PANDA-MONIUM & RHINO LOANS

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

SAN DIEGO––Shi-Shi, a 16-yearold
male panda bear, and his prospective mate
Bai Yun, age 5, are in quarantine at the San
Diego Zoo. The first pandas in the U.S. since
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt suspended
panda loans in December 1993, they arrived
September 10, and are to go on exhibit in late
October or early November. They are to
remain in San Diego for up to 12 years.
The zoo has already spent $2.5 on
facilities and arrangements to obtain the bears,
and is to pay China an annual royalty of $1
million for the privilege of keeping them.
They are expected to be the biggest public
attractions in the history of the San Diego
Zoological Society.

People in zoos

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

BROOKFIELD, Illinois– – When
Binti Jua the gorilla cradled a critically injured
three-year-old boy who fell 18 feet into her
exhibit, and carried him gently, her own
infant on her back, to the zookeeper’s door at
the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago on August
16, the contrast between gorillas’ fearsome
appearance and their usual peaceful behavior
inspired commentators around the world.
To zoo professionals, however, the
incident just proved––again––that humans are
the least predictable primates in a zoo. Binti
Jua did what most eight-year-old gorilla mothers
raised in human families might have done:
Binti Jua treated the boy like an injured member
of another gorilla family. The boy who fell
in––who recovered, and was released from the
hospital eight days later––was the wild card.

Zoos & Aquariums

Great escapes

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

The future of the Long Island
Game Farm in Manorville, New York,
remains uncertain more than three months
after the June 5 escape of Barney
Chimpanzee, 19, when a caretaker left both
padlocks on the double door to the chimp’s
cage unfastened.
According to Newsday columnist
Paul Vitello, the rampaging chimp bit
owner Stanley Novak, 63, on the head and
arm, shrugged off a man who hit him with a
fence post, and charged toward a children’s
maze. Six to eight mothers, teachers, and
assistants from the LaSalle School in
Oakdale shoved more than 100 kindergartners
and first graders into the maze; assistant
teacher Sharon Goff, mother Jill Fuchs,
and a mother identified only as Mrs. Kelly
then locked arms to block the entrance.

UNACCREDITED ZOOS

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Brian Rutledge, 44, who raised
Baltimore Zoo attendance from 180,000 to
500,000 a year in a decade by making $50 million
worth of improvements, on August 12
assumed administration of the Franklin Park
and Stone Zoos in Boston, long considered
two of the worst in the U.S. The Franklin
Park Zoo is already getting a $2.5 million new
lion exhibit, and that, Rutledge promises, is
just the beginning; much renovation may be
done “with a bulldozer.”

Tales from the Cryptozoologists

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Hym Ebedes of the Onderstepoort
Veterinary Institute near Pretoria, South
Africa, on July 13 reported his discovery of
Barbary lions––a species believed to have
been extinct––at an obscure zoo in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, where their pride has apparently
lived since 1974. Descendants of the
mascots of former Ethiopian emperor Haile
Selassie, who styled himself The Lion of
Judah, the 11 males have long black manes
that sweep under their bellies. The females
resemble other African lions. “Over the past
35 years I have seen hundreds of wild lions,”
Ebedes said, “but I have never seen anything
so majestic and magnificent. The sight of a
black-maned lion pacing around his cage had
an indescribable spine-chilling effect on me.

SANCTUARIES

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Three Texas cougars who were
sent to the Jim Moore hunting ranch near
Balmorhea, Texas, after use by the Florida
Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission in
a 1993-1994 test of Florida panther habitat,
were purchased on August 10 by Sumner
and Elise Matthes of Sarasota In Defense of
Animals for $3,000 apiece, and taken with
the aid of American SPCA wildlife programs
coordinator Kathi Travers to Carol
Azvestus’ Wild Animal Orphanage on the
outskirts of San Antonio, for 120 days of
rehabilitation. The longterm goal is to return
the cougars to the wild. The Florida Game
and Fresh Water Fish Commission refused to
contribute toward the cost. Nineteen Texas
cougars were used in the experiment all told,
of whom eight were eventually sold to
canned hunts via resellers in Florida, South
Carolina, and Missouri. Moore acquired
seven, of whom another, named Waldo,
was returned to Florida earlier. Moore,
Sumner Mathis reported, “will not say what
he did with the three others.”

It’s all happening at the zoo

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Convincing the American Zoo Association that it
has rectified the many problems noted by media, the public,
the USDA, and AZA itself over the past decade, the Los
Angeles Zoo on September 17 won reaccreditation, 18 months
after getting a “shape up or else” order. Changes have included
hiring Manuel A. Mollinedo as director, removing the zoo
from administration by the Los Angeles City Parks
Department, winning voter approval of a $23 million bond
issue, and breaking ground for a $4.5 million new chimpanzee
habitat. The zoo’s 14 chimps are to get a waterfall, along with
climbing trees and a triple-tiered shelter.

PRIMATES IN RESEARCH

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

Jan Moor-Jankowski, MD, founder and for 30 years
director of the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery
in Primates at New York University, and Louis Dinetz, former
LEMSIP assistant director, on August 13 sued seeking $20 million
damages from NYU and the USDA for allegedly covering up
“scientific misconduct and fraud” and violating federal whistleblower
protection laws, by terminating them both last year and
turning LEMSIP over to primate dealer Frederick Coulston, after
Moor-Jankowski went public with allegations of negligent care in
the primate laboratory of NYU addiction researcher Ron Wood.
The allegations were upheld; NYU was ordered to pay a
$450,000 civil penalty for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
However, while USDA investigators reported that NYU had illegally
retaliated against Moor-Jankowski by shutting down LEMSIP,
other USDA officials rejected his administrative complaint,
forcing him to court to seek redress. Moor-Jankowski is represented
by Philp Byler, who also represented him in his landmark
1991 libel case victory over the Austrian pharmaceutical firm
Immuno AG, which had sued him for publishing a letter by
International Primate Protection League president Shirley
McGreal, in his capacity as editor of the Journal of Primatology.

Feces-flinging in the Texas sun

October 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1996:

SAN ANTONIO––Figurative feces-flinging escalated
around Primarily Primates over the summer, apparently
stimulated by a sniff of government funding for laboratory
chimpanzee retirement.
Language authorizing funding for investigation of
chimp retirement was in the version of the National Institutes
of Health budget bill approved by the Senate on September
12. Earlier, the House Committee on National Security and
the Senate Committee on Armed Services recommended that
retirement be considered as an option for disposing of the 150
chimpanzees now kept at the Primate Research Complex at
Holloman Air Force Base in Arizona, managed under contract
by the Coulston Foundation.

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