ANIMAL CONTROL, RESCUE, & SHELTERING

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Fixing the problem
Vancouver, British Columbia,
officially went to no-kill animal control
effective October 1, after killing only 74
dogs in 1997. The announcement brought
the surge of owner surrenders that typically
follows publicity about a no-kill policy,
causing crowding which pound director
Barbara Fellnermayr predicted would be
only temporary. The volunteer group
Animal Advocates has pledged to expand a
fostering program to handle the overflow.
Animal Advocates reportedly already has
about 50 active fostering families, who
have enabled the West Vancouver SPCA
to “virtually stop killing adoptable dogs,”
wrote Robert Sarti of the Vancouver Sun.
The Vancouver pound does not handle cats.

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Jeff Getty says he can’t eat bananas in public

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Jeff Getty, 41, subject of a failed
experimental bone marrow transplant from a
baboon in December 1995, and later a
spokesperson for animal use in biomedical
research, recently told New York Times
reporter Claudia Dreifus that he can’t eat a
banana in public because “People go ‘urk,
urk.’ They start laughing uncontrollably,
scratching their underarms, and making
embarrassing jokes like ‘How are your
friends at the zoo?’”
Asked Dreifus, “What exactly did
you do that makes people so uncomfortable
as to make banana jokes?”

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PAUL MCCARTNEY ON RESEARCH

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Composer and songwriter Paul
McCartney told BBC Radio 2 interviewer
Des Lynam during an October 23 broadcast
that his late wife Linda’s long struggle with
breast cancer and her death last April had
heightened his awareness of the moral dilemmas
associated with animal research.
Though Paul and Linda McCartney
were both vegetarians and animal rights campaigners
for more than 20 years, he said he
had not previously realized how much animal
experimentation is done, nor the extent to
which it is legally required.
“I suppose a limited thing is
unavoidable, but it is very difficult for me to
think like that,” he said, “because I favor the
rights of the animals. Linda and I are just
passionate about these poor creatures that we
often use so cruelly.”

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Near Neanderthal, past and present

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

The Ice Man, the 5,200-year-old
set of remains found in the Italian Alps in
1991, was a vegetarian, University of
V i r g i n i a professor of environmental science
Stephen A. Macko on October 26 told the
annual conference of the Geological Society
of America. “You are what you eat, and
clues to what people ate thousands of years
ago are in their hair,” Macko explained to the
Toronto gathering. Analyzing the Ice Man’s
hair, Macko found that contrary to the initial
theory that he was a hunter, “There is little
evidence he ate meat––and that was true for
some significant time, at least months if not
years before his death.”

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Monty Roberts

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

A coroner’s inquest in Middlesbrough,
County Durham, United Kingdom,
ruled on October 20 that the March 2 death of
Middleton Equestian Centre stable girl
Alyson Carter, 19, was an accident. Contrary
to standard procedure, Carter removed the bridle
of a three-year-old stallion named Ski, then
tried to maneuver him into his stall by hitting
him on the neck, and when he wouldn’t go,
struck him on the rump with the bristle end of a
broken stable brush. Ski kicked her on the left
side of the face with both feet.

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Leakey cedes seat for KWS hot seat

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

NAIROBI––Richard Leakey, resuming
directorship of the Kenya Wildlife Service,
which he previously headed 1988-1994, has
surrendered his seat in Parliament.
“I would prefer that my successor
should be from the handicapped community,”
said Leakey, who lost both of his legs in a 1993
airplane crash. “I would prefer a female candidate,”
he added.
Credited with virtually halting poaching
in the Kenyan national parks and corruption
within the KWS during his previous stint,
Leakey resigned after clashing with politicians
close to Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, and
helped organize the opposition party Safina, but
Moi reappointed him after the KWS ran up an
$8 million deficit last year under David
Western. Within days of Leakey’s reappointment,
KWS received $2 million in U.S. aid.
Besides the deficit, resurgent corruption,
and renewed poaching, Leakey must contend
with tree poaching which according to
Musa Radoli of the Nairobi Nation has
destroyed much of the formerly protected
Kakamega Forest.

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COVERT INFILTRATION AGENCY?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

ANIMAL PEOPLE paranoia
about suspected infiltration, disruption, and
possible use of international animal protection
organizations as cover for Central
Intelligence Agency projects surged on
October 1 when Carroll Cox of EnviroWatch
shared a set of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Division of Law Enforcement conference
notes from a meeting of May 18-20, 1993,
in Reno, Nevada.
Cox obtained the notes through a
recent Freedom of Information Act request.
Twelve attendees, none below the
rank of assistant regional director for law
enforcement, were told that “CIA has
expressed an interest in working with the
Division at the national and international levels.
A CIA section chief,” they were told,
“will speak to the agents at this summer’s
undercover school and SABS.”

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Vail, the “Earth Liberation Front” and the search for the missing lynx

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

VAIL, Colorado––”On behalf of
the lynx,” the October 21 e-mail to KCFR-FM
Colorado Public Radio in Denver said, “five
buildings and four ski lifts at Vail were
reduced to ashes on the night of Sunday,
October 18. Vail Inc. is already the largest ski
operation in North America, and now wants to
expand even further. The 12 miles of roads
and 885 acres of clearcuts will ruin the last,
best lynx habitat in the state. Putting profits
ahead of Colorado’s wildlife will not be tolerated.
This action is just a warning.”
The e-mail was signed “Earth
Liberation Front.”
The arson came exactly one month
after U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham
dismissed a lawsuit against the Vail expansion
based on the possible presence of lynx,
brought jointly by the Colorado Environmental
Coalition, Defenders of Wildlife, the
Wilderness Society, Sinapu, the Sierra Club,
and the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project.
Lynx haven’t been seen in Colorado
since 1973, but the last one appeared in the
Vail Mountain area, and a track found there in
1991 was said to have been that of a lynx.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

Rodeo protester Marla Rose was arrested for alleged felonious possession of a deadly weapon on October 4 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on the complaint of an as yet unidentified rodeo person, Chicago Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi report- ed. The “deadly weapon,” Hindi said, “was an electrical shocking device identical to those used by some of the stock handlers at the rodeo to jolt bulls as they exited the chutes during the bullriding events. So let’s see if I understand this, ” Hindi continued. “A prod used on defenseless animals by phony cowboys does not hurt, is not a weapon, and is not the same as a stun-gun. Conversely, the same prod in the hands of an activist who is merely display- ing it does hurt, is a weapon, and magically becomes a stun-gun? ” Rose was held overnight, then released on a signature bond.

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