Letters [Oct 1997]

October 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

No-kill animal control agency
The Colorado Humane Society & SPCA is an open-door
shelter that provides animal control service to a large part of the
Denver metropolitan area––while operating as a no-kill shelter. We do
not kill animals for lack of space or for time limits. We euthanize only
to end the suffering of mortally injured or sick animals; when directed
to do so by a government agency; when an animal’s aggression is
unalterable and it poses a risk to society; and when an owner asks us
to do so––and we try to talk them out of it. In all of our research, I
have found no information on other organizations which manage this
difficult feat. Do you know of another? We would like to find information
on similar organizations, and would love to share information
on our success where it may help others.
––Pat Milton
Colorado Humane Society
Littleton, Colorado

Letters

Editorial: Slugs, burros, men & boys

October 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Two young burros from Wild Burro Rescue now share the ANIMAL PEOPLE
premises with 19 cats, two dogs, three humans, and just about every kind of wildlife
native to Whidbey Island, Washington, including all seven types of slug.
The slugs would remind us of the often slow pace of change, even if our work did
not, having survived, almost unaltered, for more than 450 million years, with scarcely a
visible friend. Even the cats back disgustedly from their dishes when slugs crawl through
the heavy-duty screens around the porch to invade their kibble. We patiently relocate the
slugs more from obedience to the compassionate ethic than from genuine empathy––except
for Wolf, now seven, who has insisted on relocating every kind of life from harm’s way
since he could walk. Wolf opened this school year by rescuing a snake and attempting to
save grasshoppers from boys who tormented and tried to kill them on the playground. The
notion that “It’s just a [fill in the blank]” has never been part of his psychological vocabulary.
Instead, he explains––to anyone who denigrates any life form––that “all life has an
importance.” To be able to love a slug, we think, exemplifies the hope of the humane
movement and indeed, of humanity.

REFUGE OR NO-MAN’S LAND?

October 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

BURMA––”About 300 Karen
civilians fled into the Mae Sarieng district” of
Thailand, the Global Response environmental
and human rights electronic mail network
alerted 6,500 members on August 21, “after
Burmese soldiers torched six villages in
Burma’s Doi Kor province,” torturing relatives
and friends of the refugees who were
captured, according to interviews with the
escapees and relief workers published by the
Burma News Network and Bangkok Post.
The refugees, like many other
Karen fleeing the dictatorship of Burma over
the past several years, were interned at a
Thai government camp for displaced persons.
Especially problematic for human
rights advocates was that the incident came in
association with the establishment of the
Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve.

Germ war on rabbits

October 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand––
Frustrated by governmental caution, farmers in
at least six districts of the South Island of New
Zealand separately introduced the deadly rabbit
calicivirus in late August. Their evident strategy
was to goad the government into undertaking
large-scale deliberate releases, as Australia
did in October 1996, a year after an accidental
release from a test site on Wardang Island
turned four of the six Australian states into––in
effect––a germ warfare experiment.
Concerned about liability, New
Zealand authorities held back a long discussed
release. On the verge of the rabbit birthing season,
highland farmers finally forced the issue
by importing from Australia the internal organs
of rabbits who had died of calicivirus, pureeing
the organs in blenders with bait such as oats,
jam, or carrots, and pouring the mess around
rabbit warrens.

Speculative prices send parrot theft soaring

October 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

MIAMI– –Bill Gates, 50, not the
Microsoft baron but the manager of Animalia
Exotics in Miami, crawled out of a pool of his
own blood on August 20, dialed store owner
Joe Ferrero on his beeper, and when Ferrero
immediately called back, croaked “Joe, get
over here. I’m dying.”
Gates didn’t die, but he had been
badly pistol-whipped by two men who had just
cased the store with a seven-year-old girl and a
220-pound woman. The four left. The men then
returned to nab $200, an umbrella cockatoo,
and a Milian Amazon parrot. The birds were
worth an estimated $3,500, near the low end of
the parrot price scale.

OBITUARIES

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Bruno Zehnder, 52, of Manhattan,
froze to death in an Antarctic blizzard
circa July 7, returning from an expedition to
photograph breeding emperor penguins.
Zehnder was reportedly about a mile from
safety at Mirnyy Station, a Russian research
base which he had missed by 50 yards despite
flares set out to guide him. Born in Bad
Rogov, Switzerland, Zehnder emigrated to
New York City in 1977, after making his
first international reputation with photographs
of Vietnam after the Vietnam War, but his
real home was Antarctica, where he lived
much of each year at the bases of Chile, New
Zealand, the U.S., Denmark, and Russia.
Zehnder married Heather May of New York
City in 1984 at Marambio, an Argentinian
research station, surrounded by tuxedo-clad
penguins––but the marriage lasted just three
years, as the penguins seemed to be his more
enduring love. “His frequent sojourns in
Antarctica resulted in photos that won several
prizes,” The New York Times r e m e m b e r e d ,
among them the 1987 United Nations
Environmental Protection Prize, the 1990
BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year
award, and election to the Royal Geographic
Society. “One of his most widely published
pictures was of a pair of emperor penguins in
tender embrace with a chick between them,”
the T i m e s recalled. “Another, made last
year, was of a mother emperor penguin trying
vainly to feed her chick, whose beak had
frozen closed.” The photo helped draw international
attention to the threat of global
warming to penguin survival.

Obituaries

REVIEWS: Music

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Adventures at Catfish Pond
Bob “Catfish” Hodge

All Spirits Sing
Joanne Shenandoah

Penguin Parade
Banana Slug String Band

If A Tree Falls
Anthology produced by
Darryl Cherney & Leib Ostrow

Music for Little People/EarthBeat
(POB 1460, Redway, CA 95560),
1997. Each $9.95/cassette, $15.98/CD.

As a college student, Delilah
Cooper infiltrated an early false front for the
wise-use movement, documented the then hidden
identities of the people behind it, and sent
the information to the editor of ANIMAL
PEOPLE. When we disclosed those identities,
the organization vanished almost
overnight, without a forwarding address.

BOOKS: And the Waters Turned to Blood

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

And the Waters Turned to Blood:
The Ultimate Biological Threat
by Rodney Barker
Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY
10020), 1997. 352 pages, hardcover, $24.00

It’s a shame how this book
has been hyped. “Deadlier than
Ebola!” trumpets one press release,
building expectations of a Creightonesque
biological thriller. But
Pfiesteria piscicida is no fiction, and
frightening though the microorganism
may be, it doesn’t hold a candle
to the real horror of its discovery––
that without the tenacity of one outspoken
scientist, the world would
still be unaware of it.

BOOKS: Turtle Bay

September 1, 1997 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Turtle Bay
by Saviour Pirotta,
art by Nilesh Mistry
Farrar, Straus & Girous (19 Union Square
West, New York, NY 10003), 1997.
28 pages, hardcover, $15.00.

Turtle Bay, about old Japanese sponge
diver who sweeps a remote beach to prepare it for
loggerhead turtle nesting, might be the best way to
explain to a child why a favorite beach (or a part of
it) is off limits, whether to help sea turtles, piping
plovers, clapper rails, or any other animals whose
needs conflict with human recreation.

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