Weaning zoos from elephants

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

BANGALORE, NAIROBI, SALT LAKE CITY, CHICAGO, DETROIT,
SAN FRANCISCO– “In a jumbo victory for Bangalore animal activists,
Lord Ganesha has showered his benediction on Veda, a 6-year-old baby
elephant at the Bannerghatta Biological Park in Karnataka, India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided that Veda will not be sent
as a diplomatic gift to the Yerevan Zoo in Armenia,” announced
Compassion Unlimited Plus Action founder Suparna Ganguly on April 29.
“Karnataka State got their official letter today from the
prime minister’s office that the decision to send the baby elephant
has been cancelled,” Ganguly elaborated to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We had a
Thanksgiving with the elephants at Bannerghatta.”
Confirmed Govind D. Belgaumkar of The Hindu,
“Bangaloreans–schoolchildren and parents, as well as other animal
lovers–on Friday celebrated the government decision to leave Veda
with her mother Vanita, grandmother Suvarna, brother Gokula, and
little sister Gowri. People distributed sweets, touched Veda, and
prayed for her long life.”
That was one week after the Nairobi newspaper The Nation
hinted that Youth for Conservation might have won a parallel struggle
to block the export of as many as 318 elephants, hippos, lions,
zebras, giraffes, gazelles, and members of about 20 other species
from Kenya to Thailand.

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What happened to the hippos?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

KAMPALA–Did anthrax kill the hippos, or was it poison?
What became of their teeth? Who was responsible?
“We have lost 287 hippos since July 2004,” Uganda Wildlife Authority
veterinary coordinator Patrick Atimnedi told fellow members of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases in March 2005.
“So far, we have lost about 11% of the hippo population.
“August 2004 was the peak of mortality,” Atimnedi continued,
“declining toward December. We were surprised with a resurgence from
January 2005.
“So far the source of infection is unclear,” Atimnedi
admitted. “[Mass] hippo mortalities have occurred in this park in
the last 50 years, usually in 10-year cycles. These, however,
would affect at most not more than 30 hippos, and were mainly
associated with drought.”
Atimnedi is certain that anthrax is the lethal agent. “All
cases are actually being investigated,” Atimnedi emphasized,
mentioning visits by foreign experts and samples sent to laboratories
outside Uganda to confirm his observations.

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Japan looks to South Korea for help in restarting commercial whaling

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

ULSAN, South Korea–Japanese whalers expect a home town edge
when the 57th meeting of the International Whaling Commission
convenes June 20-24 in Ulsan, South Korea.
The IWC meeting will start 10 days after the end of a 12-day
series of preliminary meetings on scientific issues.
“Ulsan is opening a $6-million whale museum this month on an
otherwise dilapidated wharf across from a shabby strip of whale
restaurants,” Los Angeles Times staff writer Barbara Demick reported
on May 2. On an adjacent lot, groundbreaking is expected soon on a
site for a whale research center, which is to include a processing
facility for whale meat.”
“Dozens of speciality restaurants along the waterfront of
South Korea’s self-proclaimed whale capital” sell whale meat, Demick
explained.
Retired whaler Son Nam Su, 69, told Demick that hunting and eating
whales is a cultural legacy of the Japanese occupation of Korea,
1910-1945, and that at peak the South Korean whaling fleet killed
about 1,000 whales per year.

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Sheep export protester Hahnheuser is acquitted

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

GEELONG, Australia–A Geelong County Court jury on May 6,
2005 acquitted Ralph Hahnheuser, 42, of “contaminating feed to
cause economic loss.”
Hahnheuser admitted adding shredded pork to the water and
feed given to sheep at a feedlot in Portland, South Australia, on
November 19, 2003, as he immediately afterward announced to news
media. Hahnheuser pleaded innocent by reason of having committed the
act to prevent cruelty to the sheep, who were to have been shipped
to Kuwait the next day.
Islamic dietary law forbids eating pork or having contact
with it. Hahnheuser hoped that the sheep would not be exported if
they were known to have possibly consumed pork. The shipment of
about 70,000 sheep was delayed for two weeks. Represent-atives of
two sheep exporting firms estimated that the action cost them $1.3
million (Australian funds).

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Judges rap canned hunts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

The Tennessee Court of Appeals in Nashville on May 3 upheld
the 1991 state ban on private possession of white-tailed deer. Game
ranchers first brought the law before the Tennessee Court of Appeals
in 1997, lost, and tried again with different arguments in 1999 and
2004.

District Judge Dorothy McCarter, of Helena, Montana, on
May 2, 2005 ruled that Initiative 143, which in 2000 outlawed game
farming, was not an illegal “taking” of private property. Her
verdict paralleled the February 12 reasoning of District Judge David
Rice, of Havre, in a parallel case.

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Rosebud Sioux Tribe hog factory & Israeli foie gras cases

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe has reached an out-of-court
settlement with the U.S. Department of Interior that will limit the
Sun Prairie hog farming development on the reservation to just the
two 24-barn farms that are already operating, instead of the 13 that
the Bureau of Indian Affairs authorized on behalf of the Rosebud
Sioux Tribal Council in 1998, reported David Melmer of Indian
Country Today on May 9, 2005. In addition, the existing barns may
operate for only 20 years under the current lease, not 50 years,
Melmer wrote. Approval of the settlement by U.S. District Judge
Richard Battey is anticipated. “The two existing farms have 24 barns
that produce 2,000 hogs each per year and will continue to produce a
combined 96,000 hogs per year,” summarized Melmer. “Since the hog
farm lease agreement was announced, Concerned Rosebud Area Citizens,
the Humane Farming Association, and the South Dakota Peace & Justice
Center have tried to shut the project down. In 1999 a new tribal
council began trying to stop the growth of the hog farm, and in 2003
the BIA was asked to close it. The Department of Interior withdrew
the lease; Sun Prairie fought the tribe and the federal government
to keep the hog farms open. Nearly two years ago, Battey ruled that
the lease termination did not comply with due process and found the
lease to be valid.”

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Welfare experts quit KFC posts

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Animal welfare consultants Temple Grandin of Colorado State
University and Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph, Ontario,
Canada, resigned from positions as advisors to the KFC fast food
chain during the first week of May 2005, after the parent firm, Yum
Brands, asked them to sign a confidentiality agreement that would
have required them to refer all media inquiries to the KFC corporate
headquarters. “I resigned because there is a document that I can’t
sign,” Grandin told Nichola Groom of Reuters. “I feel very strongly
that I [should be able to] talk freely to the press.” Grandin has
also advised McDonald’s, Wendy’s International, and Burger King
about animal welfare matters, but told Groom that none of them ever
asked her to sign an agreement to not speak to the press. Added
Duncan, “The way that I read it, it wouldn’t allow me to talk in
general terms about animal welfare. If someone phoned and said ‘You
are on the KFC animal welfare committee,’ I was bound to say ‘No
comment.”‘ KFC spokesperson Bonnie Warschauer said the company would
try to work out a new confidentiality agreement with Grandin and
Duncan, who have each advised KFC for about three years.

Changings of the guard at Best Friends, Alley Cat Allies, Farm Sanctuary, Toledo Zoo, et al

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Bonney Brown, founder of the Neponset Valley Humane Society
in Massachusetts in 1992, and outreach director for the Best Friends
Animal Society since 1998, has taken a similar post with Alley Cat
Allies. “Alley Cat Allies and Best Friends have always had a strong
working relationship. We look forward to future collaboration,”
Brown said. Southern Animal Foundation co-founder Paul Berry, with
Best Friends since 2001, will fill Brown’s former position.

Farm Sanctuary cofounder Lorri Bauston, who left the
organization in July 2004 and resigned from the board in March 2005,
has announced that she will open a new 26-acre sanctuary called
Peaceable Kingdom in September 2005. Contact info: 5200 Escondido
Canyon Road, Acton, CA 93510; 661-269-0986;
<info@peaceablekingdomsanctuary.org>;
<http://peaceablekingdomsanctuary.org>.

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Editorial: Lessons from finding the ivory-billed woodpecker

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

At least one ivory-billed woodpecker still inhabits the Big
Woods region of Arkansas, the world learned on April 28, 2005.
Yet, 60 years after the brightly colored big bird was believed to
have been hunted to extinction, it is almost certainly still on the
brink.
Gene Sparling, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, first saw the
officially rediscovered ivory-billed woodpecker on February 2, 2004
in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, a relatively dense and
impenetrable swamp, not far from U.S. I-40, which runs in an almost
straight line from Memphis southwest to Little Rock.
Ornithologists Tim Gallagher of Cornell University and Bobby
Harrison of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, confirmed the
Sparling sighting after accompanying him to the vicinity. David
Luneau, of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, on April 25,
2004 videotaped the ivory-billed woodpecker taking off from the trunk
of a tree.
Before announcing the find, the scientists enlisted the help
of The Nature Conservancy to purchase more habitat.

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