Organization notes

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

The Humane Society of the U.S. board of directors on April
24, 2004 elected senior vice president for government affairs and
media Wayne Pacelle, 38, to succeed Paul Irwin as president and
chief executive. Irwin, senior vice president under John Hoyt
1975-1996, and president since then, is retiring. Pacelle joined
HSUS in 1994, after five years as executive director of the Fund for
Animals. Pacelle was selected over chief of staff Andrew Rowan, who
continues in that position, and former Maryland governor Parris
Glendenning.

Farmed Animal Watch founder Mary Finelli on April 17, 2004
turned the electronic newsletter over to new editors Hedy Litke and
Che Green, after two years and 47 editions. Litke also directs the
New York City-based Animal News Center. Green is a longtime member
of the Seattle-based Northwest Animal Rights Network. Farmed Animal
Watch is jointly sponsored by Animal Place, the Animal Welfare
Trust, Farm Sanctuary, the Fund for Animals, the Glaser Progress
Foundation, and PETA.

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Olson heads Morris Animal Foundation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

ENGLEWOOD, Colorado–The Morris Animal Found-ation on March
17 announced that Patricia N. Olson, DVM, will succeed Robert
Hilsenroth, DVM, as executive director.
Olson joins the Morris Animal Foundation after six years as
director of canine health and training for Guide Dogs for the Blind,
Inc., following previous appointments at the American Humane
Association, the University of Minnesota, Colorado State
University, Cornell University, the International Air Transport
Association, and a stint as U.S. Senate Congressional Fellow for the
American Veterinary Medical Association.
Hilsenroth, who succeeded founder Mark Morris, DVM, is
retiring after 12 years.
One of the first small animal specialist vets in the U.S.,
starting practice in New Jersey in 1925, Morris in 1933 cofounded
and was elected first president of the American Animal Hospital
Assoc-iation. Twenty-eight years later, in 1961-1962, Morris
served as AVMA president.
In between, Morris developed the first health specialty pet
foods sold in the U.S., sold the formulas to the Hill Packing
Company in 1948, and used the proceeds to set up the Buddy
Foundation, to fund animal health research. The Buddy Foundation
became the Morris Foundation in 1956.

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REVIEW: Cull of the Wild: The Truth Behind Trapping

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

Cull of the Wild: The Truth Behind Trapping
Animal Protection Institute (POB 22505, Sacramento, CA 95822), 2003.
Video offered on each cassette in both 27-minute and 10-minute versions.
$10.00 each [$7.50 each for 10 or more copies.]

For 12 winters, 1977-1989, I was volunteer assistant to a
now deceased Quebec deputy game warden in a rural township whose
farmers had virtually all posted their land against trapping. I
combined my morning crosscountry runs with patrolling between 50 and
60 miles per week of woodlots, streams, and riverbanks, scouting
for illegal traplines. The region was rich in fox, coyote,
raccoon, muskrat, and sometimes beaver, and pelt prices were at
their 20th century peak. Thus the farms continually attracted
trappers, despite the posting signs. The trappers appeared to
consider their trap losses to my patrols a routine cost of doing
business.
Over the years I became familiar with standard trapping
methods and equipment–and found that the cruelty of trapping was
actually understated by animal rights literature. The late Animal
Welfare Institute founder Christine Stevens, for example, claimed
that cable snares are less cruel than leghold traps, having probably
never seen real-life cable snaring.

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Organization updates

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

NCDL becomes Dogs Trust

LONDON–The National Canine Defence League on October 9
renamed itself Dogs Trust. Founded in 1891 to oppose vivisection of
dogs, NCDL for most of the 20th century focused on providing
veterinary care to pets of the poor. Restructured in 1980, it is
now the British leader in rehoming dogs, and since 1996 has
cosponsored the International Companion Animal Welfare Conference,
partnering with the North Shore Animal League International division.

MSPCA kills Animals magazine

BOSTON–Promising to balance the Massachusetts SPCA budget in
2004, first-year president Larry Hawk in August 2003 terminated the
money-losing Animals magazine, and in September laid off 19
employees.

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Who killed activist Jane Tipson, and why?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2003:

GROS ISLET, St. Lucia– Jane Tipson, 53, cofounder of the
St. Lucia Animal Protection Society, the Eastern Caribbean Coalition
for Environmental Awareness, and the Caribbean Animal Welfare e-mail
newsgroup, was fatally shot at close range at 1:20 a.m. on September
17 just yards from the gate of her home.
Tipson “was following her 50-year-old sister Barbara” in a
separate vehicle, reported the St. Lucia Star, “after they had
been trapping stray dogs and cats along the beach. Barbara had
arrived at their house when she heard a loud noise from the driveway.”
Mistaking the noise for a tire blowout, Barbara Tipson “drove back
to find her sister slumped over the wheel [of her vehicle], dead,
the result of a wound to the neck,” the Star continued.
“This case does not appear to be a robbery,” police
commissioner Ausbert Regis said, “because the person did the act and
left. We are still trying to determine a motive but at this time it
appears that the killing was targeted.”
Nicole McDonald and Chris-tine Larbey of the Star wrote that,
“Close friends of Jane Tipson (who prefer to remain anonymous) said
she had confided in them about receiving threatening phone calls over
the past few weeks. The police were not prepared to confirm the
death threats.

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Following the money

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Philanthropic Research Inc., the
subcontractor to the U.S. Internal Revenue
Service responsible for posting the IRS Form 990
filings of U.S. charities in downloadable PDF
format at <www.Guidestar.com>, on April 3
announced that it has received a grant of £2.9
million from the British Treasury to produce a
similar web site for the British Charity
Commission. “Annual filings made by charities to
the Charity Commission will constitute the core
data for the GuideStar UK database, and the
charities themselves will provide additional
narrative information about their missions,
programs, objectives, and accomplishments.

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WWF splits over links to corporations

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

GENEVA, Switzerland–World Wildlife Fund U.S. president
Kathryn Fuller has reportedly refused to resign at request of WWF
International president Claude Martin.
Martin asked Fuller to quit after she abstained from voting
in her capacity as a board member of Alcoa, rather than oppose a
company plan to build a dam complex that will flood 22 square miles
near Karahnjukar, Iceland, submerging nesting and feeding areas for
barnacle and greylag geese who migrate from Greenland to Britain.
The dam project is opposed by the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, as well as by WWF
International.
Fuller joined the Alcoa board after Alcoa donated $1 million
to WWF-U.S., wrote Severin Carrell of the London Independent.
Martin and WWF International were meanwhile ripped in an open
letter from Kevin Dunion, former director of the Friends of the
Earth chapter in Scotland, for failing to oppose a plan by the
French mining, quarrying, and cement-making firm Lafarge to open a
“super quarry” on Harris Island in the Hebrides. Lafarge and WWF
also have a “very close” relationship, Dunion said.
WWF-Britain came under criticism at the same time for its
ties to the HSBC banking empire, a major financier of rainforest
logging in Indonesia and dam-building in fragile areas including the
Three Gorges region of China.

People & projects

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

British Columbia activists Anthony Marr, Brenda Davis, and
her son Cory Davis have rescheduled their HOPE-GEO “Compassion for
Animals Road Expedition” across the U.S. and Canada “due to U.S.
Immigration temporary visa requirements.” The new scheduled starting
date is September 1, 2003. The 25-week tour of 40 states and four
provinces in a van equipped to display pro-animal videos to the
public was to have begun on January 8, but the HOPE-GEO team “were
not permitted to enter the U.S.,” they told supporters. Marr is
widely known for his investigations of wildlife trafficking, both in
British Columbia and abroad. Davis, a registered
dietician/nutritionist, is author of four books on vegetarian and
vegan nutrition and health. More HOPE-GEO/CARE information is posted
at <www.hope-care.org>.

The Massachusetts SPCA on January 31, 2003 announced that
Ameri-can SPCA president Larry Hawk will in February begin
transitioning from his present post to succeed Gus Thornton, who is
retiring, as president of the MSPCA. Formerly director of
veterinary marketing for Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Hawk in 1995 became
president of PETsMART Veter-inary Services and was founding president
of PETsMART Charities, now headed by Joyce Briggs. He succeeded the
late Roger Caras at the ASPCA in 1999.

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OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Margaret Wentworth Owings,
85, died on January 21 at Wild Bird, her
clifftop home in Big Sur, California, soon
after publication of her collected writings and
art, Voice From The Sea: Reflections on
Wildlife and Wilderness. Remembered by
Mack Lundstrom of the San Jose Mercury-
News as “the most influential woman in the
California environmental movement,”
Owings was “a protector of wildlife from the
day in 1957 when she watched with her
binoculars as a rifleman killed a Stellar sea
lion near her home. For the next 40 years,”
Lundstrom wrote, “she pushed for laws to
stop a proposal to slaughter 75% of the
California seal lion population.” Pushed by
the fishing industry, the proposal survives in
altered form as the National Marine Fisheries
Service recommendation of February 1999
that the Marine Mammal Protection Act
should be amended to allow the killing of sea
lions and seals who interfere with fishing,
invade marinas, or threaten salmon runs.
Owings cofounded the Rachel Carson
Council in 1965, founded Friends of the Sea
Otter in 1968, was founding president of the
Mountain Lion Foundation, and also held
board posts with the Save-the-Redwoods
League, the Big Sur Land Trust, Defenders
of Wildlife, the African Wildlife Foundation,
the Point Lobos League, and the Environmental
Defense Fund. Without Owings,
said Big Sur Land Trust executive director
Zad Leavy, “the California sea otter might
well be extinct.”

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