Bill introduced to halt wild horse slaughter; horse lovers rally

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C., RENO– U.S. Representatives Nick J. Rahall
(D-West Virginia) and Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) on January 25
introduced a bill to restore to wild equines the full protection
extended by the 1971 Wild & Free-Roaming Horse & Burro Protection Act.
The Rahall/Whitfield bill, HR-297, would repeal a stealth
rider attached by Senator Conrad Burns (R-Montana), to the
Consolidated Appropriations Act passed by Congress on November 18,
2004.
“If allowed to stand, the Burns provision will lead to the
slaughter of thousands of wild horses for human consumption abroad,”
summarized American Horse Defense Fund attorney Trina Bellak.
An impromptu demonstration of the symbolic significance of
wild horses to the American public came on January 21 at Damante
Ranch High School in Nevada.
Fearing that the Nevada Department of Agriculture was
rounding up mustangs to sell to slaughter, 30 to 40 students left
their classes, marched to the temporary corral in two separate
groups, so that if one group was intercepted the other might get
through, and released about a dozen horses who had already been
captured with hay as bait.

Video law holds up in first test against animal fighter

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

PITTSBURGH–Reaching a unanimous verdict in only 45 minutes,
a federal jury on January 13, 2005 convicted video distributor
Robert Stevens of three counts of selling depictions of illegal
cruelty to animals across state lines.
The case was the first court test of 1999 legislation
introduced by Representative Elton Gallegly (R-California).
U.S. Senior District Judge Alan N. Bloch rejected federal
public defender Michael Novara’s contentions that the law violated
Stevens’ First Amendment right to freedom of expression, and that it
was misapplied because the law was introduced to address “wanton
cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.”
The law prohibits the interstate distribution of videos or
films depicting illegal cruelty to animals, if they are without
“serious religious, political, scientific, educational,
journalistic, historical, or art value.”
Stevens, 64, of Pittsville, Virginia, in 2003 sold two
videotapes of dogfights and one video of a “hog/dog rodeo” to
investigators for the Pennsylvania State Police and USDA Office of
the Inspector General. Stevens advertised the videos for sale in the
Sporting Dog Journal, whose publisher James Fricchione, 34, was
convicted in March 2004 of six felonies and five misdemeanors for
allegedly promoting dogfights.

Python was the first animal hero in Sumatra

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

MEDAN, Sumatra, Indonesia– Among the dogs, elephants,
and other species who saved humans from the Indian Ocean tsunami on
December 26, 2004, the most surprising story may have been that of
the python who pulled a 26-year-old clothing vendor named Riza and a
neighbor’s nine-year-old twin daughters to safety near Bandar Blang
Bintang, Indonesia.
The Indonesian state news agency Antara reported on December
30 that, “Riza at about 8 a.m. was enjoying the holiday in bed when
suddenly she saw walls of water, mud, rocks and branches rushing
into the neighborhood. People were screaming and running. Riza,
living in a rented house near the coast in Banda Aceh with three
friends, dashed up to the second floor of a neighbor’s house and
stood on top of a cupboard.
“But as she told Antara from a makeshift shelter, the current swept
her and her friends off their perch. As Riza drifted, she saw the
two girls and their mother.”
All three were badly injured.

Tsunami destruction of fishing fleet brings respite for sea turtles

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

VISAKHAPATNAM, VELANKANNI, PHUKET–The Indian Ocean sea
turtle nesting season had just begun when the tsunami hit on December
26, 2004.
“I was awake by five a.m.,” Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep
Kumar Nath told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Every morning during the nesting season Nath organizes
volunteer foot patrols to find and protect sea turtle nests along the
beaches of Visakhapatnam, India. The volunteers try to spot the
turtles as they come ashore, keep crowds away, and ensure that the
nests are properly buried, to avert predation by street dogs,
jungle cats, jackals, and foxes. “I have witnessed such incidents
since we began our turtle protection program,” Nath said. “The
dogs eat quite fast.”
On December 26, Nath recalled, “Our
poacher-turned-volunteer saw a sea turtle laying eggs, while another
turtle returned to the sea without laying, he informed me around
8.30 a.m.” It was a quiet morning. Done at the beach, the Visakha
SPCA team departed–just in time.

Soi Dog Foundation anchors Thai tsunami animal relief effort

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

PHUKET, Thailand–“We are okay,” Soi
Dog Foundation president Margot Park e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE on December 26, soon after the
tsunami, “but the devastation is indescribable.
Three Norwegians, including a baby, three
Russians, and a German are stranded at our house
with seven more Norwegians on their way. Many
dogs have lost their homes and more will be
dumped as people flee.
“My extremely good friend Leone Cosens
has been found dead,” Park added. (See
Obituaries, page 22.)
The Phuket Animal Welfare Society,
founded by Cosens in 1992, lost countless local
volunteers. Almost a month later the PAWS web
site still said nothing of the tsunami; there
was apparently no one to update it.
“If anyone travels to Phuket,” Park
asked, “he/she could perhaps bring some things
such as long-acting antibiotics, Iver-mectin to
treat mange, and suture materials for
sterilization surgery. But our most immediate
need,” Park stipulated, “is funds to buy dog and
cat food. Many dogs and cats perished, but
those who survived have lost their food sources
and cannot find fresh drinking water.”

Wildlife fared better in Sri Lanka than Thailand

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Like the wildlife of India, Sri Lankan wildlife mostly
seemed to have sufficient warning to escape the tsunami–but the
wildlife of Thailand, hours closer to the earthquake that detonated
it, fared far worse.
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society president Ravi Corea
inspected Yala National Park soon after the tsunami.
“There were reports that elephants fled the coast just before
the tsunami hit. We saw no dead animals except for two feral water
buffalo,” Corea e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We saw large herds of
axis deer, a male elephant, many peacocks, wild boar, black-naped
hare, two species of mongoose, and a pack of five jackals,” Corea
recounted.
However, Corea saw longterm threats to Sri Lankan wildlife
in the extensive damage to vegetation and fresh water sources.
“It is important to assess how salt water is affecting the
life in lakes and will affect the food chain, especially for apex
feeders such as aquatic birds, fish-eating mammals, and reptiles,”
Corea said. “Such study might help us to understand how global
warming and a resulting rise in sea level might affect inland coastal
areas.”

Elephants and trained street dogs are heroes of the tsunami in Thailand

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

KHAO LAK, Thailand–Elephants, the totems of Buddhism and
Thailand, were among the heroes of both the December 26 tsunami and
the aftermath.
“After the tsunami, reports circulated that elephants became
superheroes, snatching up people with their trunks and pulling them
from harm’s way,” wrote Denver Post correspondent Jeremy Meyer.
“The owners of eight elephants who live in a tourist camp
near one of the worst- hit areas on Thailand’s southwestern coast say
they witnessed no pachyderm heroics,” Meyer continued, “but Chain
Usak Jongkrit,” one of their mahouts, “believes they may have tried
to warn people of the impending disaster.
“Early in the morning they started making an unusual sound,”
Jongkrit told Meyer through an interpreter.
“Five minutes before the tsunami hit,” Meyer wrote, “the
elephants, secured by chains around their front ankles, began
screaming again. One broke free and ran uphill. Another also
bolted, carrying tourists.”
“If the elephants didn’t react to the tsunami, more people
would have died,” Jongkrit said. “People saw them running and knew
something was wrong.”

Tsunami & vegetarians

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

KHAO LAK–Exposure to death revived the Thai tradition of
Buddhist vegetarianism, at least among tsunami relief workers, the
newspaper Matichon reported on January 12.
“After we turned to vegetarian food and lighting jos sticks
to the spirits asking for help, the job became much easier,” Khao
Lak body recovery team leader Chatchawan Suthiarun said. “
Indicating that a vegetarian soup kitchen was among the most
popular with Khao Lak refugees, Matichon quoted a tsunami survivor
as saying that the smell of death had put her off meat.
Most Thais today eat some meat, chiefly fish and poultry,
but Thailand was for centuries –like India and Sri Lanka–a
vegetarian enclave.
While the World Conservation Union and other environmental
organizations pointed out that logging coastal mangrove swamps to
start shrimp farms had left coastal Thailand unprotected against
tsunamis, the International Vegetarian Union noted that the shrimp
farms exist to produce meat.

Letters [Jan/Feb 2005]

January 1, 2005 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Vaccine, poison

Israel is now cooperating with the
Palestinian Authority in distributing the oral
rabies vaccine in Palestinian areas, funded by
the European Union. Israel has permission to fly
planes over Palestinian territory to distribute
the vaccine. However, Israeli Veterinary
Serv-ices also sells strychnine to the
Palestinian Authority, and encourages them to
use it along the border to keep rabid dogs out of
Israel.
At long last all the steps have been
taken to get Fatal Plus into Israel, in powdered
form. The head of Veterinary Services has
repeatedly assured us that when the drug is in
stock and proves effective, he will ban
strychnine. The Veterinary Services official
responsible for distributing strychnine within
Israel told me that he hands out enough of it to
kill about 25,000 dogs per year. Municipal vets
in Jerusalem, Arad, the West Bank, and other
border areas use the most.

Letters

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