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JUNE 2005

Letters

Woodpecker

Wow!  Your May editorial “Lessons from finding the ivory-billed woodpecker” is phenomenal.

When someone sent me the news about the ‘rediscovered’ bird, I responded with the following rant:

“Conservationists” who endorsed the poisoning of Anacapa, accepting as collateral damage the loss of rare species such as the burrowing owl and the Anacapa deer mouse, may also have wiped out an unrediscovered “extinct” species.

We have proof that the National Park Service poisoned a species of bird they didn’t even know was on the island. They also did not do a DNA test on the poor Anacapa Island rat, a uniquely adapted population, genetically isolated for two centuries.

If these bio-crats would simply let compassion for every individual creature be their guide, as opposed to academic interest in the statistically rare ones, we wouldn’t have such destructive (in addition to obscenely cruel) hubris.

Your indepth analysis of the news took the lessons to a very sophisticated level. I remain in awe of your ability to digest and synthesize information.

I forwarded “Lessons…” to Travis Armstrong, editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press. He is a very courageous and determined defender of the island animals.

Thanks again.

—Scarlet Newton
Channel Islands Protection Assn.
P.O. Box 60132
Santa Barbara, CA 93160
Phone: 805-882-2008
<chiapa99@hotmail.com>
<www.chiapa.org>

National character & compassion

Your April 2005 editorial feature “National character & the quality of compassion” gave a very good overview of the kinds of animal cruelty that exist in both Eastern and Western cultures. Just as informative––but a lot more encouraging––was Animal People’s report of the results of the MORI polls commissioned by Compassion In World Farming and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, with help from One Voice of France and the Royal SPCA of Great Britain.

It came as a welcome surprise to learn that although people in some developing countries have had the benefit of humane education for only a relatively short period of time, a large majority believes that humans have a moral duty to minimize animal suffering.

As usual, Animal People has provided information that is not easily available to the general reader. Thanks for your ongoing coverage of important animal rights issues.

—J.R. Hyland
Humane Religion
P.O. Box 25354
Sarasota, FL 32477
Phone: 941-924-8887
Fax: 941-925-9636
<HumaneReligion@compuserve.com>

The cases for and against cat licensing

In some 50 years of volunteer work in animal rescue in Vermont, Massachusetts, Ken-tucky, California, and now Indiana, I have consistently heard from animal control authorities that they are hopelessly understaffed, funded mainly by fees from dog licensing, and dealing with equally as many cats as dogs.

If cat licenses were necessary, the income of tax-supported civic shelters and programs would become equal to their responsibilities. Why then are cat owners not subject equally to licensing laws?

—Elisabeth Arvin
Jasper, Indiana
<CasaJody@aol.com>

The Editor responds:
Even 50 years ago, when the Walt Disney animated film Lady & The Tramp offered possibly the first realistic screen depiction of a dog pound, and promoted licensing as the then best hope for preventing shelter killing, Illinois governor Adlai Stephenson had already reviewed and in 1949 vetoed a legislative proposal for cat licensing. Licensing requirements for dogs had already been in effect in parts of the U.S. for even longer than the U.S. had existed, but compliance has rarely exceeded 25%.

Imposing fines for non-compliance has historically depressed reclaims of lost dogs from pounds, rather than encouraging more licensing.

Doing door-to-door canvassing to increase license sales typically costs more in staff time than is recovered in revenue. Relatively few animal control departments even handled cats until recent decades, yet the cost of handling dogs alone usually so far exceeds the income potential from dog license sales that most humane societies bidding on animal control contracts learned long since to ask for guaranteed revenue, with licensing revenue at most a secondary source of funding.

ANIMAL PEOPLE in a comparison of data from eight representative U.S. cities, published in March 2002, found that there is a demonstrable relationship between licensing compliance and the cost of a license, but no demonstrable relationship between the rates of licensing compliance and the community rates of dog and cat killing per 1,000 human residents. In fact, the highest rate of shelter killing came in the city with the highest rate of licensing compliance.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has reviewed data from many cities whose animal control directors believe their licensing programs are successful, but has found that the claim really seemed to be sustained by the evidence only in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

The Calgary secret of success is that the licensing program is heavily promoted as a low-cost lost pet identification system, not as a revenue generator. (ANIMAL PEOPLE profiled the Calgary animal control department in October 2000.)

Gretchen Wyler on zoo elephants

Your May 2005 cover feature “Weaning zoos from elephants” was brilliantly written, and I set the time aside to read it in its entirety. How nice to read dates and places and statistics and know that they are all facts. Wonderfully researched, and I will appreciate it if you will send me 25 copies. It must be shared with all those people who have been so involved in my elephant story here in Los Angeles––a two-and-a-half-year effort focusing on an L.A. Zoo elephant named Ruby and her trials.

I became an activist one snowy day in December 1966. Many people ask me how I’m still fighting, and I say, “My outrage drives me.” Now my passion for captive elephants fuels me. I do believe I will live another 20 years, and I do believe that before I die, there will be no more circus elephants, and that U.S. zoo elephants will have died out.

The time I have spent on captive elephants is almost matched by my caring about the government’s horrific handling of wild horses.

It has been a disappointing and frustrating nearly 40 years, and I can well imagine how you and Kim feel, since you are covering nearly every issue on the globe concerning animals. Bravo! For continuing to care so much, and for presenting such a complete picture of man’s inhumanity, I thank you.

—Gretchen Wyler
Humane Society of the U.S.
Hollywood Office
5551 Balboa Blvd.
Encino, CA 91316
Phone: 818-501-2275
Fax: 818-501-2226
<Gretchen@hsushollywood.org>

Editor's note:

Transferred to the Knoxville Zoo in May 2003, against strong activist opposition led by Wyler, Ruby was returned to the Los Angeles Zoo in November 2004, after failing to integrate into the Knoxville Zoo herd––as Wyler and others predicted. Both the Elephant Sanctuary at Hohenwald, Tennessee, and the Performing Animal Welfare Society’s Ark 2000 sanctuary in Calaveras, California, have offered Ruby a home.

The likelihood that Ruby will eventually be retired to a sanctuary may have increased with the May 17, 2005 election of new Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “I have believed for some time that a zoo is not an appropriate place for an animal as large as an elephant,” Villaraigosa reportedly told NBC news during the campaign. “I think we need to move the elephants out.”

I personally would argue that the “complete picture of man’s inhumanity” that Wyler credits ANIMAL PEOPLE with portraying is the perspective from only one side of the window. From the other, each scrap of information we receive, each remedial action undertaken, and each reader we attract provides testimony that far more people oppose cruelty than are knowingly engaged in it. All of history has documented inhumanity. ANIMAL PEOPLE chronicles the humane response.

The American Zoo Association answered “Weaning zoos from elephants” with a fax stating that, “According to opinion poll results, 95% of U.S. adults agree that seeing elephants and rhinos helps people appreciate them more and encourages people to learn more about them. 93% agree that it is important that a marine life park, aquarium, or zoo be accredited by a national association. 86% of respondents agree that visiting zoos and aquariums encourages people to donate money or time to animal conservation efforts. 96% of respondents agree that it is important that people work to conserve animals such as those found in aquariums and zoos. 95% of respondents agree that many of the successes to save endangered or declining species are at least in part a result of work done in zoos and aquariums.”

While all of this may be true, without in any way denying the positive contributions of zoos, there is still room to question whether zoos as they presently exist are the best way to do their work. Zoos have evolved from entertainment facilities to educational institutions and conservatories, but have resisted accepting a humane mission, which would require them to operate more like sanctuaries. That may nonetheless become their most viable role, as it is by now clear that even the best-managed zoo-based species survival programs have only a minor part in achieving the survival of endangered animals, and rarely can substitute for protected wild habitat.