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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: May 2008

Obituaries

 

Appaji Rao, 71, vice chair of the Animal Welfare Board of India since 2005, died of a sudden heart attack on April 20, 2008 in Chennai. A graduate of the Madras Veterinary College, Rao "volunteered at the Blue Cross of India from 1964-1966 and was our first veterinary volunteer," recalled Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna. "He joined the Madras Veterinary College as a lecturer," Krishna said, "and rose to head the department of epidimeology." Retiring in 1995, Rao continued to assist the Blue Cross of India and other animal welfare charities. For the Animal Welfare Board, Rao helped to produce draft rules for fish keeping, dog breeding, and animal euthanasia, "recently finalised and sent to the Ministry of Environ-ment & Forests for notification," Krishna said. "He was also the moving force," Krishna added, "behind the workshop for a rabies-free India held in 2006, and for drawing up the protocols for Animal Birth Control. Rules for temple and captive elephants he formulated were to be released by the Governor of Rajasthan" during the week of his death. Among Rao's last acts was to telephone Idduki SPCA chief executive A.G. Babu, asking him to seek an injunction from the High Court of Kerala "against the indiscriminate killing of stray dogs [by municipal dogcatchers] all over Kerala," Babu posted to the Asian Animal Protection Network. The injunction was granted, Babu said on April 26.

 

Rudy Komarek, 79, died in early March 2008 of a heart attack in Florida, ANIMAL PEOPLE was informed by upstate New York herpetologists Randy Stechart and William S. Brown. "Apart from several well-known bounty hunters who took thousands of timber rattlesnakes at taxpayers' expense in three northeastern New York counties and one western Vermont county, no single individual had a detrimental impact on northeastern populations of this species as great as that of Komarek," Stechart and Brown said in a jointly signed statement. Stechart and Brown estimated Komarek poached as many as 6,000 timber rattlers in New York and adjacent states, continuing to capture them for at least 14 years after they were designated a threatened species. Calling himself the Cobra King, Komarek was arrested in New York state for illegally capturing and possessing timber rattlers in 1991 and 1992, served a four-month federal prison term for trafficking in timber rattlers in 1993, and "was arrested in Kansas and deported from that state in 1995," Brown recounted on a 1998 "wanted poster" he distributed as part of an effort he began as a graduate student and continued for more than 20 years to try to deter Komarek from further raids on timber rattler dens. Brown started his pursuit of Komarek after Komarek plundered several dens that Brown had under study, documenting their threatened status. Several other herpetologists argued that Brown had made the otherwise obscure Komarek into something of an outlaw celebrity, who after relocating from New York to Florida sold maps allegedly showing timber rattler dens to other collectors. Daytona Beach News-Journal reporter Virginia Smith won the 2004 American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors top award for feature writing for a profile of Komarek and history of the Komarek/Brown feud. Before Brown made Komarek famous for poaching timber rattlers, he may have been most notorious for selling three of them to former firefighter Frank Giovanelli, who on October 7, 1986 slipped them under the door of his downstairs neighbor, Robin Goldman. Goldman had repeatedly complained that Giovanelli made too much noise. One of the snakes bit one of Goldman's cats, who survived. Giovanelli and Komarek were each sentenced to serve 90 days in jail plus three years on probation.

 

Terry LaPointe, 48, founder of the Fund for Dogs & Cats shelter in Pepperell, Massachusetts, died suddenly on March 13, 2008. LaPointe started the Fund for Dogs & Cats from her home in Townsend in 1994. The no-kill shelter found homes for about 4,000 dogs and cats during her lifetime, estimated veterinarian John Lindermuth, who assisted her from the beginning. Volunteers kept the Fund for Dogs & Cats open after LaPointe's death.

 

Ursula Bates, longtime secretary of Solihull Animal Aid, and West Midlands representative for Vegetarians Voice International since Juliet Gelately founded the organization in 1994, died on March 6, 2008 of cancer. A leading campaigner against live exports of British calves in the mid-1990s, Bates in 2005 was instrumental in organizing a memorial for fellow activist Jill Phipps, who was crushed by a cattle truck during a 2005 protest.

 

Stephan Miller, 39, was fatally bitten on the neck by a five-year-old grizzly bear on April 22, 2008 at his cousin Randy Miller's Predators in Action performing animal training center near Big Bear Lake, California. "It was a flash bite and hit him in a very vulnerable spot," during the making of a promotional video, Randy Miller told Gillian Flaccus of Associated Press. "The bear, named Rocky, recently appeared in the Will Ferrell sports comedy Semi-Pro," wrote Flaccus. Fellow trainer Chemaine Almqist of Forever Wild, in Phelan, California, praised the Millers' work and attention to safety. In 1999, however, "Randy Miller came under fire from animal rights groups for arranging a wrestling match between an 800-pound Alaskan grizzly and a 290-pound weightlifter at a public event," Flaccus recalled.