Letters [March 2006]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Hoarding cases

In declining to hear the Jenny Jones hoarding case [as
described in “U.S. Supreme Court endorses seizure of hoarded
animals,” March 2006], the Supreme Court did not uphold the right
of humane societies and animal control agencies to seize animals from
alleged hoarders and charge convicted hoarders for their care. It
did not uphold anything. The Court simply refused to hear the case,
as it refuses to hear all but a small percentage of cases brought to
it.
–Steve Wise
Boston, Massachusetts
<WiseBoston@aol.com>

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BLM asks beef ranchers to buy wild horses

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

WASHINGTON D.C.–Bureau of Land Management director Kathleen
Clarke and Public Lands Council president Mike Byrne on February 21,
2006 sent letters to more than 15,000 holders of BLM grazing permits,
asking them to buy some of the 7,000 wild horses and burros whom the
BLM was directed to sell “without limitation” by a stealth rider
slipped through Congress in November 2004.
Equine advocates decried the letter as a proposed “final
solution” for wild horses and burros.
“Any excess animal or the remains of an excess animal shall
be sold, if the excess animal is more than 10 years of age or the
excess animal has been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least
three times,” stipulated the rider, introduced by Senator Conrad
Burns (R-Montana).
The Public Lands Council “represents permittees who hold
leases and permits to graze livestock on the federal lands in the
West administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the United
States Forest Service. It also coordinates the federal lands
policies of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, American
Sheep Industry Association and the Association of National
Grasslands,” says the PLC letterhead.

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Drought tests Kenyan and Zimbabwean hunting policies

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

NAIROBI, HARARE–The vultures inspecting drought-parched
Kenya and Zimbabwe have counterparts in the corridors of national
capitols, watching to see whose wildlife management mode will fail
first.
Kenya, since banning sport hunting in 1977, has made
non-consumptive wildlife watching the nation’s second largest and
best known industry.
Much of the faltering Zimbabwean economy is based on trophy hunting.
The Kenyan model requires attracting large numbers of
tourists, who in good times employ thousands of hotel staff,
drivers, guides, and souvenir vendors.
The Zimbabwean model draws far fewer people, who seek much
less by way of accommodation, minimizing the need for up-front
investment in infrastructure. Yet trophy hunters spend considerably
more per person than wildlife-watchers.

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Chinese “Year of the Dog” begins with good omens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

The Year of the Dog, observed throughout the regions of Asia
sharing cultural affinity to China, has rarely been auspicious for
dogs.
1910, for example, brought famine and a rise in dog-eating
to Korea, following a Japanese invasion. In 1922 the Chinese
Communist Party declared that dogs are social parasites. The
notoriously dog-hating Mao Tse Tung became head of the Chinese
Communist Party in 1934, began his rise to national rule in 1946,
and in 1958 purged both dogs and songbirds, after the Great Leap
Forward brought famine on a globally unprecedented scale.
The 1994 Year of the Dog predictably began in Beijing with a
dog massacre. The Beijing Youth News estimated that as many as
100,000 dogs inhabited the city when the killing started. The
Beijing Evening News pretended that dogs found by the police were
taken to “an animal shelter run by the Public Security Ministry,” but
China bureau correspondent Jan Wong of the Toronto Globe & Mail
learned otherwise.
Chief dog-killer Li Wearui boasted to Wong that his team beat
to death 351 dogs in 10 days. His assistant Fei Xiaoyang preferred
strangling dogs with steel wire. The Beijing Legal Daily published a
photo of police dragging a dog to death behind a jeep.

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Ring-necked parakeets might take over London

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

LONDON–Ring-necked parakeets, brought
to Britain from India as exotic pets in Victorian
times, formed feral populations in London in the
early 20th century. They struggled through the
cold British winters for most of 100 years before
global warming changed the climate in their favor.
The United Kingdom Phenology Network,
described by Independent environmental editor
Michael McCarthy as “a massive database of the
timing of natural events, such as oak leaves
appearing, frogs sprawning, and swallows
returning,” has established that biological
spring comes to Britain three weeks earlier now
than 40 years ago.
Despite the significance of this finding
to agriculture, forestry, and species
conservation, the British government recently
cut off funding for the Phenology Network
headquarters at Monks Wood, in Cambridgeshire,
and also axed the Centre for Ecology and
Hydrology research stations at Winfrith, in
Dorset, and Banchory, near Aberdeen.

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Falcons, chickens, & avian flu

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Falconing, along with factory farming, cockfighting,
bird-shooting, wild bird trafficking, and keeping caged songbirds,
has emerged as a factor in the increasingly rapid global spread of
the deadly H5N1 avian influenza.
As the March 2006 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, 92
humans in seven nations had died from H5N1. More than 30 nations had
experienced H5N1 outbreaks since 2003, 14 of them since February 1,
2006. Hit, in chronological order, were Iraq, Nigeria,
Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Iran, Austria,
Germany, Egypt, India, France, and Hungary.
More than 200 million domestic fowl have been killed in
mostly futile efforts to contain H5N1, according to the United
Nations Food & Agriculture Organization–almost entirely because of
the persistence of practices long opposed by the humane community.
Falconing became implicated when five trained hunting birds
died from H5N1 at a veterinary clinic in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi agriculture ministry officials confiscated and killed 37
falcons who were kept at the clinic.

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Crows & parrots outwit exterminators

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

DARIEN (Ct.), SAN FRANCISCO –Crows and parrots, believed
to represent the apex of avian intelligence, evolved in an
environment favoring agility and efficiency in the lightest possible
package.
Any air war strategist could therefore predict the outcome in
conflict between the bird brains and exterminators with thoughts of
lead.
Foes of crows with shotguns, fireworks, lasers, and
recorded distress calls took the most murderous toll on crows they
could during the winter of 2005-2006, on battlefields from upstate
New York and the Philadelphia suburbs to the Rocky Mountains.
Most of the crows, however, are still there, or at least
not very far away.
Attempted parrot purges have been no more successful, even
though the entire U.S. wild parrot population is believed to be
probably about 20,000, not more than 50,000 by the highest serious
estimates. About 7,000 parrots, mostly monk parakeets and conures,
live in California, with at least 2,000 monk parakeets in Florida.
USDA Wildlife Services claimed in January that a week of
nonlethal hazing had driven all but 500 crows out of Auburn, New
York, where as many as 33,000 congregated a few weeks earlier.
Complaints about crows meanwhile erupted in Syracuse, Marcellus,
Cazenovia, and Cortland, noted Syracuse Post-Standard staff writer
John Stith.

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H5N1 may halt European movement to free-range poultry-raising

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

LONDON–The Tower of London ravens will be indoor cage birds
until the H5N1 crisis subsides, says raven keeper Derrick Coyle.
Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, the
British monarchy will fall–and keeping the ravens indoors sets an
example for poultry farmers.
Just as animal welfare concerns made “free range” a household
phrase and free range poultry growing began to take market share from
intensive confinement, H5N1 might kill the whole concept.
“In the protection zone,” to be established around all H5N1
outbreaks within the European Union, the European Commission decreed
on February 12, 2006, “poultry must be kept indoors.”
Agreed United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization senior
officer of animal production and health Juan Lubroth, “People need
to ensure that poultry are roofed-in to avoid contact with wild
birds, and should not mix chickens with other species, such as
ducks,” since H5N1 is most likely to mutate into forms that can
easily spread when it has the opportunity to move from one species to
another.

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Hong Kong tries again

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2006:

Hong Kong banned keeping chickens and ducks as pets,
effective on February 20, 2006, after H5N1 was confirmed in 10 wild
birds of four different species.
Hong Kong tried to ban and cull other bird species kept as
pets when H5N1 first appeared in 1996, killing six residents, but
many people released their pets rather than allowing them to be
killed–which might have spread the disease if any of the pet birds
had been infected.
Doing door-to-door inspections, the Hong Kong Agriculture,
Fisheries and Conservation Department found 42 illegal bird-keepers
with 180 chickens and 57 other fowl in their possession, among the
first 43,600 households visited. They also found 1,000
chickens at an illegal slaughterhouse.
The Hong Kong Health, Welfare, & Food Bureau asked the
Legislative Council to ban live poultry sales by 2009, a goal the
bureau has pursued for more than 10 years. Under a permit buy-back
plan introduced in 2004, 272 of 814 live chicken vendors and 30 of
200 Hong Kong chicken growers have gone out of business, the bureau
said.

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