Positions & transitions

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Virologist Harold E. Varmus, 60, director of the National Institutes of Health since 1993, left at year’s end to head the Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center i n New York City. Under Varmus, the NIH budget rose from $10.3 billion to $15.6 billion––but animal use in research continued a 20-year decline, the retirement of nonhuman primates from research use to sanctuaries became almost routine, and the propaganda wars waged against antivivisectionists by his predecessors markedly cooled.

Matt and Mary Kelly in December announced the sale of the Brodie Mountain Ski Resort in western Massachusetts, scene of many vegetarian and animal activist gatherings, to Brian Fairbanks, owner of the nearby Jiminy Peak ski area. “Fairbanks has committed to keep the veggie offerings throughout the food services at Brodie,” Matt Kelly wrote. Three vegetarian events booked for Brodie during 2000 will remain on the calendar.

Activists & Organizations

How the rich can get richer––and help the poor

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

INDIANOLA, Washington–– Richard Linzer, author of It’s Simple: Money Matters for the Nonprofit Board Member, hadn’t seen the December 1999 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE when he wrote a guest column attacking “unimaginable accumulations of wealth by large nonprofit institutions” while the problems the money was meant to rectify continue.

Linzer was not yet aware that the Animal Rescue League of Boston ended the most recent fiscal year with cash and securities worth $98 million, more than 16 times the ARL program spending; or that Dogs’ Home Battersea, of London, England, had cash and securities worth $67 million, nearly ten times as high as the Dogs’ Home program budget; or that the relatively small Holiday Humane Society in southern California has cash and securities worth $14 million, amounting to $42 in reserve for every dollar it spends.

But Linzer, who advises philanthropists in “Microsoft country” near Seattle, did know about similar situations in other branches of charity.

Tales from the

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Bill Wewer, the far-right tax attorney and direct mail fundraiser who formed the Doris Day Animal League in 1986 and the anti-animal rights group Putting People First with his wife Kathleen Marquardt in 1990, was reported dead in San Francisco on April Fool’s Day 1999.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has repeatedly identified Cetacean Freedom Network founder Rick Spill as apparently being a Wewer alter ego, based on clues that Wewer himself provided in a taunting 1997 fax, many eyewitness identifications of photographs of each one as the other, and much other circumstantial and behavioral evidence.

But Spill reportedly appeared during the late November/early December protests against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, helping longtime close associate Ben White and others to build sea turtle costumes.

Individual Compensation

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

The National Humane Education Society paid secretary. treasurer William J. Kropp $146,714; paid president Anna Briggs $40,303; and paid assistant secretary James D. Taylor $34,255. The PRedator Project paid no board members and paid no one more than $50,000. The Sierra Club paid assistant secretary Deborah Sorondo $165,503; paid chair Michael McClosky $151,128; paid executive director Carl Pope $138,103; paid assistant treasurer Louis Barnes $130,461; paid assistant treasurer Hamilton Leong $80,123; paid assistant treasurer Jeffrey Christy $ 37,820 ; paid ex-president Adam Werbach $18,273; and paid president Charles McGrady $13,250.

Activists & Organizations

WHO GETS THE MONEY? addenda – late filings

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

The financial data below pertains to animal issue-related charities whose IRS Form 990 filings came too late to abstract in our 10th annual “Who Gets The Money?” charts, published in December 1999.

Each charity is identified by apparent focus: A for advocacy, E for education, S for sheltering.

Charities often declare to the IRS a balance of program vs. fundraising and maintenance expense (overhead) which differs from the balance as it would be stated under National Charities Information Bureau guidelines. The % column states each charity’s overhead costs as declared; the ADJ column states those costs as they would appear if the NCIB guidelines were followed. The NCIB recommends that overhead costs should not be more than 40% of total spending.

Maneka meets the elephant

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Udhagamandalam, India––Fed up with recurring allegations by the U.S.-based India Project for Animals and Nature that an elephant IPAN calls Loki is being abused, despite the findings of five different teams of investigators over a year’s time that he is not, Indian minster of state for social justice and empowerment Maneka Gandhi and federal director of animal welfare Dilip Singh visited the elephant in person at the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu state on December 30.

According to the December 31 edition of The Hindu, the largest newspaper in India, Maneka inspected the elephant, fed him sugar cane, pronounced his condition and care good, called the IPAN allegations a “non-issue,” and warned Indian media and animal protection donors about foreign advocacy groups that might make sensational claims for fundraising purposes.

Saving Whales

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

ROME––Italy, France, and Monaco on November 25, 1999 jointly declared their Mediterranean territorial waters to be a whale sanctuary. All cetaceans are protected within the sanctuary, which extends from the Giens peninsula in France to the north of Sardinia and the south Tuscany coast in Italy.

Among the beneficiaries are about 2,000 fin whales plus 25,000 to 45,000 striped dolphins.

The Mediterranean whale sanctuary was created, after 10 years of negotiation, 40 days after the legislature of the German state of Schleswig Holstein voted to establish a whale sanctuary around the islands of Sylt and Amrum, within the Waddan Sea National Park. The Sylt-Amrum area is considered an important porpoise breeding habitat.

PETsMART dumps British subsidiary

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

Phoenix––Describing a 92-store British subsidiary, Pet City, as “an asset that has not met our performance expectations,” PETsMART president Philip L. Francis on December 15 announced that it had been sold––at a substantial loss––to the British firm Pets At Home.

The deal was reportedly already in negotiation when the British TV program Weekend Watchdog on December 3 interviewed four former PETsMART/Pet City employees who described senior staff bludgeoning unsold hamsters and rabbits at stores in Fife, East Anglia, and Surrey.

PETsMART marketing director Simon Blower responded to the content of the broadcast a day before it actually aired by setting up “an external advisory panel, made up of independent consultants, veterinarians, and educators” to do a “comprehensive review” of Pet City animal care.

“We are absolutely determined to make whatever changes may be necessary to get things right in all our stores,” Blower said.

Did She Read It?

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

“Deer hunting kills birds,” an ANIMAL PEOPLE cover feature pointed out in March 1997, citing the loss of forest nesting habitat caused by deer overpopulation in Pennsylvania. ANIMAL PEOPLE explained that the Pennsylvania Game Commission annually sets hunting quotas to target bucks but spare does, to achieve rapid herd growth, and noted that the National Audubon Society, quick to blame cats for vanishing songbirds, had never fingered hunters’ demands for plentiful deer.

Pennsylvania Audubon Society executive director Cindy Dunn, however, sounded as if she’d read the article in a recent address to a deer management symposium in Media, Pennsylvania. Accusing Game Commission members of “getting their opinions from barroom biology,” Dunn blasted deer management policies favoring hunters who “would like to see a lot of deer in a short time,” and called hunting no solution to the loss of nesting habitat because, “You can shoot a lot of bucks without having any impact upon deer herd size.”

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