A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Kids Making a Difference for Animals
by Nancy Furstinger & Sheryl L. Pipe
John Wiley (111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030), 2009.
(Order c/o <www.aspcaonlinestore.com>.)
84 pages, hardcover. $12.99.
Kids Making a Difference for Animals is inspirational,
heartwarming, and reduced me to tears, sharing examples of children
and teens committed to improving life for animals, both domestic and
wild.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Rue McClanahan, 76, died of a stroke on June 3, 2010 in
Manhattan. Born and educated in Oklahoma, McClanahan relocated to
New York City and landed her first off-Broadway stage role in 1957.
Television producer Norman Lear cast her in episodes of All In The
Family (1971) and Maude (1972), and she also performed in the
1982-1984 series Mama’s Family before rising to stardom in Golden
Girls (1985-1992.) McClanahan debuted as a PETA spokesperson against
fur in 1988, began promoting cruelty-free cosmetics in 1989, and
spoke out against abuse of animals in show business in 1990. As each
issue led to another, McClanahan became spokesperson for the Farm
Sanctuary legacy program in 1996, and went on to many other
prominent roles in activism, including lecturing Democratic
presidential nominee John Kerry for shooting pheasant in a 2003
photo-op and petitioning President George W. Bush to allow animal
rescuers into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Arrell, 24, a black-maned African lion (above), was
euthanized due to incurable painful conditions of age on May 21,
2010 at the Primarily Primates sanctuary near San Antonio, Texas.
Like many black-maned lions in the U.S., who may be descended from
Barbary lions imported from Egypt and Ethiopia in the early 20th
century, Arrell originally belonged to a circus. The circus left
him with a veterinarian to be declawed and have a canine tooth
removed, but never reclaimed him. Arrell and a Siberian tiger were
sold to an exotic pet keeper, who in 1993 retired both cats to the
Buffalo Roam Wildlife Sanctuary, operated by Judy Savage near
Seguin, Texas. Arrell was transferred to Primarily Primates in
2003. Savage closed Buffalo Roam in March 2005, after a two-year
effort to find new homes for the animals.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
MADRID–Sharon Nunez, founder of the
less-than-five-year-old organization Animal
Equality, on May 19, 2010 disclosed that 70
Animal Equality volunteers between August 2007
and May 2010 “physically entered a total of 172
pig farms in 11 regions of Spain,” documenting
their findings with 200 hours of video and 25,000
still photos.
Nunez released 50 minutes of the video and 2,600 photos.
“This intensive work comprises the
largest investigation into animal exploitation so
far carried out in Spain,” Nunez said.
In actuality the Animal Equality
investigation was larger by itself than all
previous undercover probes of farms and
slaughterhouses combined, worldwide.
The Animal Equality volunteers “recorded,
amongst other events, how workers routinely kill
pigs by slamming them against the floor,” Nunez
said, or “how pigs are hit, kicked or have
fingers thrust into their eyes to force them to
stand or walk,” and witnessed “countless scenes
of cannibalism–as much on organic or
‘free-range’ farms as on factory farms.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
LOS ANGELES–Brenda Barnette, most recently chief executive
officer of the Seattle Humane Society, was introduced on June 17,
2010 by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as the sixth director
of Los Angeles Animal Services since 2000.
Barnette was hired after a year-long search to find a
successor to Ed Boks, who resigned in April 2009 after just under
four years in Los Angeles. Boks’ immediate predecessor, Guerdon
Stuckey, was fired by Villaraigosa after just 13 tumultuous months
on the job, only days after Villaraigosa took office. Stuckey had
succeeded Jerry Greenwalt, who retired under intense pressure from
activist factions. Greenwalt had taken over from the late Dan Knapp
after Knapp finished his tenure on a prolonged sick leave attributed
to stress.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
LONDON–“Save the Rhino, the British
charity set up to protect one of the world’s most
endangered animals, is endorsing shooting them
for fun and is directly profiting from trophy
hunts of other species,” revealed Daniel Foggo
of the London Sunday Times on May 30, 2010.
Foggo said he had learned from Save the
Rhino fundraising manager Lucy Boddam-Whetham
that, as Foggo summarized, “The charity formed
its view on trophy hunting after being approached
by Safari Club International with offers of money
in 2006. Since then the Safari Club has donated
sums of between £6,000 and £10,000 a year.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
CASPER, PHILADELPHIA– Seeming to be in two distant places
at the same time, Showing Animals Respect & Kindness (SHARK) founder
Steve Hindi on June 17, 2010 pressed a criminal case against the
Philadelphia Gun Club in Bensalem, Pennsyl-vania, for alleged
cruelty to a pigeon during a February 2010 pigeon shoot, and posted
video clips to YouTube showing bucking horses being shocked that very
day at the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, Wyoming.
Both Hindi’s case against the Philadelphia Gun Club and the
College National Finals rodeo video received extensive local news
coverage–and upstaged his unveiling, two days earlier, of a drone
helicopter capable of documenting events such as pigeon shoots and
rodeos that exclude cameras from the spectator areas. (See page 12.)
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
Save The Elephants founder Iain Douglas-Hamilton is to
receive the $100,000 Indianapolis Prize and accompanying Lilly Medal
on September 25, 2010. The awards are presented by Cummins Inc.,
maker of diesel engines. The 2009 winner was longtime Wildlife
Conservation Society field biologist George Schaller.
“Four decades ago,” recalled the award announcement,
“Douglas-Hamilton pioneered scientific study of elephant social
behavior. He led emergency anti-poaching efforts in Uganda to bring
the elephant population there from the brink of extinction. In
September 2009, Douglas-Hamilton worked to rescue a rare herd of
desert elephants in northern Kenya and Mali, threatened by one of
the worst droughts in nearly a dozen years. In the spring of 2010, a
devastating flood destroyed the Save the Elephants camp
in Kenya including staff tents, computers, and years of field
research notes. With a team of local researchers, the camp is now
being rebuilt.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2010:
KUALA LUMPUR, DELHI– Protesting a variant on the chemical
and pharamceutical industry practice of outsourcing animal testing to
developing nations with lax regulation, “Animal lovers, activists,
a senator, and Miss Malaysia/World 2009/2010 Thanuja Ananthan were
among those who gathered in front of the Indian High Commission” in
Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysia capital city, on June 10, 2010 “to
protest a plan by Vivo Bio Tech to build an animal testing laboratory
in Malacca,” the Star of Malaysia reported.
Leading the demonstration were the SPCA Selangor, Sahabat
Alam Malaysia, which represents the international organization
Friends of the Earth in Malaysia, PETA/Malaysia, and
representatives of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
and the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments.