Blazing guns and huts as Zimbabwe ignores Kenyan lesson

January 1, 2000 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

VOI, Kenya ––The six-hour drive from Nairobi to Tsavo East National Park would be worth the bumps for Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species delegates, for the challenge the Tsavo vista pre- sents to conventional beliefs about elephants and ecology.

Hundreds of delegates and observers will soon arrive in Nairobi for workshops leading up to the April 2000 CITES triennial meeting. Whether to permit more auctions of culled elephant ivory and rhino horn will–– again––be the most contentious agenda item.

In 1997 CITES allowed Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to auction elephant ivory and hides, and to sell live elephants. These were the first cracks in the trade bans imposed by CITES in 1989 to protect elephants and rhinos from slaughter to extinction.

Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe now want to sell more elephants and elephant parts. South Africa announced on December 9 that it wants to join the market, having 30 tons of ivory stockpiled at Kruger National Park alone. South Africa will also try again to resume selling rhino horn. Previous South African efforts to sell rhino horn were narrowly defeated in 1994 and 1997.

Vermont high court favors humane society

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

MONTPELIER, Vt.– – T h e
Vermont Supreme Court on November 12
upheld a lower court ruling that the North
County Animal League, of Morrisville,
had the right to award a female German
shepherd to an adoptive couple rather
than to her former owners, Chasidy
Lamare and Charles Arnold of Wolcott.
The dog reportedly escaped
from a yard tether on June 3, 1997, and
was held for nine days by the Wolcott
animal control officer before being taken
to the League shelter, eight miles away.
She was there for four weeks before
Lamare and Arnold came looking for her.

LETTERS [Dec 1999]

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

Hens, calves
I really get something out
of every issue of ANIMAL PEOP
L E. The sincerity of B.J., the
October winner of the North Shore
Animal League’s Lewyt Award,
was quite moving. He has the character
of a human, and a learned
human at that. I wish him a very
long, good life.
I would like to see a little
more coverage of broilers, layers,
and veal calves.
––Miriam Cohen
Forest Hills, New York

Letters

Editorial: Flight from our origins

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

Crossing Kenya in a low-flying Twin Otter, we recently felt transported in time as
well as space. Behind was the Eden-like Masai Mara National Park, spreading into the
Serengeti Plain of Tanzania with only an occasional cement obelisk to mark the boundary.
Hunting has been banned in the Mara, as in all of Kenya, since 1967. Though
there is some poaching, mostly by non-Kenyan marauders, most of the wildlife has little
fear of human observation. Within just 48 hours we watched a mother cheetah chirping
occasional admonitions about rough play and wandering out of sight to her five cubs, who
treated a parked cluster of tourist vehicles as if they were a playground; saw lions mating
almost as if in performance for us; stopped for a hyena who seemed as complacent in his
mud puddle as any person in a bathtub; gaped at nonchallant herds of elephants, hippos,
and Cape buffalo; and exchanged curious stares with any number of zebras, wildebeests,
Thomson’s gazelles, giraffes, vervet monkeys, baboons, etc.

Poachers close in on Tsavo elephants

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

VOI, Kenya––Alone but brave,
the half-grown bull elephant held off five
Cape buffalo all afternoon at the smaller of
two water holes below the Voi Safari Lodge.
Refusing invitations to retreat with visiting
matriarchs, the young bull left the water hole
only long enough to break up a fight among
squabbling baboons with two quick swings of
his trunk. The gesture conveyed the message.
“He acts tough now,” said Care
For The Wild managing director Chris
Jordan, “but we’ll see how tough he really is
if a pride of lions comes around tonight.”
Around nine p.m. that evening
Jordan joined soft-spoken Tsavo East
National Park warden Naphtali Kio in
responding to aggressive questioning by CNN
reporter Anthony Van Marsh. Insisting that
elephants were leaving Tsavo to find water,
running amok and killing villagers, though
all the most accessible water holes are inside
the park, Van Marsh didn’t seem to want to
hear about villagers who cut park fences as
almost a daily routine in order to graze cattle,
sheep, and goats on park land––thereby
allowing elephants to wander out at night.

Will China move against cruelty?

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

SHANGHAI––Xu Weixing, 42,
was not supposed to have been among the animals
fed alive to the three Siberian tigers who
fatally mauled him on November 17 at the
Shanghai Safari Park––but he was, by accident.
Driving one of a convoy of 13 busloads
of high school students on a field trip, Xu was
fatally mauled when either his own bus broke
down, or he tried to tow another bus to safety.
Accounts from the Shanghai News,
Xinmin Evening News, and China bureaus of
Associated Press and the London Daily
Telegraph differed greatly in detail, but agreed
that the tigers did not finish Xu; he died from
blood loss more than an hour later.
“Before the attack,” David Rennie of
the Daily Telegraph wrote from Beijing, “the
park had already stopped the much criticized
practice of letting visitors feed live chickens
and sheep to the tigers, officials said.”

Young humane societies abroad strive to avoid old traps

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

NAIROBI, SOFIA––Kenya SPCA
animal welfare director Jean Gilchrist greets
Americans with a blunt admission that she is
not impressed with how most U.S. humane
societies operate.
A well-meaning donor sent Gilchrist
to the Humane Society of the United States’
Animal Care Expo in February 1998.
“All morning people taught us how
to do euthanasia,” Gilchrist remembers.
“Then in the afternoon they taught us how to
get counseling and cope with grief, because
you feel so bad about killing animals. I said to
myself, ‘That’s not going to be us.’ We do
euthanize,” Gilchrist explains, leading her
guests through a bevy of tail-wagging threelegged
dogs, “because some animals come to
us too sick or too badly injured to patch up,
and some animals don’t take well to being
here, but if an animal gets along, we’re going
to give that animal a chance.”

OBITUARIES

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

Ndyakira Amooti, longtime environmental
reporter for the Ugandan newspaper
New Vision, “died on August 25, 1999
after a protracted illness,” according to the
November 1999 edition of the International
Primate Protection League newsletter. IPPL
became aquainted with Amooti in 1988,
founder Shirley McGreal reecalled, “when
we contacted him about wildlife trafficking
issues. He showed outstanding courage in
driving a U.S. wildlife trafficker from the
country. Amooti also worked with us on a
case involving the smuggling of five baby
chimpanzees from Uganda to Russia.
Eventually the chimpanzees were returned to
Uganda. Amooti was the author of several
childrens’ books about animals,” McGreal
added. “In 1992 IPPL received a foundation
grant to sponsor Amooti’s attendance at the
CITES triennial meeting in Kyoto. He
dogged the Ugandan delegates, and faxed
home stories every day about how they
voted.” Amooti won the 1996 Goldman
Award for outstanding environmental work in
the African sector.

Obituaries

BOOKS: The Emperor’s Embrace

December 1, 1999 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

The Emperor’s Embrace:
Reflection on Animal Families and Fatherhood
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Pocketbooks (c/o Simon & Schuster, 1230 Ave. of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020), 1999. 253 pages, hardcover. $24.00.

At the recent No Kill Conference in
Chicago, I told seven fellow participants in a
round-table discussion group about an extraordinary
old feral tomcat named Bull, whom we
sheltered for the last two years of his life.
Bull, immensely popular with almost all other
cats but deeply mistrustful of humans, came
to our notice because he fed and looked after
two kittens through a Connecticut winter in
the wrecked car that was his former home.
Three of the seven No Kill conferees,
all of them veteran feral cat rescuers, had
also encountered cases of tomcats feeding and
protecting kittens––exactly opposite to the
stereotype of tomcats as kitten-killers.

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