LETTERS [Dec 2000]

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

JoJo

I have just received a letter from Club Med informing me that they have decided to “assume a leadership role and eliminate waterskiing at Club Med Turkoise at the end of the current season (October 31, 2000). This is a true victory for JoJo, the friendly dolphin in the Turks and Caicos islands, who has been hurt at least 40 times by water skiers since 1992, as I described in my March 1992 letter to A N I M A L PEOPLE seeking help for him.

I want to thank each and every one of you who took an interest in this situation. The volume of letters you sent to Club Med and the Governor regarding JoJo was a great factor in determining the outcome of this campaign.

Our persistence with Club Med brought an assessment of JoJo and his environment by four highly qualified marine scientists. They suggested that the Government of the Turks and Caicos should ban water skiing from all of the coastal areas that JoJo frequents.

Letters

Editorial: Keeping P.T. Barnum at bay

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

Starting on page 13 is our 11th annual “Who gets the money?” feature, outlining in
statistical summary form where the lion’s share, the dog’s share, and much of the rest of the
money donated to animal protection goes, how it gets used, and who gets paid what amount
for making the major spending decisions.
The numbers help in comparing charities, but are not the whole story.
Consider a seemingly simple matter: trying to compare the needs of nine of the bestknown
care-for-life sanctuaries in the U.S. by measuring their budgets against the numbers of
animals they keep.
Best Friends has the most animals, at about 1,800, and may have the most dogs and
cats. But Best Friends does adoptions. DELTA Rescue, with about 1,400 animals, almost
certainly has more hard-case dogs and cats in lifetime care.
Both Best Friends and DELTA Rescue also have farm animals, but far fewer than
Farm Sanctuary, which in recent years has usually had about 1,000, divided among facilities
in New York and California.

Chimp Retirement Act runs afoul of NIH monkey-business

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Alleged
monkey-business involving the Florida vote
count in the November 7 U.S. presidential
election may have thwarted monkey-business
by amendment in the House of
Representatives to the Chimpanzee Health
Improvement, Maintenance and Protection
Act of 2000.
Called the “Chimp Retirement Act”
for short, the amended bill cleared the House
on October 24, but was deemed unlikely to
get Senate attention when it didn’t reach the
floor before the election recess.

Dog meat diplomacy wins Nobel

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

OSLO, Norway––An August 31
dog meat dinner for South Korean diplomats
hosted in the North Korean capital city of
Pyongyang by North Korean dictator Kim
Jong-il helped win the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize
for South Korean president Kim Dae Jung.
Kim Dae Jung, 74, won the
$908,300 Nobel Peace Prize for taking the initiative
since 1997 in opening diplomatic relations
with North Korea. Kim Jong-il won a rare
honorable mention from Nobel Committee
chair Gunnar Berge for responding positively.
On June 13, 2000, following three
years of cautious overtures, Kim Dae Jung
flew to Pyongyang to negotiate directly with
Kim Jong-il.
The two leaders traded pairs of hunting
dogs, of breeds unique to their respective
sides of the boundary between the Koreas.

Rats, mice, birds, Bush and Gore

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Rats, mice, and birds were
not a U.S. federal election issue, yet the fate of millions may
hang on the outcome of the lawsuits and ballot recounts underway
in Florida.
If U.S. Vice President Albert Gore gains the lead in
electoral votes to go with the popular vote lead that he won on
November 7, Gore will succeed President Bill Clinton in January.
Senator Joseph Lieberman would become Vice President.
Gore led the White House defense of the Endangered
Species Act after wise-use Republicans gained majorities in both
the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1994.
Lieberman, who as Vice President would break tie
votes in the Senate, could be depended upon to vigorously protect
both the ESA and the Animal Welfare Act. According to the legislative
scorecards kept by the Fund for Animals, Friends of
Animals, and Humane Society of the U.S., Lieberman in two
terms as U.S. Senator from Connecticut had one of the best
records on animal issues of any member of Congress.

HUMAN OBITUARIES

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

David Brower, 88, died on July 5
at his lifelong home in Berkeley, California.
Brower was a boyhood friend of longtime
San Francisco Zoo benefactor Carroll SooHoo.
After graduating from Berkeley High
School together in 1928 they remained in
touch until Soo-Hoo died in 1998. Joining
the Sierra Club in 1933, Brower was elected
to the board in 1941, and was hired as the
organization’s first executive director in
1952. By the time he resigned in 1969, he
had boosted the membership from 2,000 to
77,000, but was best known for activism in
the spirit of founder John Muir, 1838-1914.

Obituaries

ANIMAL OBITUARIES

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

Sakhi, a 13-month-old tigress, was
tranquilized and skinned as the alleged climax
of a 108-day series of tantric rituals on the
night of October 5 at the Nehru Zoological
Park in Hyderabad, India. The crime coincided
with the last day of the annual festival of
Kali, the Hindu blood-goddess. Most Hindus
eschew animal sacrifice, but blood sacrifice is
central to Kali-worship. Indian prime minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee interrupted his recovery
from knee surgery to demand an investigation,
and contributed to a reward fund for apprehension
of the killers, who remained at large.

Obituaries

BOOKS: Ric O’Barry

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

To Free A Dolphin
2000. 269 pages, hardcover. $23.95.
Behind The Dolphin Smile
1988, 2000. 300 pages, paperback. $15.95.
Both by Ric O’Barry
with Keith Coulbourn
Renaissance Books (5858 Wilshire Blvd.,
Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90036.)

As this is written, dolphin freedom advocate Ric
O’Barry is working by telephone and Internet––with no budget
and no media notice––to prevent the start of swim-with-dolphin
programs at Anguilla and Tortolla, in the British Virgin
Islands. O’Barry and the people who tipped him off about the
swim-with programs believe that the dolphins to be used were
previously kept at Diver Land in Margarita, Venezuela, where
a dolphin named Cheryl who was of special importance to
O’Barry died on October 31, 1997.

TANZANIA IS HUB OF BABOON TRAFFIC

December 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

ARUSHA, Tanzania– – Growing
global concern about the decline of primates in
the wild and the possibility of more stringent
regulation of primate exports has coincided
with a flurry of primate sales to laboratories by
African and Asian dealers whom some sources
liken to bar patrons rushing to grab one last
drink “for the road” at closing time.
One apparent hub of the traffic,
especially in wild-trapped baboons, is Arusha,
Tanzania, located near the Kenya border with
paved road access to international airports at
Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya, as well as
the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam.

« 1 … 406 407 408 409 410 … 720 »