Carriage horse rescues in the old city

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

A week after the New Orleans levies broke, the Lamar-Dixon
Expo Center and 4-H Center in Gonzales, 45 miles north, held more
then 220 horses and mules, many of them evacuated from carriage
stables.
Equine and Bovine Magazine managing editor Rebecca Gimenez
reported rescuing 63 horses from three feet of water that filled two
barns in Kenner, near the New Orleans airport, but the most
dramatic equine rescue was of 22 horses and mules kept by Mid-City
Carriages. Stranded for a week after the city flooded, the animals
were attended by stable hands Darnell Stewart, Fabien Redmund, and
Lucien Mitchell Jr., who volunteered to stay with them. The three
men led the horses and mules to high ground at Leimann Park, slept
in shifts to fend off would-be horse thieves, and at last assisted
in evacuating them all on September 7.
One horse died earlier at the Mid-City Carriages stable, and
two others died later while receiving emergency care at Louisiana
State University.

News from the Islamic world war zones

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

The World Wildlife Fund, which usually supports trophy
hunting as a conservation strategy, is opposing a scheme advanced by
Mumtaz Malik, chief conservator of Northwestern Frontier Province,
Pakistan, to introduce trophy hunting for leopards. Officially,
about 40 snow leopards survive in Pakistan, but hunters and herders
claim there are 150-250. Two were shot in June after one snow
leopard allegedly killed six women in two weeks by pouncing down on
them from trees as they gathered firewood near Abbottabad. Malik
claims to have saved markhor mountain goats, a prey species for snow
leopards, by introducing markhor trophy hunting.

Thirty-five small herds totaling 155 markor, a mountain goat
standing six feet tall at the shoulder, have recently been
rediscovered near the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, India, from
Pakistan. “As recently as 1970 there were 25,000 on the Indian
side,” reported Justin Huggler, Delhi correspondent for The
Independent, “but by 1997 they had been poached to near extinction,”
as troops and guerillas often turned their guns from fighting over
the boundary to profiteering on the sale of the markors’ spectacular
spiral horns.

BOOKS: One Small Step: America’s First Primates in Space

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

One Small Step: America’s First Primates in Space
by David Cassidy & Patrick Hughes
Penguin Group (375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014), 2005.
135 pages, paperback plus DVD documentary. $19.95.

One Small Step presents the history of
the early U.S. space program, focusing on the
“chimponauts,” who preceded humans into orbit.
Then-U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower had one
question, according to David Cassidy and Patrick
Hughes: “If I put humans in space, are they
going to die? Will their hearts stop beating?
Will their blood stop flowing? Or will they be
so sick that they just can’t do anything?”
Video documentarian Cassidy’s
investigation, turned into a book by Hughes,
reveals not only how many animals were sacrificed
in the cause of space exploration, but also how
carefully their suffering was concealed from the
public. Chimpanzees grimacing in agony were
depicted by the Air Force-compliant media as
“smiling with enjoyment.”

Greyhound racing in New England staggers after two big tracks shut down

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

PLAINFIELD, Ct., BELMONT, N.H.–The last big bet on
greyhound racing in New England may be whether it survives at all,
after two of the five top tracks in the region closed within two
weeks of each other in April and May 2005.
The Plainfield Greyhound Park in Plainfield, Connecticut,
opened in 1976, closed at least temporarily on May 14, after
rushing through the 100 racing days it had to offer in 2005 to keep a
gambling license.
New England Raceway developer Gene Arganese, of Trumbull,
Connecticut, acquired an option to buy the dog track in 2004.
Arganese closed the track, he said, in order to proceed with a $343
million plan that would use the site for a 140,000-seat auto race
track, a convention center, a 700-room hotel, and an
800,000-square-foot shopping center.
But Arganese is hedging his bets.
“We’re hoping to have dog racing back by the end of 2006,” he said.
Susan Netboy, president of the California-based Greyhound
Protection League, touched off an Internet frenzy on April 29 when
Hartford Courant staff writer Steven Goode paraphrased her warning
that as many as 1,500 greyhounds might be homeless when the
Plainfield kennels close.

Russian circus animals killed in fire during controversial visit to India

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

MUMBAI–Seven trained Siberian huskies, seven cats, and four
sea lions belonging to the financially struggling Rosgoscirc circus
died in an April 5 fire at the Chitrakut Grounds in the Mumbai suburb
of Andheri West.
Animal Welfare Board of India representative Bhavin Gathani
alleged that the fire was an arson, but that suspicion lifted after
animal caretaker Jasmin Shah and Chitrakut Grounds manager Rajvir
Dhillon confirmed that the $200,000 insurance policy on the animals
had expired two days earlier. Dhillon attributed the blaze to a
short circuit.
Colonel J.C. Khanna of the Animal Welfare Board of India and
Mumbai PETA representative Anuradha Sawhney on February 5, 2005 won
a stay on Rogoscirc performances with a petition to the Bombay High
Court alleging that the circus was operating in violation of Indian
animal welfare laws.
In mid-March, wrote Surojit Mahalanobis of the Times of India
News Network, “The court accepted the Rosgoscirc plea that the
Indian laws for animal use in circus shows apply only to Indian
animals, and not to foreign species.”

New Hampshire greyhound execs hit by indictments

April 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

CONCORD, N.H.– Responding to a report by New Hampshire
attorney general Kelly Ayotte that a consortium called the New
Hampshire Gaming Association is unfit to hold a dog racing license,
“The Lakes Region Greyhound Park is actively seeking a buyer and upon
finding one, may surrender its racing license under a tentative deal
with the attorney general’s office even before the state Pari-Mutual
Commission conducts hearings on whether to revoke it,” Fosters Daily
Democrat staff writer John Koziol reported on March 29, 2005.
The Lakes Region Grey-hound Park has reportedly lost money recently
and laid off staff.
Former Lakes Region Greyhound Park general manager Richard
Hart and assistant general manager Jonathan Broome were among 17
people indicted in January 2005 for allegedly running a five-state
illegal betting ring based in Concord, New Hampshire that handled
$200 million in just four years. The ring allegedly operated within
an entity called the International Players Association.
The money “was laundered through various off-site betting
companies, including Euro Off-Track on the Isle of Man in the United
Kingdom,” wrote Providence Journal State House Bureau reporter
Scott Mayerowitz.

Bear rescue season follows tsunami

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

AGRA, CHENGDU–Wildlife SOS founder Kartick Satyanarayan
spent most of the first two months of 2005 often literally up to his
hips in post-tsunami swamp water and sometimes displaced salt water
crocodiles, gorged on human remains. Still, Satyanarayan did not
forget that his primary objective for the year was to rescue sloth
bears and jail the poachers who supply cubs to dancing bear trainers
and bear-baiters.
“Kartick has been madly rushing from tsunami work in the
Andaman Islands and Tamil Nadu to anti-poaching work, as this is the
peak season for bear cub poaching,” Friendicoes SECA shelter manager
Geeta Seshamani told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We have managed four raids
between all the other work and rescued nine tiny cubs and six
slightly older cubs at locations in Orissa, Karna-taka, and
Maharashtra states.”
Wildlife SOS originally partnered with Friendicoes SECA to
rescue animals from the streets of Delhi. Friendicoes SECA handles
dogs, cats, and other domestic species; Wildlife SOS responds to
calls about urban wildlife, mostly snakes and monkeys.

BOOKS: Humane Horse Care For Equine Wellness

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Humane Horse Care For Equine Wellness
by Andrew F. Fraser

280 pages, paperback. $25.00.

A Guide To Carriage Horse Care & Welfare by the Canadian Farm Animal Care Trust
46 pages, paperback, $10.00.

Both from: Canadian Farm Animal Trust
(22 Commerce Park Drive, Unit C, Suite 306, Barrie, Ontario L4N
8W8), 2003.

CANFACT founder Tom Hughes sent these two very useful manuals
exactly one year ago. I looked them over as thoroughly as I could,
then tried to find a reviewer with appropriate experience in
evaluating horses in normal working and riding condition.
Horse rescuers tend to see the worst of the worst–but the
purpose of these manuals appears to be to enable a humane inspector
to recognize potential problems long before they develop, so as to
put in a few words of preventive advice.

Elephants and trained street dogs are heroes of the tsunami in Thailand

January 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

KHAO LAK, Thailand–Elephants, the totems of Buddhism and
Thailand, were among the heroes of both the December 26 tsunami and
the aftermath.
“After the tsunami, reports circulated that elephants became
superheroes, snatching up people with their trunks and pulling them
from harm’s way,” wrote Denver Post correspondent Jeremy Meyer.
“The owners of eight elephants who live in a tourist camp
near one of the worst- hit areas on Thailand’s southwestern coast say
they witnessed no pachyderm heroics,” Meyer continued, “but Chain
Usak Jongkrit,” one of their mahouts, “believes they may have tried
to warn people of the impending disaster.
“Early in the morning they started making an unusual sound,”
Jongkrit told Meyer through an interpreter.
“Five minutes before the tsunami hit,” Meyer wrote, “the
elephants, secured by chains around their front ankles, began
screaming again. One broke free and ran uphill. Another also
bolted, carrying tourists.”
“If the elephants didn’t react to the tsunami, more people
would have died,” Jongkrit said. “People saw them running and knew
something was wrong.”

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