From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

Tina Nelson, 48, executive director of the American
Anti-Vivisection Society since 1995, died on October 19, 2005,
after fighting cancer for a year and a half. Hired by the Bucks
County SPCA after earning a biology degree from the Delaware Valley
College of Science & Agriculture, Nelson became chief cruelty
investigator, then worked as a domestic relations officer for the
Bucks County court system, program coordinator for the Great Lakes
Regional Office of the Humane Society of the U.S., and founder of
Kind Earth, a cruelty-free products store in Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, which she sold to take on the AAVS leadership. Under
Nelson, AAVS sued the USDA for excluding rats, mice, and birds
from federal Animal Welfare Act protection in 1970 by writing them
out of the definition of “animal” in the enforcement regulations.
This meant that more than 95% of all animals used in U.S.
laboratories have no coverage. In September 2000 the USDA agreed to
protect rats, mice, and birds in an out-of-court settlement. The
USDA then delayed implementing the settlement. In May 2002 former
Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) attached a rider to a USDA
budget bill that made the exclusion of rats, mice, and birds from
the enforcement regulations an actual part of the law.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

José, a four-month old blackfooted
ferret who was raised at the Cheyenne Mountain
Zoo and released into the wild near Wolf Creek,
Colorado in late October 2005, was killed by a
coyote or badger just three days later. “We
found only his radio transmitter, and it was all
chewed up,” Bureau of Land Management biologist
Brian Holmes told Dave Philipps of the Colorado
Springs Gazette. Philipps learned that the
survival rate for reintroduced blackfooted
ferrets ranges from one in 10 in Colorado to one
in 30 in New Mexico. Two other ferrets released
at the same time as José are also deceased, but
details of their fate were not disclosed.

Eastern Racer Snake #039, 15, was
killed by a truck during the first week of
November 2005 in Windham County, Vermont.
“Long, black and sinuous, #039 belonged to the
rarest snake species in Vermont, where only
seven other Eastern racers have been found.,”
wrote Candance Page of the Burlington Free Press.
“Herpetologist Jim Andrews captured and tagged
him in 2004 as part of the rediscovery of a
species once thought extinct in Vermont. #039
achieved minor celebrity last month,” Page
added, “when he was returned to his home after a
Herculean effort by humans to save his life after
he was found on July 14 on Interstate 91 with a
broken jaw, badly injured eye and cuts and
bruises. Volunteers fed him through a tube.
State transportation officials used his October 5
release to tout their efforts to improve wildlife
habitat near highways.”

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