Hunting

January 1, 1995 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

An unidentified American, two Germans, and a South

African safari guide waited in Tanzania on December 15 until the old-

est bull elephant in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park and three male

companions wandered over the border, then blew them away point-

blank from a jeep. Often photographed by tourists, all four elephants

were virtually tame. The eldest, dubbed R.G.B., was 47 years old,

and had been studied by researcher Cynthia Moss since 1976. As the

killing was legal, the American will be allowed to import his trophies.

Showing similar hunting skill, John Joyce, 53, and Robert

Gerber, 70, of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, were arrested on

November 24 in connection with the baiting, trapping, and jacklight-

ing of a 494-pound bear out of season. They were caught trying to fig-

ure out how to remove the carcass from a heap of doughnuts.

Bear farm phase-out

January 1, 1995 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

HONG KONG––Conceding that

bear-farming boosts demand for bear prod-

ucts and therefore encourages bear poach-

ing, the China Wildlife Conservation

Association, a branch of the Chinese

Ministry of Forestry, has signed an agree-

ment with the World Society for the

Protection of Animals, the Hong Kong

environmental group Earthcare, and the

International Fund for Animal Welfare to

cut bear farm production by a third within

three years; ensure no new cubs are put into

restrictive cages or tapped for their bile,

which many Chinese believe has medicinal

value; research and promote medically

approved alternatives to bear bile, including

herbal remedies; close down unlicensed

ZOONOSIS UPDATE

January 1, 1995 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Rabies roundup

Because continued funding for an

experimental raccoon rabies oral vaccina-

tion program begun last spring hasn’t been

approved on schedule by the Massachusetts

legislature, the Tufts University School of

Veterinary Medicine may be obliged to lay off

project coordinator Allyson Robbins on

December 31, dean Franklin Loew told ANI-

MAL PEOPLE on December 23. It also

won’t be able to order the vaccination baits in

time to be sure of having them on hand at the

optimum time to use them, when mothers

come out of their dens with newly ambulatory

babies. The initial oral vaccination budget

came from a dormant Food and Agriculture

Department fund set up to fight equine

encephalitis. However, while the vaccination

work was underway, trying to keep raccoon

rabies off Cape Cod as a demonstration of its

effectiveness, equine encephalitis reappeared

in Massachusetts, and the Food and

Woofs and Growls

January 1, 1995 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Greenpeace and the Doris Day Animal League are

among the major clients of Electronic Banking System Inc., target

of a December 1 Wall Street Journal expose as an especially notori-

ous example of an “electronic sweatshop,” a term coined by inves-

tigative writer Barbara Garson in a book by that title, indicating low

wage work under intensive electronic supervision. EBS recently

settled several complaints filed by the National Labor Relations

Board pertaining to alleged union-busting.

Can Wild Animal Orphanage be brought up to par?

January 1, 1995 Archivist 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.

BOOKS: True scary elephant tales

January 1, 1995 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

Animals In Peril: How “Sustainable Use” Is

Wiping Out The World’s Wildlife, by John A.

Hoyt, Avery Publishing Group (distributed by Humane

Society International, 2100 L St., Washington, DC

20037), 257 pages, $10.95 paperback.

Everything You Should Know About

Elephants, by The Performing Animal Welfare

Society (POB 849, Galt, CA 95632), 32 pages,

paperback, donation requested.

Time was when the only scary elephant tales

involved Winnie the Pooh’s heffalumps and the moonshine

nightmares of Timothy Mouse and Dumbo. That was before

“sustainable use” theory ran amok across Africa, helping

stoke the poaching boom of the 1980s, while abuse of captive

elephants came to light with sickening frequency.

She began with a bobcat

January 1, 1995 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1995:

BOERNE, Texas––Association of Sanctuaries president-

elect Lynn Cuny started Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in 1977

incorporating one year later. She knew from childhood that she wanted

to work with animals. “My brother worked at the zoo and I couldn’t

wait to be old enough to follow him into zoo work,” she

remembers––but that was the steel-and-concrete era, when zoos were

more like dungeons than natural habitat. “When I got there,” she con-

tinues, “it broke my heart. I decided to found an organization that

would serve the needs of wild animals in free-roaming and captive situ-

ations, because there was simply no assistance available for such ani-

mals” when they became sick or injured.

Cuny began by distributing business cards “to any individual

or agency that might come in contact with any animals in need of help.

The very first call was from a woman who had seen a skunk with a

mayonaise jar stuck on his head, stumbling through a neighborhood on

the far northeast side of San Antonio. A well-placed nail with a tap

from a hammer, and the little guy was free.”

ANIMAL HEALTH

December 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

India on November 4 declared itself free of

plague, two months after a bubonic plague outbreak hit the

Beed district of Maharashtra state while pneumonic plague

broke out in the city of Surat. The last Beed case was

reported on October 2; the last Surat case was diagnosed

three weeks later. A bubonic plague outbreak possibly

related to the one in Beed raged on in Matabeleland

province, Zimbabwe, killing 21 people and afflicting more

than 200 by November 10. Dr. Lalit Dar and staff at the

India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi meanwhile

questioned whether the diseases in question really were

plague in a letter to The Lancet, a prestigious British med-

ical journal. They noted that while most of the victims had

plague-like symptoms, only 272 out of 6,000 reported cases

were unequivocally identified, and the death toll was unex-

pectedly low. “Even within families more than one case

was uncommon,” they wrote. “The diagnosis of plague

should definitely be confirmed by culture. Conditions that

need to be excluded are viral infections such as hantavirus

pulmonary syndrome, meliodisis and leptospirosis.” The

latter three diseases, like plague, are often spread by infect-

ed rodents and tend to follow flooding, which hit western

India just before the first plague cases occurred.

Dirty pool: (Part II of a two-part investigative series)

December 1, 1994 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1994:

VANCOUVER, KANSAS CITY,

CHICAGO––Propaganda wins converts to

causes by reducing issues to good against evil,

forcing observers to take sides. Propaganda is

among the most effective tools of warfare;

but like warfare itself, it exacts a high price

from those who use it. Much as the dead

from either side don’t “win” a war, propagan-

dists for any cause often find themselves

obliged to wage wars they can’t afford simply

because they chose to use exaggerated

rhetoric in trying to win a simple reform. The

nature of propaganda is that in making broad

accusations of bad faith by the opponent, it

cuts off communication, making enmity out

of disagreement and mendacity out of misun-

derstanding.

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