Accused of involvement in elephant poaching, Thai officials raid Wildlife Friends

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  March 2012:

Accused of involvement in elephant poaching,  Thai officials raid Wildlife Friends

BANGKOK--Responding to a week of daily raids by 60 to 70 staff of the Thai National Park,  Wildlife and Plants Conservation Division,  Wildlife Friends Foundation of Thailand founder Edwin Wiek convened a February 21,  2012 press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in Bangkok to present,  Wiek said, “new facts on elephant poaching and the illegal elephant and wildlife trade.” Read more

Wildlife Heroes by Julie Scardina & Jeff Flocken

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2012:

Wildlife Heroes  by Julie Scardina & Jeff Flocken
Running Press (2300 Chestnut St., Suite 200, Philadelphia,  PA
19103),  2012.  264 pages,  paperback.  $20.00.

Wildlife Heroes co-authors Julie Scardina and Jeff Flocken
profile 40 people who do extraordinary things for animals.  Nguyen
Van Thai,  for example,  as a youth in Vietnam watched people dig up
pangolins,  a small Asian animal sometimes called a scaly ant-eater.
Prized for meat and scales believed to have medicinal value,
pangolins have become the most often poached mammals in Asia,  and
are rapidly being extirpated from much of their range.
“As I watched the juvenile climb onto the back of its mother
I was very sad,  knowing they were headed for the cooking pot,”
recalls Van Thai. Read more

Green mambas, crocs, & the risk of infection lurked

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

BANGKOK-The floodwater rising over Thailand was one problem,
and what was in it was–and remains– another.  Along with the threat
of zoonotic disease and insect plagues that accompanies most floods,
Bangkok rescuers found themselves handling more than 200 animals of
protected species,  “ranging from deer and tigers to monkeys,”
reported Apinya Wipatayotint of the Bangkok Post,  amid rumors that
“deadly green mamba snakes got loose in Nonthaburi after escaping
from a flooded house in Pak Kret.” Read more

How many tigers in private hands?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

 

How many large carnivores are in private hands in the U.S.?
There are no comprehensive lists of most species.  Guesstimates
commonly hold that there are more tigers alone,  just in Texas,  than
the 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild,  or at least more than the
1,400 tigers still in the wild in India. Read more

Other captive wildlife cases illustrate the risks

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

The release of 56 large exotic and dangerous animals from the
Muskingum County Animal Farm and subsequent killing of 48 of the
animals on October 19,  2011 was not unprecedented.
Fifteen lion/tiger hybrids called ligers were on September
21,  1995 shot by a neighboring landowner and a 50-member sheriff’s
posse after breaking out of the Ligertown Game Farm in Lava Hot
Springs,  Idaho. Read more

Many red lights flashed about Terry Thompson

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

ZANESVILLE–After Terry W. Thompson released 56 tigers, lions,  bears,  and other dangerous animals on October 19,  2011, and then shot  himself,  and after Muskingum County sheriff’s deputies shot 48 of the animals,  practically everyone agreed that  Thompson should never have had his animal collection in the first place. Read more

Congress removes restriction against USDA inspecting horsemeat slaughterhouses

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

WASHINGTON D.C.--A Congressional conference committee
scrapped House-approved language prohibiting the use of USDA funds
for horse slaughter inspections while reconciling differing House and
Senate versions of the “mini-bus” Agriculture,
Commerce/Justice/Science appropriations bill signed into law on
November 18,  2011 by U.S. President Barrack Obama. Read more

How the Zanesville animals were shot

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:
ZANESVILLE–Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz on the evening of October 18,  2011 ordered his deputies to kill 18 tigers, 17 African lions,  six black bears,  two grizzly bears,  two wolves, and a baboon because he believed that the circumstances under which they were running loose–including a failed attempt to shut some of them back in their breached cages–left no other options.

Reported Zanesville Times Recorder staff writer Hannah Sparling,  “Sam Kopchak,  64,  owns about four acres on Kopchak Road,”  next door to Terrry Thompson’s 73-acre Muskingum County Animal Farm.  Kopchak was walking his horse Red back to his barn when he noticed a group of about 30 horses on Thompson’s property acting
strange,  he said.  He looked a little closer and saw they were running from a bear.  Then, Kopchak turned around and saw a male African lion standing about 30 feet from him and Red.  The only thing separating them was a 4- or 5-foot wire fence,  he said.”

“I don’t know how I controlled myself,”  Kopchak told Sparling.  “We made a beeline toward my barn.” Read more

Ruling on Tony the truck stop tiger

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

GROSSE TETE,  Louisiana— More than 10 years of controversy
and litigation over Tony,  the resident tiger at the Tiger Truck Stop
near Interstate 10 in Grosse Tete,  Louisiana,  may be near an
end–or maybe not.  District Judge Michael Caldwell on November 3,
2011 ruled for the second time in six months,  in a case brought by
the Animal Legal Defense Fund,  that Tiger Truck Stop owner Michael
Sandlin is illegally keeping the tiger.  However,  Caldwell’s
previous ruling was reversed by a three-judge panel of the Louisiana
First Circuit Court of Appeal,  and Sandlin is expected to appeal
again. Read more

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