Editorials: Doing wolves no favors

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

Experts estimate the world wolf population never exceeded 500,000. Humans

have had wolves outnumbered and on the run since Neanderthal times. Those who couldn’t

be killed were pushed into the most inhospitable corners of the globe––for if there’s one

thing a human hunter can’t stand, it’s the idea that something else might kill his game, his

livestock, perhaps even his family if he fails to “keep the wolf from the door.”

If there’s another thing hunters hate about wolves, it’s the reminder wolves con-

vey that predatory skills and a strict dominance hierarchy do not equate with fitness for sur-

vival in the human-made world. Most fears about wolves are unfounded––North American

wolves have never eaten people––but to your average hunter no other animal so symbolizes

male inadequacy. The men with guns are now more frightened than ever. In Alaska, gov-

ernor Tony Knowles on February 4 made permanent his December 3 suspension of prede-

cessor Walter Hickel’s campaign to kill wolves in order to make more moose and caribou

available to human hunters in the region southwest of Fairbanks. In Yellowstone, the like-

lihood that wolves will soon thin out an estimated 60,000 elk, 30,000 deer, and 4,000

bison, after a 60-year absence, deals a political blow to the hope of the hunting lobby that

they might open the National Parks to hunting––the only federal lands that now exclude

hunting, and therefore the last refuge of many beasts with trophy-sized horns.

MONEY TALK

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

“By significantly expanding the scale and

scope of their groups’ activities” during the past decade,

“the directors of environmental organizations hoped to

capitalize on Americans’ increasing demands for environ-

mental quality,” say Christopher Boerner and Jennifer

Chilton Kallery of the Center for the Study of American

Business at Washington University in St. Louis, in a new

report entitled Restructuring Environmental Big Business.

“Unfortunately, as many U.S. corporations have discov-

ered, expansion away from an organization’s core compe-

tency often has numerous disadvantages,” including inten-

sified competition for donor dollars and loss of concentra-

tion on achieving key goals. Examples of groups in trou-

ble include Greenpeace , down to 3.5 million members

from a peak 4.8 million; the Sierra Club, down from

630,000 members to 500,000; the Wilderness Society,

down from 400,000 members to 275,000; the National

Audubon Society, which posted a deficit of $1.7 million

in 1993; and the National Wildlife Federation, which

has been reducing staff since 1992. Humane societies and

animal rights groups have not been hit as hard, partly

because most have remained more closely focused.

However, Boerner and Chilton Kallery note that groups

“employing highly emotional and often misleading cam-

paigns,” including “apocalyptic prophecies,” have suf-

fered significant erosion of public trust.

Success in San Francisco: No-kill animal control

March 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1995:

SAN FRANCISCO––If San Francisco SPCA ethical stud-

ies coordinator Pam Rockwell hadn’t supported her January 5 report

to president Richard Avanzino with three pages of graphs and statis-

tics, it might have been mistaken by outside readers for a work of

utopian fiction.

“Every adoptable dog and cat in San Francisco’s shelters

found a loving new home in 1994,” Rockwell stated. “Older cats

and dogs, blind animals, deaf animals, animals missing limbs or

otherwise disfigured––as long as they were healthy and of reasonably

good temperament, these dogs and cats were all adoptable. Each

was and is guaranteed a new home under the Adoption Pact,” which

the SFSPCA negotiated with the San Francisco Animal Care and

Control department just a year ago. “Since this group of animals

would be considered unadoptable and be euthanized in most shelters,

the fact that in San Francisco all these animals were saved would

appear to be an unprecedented achievement.”

Editorial: Handling the money crunch

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

It is axiomatic in fundraising that half the dollars raised by any campaign come

from the ten biggest donors––the coveted “high donors,” whose gifts not only finance good

works, but also permit the quest for additional donors. Even in charity, it takes money to

make money, and without a lump sum to invest in printing and postage, nonprofits have no

means of appealing to the small donors who provide the other half of their support.

High donors are an endangered species this winter, a phenomenon remarked

across the charitable spectrum. From animal shelters and sanctuaries to veterinary schools

and zoos, administrators tell us more people are chipping in, but total donations are down

because big gifts haven’t come. We’re seeing the same thing in the otherwise encouraging

response to our own holiday appeal. And we’re hearing from apologetic former high donors,

including some foundations, that the reasons they’re not giving as much as before have

nothing to do with our work: they’re just tapped out. Economic uncertainty accompanying

the change of political power in Washington D.C. brought a sharp pre-holiday slump in the

money markets, both hurting private investors and cutting into the residuals from which

foundations make grants. People in government jobs are anxious to see how projected cost-

cutting and restructuring will affect them––and this doesn’t just involve federal employees.

As responsibility for the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the disabled is returned to states

and municipalities, state and local budgets will also be restructured. That in turn affects

still more people, including employees of firms that sell to government.

Sanctuary: THREE-YEAR-OLD TAOS STRIVES TO GROW INTO MISSION

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

DALLAS––With a title dimly echo-

ing William Faulkner’s steamiest novel and an

acronym calling to mind the utopian com-

mune D.H. Lawrence began in New Mexico,

the Association of Sanctuaries might inspire

literary minds to imagine dark plots and tan-

gled motives even without dispute over what

“association” and “sanctuary” should mean.

Is TAOS a representative self-regu-

latory body, as billed, formed by sanctuari-

ans to advance the interests of the greater

sanctuary community? Or is it an activist

group disguised, with an agenda set mainly

by non-sanctuarians, at least some of whom

have little background in sanctuary work?

Why shelters and sanctuaries get stoned from within

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

As Lynn Cuny’s Wildlife Rescue and

Rehabilitation sanctuary has expanded, the incoming presi-

dent of the Association of Sanctuaries has learned to study

human as well as animal behavior. After absorbing a

media bashing led by former volunteers in late 1992,

between similar bashings endured by distant neighbor

Wally Swett of Primarily Primates, Cuny shared some the-

ories with ANIMAL PEOPLE that have subsequently

proved valid in many other sanctuary and shelter blow-ups.

“Problems don’t begin because of just one per-

son,” she said. “They begin with a particular combination.

You may have a potential problem smouldering for years in

someone who’s otherwise a very good employee or volun-

teer. This will be someone with low self-esteem, a pro-

found poverty mentality, who needs and wants an inordi-

nate amount of encouragement and recognition. If you are

a successful sanctuary or shelter, your success at animal

care can make these people crazy. They see the animals

being loved and appreciated, and money being spent on

care and medicine, and they don’t believe they could ever

have these things in their own lives. They become jealous.

Everybody must get stoned, even Wildlife W aystation

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST, California––

Wildlife Waystation, founded by former Hollywood costume

designer Martine Colette, is the biggest wildlife rehabilitation

center and sanctuary in the U.S.––and perhaps the world.

Forty of the most recognized names in show business help

Colette raise the annual budget of circa $1.5 million.

Occupying 160 acres in Tujunga Canyon, Wildlife

Waystation has 14 paid staffers, 32 volunteers who live on

the premises, and 175 commuting volunteers, of whom

about 35 are active regulars. It answers 50,000 telephone

calls a year, handling more than 4,000 animals annually,

including wildlife and exotics picked up by many local and

regional animal control departments. The biggest of these is

the Los Angeles Board of Animal Regulation, serving the

third largest human population of any animal control depart-

ment in the country.

“If God gives you something on this earth, it’s up to you to be responsible for it.”

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

SHARON, Wisconsin––The JES Exotics

Sanctuary isn’t a member of the Association of Sanctuaries,

Jill Shumak explains, because after attending one TAOS

meeting as a guest, Jill and her husband E.J. were “not con-

vinced that it had anything to offer us.”

Explains E.J., “They were coming on like another

regulatory body, and we already have regulators up to here,

with the state, county, local, and federal. Any time you

have a sanctuary, you have everybody looking over your

shoulder.”

The Shumaks had no objection to the TAOS

accreditation requirements, but they weren’t interested in any

more red tape. They would have been interested, E.J. says,

if TAOS had appeared as if it would develop the clout for

membership and accreditation to be meaningful in reducing

governmental hassles.

Can Wild Animal Orphanage be brought up to par?

January 1, 1995 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas––Keeping perhaps the

biggest collection of former crackhouse guard-cats in Texas,

Carol Azvestus’ Wild Animal Orphanage lies beside a nar-

row, lightly traveled road on the extreme northwestern edge

of the city, just down a low grade from an old-fashioned

Pentecostal church that still holds Sunday picnics. Scrub oaks

and grazing horses across the road complete a superficially

tranquil vista. In fact, WAO is only minutes from a major

shopping center, Sea World San Antonio, and several trans-

portation arteries, some of them being widened in anticipa-

tion of rapid development.

Already Azvestus has used almost all the land she

has. A quarantine area is going up in one of the few vacant

corners. Yet her menagerie is still rapidly growing. In addi-

tion to the 150-odd animals on site when ANIMAL PEOPLE

paid an incognito visit, another 13 big cats were to arrive

within a week from a defunct roadside zoo in North Carolina.

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