Sickness in Australia

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

SYDNEY, LONDON– – Intro-
ducing a pest to control a pest, against
much scientific and humane advice,
Australian agriculture and wildlife authorities
in mid-October released millions of calicivirus-carrying
Spanish rabbit fleas at 280
sites, expecting to kill up to 120 million of
the nation’s estimated 170 million rabbits.
The rabbits are accused of outcompeting
endangered native marsupial species
for habitat––though they also draw predation
by feral foxes and cats away from marsupials––and
of costing farmers $23 million
to $60 million a year, chiefly by eating fodder
that would otherwise go to sheep.
Calicivirus induces internal hemorrhage,
killing about 90% of the rabbits
who contract it within 30 to 40 hours. It
spreads at about 25 miles per day.

What sex has to do with it (and other amazing secrets of wildlife management revealed)

November 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1996:

REND LAKE, Illinois––A rare alliance of local hunters and anti-hunting animal
rights activists joined for the second time the weekend of September 28-29 to drive deer out of
the 1,500-acre Rend Lake Wildlife Sanctuary, west of Chicago, to keep the deer from being
killed in a special bowhunt set to start two days later.
If hunters and anti-hunters working in concert is a paradox, so is driving deer out of a
sanctuary to save them––and the action came, explained Chicago Animal Rights Coalition
founder Steve Hindi explained between deer-herding paraglider flights, because both factions
agree that wildlife management as practiced by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is
an oxymoron.
“If it’s wild, it can’t be managed. If it’s managed, it can’t be wild,” barked Hindi,
hoarse from days aloft in cold wind. “What the Illinois DNR is doing to the deer herd is agriculture.
I had a miniature video camera glued to my helmet today, to document what went on,”
he fumed. “It’s not a wildlife refuge: it’s like a farm in there. There are tons of corn and beans,
all planted in rows. They don’t have deer overpopulation; they’re trying to attract deer.”

REVIEWS: The Leopard Son

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The Leopard Son
New theatre release, from Discovery Channel Pictures (1996).

Leopards are to lions on the
Serengeti Plain of Tanzania much as coyotes
are to wolves in Yellowstone National Park:
smaller, smarter, less celebrated, and sure to
be killed if ever caught by their bigger, more
territorial kin.
Like coyotes, leopards deserve
more appreciation. Cinematographer Hugo
van Lawick has the right idea with T h e
Leopard Son, Discovery Channel Pictures’
first full-length feature film, to be released
September 27. As the maker of the awardwinning
People of the Forest: The Chimps of
Gombe, about the work of his ex-wife Jane
Goodall, van Lawick is up to the job.

Herps & alleged perps

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Third World cruelty prosecutions are almost
unheard of, and prosecutions for cruelty to reptiles are rare
everywhere, but Zimbabwe SPCA manager Merryl Harrison
vowed September 18 to bring Harare Snake Park crocodile
keeper Smart Bester to justice and save the 79-year-old male
croc who finally bit his arm off, six years after the SPCA
began receiving complaints about Bester jabbing the croc
with a stick to make him snap his jaws and lash his tail.
A three-year U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
probe of imports of endangered snakes and tortoises from
Madagascar on August 22 brought 16-count indictments
against alleged traffickers Frank Lehmeyer, Wolfgang Kloe,
Olaf Strohmann, and Roland Werner, all of Germany; Rick
Truant, of Canada; and Simon Harris, of South Africa.

Great escapes

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The future of the Long Island
Game Farm in Manorville, New York,
remains uncertain more than three months
after the June 5 escape of Barney
Chimpanzee, 19, when a caretaker left both
padlocks on the double door to the chimp’s
cage unfastened.
According to Newsday columnist
Paul Vitello, the rampaging chimp bit
owner Stanley Novak, 63, on the head and
arm, shrugged off a man who hit him with a
fence post, and charged toward a children’s
maze. Six to eight mothers, teachers, and
assistants from the LaSalle School in
Oakdale shoved more than 100 kindergartners
and first graders into the maze; assistant
teacher Sharon Goff, mother Jill Fuchs,
and a mother identified only as Mrs. Kelly
then locked arms to block the entrance.

Tales from the Cryptozoologists

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Hym Ebedes of the Onderstepoort
Veterinary Institute near Pretoria, South
Africa, on July 13 reported his discovery of
Barbary lions––a species believed to have
been extinct––at an obscure zoo in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, where their pride has apparently
lived since 1974. Descendants of the
mascots of former Ethiopian emperor Haile
Selassie, who styled himself The Lion of
Judah, the 11 males have long black manes
that sweep under their bellies. The females
resemble other African lions. “Over the past
35 years I have seen hundreds of wild lions,”
Ebedes said, “but I have never seen anything
so majestic and magnificent. The sight of a
black-maned lion pacing around his cage had
an indescribable spine-chilling effect on me.

SANCTUARIES

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Three Texas cougars who were
sent to the Jim Moore hunting ranch near
Balmorhea, Texas, after use by the Florida
Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission in
a 1993-1994 test of Florida panther habitat,
were purchased on August 10 by Sumner
and Elise Matthes of Sarasota In Defense of
Animals for $3,000 apiece, and taken with
the aid of American SPCA wildlife programs
coordinator Kathi Travers to Carol
Azvestus’ Wild Animal Orphanage on the
outskirts of San Antonio, for 120 days of
rehabilitation. The longterm goal is to return
the cougars to the wild. The Florida Game
and Fresh Water Fish Commission refused to
contribute toward the cost. Nineteen Texas
cougars were used in the experiment all told,
of whom eight were eventually sold to
canned hunts via resellers in Florida, South
Carolina, and Missouri. Moore acquired
seven, of whom another, named Waldo,
was returned to Florida earlier. Moore,
Sumner Mathis reported, “will not say what
he did with the three others.”

PRIMATES IN RESEARCH

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Jan Moor-Jankowski, MD, founder and for 30 years
director of the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery
in Primates at New York University, and Louis Dinetz, former
LEMSIP assistant director, on August 13 sued seeking $20 million
damages from NYU and the USDA for allegedly covering up
“scientific misconduct and fraud” and violating federal whistleblower
protection laws, by terminating them both last year and
turning LEMSIP over to primate dealer Frederick Coulston, after
Moor-Jankowski went public with allegations of negligent care in
the primate laboratory of NYU addiction researcher Ron Wood.
The allegations were upheld; NYU was ordered to pay a
$450,000 civil penalty for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
However, while USDA investigators reported that NYU had illegally
retaliated against Moor-Jankowski by shutting down LEMSIP,
other USDA officials rejected his administrative complaint,
forcing him to court to seek redress. Moor-Jankowski is represented
by Philp Byler, who also represented him in his landmark
1991 libel case victory over the Austrian pharmaceutical firm
Immuno AG, which had sued him for publishing a letter by
International Primate Protection League president Shirley
McGreal, in his capacity as editor of the Journal of Primatology.

Sugarloaf fight goes on

October 1, 1996 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

MIAMI, Fla.––The troubled two-year-effort to rehabilitate
and free the former Ocean Reef Club dolphins Bogie,
Bacall, and Molly, along with the former Navy dolphins
Luther, Buck, and Jake, gained addenda in September, four
months after unknown vandals freed Bogie and Bacall from the
Welcome Home Project sea pen on the Indian River Lagoon,
while dolphin freedom advocate Ric O’Barry’s release of
Luther and Buck from the Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary, in
defiance of federal permit requirements, ended with their
recapture, injured and allegedly malnourished.
On September 13, the USDA Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service assigned permanent custody of
Molly, the oldest of the dolphins, to the Dolphin Research
Center, which is also keeping Buck; Luther and Jake are back
at the U.S. Navy marine mammal center in San Diego. The
APHIS order was contested by Rick Trout of the Key Largobased
Marine Mammal Conservancy, who worked with Molly
at both the Ocean Reef Club and the Sugarloaf Dolphin
Sanctuary, and claims to have legal title to her.

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