mobile units work, and when they do not

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

WESTBROOK, Connecticut; ST. LOUIS, Missouri–Mobile
neutering project results could scarcely contrast more than those of
the TEAM Mobile Feline Unit and a similar unit recently deployed in
St. Louis.
Sponsored since 1997 by the Vernon A. Tait All-Animal
Adoption, Preservation, & Rescue Fund, TEAM in May 2002 announced
completion of more than 50,000 cat sterilizations, at the rate of
about 12,000 surgeries per year.

On the animal news beat

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

ANIMAL PEOPLE has received messages from several different
Ohio activists and organizations crediting WOIO-Channel 19 television
reporter Scott Taylor, of Cleveland, and Carolyn Lyders of
WBNS-Channel 10 in Columbus, with helping to expose and halt animal
control dog shooting and gassing with vehicular exhaust in several
rural counties. Taylor was praised especially for his reporting
about Vinton and Morgan counties, which alerted other people who
were in a position to help. Wrote Michael Sangiacomo of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Jeff Driggs shot 600 dogs to death in
Morgan County last year. The dog warden did nothing about it.

Alternatives to sterilization surgery still delayed

June 1, 2002 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2002:

ATLANTA– “A commercialized alternative to surgical
castration or ovario-hysterectomy for either dogs or cats” may still
be 10 years away, AlcheraBio senior partner Linda Rhodes, DVM,
told the 2002 International Symposium on Nonsurgical Methods for Pet
Population Control, held April 19-21 in Atlanta.
Rhodes’ prediction came as a letdown after the optimism of
many of the same speakers two years earlier.
At the Spay/USA symposium on immunocontraceptives and
chemosterilants, held in July 2000 at Bentley College in Waltham,
Massachusetts, at least two researchers hoped that their products
could clear the regulatory hurdles and be on the market by now. In
Atlanta, however, neither those researchers nor any others ventured
even a hypothetical timetable for bringing any contraceptive or
sterilant drug or antigen for animals into commercial production.

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