A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
One in a Million
by Nicholas Read
Sirius Books (1011 Commercial Dr.,
Vancouver, BC V5L 3X1)
1996, 144 pages, $5.95 paperback.
Dumped as a pup, Joey is a
German shepherd cross and the title character
of One in a Million.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
Track of the Coyote
by Todd Wilkinson
with photos by Michael H. Francis
NorthWord Press Inc.
(POB 1360, Minocqua, WI 54548),
1995. 140 pages; $14.95, paperback.
The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour
gets just one thing about coyotes right: someone
is always gunning for them. Todd
Wilkinson’s Track of the Coyote draws heavily
upon biologist Robert Crabtree’s recent
five-year study of the coyotes of the Lamar
Valley in Yellowstone National Park, now
extirpated by the reintroduction of wolves.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
China’s Threatened Wildlife
by Liz and Keith Laidler
Blandford, distributed by Sterling
Publishing (387 Park Avenue South,
New York, NY 10016-8810),
192 pages, 50 color illustrations, $24.95.
Most of us are semi-familiar with the
giant panda, perhaps the red panda, the
Yangtse dolphin, Chinese alligator, and Pere
David’s deer, but these are just a handful of
the unique, little-known, fast-vanishing wild
inhabitants of the most populous and longest
settled nation on earth, which nonetheless has
surprisingly many corners seldom explored or
exploited––until now, when increasing affulence
has in turn stimulated demand for costly
folk medicines whose ingredients are valued to
the degree that they are scarce, and are scarce
to the degree that the species from which they
come are endangered.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
Opened in November 1995, the
Shoreline Star greyhound track i n
Bridgeport, Connecticut filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy on July 16, six days after owner
A. Robert Zeff asked a federal judge to rule
that audio tapes were illegally seized in a
June 25 police raid on his Westport home. A
state police task force is reportedly probing
allegations that Zeff bribed former Connecticut
gaming policy board chair Francis Muska
and possibly other officials, seeking to avoid
questions about his financing. Zeff was
charged on June 27 with destroying evidence
and interfering with the search.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
SAN ANTONIO––The Del Rio,
Texas grand jury probe of alleged illegal sales
of wild horses to slaughter has apparently
ended without issuing criminal charges.
Acting on the advice of Charles
Brooks, trial attorney for the Environment and
Natural Resources Division of the Department
of Justice, U.S. attorney James William Blagg
and John E. Murphy, first assistant U.S. attorney,
criminal division, on July 5 recommended
to the Department of the Interior that “the
investigation within the Western District of
Texas into the incident involving Don
Galloway and the 36 horses placed on a ranch
in Terrell County, Texas should be closed.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
MADISON, Wisconsin––In a ruling
of import to shelter staff, the Wisconsin
Supreme Court by 4-3 decision on June 27
reversed a Milwaukee County Circuit Court
jury award of $81,445 to part-time worker
Cheryl Armstrong, of Thistlerose Kennels in
Greendale, who was bitten by a Siberian
husky belonging to John and Ann Mack in
January 1991. Armstrong sued the Macks
and Milwaukee Mutual Insurance. Writing
for the majority, Justice Janine Geske argued
that Wisconsin law defines a dog owner as
anyone who owns, harbors, or keeps a dog.
In boarding the Macks’ dog, Thistlerose
became the dog’s owner for legal purposes;
Armstrong became the owner’s agent.
The ownership statute “is rendered
meaningless,” said Geske, “if one who in the
course of employment exercises control over
and provides care for a dog is not found to be
that dog’s keeper.”
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
The Coulston Foundation announ-
ced June 20 that it will pay the USDA a civil
penalty of $20,000 and make $20,000 in
improvements to the Primate Biomedial
Research Center Laboratory, which it manages
at Holloman Air Force Base in New
Mexico, to settle charges resulting from the
1993 overheating deaths of three chimpanzees.
Arnim John Kudinow of Lake
Oswego, Oregon, in June drew 112 years in
prison for ramming a police car with his pickup,
throwing a knife at police, and killing a
Dutch Malinois police dog named Ronnie with
a septic bite to the nose––for which Kudinow
also was ordered to pay $595 and serve two
years on probation if he ever gets out.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
Small whales
The Sacramento Bee warned in
June that the vaquita whale is “on the verge
of extinction, a victim of commercial gill net
fishing” in the Sea of Cortez, and that the
reserve set up to protect the vaquita may be “a
sanctuary in name only.” The vaquita is a
small toothed whale, a class not protected by
the International Whaling Commission.
Romanian Institute for Marine
Research scientist Alexandru Bologna says
only 10,000 dolphins remain in the heavily
polluted Black Sea, down from 70,000 in
1970, and one million in 1950, when the former
Communist regime began “economic capitalization
of dolphins,” i.e. slaughter.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:
LUXEMBOURG––Major conservation
groups have historically been quiet
about fishing––and Greenpeace, founded on
oceanic campaigning, is no exception.
The world’s second-largest environmental
group, trailing only the World
Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace withdrew from
active opposition to sealing in Atlantic
Canada in 1986, even before seals were
blamed for crashing cod stocks. The
Greenpeace campaign against toxic pollution
in the St. Lawrence River was promoted in
part as an effort to improve fishing.