A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July-August 2013:
WASHINGTON D.C.––Are U.S. federal horse policies pivoting toward an end to horse slaughter and greater tolerance for wild horses on the western range, or toward a revived horse slaughter industry as “final solution” for perceived wild horse overpopulation?
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
By Merritt Clifton & Kim Bartlett
The American Veterinary Medical Association, 150 years old this year, has from the beginning pitched a broad tent. The AVMA is at once a trade association representing the economic concerns of veterinarians; a professional body setting veterinary standards; an umbrella for ongoing efforts to advance veterinary science; a provider of continuing professional education to vets; a disaster relief agency; a provider of public education about animal issues; and an entity which seeks to influence public policy. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2013:
Horse Sanctuary by Allison Milionis Photos by Karen Tweedy Holmes Universe (300 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010), 2013. 255 pages, hardcover. $40.00.
Horse Sanctuary offers more than 250 exquisite photos of horses at 13 facilities listed here for the interest of readers who may donate to one or more them and wonder what they look like:
The Blackburn Correctional Complex training center operated by the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation in Lexington, Kentucky; the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in Hot Springs, South Dakota; the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, in Saugerties, New York; the Equine Sanctuary, in Ojai, California; Equine Voices Rescue & Sanctuary, in Green Valley, Arizona; Front Range Equine Rescue, in Larkspur, Colorado; the Horse Harbor Foundation, in Poulsbo, Washington; the Last Chance Corral in Athens, Ohio; Lope Texas, in Cedar Creek, Texas; Lucky Horse Equine Rescue, in Bolton, Massachusetts; Nokota Horse Conservancy, in Linton, North Dakota; Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue, in Tehachapi, California; and Save Your Ass Long Ear Rescue, in South Acworth, New Hampshire. The accompanying text uncritically describes the work of each facility. Horse-lovers will love it, but Horse Sanctuary is at best just a coffee table treatment of the issues involved in horse rescue. Several of the profiles are seriously misleading. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
PARIS––At least 28 companies in 13 European nations plus
Hong Kong have been involved in marketing horsemeat as beef, French
government investigators assessed in mid-February 2013, predicting that
more alleged perpetrators would be exposed by ongoing investigations.
Entrepreneurs seeking to resume horse slaughter in the U.S. have
argued that they would market to an upscale clientele in nations
including Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Japan, who would
demand that horses were transported and killed humanely. But the
horsemeat-as-beef scandal has revealed just the opposite: by far the
greater portion of the European horsemeat trade involves the lowest
priced meat products, in which the ingredients are most easily
disguised, and about which consumers and regulators tend to ask the
fewest questions.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:
Knowing Horses: Q&As to Boost Your Equine IQ by Les Sellnow & Carol A. Butler Storey Publishers (210 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Way, North Adams, MA 01247), 2012. 249 pages, paperback. $14.95.
What a marvelous book, I said to myself, after reading Knowing Horses, Q&As to Boost Your Equine IQ. As a city kid, I knew little about horses until moving west in 1997. Authors Sellnow and Butler answer basic questions about working with horses, horse care, horse racing, wild horses, horse breeds, and horse behavior. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2012:
Trapper shoots horse as bait to trap last breeding wolf from Toklat pack
DENALI NATIONAL PARK, Alaska–Hunting guide Coke Wallace, of Healy, has acknowledged walking an aged horse to the Stampede Trail near the northern boundary of Denali National Park, shooting the horse, and setting snares around the carcass. The snares killed the last known breeding female wolf from the Grant Creek pack–the pack that roams the area made famous by the 1996 book by Jon Krakauer and 2007 feature film Into the Wild, about the 1992 death nearby of 22-year-old would-be survivalist Christopher McCandless.
The Grant Creek pack, also called the Toklat West pack, is among the three wolf packs most often viewed and photographed by Denali visitors. The pack has been continuously studied since 1939, first by Adolf Murie until his death in 1974, then by Gordon Haber from 1966 until his death while spotting wolves from a light plane in 2009, and currently by Anchorage conservation biologist and former University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2012:
Wildlife Heroes by Julie Scardina & Jeff Flocken
Running Press (2300 Chestnut St., Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA
19103), 2012. 264 pages, paperback. $20.00.
Wildlife Heroes co-authors Julie Scardina and Jeff Flocken
profile 40 people who do extraordinary things for animals. Nguyen
Van Thai, for example, as a youth in Vietnam watched people dig up
pangolins, a small Asian animal sometimes called a scaly ant-eater.
Prized for meat and scales believed to have medicinal value,
pangolins have become the most often poached mammals in Asia, and
are rapidly being extirpated from much of their range.
“As I watched the juvenile climb onto the back of its mother
I was very sad, knowing they were headed for the cooking pot,”
recalls Van Thai. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2011:
The release of 56 large exotic and dangerous animals from the
Muskingum County Animal Farm and subsequent killing of 48 of the
animals on October 19, 2011 was not unprecedented.
Fifteen lion/tiger hybrids called ligers were on September
21, 1995 shot by a neighboring landowner and a 50-member sheriff’s
posse after breaking out of the Ligertown Game Farm in Lava Hot
Springs, Idaho. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2011:
WASHINGTON D.C.--A Congressional conference committee
scrapped House-approved language prohibiting the use of USDA funds
for horse slaughter inspections while reconciling differing House and
Senate versions of the “mini-bus” Agriculture,
Commerce/Justice/Science appropriations bill signed into law on
November 18, 2011 by U.S. President Barrack Obama. Read more