New drug dart for deer

January 1, 2001 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

LONDON–Harmlessly tranquilizing or innoculating animals from many times the range of previous syringe guns, the new-design high-speed Ecodart will at last make practicable the administration of contraceptive drugs to deer, says inventor and deer management consultant Richard Price.

Conventional syringe darts land with such penetration force that they cannot be safely fired at a speed of more than 80 yards per second, Price recently told Daily Telegraph science correspondent David Derbyshire. That limits the delivery range to under 30 yards, with no crosswind–closer than deer can usually be approached.

The Ecodart flies at more than 1,500 feet per second. Made from carbon-bonded glass, the nose cone shatters on impact, releasing a gas bag which inflates to the size of a grapefruit, preventing deep penetration while propelling the drug dose into the animal.

Price unveiled the Ecodart two weeks before Humane Society of the U.S. researcher Alan Rutberg and Morris County, New Jersey, cancelled a three-year-old deer contraception study at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum. They had managed to dart only 14 deer in 1997. Just two were later relocated for examination.

A similar study underway at Irondequoit Park in Syracuse darted 65 deer, 1997-1999, but doing the job took researcher
William F. Porter and team 3,000 hours.

Tapping the wells of kindness in China and southern Asia

January 1, 2001 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2001:

HONG KONG; PAN YU, Guangzhou, China; SEOUL, South Korea; KARACHI, Pakistan–Two burly Asiatic moon bears at a time lick strawberry jam from the hands of Jill Robinson, 42, at the prototype Animals Asia Foundation sanctuary in Pan Yu, China. Four more bright-eyed bears watch, as eager for their treat as any dog, yet with patience too. Another bear, the oldest, is blind. He follows with his nose each handful of jam, each apple, each grape, and each blueberry that Robinson dispenses. Only scars in the bears’ abdomens reveal their past.

Robinson met these bears in 1993 at a so-called “bile farm” behind a decrepit hospital in Hui Zhou, almost immobilized in small cages. There were 13 bears then. Metal shunts resembling those driven into trees to extract maple syrup were implanted in each bear’s belly, to collect bile. The bile, with medicinal qualities akin to corticosteroids, was used to make a variety of traditional drugs.

“It was absolutely devastating, almost unbelievable that sentient creatures were kept in such a way,” Robinson told
Australian reporter Lyn White. “The bears had scars along the length of their bodies from the pressure of the bars on the cages. They had ulcerated paws, ingrown claws, wounds from banging their heads against the bars, and gaping implant sites–inflamed and infected.”

The bears were crazed to the point of being deadly dangerous, and their keeper teated them brutally, to maintain dominance. Robinson became inflamed and infected with determination to get them out of there. But China at the time had 10,000 bears in similar cages with catheters poked into their stomachs, with plans to quadruple production by 2000.

Apartheid and three caracal kittens

December 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

by Chris Mercer & Beverly Pervan

Our Kalahari Raptor Centre is the only registered wildlife rehabilitation centre in the Northern Cape province of South Africa–– almost a third of the country.

On October 14, 2000, we advised the department of Nature Conservation of the Northern Cape Province in Kimberley that:

“Further to our previous application for permits to provide sanctuary to predators, we were called by a farmer who stated that he had captured three young caracals after trap – ping and killing their mother. I drove more than a thousand kilometres round-trip to fetch them. One of the three had a foreleg broken so severely as to require amputation.

TANZANIA IS HUB OF BABOON TRAFFIC

December 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

ARUSHA, Tanzania– – Growing
global concern about the decline of primates in
the wild and the possibility of more stringent
regulation of primate exports has coincided
with a flurry of primate sales to laboratories by
African and Asian dealers whom some sources
liken to bar patrons rushing to grab one last
drink “for the road” at closing time.
One apparent hub of the traffic,
especially in wild-trapped baboons, is Arusha,
Tanzania, located near the Kenya border with
paved road access to international airports at
Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya, as well as
the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam.

New gorilla family ready to visit in Uganda

November 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment