Fundraising by unknowns

ANIMAL PEOPLE readers are asking about recent appeal mailings from five charities that the recipients have not previously heard of:

* John Aspinall's Wildlife Sanctuaries, using a post office box in Hagerstown, Maryland;

* The Elephants of Africa Rescue Society, using a post office box in Los Angeles;

* Noah's Lost Ark Animal Sanctuary, of Youngstown, Ohio;

* Wild About Cats, with a post office box in Sacramento, California; and

* Wolf Mountain Sanctuary, located in Lucerne Valley, California.

The John Aspinall's Wildlife Sanctuaries appeals are signed by Damian Aspinall, son of the late British gambling hall proprietor and for-profit zoo owner John Aspinall, who died in June 2000. The Aspinall zoos, Howletts and Port Lympne, are noted for hands-on care and fatal accidents to keepers: five since 1980.

"The proportion of the late John Aspinall's £25 million fortune inherited by his children will depend on their dedication to his wild animal breeding program, his will has revealed," wrote Thomas Penny of the London Daily Telegraph in December 2000.

Damian Aspinall, Penny continued, is "a millionaire through property and technology investments who has taken on his father's work, and has committed himself to taking it further by introducing British-bred gorillas, rhinos, and elephants into the wild."

The Elephants of Africa Rescue Society, Noah's Lost Ark Animal Sanctuary, and Wild About Cats are all very small charities for whom Virginia fundraiser Bruce Eberle (see page 6) has recently done trial solicitations.

Noah's Lost Ark Animal Sanctuary director Ellen Whitehouse told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the trial mailing for her organization lost money. The history of other Eberle mailings in the names of little-known sanctuaries suggests that the appeals on behalf of the others are unlikely to do much for them.

The Elephants of Africa Rescue Society was founded by Hayden Rosenauer and Heather Greaux, who in 1998 purchased 120 acres near the DELTA Rescue and Shambala sanctuaries in Acton, California, founded respectively by Leo Grillo and Tippi Hedren. Rosenauer and Greaux started their sanctuary with an elephant named Susie. In March 2001 they received two more elephants, Butch and Buffy, whom they bought from a petting zoo in Eutawville, South Carolina, for $50,000.

The elephant purchase was reportedly backed in part by a personal loan obtained by board member Charlie Sammut, who planned to take Buffy to his Vision Quest Ranch & Equestrian Center near Salinas, California, as a companion to an elephant he already had named Lisa.

Sammut, 40, is a former police officer who in the 1980s ran a business called Oxton Kennels & Exotics in Salinas, toured schools with exotic animals, and walked two miles a day alongside U.S. 101 with an African lion named Josef. The business eventually separated into two: Oxton Kennels, a boarding facility for dogs, and Wild Things Animal Rentals, which trains animals for use in screen productions.

Just a month before Buffy came to California, Sammut was written up by the Contra Costa Times for a plan to build a safari-style bed-and-breakfast, at which guests would stay in tents for $225 a night and watch Lisa the elephant, Josef the lion, and other animals including a tiger and a black bear.

The six-member Elephants of Africa Rescue Society board also includes Ron Whitfield, lion-and-tiger trainer at Marine World Africa USA for 23 years.

Founded in 1980, the Wolf Mountain Sanctuary is a project of Tonya Carloni, also known as Tonya Little-wolf, who for many years has done presentations about wolves and Native American culture in the Los Angeles area.

Her web site stipulates that she does not take in wolf hybrids.