BOOKS: Hunt Club Management Guide

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Hunt Club Management Guide
by J. Wayne Fears
Stoeger Publ. (17603 Indian Head Hwy, Suite 200, Accokeek, MD
20607), 2003. 144 pages, hardcover, $24.95.

Deer Diary
by Thomas Lee Boles
Xlibris Corp. (<Orders@Xlibris.com>), 2002. 286 pages, paperback, $18.69.

J. Wayne Fears, involved in leasing land for hunt clubs for
more than 20 years, gives the impression that he lives to kill deer.
Thomas Lee Boles, a vegetarian animal rights activist, has
handreared orphaned deer and befriended deer both in captivity and in
the wild.

Editorial: Sheltering is pointless until the need is reduced

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

“We live in a deeply depressed, impoverished, remote and
backward corner of the far side of hell,” someone laments to us
almost every day. “We have never had low-cost or free pet
sterilization and vaccination, let alone a neuter/return program for
feral cats and street dogs. People poison or shoot dogs and cats
with impunity. The dogcatcher sells dog meat, dog leather, cat
pelts, and live animals for use in laboratories. Millions of
animals are in urgent need. Please help us fund a shelter to house
100 of them.”
Such pleas are heartrending, but under such circumstances,
either operating or funding a shelter is pointless, mindless, and
likely to only rearrange the misery in that particular part of hell’s
overcrowded and starving half acre.
No humane society anywhere should even think about starting a
shelter until and unless it receives a gift or bequest of the land
and money needed to build and run the shelter without diverting
resources from sterilization, vaccination, and public education.
Later, if sterilization, vaccination, and public education
are successful, starting the right kinds of shelter at the right
times might represent worthwhile expansions of the mission. But
until the numbers of homeless dogs and cats are markedly reduced, and
until the public shows increased sympathy and tolerance toward them,
putting funds into shelter work makes less sense than using money as
cat litter.

Rehabilitating Asian bears

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

CHENGDU, AGRA–The Giant Panda Breeding
and Research Center and the China Bear Rescue
Center stand just miles apart, on opposite sides
of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan state in
southwestern China.
The Wildlife SOS Agra Bear Rescue Centre
is 1,500 miles away, on the far side of the
Himalayas, 10 miles from the Taj Mahal, within
the Sur Sarovar Sanctuary, near Agra, India.
The giant pandas, red pandas, and
Asiatic black bears of two subspecies whom the
three sanctuaries host were all caught in the
crossfire of late 20th century Marxist class
struggle, but that was just the latest of their
species’ misfortunes.
Each are descended from some of the first
bears to lose habitat to humans.
Products of parallel evolution, bears
and large primates, including humans, developed
to fill approximately the same ecological niches.
Bears came from the carnivore family,
emerging in the northern hemisphere only slightly
earlier than the first raccoon-sized advanced
primates emerged in northeastern Africa.
Most bears and the most widely
distributed large primates developed omnivorous
diets. The biggest bears evolved limited
bipedalism and relatively small, little used
tails; some of the largest primates became fully
bipedal and shed their tails. Primates developed
opposable thumbs. So did the raccoon branch of
the bear/raccoon line.

Letters [Nov 2003]

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Kitten in Beijing

I want to tell you how much I enjoyed reading your October cover
feature, “Four shelters serve Beijing.” The vignette at the end
about your son holding a kitten on a Beijing street and attracting
attention was very sweet. Wolf was using his act of holding that
little life to send messages to those who came around him. Wasn’t
that the most beautiful scene on the streets of Beijing?
–Peter Li
Houston, Texas
<LiPj@uhd.edu>

Ukrainian animals get newspaper

We are glad to inform you that our Centre is starting a
monthly newspaper on animal rights called Time to Protect Animals.
This will be the first such publication in the Ukraine and the former
Soviet Union. The project will be realized with financial support
from the World Society for the Protection of Animals. The pilot
edition of 5,000 copies will be distributed during the first week of
November 2003. The famous Ukrainian newspaper Vremja (Time), which
publishes 80,000 copies three times a week, is asking their readers
who would like to receive a free copy, and those who ask will get
our newspaper.

Letters

Dog-eating and my culture

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Dog-eating and my culture by Bing A. Dawang

Just before World Animal Day, which coincides with the feast
of St. Francis d’Assisi, the patron saint of animals, a local
newpaper defended the dog meat trade in the Philippines, in
particular in Baguio City and the Cordilleras, by claiming that dog
eating is a part of the Igorot indigenous culture.
As a full-blooded Igorot, I take offense.
The newspaper quoted Isikias Isican, said to be curator of
the St. Louis University museum, as saying that there is a clear
cultural basis for butchering dogs because they were “butchered by
Igorot tribes before going to war, or to cure certain afflictions.”
Isican generalized that dog-eating is a part of Igorot
tradition by recalling that in 1904 a few Igorot men and women were
displayed at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition (“world’s fair”) in
St. Louis, Missouri. Described as as heathen pagans, they
butchered a dog as part of the show.
In the same article Hanzen Binay, formerly defense counsel
for several dog meat traders and now a Benguet prosecutor,
questioned the wisdom of the Philippine Animal Welfare Act.
Objecting that the law was supported by British animal advocates,
Binay asked rhetorically why Britain does not respect the Igorot
culture.

Study confirms: corruption kills wildlife

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

NAIROBI–Corruption kills wild-life, confirms data published
in the November 6, 2003 edition of the British scientific journal
Nature.
The findings were based on a comparison of elephant and rhino
populations with the national “Corruption Perception Indexes”
produced by the watchdog group Transparency International during the
years 1987-1994.
The findings support the arguments of Youth for Conservation,
the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, and the Nairobi office of
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in their continuing
effort to maintain the 1977 Kenyan national ban on sport hunting.
Yet study authors Robert J. Smith, R.D.J. Muir, M.J.
Walpole, Andrew Balmford and Nigel Leader-Williams paradoxically
concluded with an implied endorsement of “sustainable use,” such as
hunting, to fund conservation. This was probably because the study
made no effort to trace the relationship between legal hunting and
corruption.
Wildlife policy changes proposed in both the U.S. and
Kenya–backed by much of the same money–threaten to replace the
principle of protecting rare species with the notion that even
endangered wildlife should “pay for itself” by being hunted or
captured for sale.

Beijing Public Security Bureau opens shelter to public

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

BEIJING–The Beijing Public Security Bureau has opened the
city animal control shelter to the public and has begun adopting out
dogs for the first time, Association for Small Animal Protection
founder Betty Zhao e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on November 6, 2003.
The PSB has also begun accepting volunteer help. Zhao
recently mobilized 18 volunteers [above] to groom dogs for adoption
display. As dogs are still relatively scarce in Beijing, Zhao
anticipated that all of the groomed dogs would soon find homes.
Most dogs picked up in recent months are believed to have
been pets who were dumped at large during the SARS panic, often by
terrified neighbors rather than by the animals’ caretakers.
Until now, there was little way for Beijing residents to
reclaim lost dogs. Most dogs found at large were simply killed.
The PSB policy changes coincide with moving into a new building.
“The cages are decorated with cartoons [to welcome human
visitors], with a bowl for water and a bowl for food inside each
cage,” Zhao said. “It is easy for the staff to do clean-up. But
the dogs still have to stay in a cage. We have recommended that they
should establish a place for the dogs to run.”

Flood, fires, deadly hailstorm hit animal refuges around the Pacific rim

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

Three weeks of fires threatening shelters, sanctuaries, and
sensitive wildlife habitat around the Pacific Rim were followed on
the night of November 2 by flash flooding that all but obliterated
Bukit Lawang, Indonesia.
“Bukit Lawang is the site of the original Sumatran orangutan
rehabilitation centre, established in the early 1970s by PanEco
Foundation president Regina Frey and her colleague Monica Borner,”
the Sumatran Orangutan Society e-mailed to International Primate
Protection League founder Shirley McGreal. “The village had
developed into a thriving resort.” “The Bohorok river
began to rise slowly,” SOS described, based on survivor accounts,
but “around 10.00 p.m. came a deluge bearing hundreds of fallen
trees. The town was located directly in the path of the surge as it
hit a bend and thrust over the Bohorok banks at full force.
Together, the water and timber pummeled the village for about three
hours.”
Wrote Suzanne Plunkett of Associated Press, “The death toll
hit 112 on November 6 as authorities promised to punish illegal
loggers held responsible for the disaster. At least 135 other people
are reported missing and feared dead.”

Badger culls spread bovine tuberculosis

November 1, 2003 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2003:

LONDON–Ben Bradshaw, Parliamentary under secretary for the
British Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on
November 4 halted five years of reactively killing badgers near
bovine tuberculosis outbreaks because culls at 20 locations produced
a consistent 27% rise in the number of bovine TB cases compared to
the numbers detected at outbreak sites where badgers are not culled.
The $40 million trial cost the lives of 8,000 badgers. Known
to become infected by bovine TB, badgers are blamed by farmers for
spreading it, but the data shows that they spread it less if they
are not hunted.
Two parallel tests continue. One, the control experiment,
involves taking no action against badgers. The other is “proactive
culling,” in which the badger population is eradicated as completely
as possible before bovine TB appears.
Beginning in 1998, each test method was applied uniformly
within a 38-square-mile area. The experiment was not due to end
until 2006, but trial steering group leader John Bourne told news
media that the results from reactive culling were so bad that
continuing to do it was no longer appropriate.

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