A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
In a Dog’s Heart
by Jennifer Arnold
Random House (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019), 2011.
256 pages, hardcover. $25.00.
Not another dog book, I said. The market is flooded with dog books. Send me cat, horse, or elephant books, but not another book about dogs. But In a Dog’s Heart, Jennifer Arnold’s latest, perked me up. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
BOOKS: Humane education classic:Time Is Short And The Water Rises
by John Walsh with Robert Gannon
E.P. Dutton & Co., 1967. 224 pages, hardcover.
One can still find battered copies of Time Is Short And The Water Rises through online book search services, often selling for less than the orignal cover price of $6.95, plus postage. The ANIMAL PEOPLE review copy was discarded years ago by Central School District #1, in the Town of Rockland, New York. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
Before there was Operation Gwamba, documented by John Walsh and Robert Gannon in Time Is Short And The Water Rises, there was Operation Noah, a five-year rescue begun in 1958 by Rhodesian chief ranger Rupert Fothergill.
Fothergill, 46, began relocating animals from the Zambezi Valley to Matsudona National Park and other habitat near Lake Kariba in 1958, after the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River was closed. Fothergill was still at it in 1964, to little outside notice, when Operation Gwamba began.
The Kariba Dam, then the biggest in the world, impounded water for 174 miles below Victoria Falls. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
TAMPA–Contacted by ANIMAL PEOPLE about a flamboyant but ill-informed September 28, 2011 “exposé” of Big Cat Rescue by Mike Deeson of WTSP-TV, Big Cat Rescue founder Carole Baskin seemed only transiently interested in defending herself and her organization.
Her husband, attorney Howard Baskin, posted an extensive response and rebuttal to Deeson on the Big Cat Rescue web site, including a detailed summary of why he advised his wife against going on camera with Deeson for what appeared to be an “ambush interview.” Carole Baskin did e-mail to Deeson an extensive written response to the allegations against Big Cat Rescue. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” –William Shakespeare
Jagjit Singh, 70, died of a brain hemorrhage in Mumbai on October 10, 2011. “Widely credited for reviving the popularity of classical Hindustani love songs in Urdu, known as ghazals,” recalled New York Times correspondent Neha Thirani, Singh was also remembered “for using his voice to speak up for elephants needlessly being killed by speeding trains on railway tracks,” said PETA/India manager of media and celebrity projects Sachin S. Bangera. Singh wrote to former Indian railways minister Mamata Banerjee in September 2010, after a train moving at 70 miles per hour killed seven elephants in the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, asking her to “limit the speed of trains running through elephant corridors and to use speed-detection guns to monitor train speeds.” The use of speed guns to clock train speeds was introduced in October 2010 by Azam Siddiqui, a TV news camera man who first wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE about road and railway threats to elephants in 2004. ANIMAL PEOPLE helped Siddiqui to collect the information he needed to apply for the PETA/India grant that funded the acquisition of a speed gun used to demonstrate the efficacy of the technique–but while the speed gun easily passed all tests, train speeds are still not routinely monitored. Three elephants were injured in July 2011 near the site of the collison that killed the seven, and another was killed in October 2011. More than 150 elephants have been killed by trains in India since 1987. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
BEIJING, BANKOK, HANOI-– Public outrage on September 21, 2011 brought the abrupt cancellation of the eighth annual dog meat festival in Zhejiang, China, which had been scheduled for October 18.
From five to ten thousand dogs were to have been caged in the streets of Jinhua City, Zhejiang province, to be killed and butchered to visitors’ order. “Dogs’ yelping fills the air throughout the the festival,” reported The Shanghaiist. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
HARARE, Zimbabwe–Driven by drought and inability to farm on property seized a decade ago, desperate Zimbabweans have begun a second round of land invasions.
Land invasions during the first years of the 21st century left the Zimbabwean trophy hunting industry largely intact, but destroyed nonlethal wildlife watching and turned Zimbabwe from being one of Africa’s major food exporting nations into requiring international food aid. Encouraging the land invasions kept the ZANU-PF party in power, extending the tenure of President Robert Mugabe to 31 years. But Mugabe, 87, is suffering from advanced prostate cancer, according to leaked diplomatic papers. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
BRUSSELS–The European Parlia-ment on October 13, 2011 ratified a Written Declaration on Dog Population Management in the European Union which “calls on Member States to adopt comprehensive dog population management strategies,” to “include measures such as dog control and anti-cruelty laws, support for veterinary procedures including rabies vaccination and sterilization as necessary to control the number of unwanted dogs, and the promotion of responsible pet ownership.” Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2011:
HONOLULU–Five years of advocacy appears to have ended most of the retail end of the live pig trade to Hawaii.
Now comes the hard part: ending the wholesale trade to hotels and restaurants that cater to tourists who visit Hawaii from all over the world, but are usually there for just a few days out of a lifetime. Hotel and restaurant demand accounted for more than 80% of live pig imports at the peak of the trade, and with the retail trade shrinking, may account for almost all of it now. Read more