A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2011:
Tony LaRussa, 68, celebrated his fourth World Series
victory in 35 years of managing major league baseball teams by
retiring from baseball. The Performing Animal Welfare Society
reportedly offered LaRussa a job as an elephant keeper, but he has a
fulltime volunteer job at Tony LaRussa’s Animal Foundation, begun
with his wife Elaine in 1991. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2011:
GROSSE TETE, Louisiana— More than 10 years of controversy
and litigation over Tony, the resident tiger at the Tiger Truck Stop
near Interstate 10 in Grosse Tete, Louisiana, may be near an
end–or maybe not. District Judge Michael Caldwell on November 3,
2011 ruled for the second time in six months, in a case brought by
the Animal Legal Defense Fund, that Tiger Truck Stop owner Michael
Sandlin is illegally keeping the tiger. However, Caldwell’s
previous ruling was reversed by a three-judge panel of the Louisiana
First Circuit Court of Appeal, and Sandlin is expected to appeal
again. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2011:
ZANESVILLE–Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz on the evening of October 18, 2011 ordered his deputies to kill 18 tigers, 17 African lions, six black bears, two grizzly bears, two wolves, and a baboon because he believed that the circumstances under which they were running loose–including a failed attempt to shut some of them back in their breached cages–left no other options.
Reported Zanesville Times Recorder staff writer Hannah Sparling, “Sam Kopchak, 64, owns about four acres on Kopchak Road,” next door to Terrry Thompson’s 73-acre Muskingum County Animal Farm. Kopchak was walking his horse Red back to his barn when he noticed a group of about 30 horses on Thompson’s property acting
strange, he said. He looked a little closer and saw they were running from a bear. Then, Kopchak turned around and saw a male African lion standing about 30 feet from him and Red. The only thing separating them was a 4- or 5-foot wire fence, he said.”
“I don’t know how I controlled myself,” Kopchak told Sparling. “We made a beeline toward my barn.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2011:
LETTERS
Marti Kheel
My late sister Marti Kheel’s quest for answers began long ago
when as a child, the adult world caused a severing of her heart and
mind during a mass slaughter and plucking of chickens that was the
activity of the day at her summer camp. In her own words:
“In retrospect, I think that two forms of violence occurred
that day-the extreme violence directed against the chickens and the
internal violence toward my own nature and my own feelings of
connection to other animals. What happened that day is that my
initial feelings of empathy for the animals under attack became
suppressed and anaesthetized. It took me many years to start the
process of reclaiming those feelings and in essence, that has become
my life’s work-to reclaim those initial feelings of kinship with
other animals and to help others do so as well.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
Wangari Maathai, 71, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, died of cancer on September 24, 2011, in Nairobi, Kenya.
Maathai “won a scholarship to study biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, receiving a degree in 1964,” wrote New York Times obituarist Jeffrey Gettleman. “She earned a master of science degree from the University of Pitts-burgh. She went on to obtain a doctorate in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi, becoming the first woman in East or Central Africa to hold such a degree,” Gettleman continued. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
WUXI, China–Tipped off at 10 p.m. on August 3, 2011 that truckers planned to illegally haul a load of cats to live markets in Guangzhou, Guangdong at dawn, disguised as a cargo of furniture, members of the Wuxi Animal Protection Association in Jiangsu province mobilized overnight to intercept the truck at a toll booth at about 5:00 a.m. on August 4. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
LONDON--The British Horseracing Authority on September 27, 2011 ruled, after a 10-month review of whipping rules, that jockeys who whip a horse more than seven times in a flat race, more than eight times in a jumping race, or more than five times down the home stretch, will after October 10, 2011 be suspended for at least five days and forfeit their riding fees plus prize money (if any). The rule change came three weeks after University of Sydney professors Paul McGreevy, David Evans, Andrew McLean, and Bidda Jones won the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for scientific research that contributes to animal protection by showing that race horses run faster when they are not whipped.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
WASHINGTON D.C.–-A new USDA rule amending enforcement of the Commercial Transport of Equines to Slaughter Act to cover horses at every stage of transport to slaughter took effect on October 7, 2011. The old rule, in effect since 2001, prohibited hauling horses to slaughter on double-decked trailers, and required that horses going to slaughter must receive food, water, and six hours of rest before each travel segment, but horses “never move directly to slaughter,” USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service farm animal welfare coordinator Gary Egrie told Heather Johnson of the North Platte Telegraph. “Buyers move them to feedlots or other assembly points until they have a full truck,” Egrie explained. The rule now covers collecting horses to be slaughtered, as well as the final haul.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
Commentary by Kim Bartlett
Visiting Hawaii in early 2011, I was driven around the island of Hawaii 1.5 times and the island of Oahu once, but I never caught sight of one of the pigs who are said to be wreaking so much havoc.
Feral pigs are blamed for nibbling crops, including macadamia nut trees, and also for eating from people’s garbage cans. On a bus tour of the island of Hawaii, in a forested stretch of highway north of Hilo, the driver called out that a pig was crossing the road ahead of us, but the pig was gone before I saw him. The driver seemed surprised to have spotted one. Read more