Animal exhibitions in the Islamic world

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Bear-baiting

“Punjab [Pakistan] authorities have stopped an illegal bear
baiting event from going ahead for the first time in twenty years,”
World Society for the Protection of Animals publicist Jonathan Owen
announced on April 8, 2005. “The event, to have climaxed a
week-long fair at Pir Mehal in March, famed for bear baiting, was
disbanded after WSPA representatives warned police and wildlife
officials. Mehmood Ahmed, Secretary of Forests & Wildlife in Sindh
state, Pakistan, on March 7 announced at a ceremony in Hyderabad
honoring staff for successful actions against bear baiting with dogs
that his department is seeking amendments to the Sindh Wildlife
Ordinance that will ban bear baiting entirely. Mehmood Ahmed thanked
WSPA for “controlling bear baiting up to 80%,” the Pakistan Times
reported. Repres-enting WSPA, Animals’ Rights in Islam author
Fakhr-I-Abbas told the gathering that while the wild bear population
of Pakistan is in jeopardy, exhibitors of dancing bears and
promoters of bear baiting hold as many as 850 bears captive. In 2002
WSPA donated to the Pakistani government a bear sanctuary at Kund
Park in the North West Frontier province that WSPA built in 2000.

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Russian circus animals killed in fire during controversial visit to India

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.”

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Spring 2005 Legislation

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

The U.S. Virgin Islands on May 5 gained an anti-cruelty law,
after five years of negotiation and passage of two bills in nine
months that were vetoed by Governor Charles W. Turnbull, who favored
weaker penalties and fewer offenses, and opposed any restrictions on
cockfighting In final form, the bill exempts cockfighting, does
not permit felony prosecution of cruelty, and eliminates jail time
for neglect.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin has thus far into 2005
signed into law bills that require animal shelters to sterilize dogs
and cats before adoption, require rabies vaccination of dogs and
cats using a three-year vaccine, and prohibit “remote control”
hunting, i.e. hunting with the hunter and prey not at the same
location.

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Oregon Humane Society New Shelter Project 2000

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Oregon Humane Society New Shelter Project 2000
Skanska USA Building
Free downloadable PDF file: <www.oregonhumane.org/shelter.htm>

To review in May 2005 a book published to commemorate the
opening of the new Oregon Humane Society shelter in June 2000 might
appear to be revisiting old news, but ANIMAL PEOPLE learned long ago
that shelters need time to age.
The Oregon Humane Society shelter in April 2005 scored 100 on
the ANIMAL PEOPLE 100-point scoring scale, explained in detail in
the June 2004 edition. Based upon how well a shelter fulfills the
“Five Freedoms” articulated by the British Farm Animal Welfare
Advisory Committee in 1967, with nine further considerations
specific to dog and cat sheltering, the ANIMAL PEOPLE scale is
designed to evaluate all types of shelter on an equal footing,
regardless of size, function, or budget.
New shelters tend to score better because they incorporate
better ideas, but the $8.3 million investment put into the Oregon
Humane Society shelter has much less to do with the perfect score
than the successful functioning of the facilities, including a
particularly effective floor plan. Many more expensive shelters fall
short, sometimes scoring only in the 70-point range, while
thoughtfully designed shelters built on a fraction of the Oregon
Humane budget have scored above 90 points. Oregon Humane handles
more than twice as many animals as any shelter previously scoring 100.

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BOOKS: The Tipping Point: How little things can make a difference

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

The Tipping Point: How little things can make a difference by
Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay Books (1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020),
2002. 280 pages, paperback. $14.95.

“Listen! My children and you shall hear
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Twas the 18th of April in ’75.
Hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and year.”

So begins William Wadsworth Longfellow’s immortal poem about
Paul Revere’s ride, and so begins this profoundly absorbing book by
Malcolm Gladwell.
At the same time that Paul Revere rode forth to “spread the
alarm, to every Middlesex village and farm, / for the country folk to
be up and to arm,” William Dawes set out to carry the same message.
Yet Dawes’ role is little remembered, whereas in Revere’s case,
“the sparks struck out by the steed in his flight / kindled a nation
to flame with its heat.”
Even less remembered is the third rider, Dr. Samuel
Prescott, who was actually the first of the three men to reach
Concord.

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Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Splash, 15, a 16-foot male orca born at Marineland Canada
in Niagara, Ontario, sold to SeaWorld in 1992, died on April 5 at
SeaWorld San Diego. Splash suffered from a series of infections and
illnesses that apparently began after he seriously scraped his face
in a 1994 collision with the side of his tank.

Dare, 6, a Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, died on March 10 at
the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue & Rehabilitation Center on
Topsail Island, North Carolina. Found as a stranded one-year-old in
Dare County in 1999, Dare was emaciated and battered from collisions
with boats. She was to be returned to the sea in September 1999 when
Hurricane Floyd hit. Volunteers fleeing the rescue center took her
home with them, but then had to flee their home as well. Flood
water contaminated Dare’s tank, and she never fully recovered.

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Human obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Frank Perdue, 84, died on March 31 at
home in Salisbury, Maryland. His father,
Arthur Perdue, started an egg farm in the year
that Frank Perdue was born. After leukosis
killed their 2,000 leghorns in the early 1940s,
they switched to raising broiler hens, began
developing factory-style protection methods, and
prospered during the World War II meat shortage.
Frank Perdue took over the $6 million a year
business in 1952. Annual revenues were up to $56
million in 1970, when Perdue introduced the
Perdue Farms brand name to supermarkets,
appearing in approximately 200 TV commercials
during the next 24 years to promote it. By 1991
Perdue Farms was the third largest poultry firm
in the U.S., worth $1.2 billion a year. In
April 1997, Animal Rights International founder
Henry Spira asked Perdue to lead the way in
reducing the suffering to poultry that results
from factory farming. After Perdue ignored
repeated requests from Spira, Spira in October

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Animal obituaries

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

Becky Louise, 14, among the last survivors of the 1991-1992
ANIMAL PEOPLE test of neuter/return feral cat control in northern
Fairfield County, Connecticut, died peacefully and unexpectedly on
March 26. She was one of two indistinguishable littermates who were
named after Alley Cat Allies cofounders Becky Robinson and Louise
Holton. As the owner of the apartment complex where the cats were
trapped did not want them returned, and they were not adoptable
because they could not be handled, Becky and Louise were among 21
cats from the neuter/ return test who were evacuated in July 1992 to
the first ANIMAL PEOPLE headquarters near Shushan, New York, along
with 10 previously rescued cats. In August 1992 a female coyote who
had lost a front paw, probably in escaping from a leghold trap, ate
nine of the feral cats, in as many days. As either Becky or Louise
was among the coyote victims, but we did not know which, the
survivor became Becky Louise. Becky Louise then moved, by her
choice, into the house from the basement with outdoor access that
had been been adapted into a habitat for the ferals. Relocated with
ANIMAL PEOPLE and all the other surviving cats in 1996 to Clinton,
Washington, Becky Louise never tamed, never groomed herself, and
required heavy sedation before her squirrel-sized mats could be
shaved off. Probably because of her poor hygiene, Becky Louise had
low status among the cats, though she was tolerated by all. Since
the death of her twin sister, Becky Louise had only one close
friend, Miriam, another shy feral whom ANIMAL PEOPLE rescued in
2003. Among the 320 cats involved in the 1991-1992 Connecticut
project, the known survivors are Sombra and Punto, kept by ANIMAL
PEOPLE webmaster Patrice Greanville, and Rosalba, Peetee, and
Sylvie, still with ANIMAL PEOPLE. There may be other survivors
among the 45 cats who were adopted out. To our awareness, the last
of the 237 cats who were returned to their habitat either died or
were tamed and adopted by mid-1995.

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Dogfighting, meth cookers, & the KKK

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

ANDERSON, S.C.–Firefighters responding to a March 20
explosion and fire at a methamphetamine still in Anderson County,
South Carolina, found 23 pit bull terriers chained to nearby trees,
along with 24 Chihuahuas and an Akita. Burn victim John Woods was
airlifted to Augusta, Georgia for emergency care. Quilla Ralph
Woods, 59, and Brenda Joyce Keaton, 51, with charged with
illegally manufacturing methadrine. Q.R. Woods “has a 15-page
criminal history dating to 1966 and is listed on the state’s sex
offender registry,” reported Charmaine Smith and Kelly Davis of the
Anderson Independent-Mail. Q.R. Woods also was charged with
possession of a firearm by a felon.
The circumstances under which the dogs were found would
appear virtually certain to bring related criminal convictions, but
prosecutors have often run into legal obstacles in pursuing charges
against suspected breeders of fighting dogs and the breeders’
spouses. The main difficulty is in proving that the breeders and
their spouses knew that the dogs were used for criminal activity.
Different judges have twice in four months thrown out
racketeering charges filed against Luther Johnson Jr., 38, of
Wetumka, Oklahoma, alleged organizer of a dogfighting ring that
police hit with a series of raids between May and July 2004.

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