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.

Editorial feature: 21st century began with 10 years of hard-won gains

January 1, 2010 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2010:
Most ANIMAL PEOPLE readers are probably buried lately in a
blizzard of appeals reviewing the deeds of animal charities during
the past year and decade. Recipients will be cheered by recaps of
“victories,” no matter how transient. Some may notice, though,
that “defeats” are seldom mentioned.
Comprehensive assessments of progress tend to be fewer–and
can be discouraging, in view of frequent contradictory indicators.
But the animal cause does not advance primarily through obvious
“victories,” or fail through the unmentioned defeats, which most
often result when legislation is proposed before sufficient
groundwork is done to pass it, or when resources are inadequate to
achieve an ambitious goal.
Fundraisers and campaigners like to evoke imagery suggesting
that at some point a cause will “triumph,” perhaps after someone
blows the right horn to bring all obstacles tumbling down. This is a
tried-and-true appeal format, but reality is that if any “war”
metaphor is appropriate to advancing the cause of animals, it is
that of trench warfare.

Editorial: No-kill sheltering & the quest for the holy grail

November 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2009:

PetSmart Charities, as the November/December 2009 edition of
ANIMAL PEOPLE goes to press, is celebrating four million adoptions
achieved through the Luv-A-Pet adoption centers located in each
PetSmart store, the first of which opened in February 1992.
“That’s four million lives saved, thanks to the
collaborative efforts of PetSmart Charities, more than 2,500 local
animal welfare groups and shelters across the U.S., and PetSmart,
Inc.,” said PetSmart Charities communication manager Kim Noetzel.
PetSmart Charities is also expecting to grant $10.3 million
to “local animal welfare agencies, shelters, and rescue groups to
support their pet adoption efforts” this year, Noetzel
mentioned–an increase of $1.3 million from 2008, when PetSmart
Charities was already granting more money to small animal charities
than any other grant-giving institution.
Few other funders have increased their aid to animal
charities at all in the past two years. Many foundations have cut
their grantmaking. Some have ceased operation.
Yet Friends of the Plymouth Pound, on Cape Cod, called a
boycott of PetSmart because, after 10 years, the PetSmart store in
Hyannis chose to work with a different adoption partner. Friends of
the Plymouth Pound had placed 49 cats through the Hyannis store in
2009. Other adoption partners had placed 821 cats through the
PetSmart store in Plymouth.

The 1st Church of Animal Rights tried to launch the movement in 1921

October 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2009:

What if the animal rights movement had launched out of the
older humane movement 55 years earlier, before factory farming
methods were invented, before laboratory use of animals expanded
into big business, before wildlife management was funded by hunting
license fees, before the humane movement came to be dominated by an
“animal welfare” rather than “animal rights” philosophy?
This is no mere fantasy. It could have happened, impelled
by the brief confluence of Diana Belais and Royal Dixon, flamboyant
and charismatic personalities whose talents and background,
differently mixed, paralleled those of the late Cleveland Amory,
who founded the Fund for Animals in 1968, and Ingrid Newkirk, who
cofounded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1981.

Editorial: Keeping shelters open when money & time are tight

July 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2009:

The good economic news from the nonprofit
information-tracking web site Guidestar is that only 52% of U.S.
charities reported declining donations during the winter of
2008-2009. This was no worse than the rate of decline during the
preceding summer.
Animal charities appear to have enjoyed less severe declines
than those serving other sectors, but since animal charities raise
only about 1% of total contributions to charity in the U.S., even
moderate losses hurt.
Economic analysts now predict that we may have reached a
turnaround. Yet even in the most hopeful scenario, fall and winter
budgets must be planned conservatively. If more money arrives than
is expected, more can be done, but meanwhile it is prudent to avoid
becoming over-extended. If we are not yet coming out of the
recession of the past two years, the recent stresses on animal
shelters will only get worse.

Castaway dogs trouble Malaysian conscience

June 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2009:
PULAU KETAM, Malaysia– Striving to rescue more than 150
dogs who survived being deliberately marooned on a remote swampy
island in the Straits of Malacca, the Malaysian animal charities
Furry Friends Farm, Selangor SPCA, and Save A Stray had among them
caught just a few dozen in a month of effort as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to
press–but they had stimulated awareness of surgically sterilizing
dogs wherever television, radio, and online media reach in the
Malay language, including Singa-pore and Indonesia as well as
Malaysia.
The Pulau Ketam dog rescue showed promise of expanding into
the beginnings of a regional Animal Birth Control program, modeled
after ABC successes in India. Malaysian Department of Veterinary
Services director general Abd Aziz Jamaluddin told Lestor Kong of The
Star that the department will send 10 veterinarians to Palau Ketam to
sterilize dogs on June 27-28.

Marooned dogs’ howls echo in Turkey

June 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2009:
Marooning the dogs of Palau Ketam had two notorious
precedents near Istanbul, Turkey, recalled by Companion Animal
Network founder Garo Alexanian in the November/ December 2008 edition
of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
The first marooning off Istan-bul occurred at some point
prior to 1869, when Mark Twain described it in The Innocents Abroad,
along with “the howl of horror” from citizens that stopped the
practice.
The second marooning came in 1910. “This act so disturbed
the modern Turkish republic,” Alexanian wrote, “that newspaper
columnists have attributed difficult economic times in Turkey to the
curse of Turks having done it.”

BOOKS: Most Good, Least Harm

May 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2009:

Most Good, Least Harm by Zoe Weil
Simon & Schuster (1230 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10020),
2009. 192-page download; $14.00. 224-page paperback; $15.00.

Institute for Humane Education cofounder Zoe Weil’s latest
book, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World
and a Meaningful Life prescribes seven MOGO principles –MOGO is
short for “Most Good”–to build a viable future for our children and
our planet.

ALF burns Italian zoo

April 1, 2009 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2009:
TURIN–An arson claimed by the Animal Liberation Front with
spray-painted slogans and a posting to the Florida-based Bite Back
web site on February 25, 2009 razed the newly built Zoom Zoo near
Turin, Italy. The zoo was to open in April.
“Several bottles filled with petrol were used to start the
fire, which killed some 40 hawks, buzzards and owls,” Europe News
and Italian media reported. The ALF claimed to have released about
30 birds.
Also killed were two hedgehogs, but firefighters kept the
blaze from harming several tigers who were also on the premises.

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