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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2009:

EDITORIAL:  Has Michael Vick truly hit the road to redemption?

Former Atlanta Falcons quarterback and convicted dogfighter Michael Vick on May 20, 2009 completed 19 months at the Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.

Released through a side gate, Vick is not in Kansas any more. Eluding the media spotlight, Vick followed the Yellow Brick Road--or some other seemingly improbable path--into an alliance with the Humane Society of the United States that has stretched the imaginations of many animal defenders and much of the public almost as much as the alliance of Dorothy, her mixed breed dog Toto, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Woodman, and the Scarecrow, who exposed the Wizard of Oz in 1900.

Dingdong! The Wicked Witch is not dead, but will be volunteering for the representatives of dogs and cats, wildlife, habitat conservation, and nonlethal crop protection. Vick, who since his April 2007 arrest has personified dogfighting, is to become an itinerant spokesperson against dogfighting, building on his lingering "street cred" as the first prominent quarterback of African ancestry in the National Football League.

"There was nobody tougher on Michael Vick than HSUS," explained HSUS president Wayne Pacelle. "We urged state and federal authorities to prosecute him and we made a key confidential informant available to federal authorities, who proved vital to the case. We also campaigned, along with others, to urge the Atlanta Falcons to drop Vick, the National Football League to suspend him, and his corporate sponsors to sever their ties."

Vick asked for the chance to speak against dogfighting under the HSUS banner. HSUS conditionally accepted. Vick will be required to make public appearances, not just appear in a video, and will have to do it "for a long time," Pacelle said, before HSUS will feel convinced that he has sincerely repented and reformed.

Earlier, Vick was to have produced an anti-dogfighting public service announcement to be distributed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In January 2009, however, PETA withdrew from the deal after Vick's attorneys asked PETA to support Vick's application for reinstatement of eligibility to play in the NFL.

Instead, PETA urged that Vick undergo a brain scan and psychiatric evaluation.
"I sat with the man, but I still don't know what's in his heart," acknowledged Pacelle. "He told me he did terrible things to dogs. He said he grew up with dogfighting, and never sufficiently questioned it. He said that he has changed forever. And he said he wants to show the American public that he is committed to helping to combat this problem. He asked for an opportunity to help. I want to give him that opportunity. If he makes the most of it," Pacelle assessed, "and demonstrates a sincere long-term commitment to the task, then it may prove to be a tipping point in our campaign to eradicate dogfighting. If he demonstrates a fleeting or superficial interest, then it will be his own failing, not ours.

"For me," Pacelle stipulated, "it's not about Michael Vick and providing endless punitive treatment. It's about stopping other young people from going down the road Vick took. We've done a lot with the law, and with law enforcement, and that work continues. But the most urgent challenge we face is interrupting the cycle of violence that leads kids down this dead end path. They need to see that dogfighters never succeed. They are criminals, and there is no good outcome. Michael Vick's story is a narrative they need to hear."

Responded International Society for Animal Rights president Susan Dapsis, in an open letter to Pacelle, "You make a persuasive argument that Vick could, and I repeat could, be a force for good regarding the obscene practice of dog fighting. ISAR's fear, however, and that of many of our colleagues in the animal protection movement, is that the allegedly repentant Michael Vick is actually the sociopath Michael Vick who is using HSUS to further his own professional and financial goals. We don't believe that given Vick's criminal conduct, the dog abuser has suddenly become the dog lover. Accordingly," Dapsis pledged "ISAR will watch HSUS while you watch Vick."

Taking a rather different approach to Vick, Dapsis pledged that, "Each time ISAR learns that Vick has benefitted, or is about to benefit from his criminal celebrity, we'll send our 'Don't Let Michael Vick Benefit By Abusing Dogs' petition to everyone who is trying to help him." Dapsis called the petition "a grass roots effort to further punish Vick for his abominable conduct. We vow to keep after him," she pledged, "even after he has faded from public view--the sooner the better."

Michael Vick is clearly hoping that the endorsement of a major national humane organization will help persuade NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to reinstate him, and start him back toward football stardom and the lucrative equipment and apparel endorsement contracts that he lost in consequence of participating in dogfighting.

But as New York Times sportswriter Lynn Zinzer pointed out, "His N.F.L. future also depends on finding another team that will sign him." Vick spent his entire previous career with the Atlanta Falcons. Falcons owner Arthur Blank "has said Vick will never again play for the Falcons," Zinzer continued, "who have said they will try to trade Vick's rights or release him. They previously agreed to a contract settlement that frees both sides from the lucrative 10-year deal Vick signed in 2004.

"Any prospective new team would most likely endure the wrath of fans and others still outraged over his involvement in dogfighting and its accompanying brutality," Zinzer assessed. "A new team would also be banking on Vick returning as the electrifying player he was over his six seasons in the NFL" before his arrest. "Vick has reportedly stayed in shape while in prison," Zinzer noted, "but with two missed seasons, there is no way to know if his skills have diminished. Vick said in bankruptcy court last month that he believed he could play another 10 to 12 years. The NFL career average is only 3.2 years, and Vick has [already] played six."

"The story of the coming NFL season will be which team has the courage to give Vick the second chance he has earned by virtue of his incarceration," wrote New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden. Rhoden is known for open sympathy toward animal causes, including critical coverage of horse racing and commentary about coaches who respond inadequately when athletes mistreat animals. He devoted two columns to pondering how the NFL, society, and animal advocates might best respond to Vick's quest for redemption and an athletic comeback. "Vick may still be better than half the quarterbacks on NFL rosters," Rhoden guessed. "If public relations were not an issue, several teams would take a chance on the 28-year-old Vick."

However, Rhoden continued, "While debates on sports talk radio programs continue to focus on the narrow issue of whether Vick deserves a second chance to play football, the larger, wiser issue is Vick's personal rehabilitation and the role he can play in discouraging animal abuse." Rhoden noted that PETA had backed away from Vick, but suggested that "There is no benefit to the organization to making peace with Vick. Better to call attention to itself by waging a public crusade against any team that considers signing him."

Rhoden himself felt more inclined to stick his neck out. "Whether you feel his sentence was too harsh or that it was justified," Rhden wrote, "Vick has served the sentence that was imposed. This is a time for soul-searching, and not only from Vick. Before they pick up placards and protest, animal lovers and animal-rights activists should look into their hearts and realize that Vick has paid a heavy price for his role in the cruelty. Vick has lost almost everything. He has been disgraced before the public, his family, and his friends. He is bankrupt.

"The HSUS announcement about its partnership with Vick, and the reaction to it," Rhoden finished, "underline complexities that lie between raw outrage over the mistreatment of animals and the rehabilitation of the humans who commit the crimes. Is there justification for being skeptical of Vick's motives? Of course. Vick is eager--desperate--to remake his imageŠ[But] Regardless of how you feel about Vick, the morality of the issue he represents--cruelty to animals--is not cut and dried, black and white. HSUS has introduced a large patch of gray."

Humane work is about redemption

The enduring appeal of The Wizard of Oz is that it is not a simple black-and-white good-against-evil morality tale. The highly manipulative and ethically ambiguous wizard himself proves to be a rather ordinary man who is striving to live up to extraordinary expectations, not unlike a star athlete, who while still much too young to be viewed as a wise elder in almost any society, is widely expected to exemplify the highest ideals of social conduct.

Most fall short. As Rhoden has often pointed out, the overwhelming majority of star athletes are simply ordinary young men with extraordinary talents, whose values are shaped chiefly by peer conduct--like the behavior of soldiers and sailors, students, and many animal rights activists. Star athletes have not been taught to be moral philosophers, or exemplars; they have been taught to play games well enough that other people will pay to watch them.

Yet there is one moral lesson that every successful athlete learns almost as soon as he or she takes up a sport: how to rebound from a failure and rise to the next challenge.  To a considerable extent, the degree to which an athlete becomes a star reflects the extent of his or her ability to learn quickly from an error, and never make the same mistake twice. Other people may refuse to learn from mistakes, and may endlessly repeat the same patterns of behavior througout life, but a successful athlete--at least on the playing field-- must be willing and able to adapt, often in the space of a split second.

Michael Vick as a quarterback was best known for thinking on his feet, scrambling instead of passing, or passing instead of scrambling, or doing both as part of one play, while outsized defensive linemen tried to knock him farther than the tornado threw Dorothy. Vick may be able to go another direction now. He is certainly trying to show that he can.

His conduct as a sadistic dogfighter, according to the co-defendants whose testimony sent him to prison, suggests that he may well be a psychopath, who will play for the fullest possible advantage his association with whatever humane society accepts his help. But, make no mistake about it, the Humane Society of the U.S. is unlikely to be the only bidder. Almost certainly several others would accept Vick as a spokesperson, if only for the short-term publicity value of having him, and most have much less ability to keep his conduct under close surveillance throughout whatever association he might have with them.

HSUS is gambling on Vick's sincerity, but so are thousands of local humane societies that gamble every day on the sincere commitment of volunteers and employees who previously hunted, trapped, fished, worked in animal slaughtering and factory farming, and--occasionally--were at some point convicted of cruelty or neglect.

Michael Vick is not the first convicted dogfighter to represent a humane society. Some of the most effective opponents of dogfighting--and cockfighting--have participated in animal fighting in their youth, yet have convincingly turned against it later. These people have been exceptions. Convicted animal fighters have extremely high rates of recidivism. To some extent sadism appears to be addictive. Beyond that, dogfighting and cockfighting are the focal activities of entire subcultures, and participants typically have family and many friends who also participate.

It is possible that Vick feels that the humane society most involved in taking him down may be the one best able to help him stay away from any further association with dogfighting and dogfighters. Much as recovering addicts often realize that they need the supervision, new activities, and new social life provided by twelve-step programs, Vick may understand that redeeming his public image, as well as recovering his personal fortunes, will require an ongoing, lifelong commitment, and that HSUS may be the national organization best able to help him make a complete break from his past.

Only time will tell whether Vick makes good. Meanwhile, the focal goal of humane work is redemption: changing the direction of not only erring individuals but the whole of society in how humans treat animals. Achieving redemption requires allowing those who have erred the opportunity to change directions, providing whatever help is appropriate.

Dorothy and Toto would have given Vick a chance.

--

Dog bite prevention week

ALBANY, CHICAGO, DENVER, INDIANAPOLIS, NEW YORK CITY, WASHINGTON D.C.--Dog Bite Prevention Week 2009 opened with opponents of breed-specific legislation claiming victories in Indianapolis and Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, but closed with a 13-page verdict against pit bull terrier advocates in Loudoun County, Virginia.

The Indianapolis city/county council on May 12, 2009 voted to table an At Risk Dogs bill introduced by councillor Mike Speedy. The bill will not be discussed again until after a new community budget is approved, probably not before October, Speedy told ANIMAL PEOPLE. But Speedy vowed that the At Risk Dogs proposal will be brought back at the first opportunity.

The At Risk Dogs proposal would have required that pit bull terriers be sterilized, in a community where more than 30% of the dogs arriving at shelters are pit bulls. It paralleled legislation in effect in San Francisco since January 2006, credited with achieving a 23% reduction in shelter intakes of pit bulls, and a 33% reduction in the number of pit bulls killed by animal control in only two years, after more than a decade of non-mandatory programs made little difference. Similar ordinances are in effect in smaller cities in at least 10 states. Yet another took effect on April 16, 2009 in Moses Lake, Washington.

The Highland Park city council on May 14, 2009 deferred until after a June 22 public workshop any further action on a pit bull ban proposed by mayor Michael Belsky after a newly acquired pit bull belonging to a 17-year-old boy inflicted severe facial bites on a 14-year-old girl.

"The girl had been petting the 9-month-old male dog, which was on a leash, as she sat with its new owner in his front yard," reported Lisa Black and Robert Channick of the Chicago Tribune. "The owner, who wasn't identified," Black and Channick added, "was cited for violating city ordinances regarding a biting dog as well as failure to have a dog license or rabies vaccination, authorities said."

The Belsky proposal parallels the pit bull ban enforced in Denver since 1989, except for 15 months when it was overturned by state legislation that was itself overruled by Denver District Court decisions in December 2004 and April 2005. Colorado law prohibits breed-specific ordinances, but the court found that the law overreached state authority over cities with "home rule" charters. Since the Denver ordinance took effect, Denver has had fewer dog attack fatalities and disfiguring injuries than any other U.S. city of comparable size, and has impounded and killed fewer pit bulls, despite a surge of impoundments and killing when enforcement resumed after the 15-month suspension.

Illinois, like Colorado, is among the 11 states that prohibit breed-specific ordinances, but Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan on March 16, 2007 wrote to the general counsel for the Illinois Department of Agriculture that "a home rule unit," such as Highland Park, "is not prohibitedŠfrom regulating or banning the keeping of specific breeds of animals."

Highland Park state representative Karen May told Black and Channick of the Chicago Tribune that that proposed pit bull ban appears to have public support. "The problem," May explained, "is that some rabid animal-rights activists are just waiting to bring suit," at anticipated high cost to the city.

The Loudoun County case was in court for two years before Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Burke F. McCahill on May 21, 2009 ruled that the county pit bull policy does not violate state or local laws. As in Colorado and Illinois, Virginia law holds that a dog may not be deemed dangerous solely based on breed, according to a non-binding 2007 opinion by former state attorney general Robert F. McDonnell.
After the Loudoun County shelter refused to allow county resident Ron Litz to adopt a pit bull, Litz and the Animal Rescue League of Tidewater alleged in May 2007 that the shelter had enforced a defacto breed ban by killing all 56 pit bulls it received in the preceding year. The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors then instituted a policy of transferring pit bulls who pass temperament testing to nonprofit rescues for possible adoption.

Loudoun County shelter manager Inga Fricke testified at a two-day trial in May 2009 that 26 pit bulls have been transferred under the new policy, while 122 have been euthanized, only one of whom would have passed the adoption standards set for other breeds. Best Friends Animal Society training manager Sherry Woodard asserted that this continues to demonstrate "breed bias."  Responded Judge Cahill, "Use of this term as well as the statistics can be misleading for a variety of reasons. If I were to rely on the statistics alone, I would have to ignore the evidence that there are differences in breed characteristics."

The foundation for the Cahill verdict, however, was his finding that "The decision to not allow adoptions was made by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. Although couched differently in the pleadings, this case is really an attempt to attack a policy decision of a legislative body."

Best Friends, the American SPCA, and American Humane have led opposition to breed-specific laws in recent years--and while the Indianapolis, Highland Park, and Loudoin County controversies smouldered, more than 50 years of dog attack history circled around in New York City and Albany, New York to bite the American SPCA and American Humane.

NYC housing ban
Because non-breed-specific measures had for 15 years failed to reduce dangerous dog incidents and dogfighting in public housing, the New York City Housing Author-ity on April 29, 2009 defied the American SPCA and American Kennel Club by reinstituting bans on keeping pit bulls, Rottweilers, and Dobermans in public housing--and reinforced the ban by extending it to any dog weighing more than 25 pounds. The limit had been 40 pounds. ASPCA spokespersons pledged to fight the New York City Housing Authority on behalf of pit bulls and other large dogs, renewing a conflict dating to the June 1937 opening of Harlem River Houses.

The initial issue was human racial discrimination. Harlem River Houses was only the second federally funded housing project in the U.S., the first in New York City, and though not formally segregated, was specifically designed to house families of African ancestry. Harlem River Houses excluded pets. The no-pets policy was later extended to all public housing in New York City. The ASPCA for more than 40 years sought to overturn the ban on pets. The scope of the New York City Housing Authority meanwhile grew to include more than 7,000 buildings at 46 sites, including 178,000 apartments, home to 430,000 people. Dogs were smuggled in, despite the rules.

Then-mayor Edward Koch proposed a crackdown in August 1987, two days after police shot a pit bull who menaced five children at a Bronx housing project, then lunged at the first police officer to reach the scene. Citing public health department findings that pit bulls constituted 1% of the dogs in New York City but inflicted 4.5% of the bites requiring medical treatment, Koch recommended legislation to "prohibit the sale, purchase, possession, renting, leasing or harboring of a pit bull [anywhere] in the city," reported Alan Finder of The New York Times. Pit bulls already in New York City were to be sterilized, muzzled in public, and insured against liability.

Testifying against the Koch bill were then-American SPCA president John Kullberg, AKC president Ken Marden, and Phyllis Wright, the first Humane Society of the U.S. vice president for companion animals. The Koch bill was nonetheless adopted in 1989, in amended form, requiring that pit bulls be tattooed, photographed, registered, and insured. No more pit bulls were to be allowed in New York City after October 1, 1989. In September 1989, however, enforcement was halted by a preliminary injunction issued by the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of a coalition headed by the American SPCA, the AKC, and the Canine Defense Fund.

The New York City Board of Health replaced the Koch ordinance in April 1991 with non-breed-specific regulations applying only to dogs who were declared dangerous after a hearing. By then pit bulls accounted for 6% of the bites requiring medical treatment.

The New York City Housing Authority reportedly paid damages of $190,000 to a woman who was injured by a pit bull in 1992, but evicted only about a dozen tenants per year for illegally keeping dogs until 1995, when it evicted 50.

Taking over New York City animal control duties from the American SPCA in 1994, the Center for Animal Care & Control in the third week of February 1996 impounded a dozen alleged fighting pit bulls from city housing projects, and warned that it needed stronger laws to protect project residents.

None were passed. Within just a few days in mid-1997, a elderly man died from a heart attack while defending his schnauzer from an escaped pit bull; a teenaged boy fell to his death from a housing project roof while trying to evade an attacking pit bull; a pit bull mauled a 12-year-old girl at a housing project; and a teenaged boy killed a Brooklyn housing project maintenance man for reporting his pit bull to police. A hot line set up to respond to dog incidents in the projects received more than 2,100 reports, mostly about either menacing or neglected pit bulls.

Four percent of the dogs in New York City were now pit bulls, accounting for a third of all dog bites requiring medical attention, and 40% of the dogs impounded for biting, up eightfold even as the number of pit bulls had only quadrupled. "Politicians who pander to pet owners without considering human safety should be rebuked," editorialized the New York Times, but in 1998 the New York Housing Authority responded to a federal law allowing project residents to keep pets by dropping most restrictions on what pets could be kept.

Between the CACC warning in 1996 and the end of 1999, the number of dog bites reported to the New York City health department increased from 6,000 to 11,000, including about 3,400 by pit bulls.
But pit bulls themselves were the major casualties of allowing them to proliferate--and still are. From 1997 through 2008, the number of impounded animals killed in New York City shelters dropped from 43,036 to 16,489. Only the number of pit bulls killed increased, to more than half of all dogs received. The CACC has adopted out more pit bulls than any other breed since 2004, yet so many come in that pit bulls reportedly still have a euthanasia rate of more than 90%.

Child protection

Founded in 1867, the American SPCA is usually considered the progenitor of the U.S. humane movement. American SPCA founder Henry Bergh and attorney Elbridge T. Gerry in 1877 famously invoked animal protection law to rescue an abused child named Mary Ellen Wilson. Gerry went on to found the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The Mary Ellen incident helped to inspire the formation of the American Humane Association, also in 1877. American Humane has since 1878 had parallel animal and child protection divisions, making it the oldest national child protection society in the U.S. as well as the oldest national animal charity. In 1915 American Humane initiated Be Kind to Animals Week, the first annual event organized nationally on behalf of animals, and began honoring "Be Kind to Animals Kids."
There are now many pro-animal national events competing for media attention, including the Pet Adopthons coordinated by the North Shore Animal League America; Home 4 the Holidays, coordinated by the Helen Woodward Animal Center; and the Great American Meatout, coordinated by the Farm Animal Reform Movement.

Yet Be Kind to Animals Week still garners the most recognition, according to ANIMAL PEOPLE searches of News-Library.com archives--19% more mainstream media mentions since 1995 than Spay Day USA, the runner-up, and more than twice as many mentions as Dog Bite Prevention Week, in third place, even though the latter enjoys the patronage of the U.S. Postal Service. "Be Kind to Animals Kid" winners' stories are usually told in about 5% to 15% of the coverage, but 2009 grand prize winner in the ages 6-12 division Annie Lee Vankleeck, age 6, of Shokan, New York, appears to have been named in barely 1%.
Lack of notice of Vankleeck's award may have saved American Humane from being asked hard questions about it by media other than ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Opened the American Humane announcement of the award, distributed on May 4, 2009, "'Every chance she gets, Annie tries to help pit bulls,'" said her mother, Sharon. Wanting to do something to help animals, Annie and her family went online to look at their local shelters' websites. After finding out that Out of the Pits, a nonprofit pit bull rescue in Albany, needed gently used blankets and towels, Annie made it her mission to fulfill that need." The American Humane announcement did not describe Vankleeck working directly with the Out of the Pits dogs. But it did establish that she has contact with at least one pit bull: "She is keenly aware that people can be prejudiced against or afraid of pit bulls, so she will not bring her pet pit bull, Ike, to show and tell at school."

Out of the Pits was begun in 1996 by Cydney Cross, a former adoption counselor and shelter manager for the Mohawk & Hudson River Humane Society in Cohoes, New York. Cross appears to have left the humane society in 2006.

Out of the Pits has received mostly favorable media coverage, but a photo published on October 29, 2009 by the Albany Times Union depicted an Out of the Pits event of a sort that many shelters would not encourage no matter what kind of dogs were used.

Described the caption, "Olivia Moody, 8, gets a little love from Piggly Wiggly at a kissing booth set up by Out of the Pits, a local pit bull education and rescue organization in front of Sloppy Kisses pet boutique on Broadway in Saratoga Springs... Sisters Skyler and Paige Rosewell, both 6, and Sean Rosewell, 3, visit with Toby at the kissing booth, which was set up to mark National Pit Bull Awareness Day."
The event was also mentioned by the Saratogian, of Saratoga Springs.

Josephine Ramsay, 52, circa August 2008 adopted a three-month-old pit bull puppy from Out of the Pits. Early on the evening of April 16, 2009 the pit bull, now about a year old, inflicted facial injuries to Ramsay's nephew, Frankie Flora, age 5, of Wappingers Falls, New York, that reportedly required more than 1,000 stitches to close. Ramsay herself was also injured.

"The fact that one of their adoptions ended in a tragic attack is heartbreaking," American Humane executive director Marie Belew Wheatley told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "but has nothing to do with our honoring this young lady [Vankleeck]. In fact, at the time the selection was made, this accident had not yet happened. At the time of announcing the award winners, we were unaware of the terrible attack in New York."

Nominations for the 2009 Be Kind to Animals Kid contest closed on April 15, 2009, barely 24 hours before Frankie Flora was attacked, and two weeks before the award was announced. That the dog was adopted from Out of the Pits was mentioned by WABC television news on April 18, and reported by the Poughkeepsie Journal on April 22.

The American Humane periodical National Humane Review in July/August 1961 devoted an entire page to six recommendations from World Health about "How to prevent 50% of dog bites":

1) Don't give a dog to a child under age six. This might prevent 18% of bites.
   2) Discourage playing ball with a dog, riding a bicycle near an excited dog, and running while playing with a dog if it excites him. This might prevent 10% of bites.
   3) Don't wake a dog suddenly. Be careful of the mother when picking up her puppies and be careful with sick animals. Perhaps 3% of bites avoided.
   4) Teach children how to care for pets and not to abuse or tease dogs.
   5) Don't pet or startle a dog while feeding him. Don't take food away from a dog. Don't intervene in a dog fight. Perhaps 10% of bites prevented.
   6) Avoid holding your face next to a dog's so as to prevent serious bite wounds.

The page was designed to be used as a poster in animal shelters. Alongside it was a two-page article called Confessions of a Vicious Dog, reprinted from a Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company handout that was distributed to school children throughout the PacTel service radius. It consisted of basic advice for not getting bitten by ordinary dogs in ordinary situations.
But already there were hints that some dog breeds might be significantly more dangerous than others.

Pits & Dobermans

Ten days after Germany surrendered to end World War II in Europe, with fighting still underway in the Pacific theatre, defense plant worker Doretta Zinke, 39, took an evening stroll near an Army transmitter station outside Miami Springs, Florida. Zinke met nine pit bull terriers kept by Joe Munn, 43, of Hialeah. Two Army Air Force enlisted men ran to her aid, but she had already suffered fatal injuries. She died within 90 minutes.

"One of the few recorded cases of an adult human being fatally attacked by dogs," according to Associated Press, the Zinke death shared headline space as far west as Joplin, Missouri with the battle to capture Okinawa.

Twenty-six pit bulls were impounded from Munn. Fifteen adult dogs were shot; 11 puppies were gassed. Munn "said he bred the dogs to sell and denied they had been used for pit fighting," reported Associated Press.

"The humane society [apparently the Humane Society of Greater Miami] received hundreds of telephone calls from people asking that the society intervene in the killing of the animals," Associated Press continued. "Humane officials said they were carrying out the order of authorities who with disinterested veterinarians deemed the dogs of the 'most vicious type.' Prior to the attack on Mrs. Zinke, they had been accused of attacking other people within the past week."

Doretta Zinke was among first victims on record of a dog attack following a now familiar pattern, in which dogs--usually pit bulls--leave their caretaker's property and then kill or disfigure a complete stranger, who was minding her own business in a place where she should have been safe. The Zinke case was also among the first on record in which animal advocates aggressively defended dogs who were impounded in such a situation, at a time when whole litters of puppies and kittens were routinely killed for population control, with scarcely a hint of protest or suggestion that anything else could be done.

The standard procedures of surgically sterilizing dogs and cats had been approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association in 1923, but were still a dozen years from use by Friends of Animals, the first U.S. charity to facilitate dog and cat sterilization, and were still 28 years from acceptance by the American Humane Association, the only national animal advocacy group in the U.S. from 1877 until the Humane Society of the U.S. formed in 1954.

Fatal dog attacks, until the last quarter of the 20th century, almost always involved infants or toddlers, and/or rabid dogs. The last adult killed in a dog-related incident in the U.S. before Zinke may have been James Farrell, 55, town marshal for Ada, Ohio. Farrell in 1937 was found dead in the road after trying to haul two dogs to the pound on his motorcycle.

Until the late 20th century, fatal dog attacks on infants and toddlers were also exceedingly rare by current standards. In 1976, for example, Joanne Bashold, 24, of New York City, left her four-day-old baby girl alone with a German shepherd who had not been fed for days. Bashold was later acquitted of negligent homicide. The most recent similar incident in New York City had apparently occurred on February 11, 1877, when a Spitz fatally injured the newborn daughter of a woman named Kate Hartman.

The Spitz, in the 1870s, was widely believed to have an unusual susceptibility to rabies. Within less than 10 years of formation, the American SPCA became involved in opposition to breed-specific animal control policies targeting the Spitz. ASPCA founder Henry Bergh recognized, correctly, that the Spitz was disproportionately involved in transmitting rabies to humans because--at a time when dogs of any discernible lineage were rare--it was popular among German immigrants who lived in crowded tenements where a mad dog could quickly bite and infect many people.

Later, when vaccination brought rabies under control, while other dog breeds gained popularity, the purported threat of the Spitz faded from memory.

But neither the Spitz, nor the Doberman, nor any other breed before the late 20th century proliferation of pit bull terriers and Rottweilers ever killed and disfigured humans at anywhere even remotely close to the numbers who have been killed and maimed in the past 27 years by pit bulls and Rottweilers. Pit bulls and their closest mixes, exclusive of dogs raised to fight, have at this writing killed 153 Americans and Canadians and disfigured 785 since 1982. Rottweilers have killed 66 and disfigured 237. All other dogs combined--95% of the total dog population--have killed 106 and disfigured 355.

DogsBite.org founder Colleen Lynn, studying 88 fatal dog attacks occurring in the U.S. in 2006-2008 found that pit bulls killed 82% of the adult victims, and committed 81% of the fatal attacks in which dogs left their caretaker's premises--as in the Zinke case.

Joe Munn, owner of the pit bulls who killed Zinke, was convicted of man-slaughter at a time when criminally charging anyone for a dog attack was even more unheard of than dog attacks themselves. Munn served one year of a five-year prison sentence, but apparently did not learn his lesson. Harry Smalley, 73, in April 1955 walked his leashed dog past Munn's Miami dry cleaning shop. Two of Munn's pit bulls rushed out the door to attack the leashed dog, mauling Smalley when he intervened.

The Smalley attack did not attract much note, but two months to the day later, newspapers all over the U.S. reported the unwitnessed fatal mauling of Winifred W.L. Bacon, 64, by her two Dober-mans at Island Beach State Park, near Toms River, New Jersey. Five years later a Doberman killed his mistress, Frances Tetreault, 50, of Northvale, New Jersey.

The second fatality inflicted by a single breed of dog in one region lastingly established the bad reputation of Dobermans. Dobermans have since 1982 killed just four people, disfiguring seven. Their record in 1955-1960 was no worse, but any dog attack fatalities were then so rare as to attract coverage equivalent to a sensational murder.

Mail carriers

Preventing dog attacks has been recognized as a duty of government throughout recorded history. Before 1955, however, this was mostly in the contexts of protecting livestock and preventing rabies.
People whose dogs chased or injured either humans or livestock were warned to keep the dogs muzzled, tied, or confined. If the offense was repeated, the dog would be impounded and killed. Severe harm to either humans or livestock occurred seldom enough that the doctrine of "one free bite" was already established as far back as written dog laws have been discovered. Cases of a dog killing or maiming someone were so rare that the legal focus was on preventing chronic problems, rather than catastrophic single events.

Until vaccinating pet dogs against rabies became mandatory throughout the U.S. in the 1950s, rabies control consisted of sporadic roundups and massacres of free-roaming dogs, usually only after outbreaks occurred--as is still done in parts of China, India, Indonesia, and other nations where rabies vaccination has yet to become universal.

Except during rabies outbreaks, dogs and dog bites appear to have been little feared. Yet if most of what is generally believed to lead to dog bites today had led to bites 50 years ago and earlier, the incidence of bites should have been exponentially higher than now. Most Americans, like most other people, lived in constant proximity to free-roaming dogs, many of them unfamiliar. Of the 32 million dogs in the U.S. circa 1955, according to pioneering dog and cat population ecologist John Marbanks, about 30% were street dogs, who lived much as many dogs still do in the developing world.

Under 1% of all dogs were sterilized, as of 1960, when sterilization frequency first was studied. In consequence, about 90% of the dogs in the U.S. were mongrels, and about six million surplus puppies per year were among the eight million dogs per year killed by animal shelters. By far the most bites were inflicted by bitches defending litters. Of the dogs who had homes, half or more were allowed to wander. Tethering, now known to make dogs more territorial and dangerous, was the chief means of confinement.
The American Humane Association gave Walt Disney a lifetime achievement award in 1956, particularly lauding his 1955 animated feature Lady & The Tramp for promoting the idea of keeping pet dogs at home.
Bite prevention as we know it today was rarely discussed. The National Humane Review did not even mention dog bites in 1955. The first notice of dog bites after the June 1955 death of Winifred Bacon came in the July/August 1956 edition. There the AHA saluted U.S. Postmaster Arthur E. Summer-field for taking notice that 6,000 mail carriers were bitten on the job in 1955.

Summerfield in June 1956 convened a conference in Washington D.C. to introduce the notion of preventing dog bites. The chief executives of the AHA, American SPCA, American Kennel Club, and Popular Dogs magazine were invited to share their ideas.

"Eugene J. Lyons, postal personnel chief, reported on field tests the department is conducting to find a way of discouraging dogs from attacking mailmen," said United Press.
"The conference developed two major thoughts," summarized the National Humane Review. "One, educate the owners to their responsibilities and encourage them to have more obedient dogs and, two, to give safety training to letter carriers on how to behave with strange dogs."

Only 3,000 letter carriers are bitten by dogs each year now, half as many as in 1955. But the 130,000 letter carriers working in 1955 walked an average of eight miles per day, encountering about 35 free-roaming dogs per day. The 214,084 letter carriers working in 2008 walked an average of five miles per day, encountering fewer than six dogs per day--and most of those are leashed. Though letter carriers today are only half as likely to be bitten, they are about six times more likely to be bitten by the dogs they meet.

After the Summerfield conference the National Humane Review did not again mention dog bites until it published the six World Health recommendations for avoiding them in July/August 1961.
Wrote the editors in introduction, "Man's best friend was reportedly responsible last year for biting some 611,000 persons in the United States. It was also reported that man's best friend cost Americans some $5,000,000 in medical bills during the year." The cost of dog bites in 1960 would equal about $100 million today. As of 2007, 4.7 million Americans were bitten by dogs. The cost of treating the 800,000 who received hospital care came to $268 million, not including plastic surgery for victims like Frankie Flora.
Not clear from the National Humane Review report is whether the 611,000 dog bites reported in 1960 were all bites, or just bites receiving hospital treatment. If the latter, adjusting for inflation since 1960, the average cost of a bite receiving hospital treatment has more than doubled, from the equivalent of $164 in 2009 dollars to $336.

Rabies was still common enough in the U.S. in 1960 that bite treatment often included a series of 14 post-exposure vaccinations, painfully injected into the abdomen. The U.S. no longer has canine rabies. The higher cost of first aid today appears to be associated mostly with bigger and deeper bites.
As to the numbers, the journal Public Health in 1973 published findings by Alan M. Beck, Honey Loring, and Randall Lockwood that "The rate of dog bites reported in St. Louis from 1963 to 1973 almost doubled," but were "comparable to those for other urban areas." Beck, Loring, and Lockwood believed that that 1960 figure included all bites. They estimated that the U.S. bite total had risen to about one million per year.
The rate of increase in dog bites they found projects to about twice the present estimated bite total. This suggests that 50% of dog bites are now prevented, as World Health projected was possible in 1963--but the other 50% reflect exponentially more dangerous dogs. --Merritt Clifton

--

Castaway dogs trouble Malaysian conscience

PULAU KETAM, Malaysia-- Striving to rescue more than 150 dogs who survived being deliberately marooned on a remote swampy island in the Straits of Malacca, the Malaysian animal charities Furry Friends Farm, Selangor SPCA, and Save A Stray had among them caught just a few dozen in a month of effort as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press--but they had stimulated awareness of surgically sterilizing dogs wherever television, radio, and online media reach in the Malay language, including Singa-pore and Indonesia as well as Malaysia.

The Pulau Ketam dog rescue showed promise of expanding into the beginnings of a regional Animal Birth Control program, modeled after ABC successes in India. Malaysian Department of Veterinary Services director general Abd Aziz Jamaluddin told Lestor Kong of The Star that the department will send 10 veterinarians to Palau Ketam to sterilize dogs on June 27-28.

"Pulau Ketam residents had trapped and dumped the dogs on the island since early March," reported Shoba Mano of The Star, "with allocations allegedly provided by Klang municipal councillor Tee Beng Lee. In late April, animal activist Sabrina Yeap read a Chinese newspaper report where independent animal rescuers complained of dogs being abandoned on uninhabited islands off Pulau Ketam, near Port Klang. Shocked, Yeap shared her concerns with fellow activist and blogger, Terence Victor Smith, better known as TV Smith. He immediately went on an expedition to investigate the matter."
Smith, an active blogger, relayed word of the dogs' plight to the outside world on May 2, 2009. Smith is no relation to the British punk rocker of the same name. "Unfortunately, I am not as talented," Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Yet the rock star probably never sang a message that resonated as far, as fast, as Smith's posting.

"The Pulau Ketam villagers have been rounding up all the dogs on the island and shipping them to a deserted mangrove island," Smith began. "I met with the village head, and was shocked to hear that they did not even consider how the unfortunate dogs would survive. Friends Daniel Tang and Sabrina Yeap," the Furry Friends Farm founder, "accompanied me on a reconnaissance trip. We chartered a boat. As we approached the island, I was thinking we would only see bones and carcasses. Poisonous snakes abound on the waterlogged island and the mud and sand will swallow you when you walk on it. The first dog we saw managed to wag his tail feebly upon seeing us."

This dog, photographed perching in a tree, became the poster dog for the Furry Friends Farm rescue effort.

"According to local fishers," Smith said, "the starving animals resorted to cannibalism. They ate the carcasses of the fellow castaways who didn't survive. They were so desperate that they swam to nearby kelongs," the floating platforms used as homes and workplaces by local fishing families, "only to be chased away. Many weaker dogs died in the water. We enlisted the help of a couple of Indonesian workers from a nearby kelong. They will also try to feed and trap the remaining dogs where possible.

"Boat hire is expensive there," Smith observed. "It is a tourist area. Rescued dogs cannot be transported on the regular ferries. Almost nobody will lift a finger to help without a fee," Smith found. "The locals are already shaking their heads in disbelief that outsiders want to save the animals they so casually discarded. We need their co-operation to help save the unfortunate creatures," Smith concluded. "We also hope to educate the islanders on better treatment of animals. It would be an impossible mission if we didn't win their hearts."

Word of the dogs' plight had circulated through Malay media for about a month before reaching Smith.
"The news that Pulau Ketam residents had placed some 312 stray dogs on three nearby deserted mangrove islands sparked a public outcry," reported the Malay Mail. "The villagers defended their actions as their last resort to try to overcome their stray dog problem. There were about 2,000 strays on Pulau Ketam," the Malay Mail said.

"Heat is on us now"

"The heat is on us now," Pulau Ketam politician Pua Kin Lok said, "but we can't wait until the dogs start eating us before we do something. We're doing this on our own because the government has not come up with a better solution. We have had at least four cases of children being attacked by dogs. It is very scary for us, especially at night."

"The dogs, who lived below the stilt houses, would come up to the wooden platforms [supporting the houses] during high tide," wrote Edward Rajendra of the Malaysia Star. "Pulau Ketam village head Cha Keng Lee said most residents felt that the move to send the animals to the nearby islands would resolve the stray dog problem. The uninhabited island would also offer more space to the dogs, he said."
"Our aim was not to be cruel to the dogs. But we strongly feel that the stray dog problem must be solved," Lee told Rajendra. "When the dogs come up to the platform, they defecate all over. Sometimes they also bite the children."

The Pulau Ketam islanders "meant to be kind, as they were uncomfortable with the way stray dogs were exterminated by local council staff," said Wani Muthiah of the Star.  Responded K. Sri Dhammaratana, the Buddhist chief high priest of Malaysia, "It shows that they lack compassion. To abandon dogs on an island which has no food and water is unacceptable. They have forgotten that these dogs are living things."

Five days after Smith and Sabrina Yeap began their rescue attempts, and began trying to mobilize to do more, five Selangor SPCA and Save A Stray personnel visited the marooned dogs, taking nine reporters with them. They caught just two dogs.

Their involvement, beginning after Smith and Yeap had begun international fundraising to hire more boats and help, generated some initial suspicion. Yeap worked for the Selangor SPCA before starting Furry Friends Farm, and there was friction about the parting of the ways. Awkward cooperation developed as the rescue proved to be a longterm project.

"We need more help in terms of funds and support," said Save A Stray founder Jacqueline Tsang. "These dogs are foragers, not hunters. They cannot live here even if they learn to hunt. Many will die. We are here to educate the people and inform them that we need to neuter the dogs."

"To date, more than half of the 300 dogs left on one of the islands, Pulau Tengah, have died from starvation or dehydration," the Malay Mail reported on May 7. "On the furthest island, Pulau Selat Kering, dogs were found to be attacking and eating each other."

"The dogs were so frightened at the sight of a big group of people that they fled deeper into the island," wrote Rajendra. The dogs remained deep among the mangroves as the incoming tide covered much of the island surface.

The Selangor SPCA and Save A Stray set up feeding stations, as Furry Friends Farm had, to try to win the dogs' trust. Diving instructor Pamela "Pumpkin" Lim C heng Yoke became the on-site director of rescue. Volunteers Marjorie Gabriel and Karin Lee built four "food pontoons," consisting of platforms attached to empty oil drums. The "food pontoons" kept the food above water even at high tide, and gave the dogs a relatively dry resting place.

Among them, the three groups rescued only five dogs during their first week of attempts, reported Wani Muthiah of the Star. They were more successful in their second week. Furry Friends Farm caught 15 dogs and the Selangor SPCA caught 13.

The rescuers had hoped to get support from the Klang Municipal Council, after the council reportedly promised Furry Friends Farm legal adviser that help would be forthcoming. "We want the council to provide us with boats and dog catchers to make the rescue mission easier and more cost-efficient," Fernandez told the Star. "But they are not being helpful at all."

Blogged Smith, "Those responsible for dumping the dogs are still sitting on their ass and not doing anything to help despite offering to do so. We have no choice but to work with the killers at the moment, as only they know where the dogs were dumped."

Despite frustration with the council's inertia, the Selangor SPCA hoped that the official involvement would lead to "long-term sterilization and education efforts on Pulau Ketam within the next three months. A dog population census/survey needs to be carried out to obtain a more accurate figure for the population, currently estimated at 1,500-2,000 dogs," the Selangor SPCA web site recommended. "An area of approximately 2,000 square feet needs to be located on Pulau Ketam for a temporary neutering clinic, as well as a holding and post-operation facility."

According to the Selangor SPCA plan, "Sterilization will target pet dogs first, then community dogs and strays. Community dogs and strays will be vaccinated, treated and neutered before being returned to their original location or moved back to the mainland for rehoming," in a "collaborative effort between animal welfare groups."

Prior to the sterilization campaign, the program participants would "arrange for an educational talk for the residents, to highlight the importance of neutering to curb the number of dogs on the island, as well as dispel any myths or misconceptions they have about neutering."

Contact:

The Furry Friends Farm Rescue Mission Secretariat: <dogrescue.pk@gmail.com>; telephone +601-2378-3730 or +601-2320-8090. Rescue updates are posted at <www.mycen.com.my/rescue>.
TV Smith: <tvsmith@mycen.com.my>.
Sabrina Yeap: <yeapwen@yahoo.com>.
Selangor SPCA: <enquiries@spca.org.my>; <www.spca.org.my/>; 603-4256-5312; Jalan Kerja, Ayer Lama, 68000 Ampang Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan.

European Union bans seal products

RAMKIN INLET, Nunavut; BRUSSELS--The European Union on May 5, 2009 banned the import of seal pelts and other sealing byproducts. Canadian governor general Michaelle Jean on May 27, 2009 responded by taking a bite from the heart of a freshly killed seal.

"Hundreds of Inuit had gathered for a community feast in Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, the first stop on Jean's trip to nine remote northern communities as Canada's head of state and representative of Queen Elizabeth II," recounted Agence France-Presse. "Jean reportedly knelt above the carcass of a freshly slaughtered seal and used a traditional ulu blade to slice meat off the skin. She then asked one of her hosts: 'Could I try the heart?''' Jean swallowed one piece, according to Canadian Press, pleasing her Inuit audience, the Atlantic Canadian sealing industry, and the Canadian fur trade.

But her gesture was unlikely to improve the image of sealing and sealers, resoundingly expressed by the European Union vote: 550 in favor of the seal product import ban, with just 49 opposed, and 41 abstentions. The language of the ban deems sealing "inherently inhumane."

Nine of the 27 European Union member nations had already either enacted similar bans or had announced plans to do so, including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Slovenia.

The European Union vote came even as Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper flew to Prague to try to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU. Only the U.S. does more business with Canada than the EU--but seal products in 2008 accounted for just 3.5 million euros worth of the 25 billion euros exchanged.
Small though the sealing trade with the EU is, a third of all global trade in seal products moves through EU nations, often en route to purchasers in Russia and China.

The language of the EU ban allows for the continued transshipment of seal products through Europe, to reduce the chance that the ban might be overturned by a Canadian protest to the World Trade Organization, promised by Canadian federal trade minister Stockwell Day. However, transhippers may not sell or promote the sale of seal products that are en route through the EU. The ban covers all seal derivatives, including fur, meat, oil, blubber, and vitamin tablets made from seal oil. The ban has yet to be ratified by the Council of Ministers, but this is considered a formality, since the national delegations have already approved it. The ban is expected to take force in October."After many years of campaigning by European citizens I welcome the regulation," said European Union environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, who made passing it a priority."The Canadian government used every trick in the book: massive lobbying, misinformation, even threats of trade reprisals. But the EU stood its ground," exulted Rebecca Aldworth, who has coordinated anti-sealing campaigns each spring for more than a decade, at first for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, most recently with the Humane Society of the U.S.

"This is the beginning of the end for the Canadian seal hunt," Aldworth predicted. "The Canadian government estimates that losing this market will cost Canada's sealing industry $6.6 million each year. The hunt brought in less than $7 million last year. Just the promise of an EU ban was enough to drive the prices for seal fur down 86% since 2006. As a result, many sealers stayed home. Out of this year's quota of 280,000 harp seals, fewer than 60,000 have been killed so far."

Sealing participation from Newfoundland & Labrador fell by more than two-thirds, said Department of Fisheries & Oceans resource management officer Larry Yetman. Newfoundland & Labrador prime minister Danny Williams warned that his government might authorize seal culls.

"The seal herd has to be kept under control, and if that has to be through a cull, that's just another method," Williams said.

The European Union ban exempts seal products hunted by Inuit, but North Bay Fur Harvesters Auction fur technician Ed Ferguson told Chris Windeyer of The Nunatsiaq News in Iqaluit that Fur Harvesters would probably buy only about 3,000 pelts from Inuit in 2009, down from 10,000 in 2008, and had sold no Nunavut seal skins at one recent auction.

"The government of Nunavut is trying to sell those 10,000 pelts, currently sitting in a warehouse, by stepping up sales of pelts to Nunavut artisans at cut-rate prices," wrote Windeyer. "The government spent about $400,000 buying up pelts from Nunavut hunters last year and thanks to the European ban, is left holding the bag."

A coalition of sealers and other representatives of wildlife use industries sought to build an appearance of public support with a web petition promoted as being about protecting seals. It actually sought signatures toward establishing a "right" for sealers to continue sealing. Links led viewers to the wise-use International Wildlife Management Consortium World Conservation Trust and the government of Newfoundland & Labrador.

Egypt uses H1N1 flu as pretext to massacre pigs

CAIRO, PARIS--After condemning the pointless massacre of pigs in Egypt in response to a "swine flu" that swine rarely get and have yet to verifiably pass to any other species, the 2009 meeting of the Organization for Animal Health (OIE) on May 24 elected Nihat Pakdil of Turkey to become OIE European region secretary general.

Pakdil, as Turkish deputy undersecretary for agriculture, in 2005 ordered a pointless massacre of dogs in response to the avian flu H5N1, even though dogs have never been infected by H5N1.
Despite Pakdil's ascent, Africa Network for Animal Welfare founder Josphat Ngonyo was hopeful, he told ANIMAL PEOPLE, that the OIE conference discussion would prevent anything like the Egyptian pig killing "from ever occurring again, through the concerted effort of OIE, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, and the international animal welfare community."

Attending the OIE meeting in Paris as an international representative for Compassion in World Farming. Ngonyo was also recently appointed to the editorial board of Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare, an online service of the United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization. The OIE, originally part of the League of Nations and 20 years older than the FAO, operates under FAO auspices.

"There was much pressure on the OIE to intervene [in Egypt], since the pig killing violated the OIE standards for humane killing in connection with disease control," Ngonyo said. "The OIE position remained that OIE cannot force member states to implement the OIE standards, but will assist them in building the capacity to do so."

WSPA and International Coalition for Farm Animal Welfare delegate David Wilkins said that Egypt had accepted in principle an "offer of assistance in training personnel in humane handling, slaughter and transport." Details are to be arranged "in Cairo in the next few weeks," said Wilkins.

Egyptian chief agricultural veterinary officer Abdil Samaha and government veterinary services chief Hassan Aidaros told animal welfare group representatives at the OIE meeting that the culling had stopped, after 160,000 pigs were killed, leaving about 10,000 pigs for breeding stock at a new pig-rearing location yet to be designated.

Recounted Wilkins, "The chief veterinary officer [Samaha] explained that the Egyptian minister of health had received information from the World Health Organization that control of swine flu might entail slaughtering pigs if they were being reared in close proximity to humans."

WHO has repeatedly denied ever recommending that pigs be killed, in absence of any evidence that they either had the new variant H5N1 flu, identified in April, or could transmit it to humans even if infected.
However, Wilkins continued, the Egyptian parliament "also agreed that pigs should be slaughtered. The minister of health and the minister of the environment used this as an excuse to instruct various local authorities to carry out the slaughter. These authorities did not use trained personnel. The result was inhumane and cruel slaughter. The minister of agriculture, the chief veterinary officer, and the government veterinary services were not consulted," or so Samaha claimed.

The start of the pig cull on May 2, 2009 met violent resistance.
"Police were deployed in force around the Cairo slum district of Manshiyet Nasr where hundreds of residents, mostly Coptic Christian rubbish recyclers, fought running battles with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets," reported Mona Salem of Agence France-Presse.

"I wonder if this measure has been taken because the pigs belong to Copts," Society for the Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt founder Amina Abaza suggested to Samer el-Atrush of Agence France-Press.
"Adel Hammouda, the chief editor of the weekly al-Fagr and a Muslim, picked up on the religious undertones," reported Maggie Michael of Associated Press. "They found in this black epidemic their golden opportunity to wage their religious war against Christianity, hiding behind the pigs," wrote Hammouda.
Impounded pigs were trucked away to be killed at the Bassatin slaughterhouse complex, the largest in Egypt. Furor over the pig-killing spread from the Coptic minority to the mainstream after Heba Nasreddin of the government-controlled weekly Al-Ahram reported that "Only the males are killed in accordance with the rules. Piglets and sows are hit with an iron bar and left to bleed to death."

The independent newspaper Al-Masri Al-Yom on May 17 posted video described by Alain Navarro of Agence France-Presse as "pigs being beaten with iron bars, piglets being stabbed, and animals being kicked alive into bulldozer buckets."

Added Associated Press writer Maamoun Youseff, "It showed men standing in the backs of trucks skewering squealing piglets with large kitchen knives and hitting others with crowbars, tossing them in front of a bulldozer. Piles of bleeding bodies, some still moving, were transferred to larger trucks, which took them to the desert to be buried."

Contrary to the claims of Samaha and Aidaros to the OIE delegates, government agricultural vets appeared to be involved. "In the video," continued Navarro, "Mohamed el-Mugharbil, deputy mayor of Kashkus near Cairo, describes how chemicals are poured on animals caged in lorries, leading to a slow death. Ali Shaaban, head of the site where the corpses are buried, confirmed the method."
"The pigs are covered with chemical products and left for 30 or 40 minutes until they are dead. Then we throw them in the ditch," Shaaban said.

"These are disinfectants. The throats of the animals are slit before they are buried," department of infectious diseases head Saber Abdel Aziz Galal told Navarro.

Wrote Navarro, "The Ministry of Agriculture issued instructions," at the outset of the massacre, "that owners should kill their pigs by piercing their hearts with a needle and then slitting their throats before burying them in pits lined with quicklime."

"Forbidden by Islam"
Sheikh Salim Mohammed Salim, head of the fatwas committee at the University of Al-Azhar, responded to Navarro that this killing method is "strictly forbidden by Islam...whatever it is, including a pig."
Speaker of Parliament Ahmed Fathi Sorour said the killing should be done in a "civilized and humane way, because animals have rights like human beings."

Participants in online discussion of the killing at Islamic web sites often cited two Qu'ran passages that forbid eating pigs.

Verse 2:173 states, "He hath forbidden you only carrion, and blood, and swine flesh, and that which hath been immolated to (the name of) any other than Allah."

Verse 5:3 elaborates, "Forbidden unto you (for food) are carrion and blood and swine-flesh, and that which hath been dedicated unto any other than Allah, and the strangled, and the dead through beating, and the dead through falling from a height, and that which hath been killed by (the goring of) horns, and the devoured of wild beasts, saving that which ye make lawful (by the death-stroke)," according to the rules of hallal slaughter, " and that which hath been immolated unto idols."

Also cited, from the Hadiths of Bukhari, in a passage narrated by Abu Thalaba: Allah's Messenger forbade the eating of the meat of beasts having fangs."

Some asserted that the passages make pigs themselves haram, to be exterminated. Others pointed out that especially when read together, these three passages clarify that eating a pig is haram because pigs are fanged scavengers, who consume carrion. Eating dogs or cats would be haram, for the same reason--but the animals themselves are not condemned for being as Allah made them.

Attorney Ahmed El Sherbiny appealed on behalf of the Egyptian Federation for Animal Welfare for the Egyptian parliament to "speed up passing the suggested animal welfare legislation which was submitted to the Minister of Agriculture two years ago. Had the legislation been adopted," El Sherbiny said, "the present cruelty could not have taken place."

Other nations

Pig purges occurred in other nations.
In Chennai, India, reported The Hindu on May 4, officials impounded 153 of the estimated 400-500 pigs in the city. Another 208 pigs were impounded from five suburbs "and let off in distant places."
In Indonesia, said the Jakarta Post, "The Batam regional administration culled around 500 wild boars raised on farms in Batam city." Batam mayor Ahmad Dahlan told the state news agency Antara that as many as 15,000 boars would be killed later, and that since they were raised illegally, the farmers would not be compensated for them.

The Baghdad Zoo killed a trio of 10-year-old boars, reported Jomana Karadsheh of CNN, "to break a barrier of fear" among visitors, zoo director Adel Musa told her.

Kabul Zoo director Aziz Gul Saqib took Afghanistan's only known pig off display, reported Agence France-Presse.

Panic over the new variant H1N1 "swine flu" outbreak caused U.S. pork producers to lose $2.5 million a day in late April 2009, reported the National Pork Producers Council. But even as the new variant H1N1 virus spread to more than 11,000 people in 42 nations worldwide, there was still no evidence that pigs had any recent role in transmitting it, and there was mounting evidence that it could turn deadly only in people with pre-existing health issues that opened them to severe infection. Otherwise, new variant H1N1 appeared to be less dangerous than ordinary winter flus.

A team headed by Rebecca Garten of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reported in the May 22, 2009 edition of Science that the genetic elements of the new variant H1N1 strain might have circulated in pigs undetected for 10,000 virus generations before somehow crossing to people.

"The new strain's ancestry has ties to a pig farm in North Carolina where in 1998, scientists discovered that pig, bird and human viruses had combined in pigs to form a new strain of swine flu that also infected a handful of humans," summarized Associated Press writers Margie Mason and Alexandra Olson. "Most of the current strain can be traced to that combination. At some point along the way, it combined with other flu strains and jumped back into humans--just when and where exactly may never be known."
Bacterial co-infection?

As the June 2009 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, 15,510 confirmed new variant H1N1 flu had been detected, in 53 nations. A third of the cases had occurred in Mexico, including 85 of the 99 known human fatalities. As the disease spread worldwide, epidemiologists were increasingly puzzled about the clustering of deaths in Mexico. Most of the fatalities appeared to originate from exposure in the region between Mexico City to Vera Cruz, or from exposure to other people who became infected there.
University of Maryland virologist Maria Salvato, Ph.D., cautioned fellow members of the International Society for Infectious Diseases that the investigation might be "heavily biased towards blaming everything on influenza," paying too little attention to possible bacterial co-infections.

The first identified cases of new variant H1N1 in humans occurred close to a pig farm owned by Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of the Smithfield international conglomerate. No trace of new variant H1N1--or any flu--has turned up among the Granjas Carroll pigs. This suggests that even though new variant H1N1 was in the community, the Granjas Carroll biosecurity precautions were adequate to keep the pigs from being exposed.

However, pigs raised in intensive confinement are routinely given prophylactic doses of antibiotics. This has the dual effect of increasing the pigs' resistance to bacterial infection, and increasing the antibiotic resistance of the bacteria. Thus, in theory, the pigs might be able to fend off some sort of as yet unrecognized bacterial infection that occurs in the Mexico City/Vera Cruz corridor, but has not spread with the flu virus, and is deadly to people who don't get antibiotic treatment promptly--or at all.

The only known case of pigs getting new variant H1N1 "swine flu" came in Alberta in April 2009. The Alberta outbreak was apparently transmitted to the pigs by a farm carpenter who had recently visited the infected region in Mexico. All of the pigs promptly recovered, but the farm was indefinitely quarantined. As ongoing pig births combined with inability to send pigs to slaughter created overcrowded conditions, the formerly infected herd were culled in early May 2009, Alberta chief veterinarian Gerald Hauer disclosed.
Concern that new variant H1N1 flu might combine with the deadly H5N1 avian flu to produce a global flu epidemic heightened at the end of April 2009 when researchers at the Kobe University Center for Infectious Diseases in Japan found strains of the H5N1 virus in 52 pigs, among 402 pigs examined, in four Indonesian provinces.

"Since the appearance of the novel H1N1 swine-related virus in the international arena, the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus has been somewhat outside the public spotlight," cautioned ProMED animal disease moderator Arnon Shimshony. "Simultaneous circulation of both viruses may lead to serious consequences, particularly in countries with considerable pig populations, in case co-infection of pigs with both viruses occurs, potentially followed by virus reassortments. China has the potential to be the site of such development," Shimshony predicted.
--Merritt Clifton

LETTERS

Kangaroo culling

I seek the assistance of ANIMAL PEOPLE readers to provide international pressure to protect our kangaroos. On May 13, 2009 in Canberra, our national capitol, Administrative Appeals Tribunal president Linda Crebbin ruled that the killing of thousands of kangaroos on Australian Government Defence Department land-the Majura Training Area, near Canberra-must be suspended immediately pending a hearing of the full Tribunal on June 2.

Animal Liberation (NSW), through pro-bono lawyer Malcolm Caulfield , successfully argued that the scheduled cull of 7,000 kangaroos should be stopped, as the kangaroos did not pose an immediate threat to the ecosystem of the area. This was a tremendous victory-but temporary, and will be back in court as the June 2009 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE goes to press.

4,000 kangaroos had already been shot when the cull was suspended. The existing permit allows a further 3,000 to be killed. The Defence Department argued that the kangaroos were threatening vulnerable flora and fauna, but Animal Liberation countered that the most vulnerable areas are fenced off, and that kangaroo numbers are already low enough to avoid ecological damage.

Unfortunately, no sooner was the suspension announced, than Australian Capital Territory chief minister Jon Stanhope and the Defence Department announced they would change the law-so that the Defence Department decisions regarding kangaroo management would no longer be subject to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal process.

Commercial kangaroo killing already shames Australia. Up to four million adult kangaroos per year are killed in remote areas to supply the meat and skin trade. Estimates are that hundreds of thousands are wounded each year, rather than killed instantly, and of great additional concern is the inevitable suffering of dependent joeys. A new report, A Shot in the Dark-a report on kangaroo harvesting, commissioned by Animal Liberation and released in May 2009, estimates that "440,000 dependent young kangaroos are either clubbed to death or left to starve after their mothers are killed."

See the full report at <www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com/shotinthedark.html> .
Please write to Australian defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon, <J.Fitzgibbon.MP@-aph.gov.au>, and ask him to ensure that animals on Defence Department sites are covered by Australian environmental law and protected from unnecessary lethal population control.
Please write to the Australian environment minister Peter Garrett, <Peter.Garr-ett.MP@aph.gov.au >, and indicate opposition to the huge commercial kangaroo killing industry in Australia, and to the killing of kangaroos on Defence Department land.
You may also wish to write to the Australian embassy in your country. Contact information is accessible at <www.dfat.gov.au/ missions/>.
--Glenys Oogjes
Executive Director
Animals Australia
37 O'Connell Street
North Melbourne
NSW 3051
Australia
Phone: +61-3-9329-6333
<googjes@animalsaustralia.org>
<www.AnimalsAustralia.org>

Seeking to stop donkey abuse in Nepal

Animal Welfare Network Nepal on May 19, 2009 handed a petition seeking to stop donkey abuse, signed by 1,036 people from all over the world, to Hari Dahal, the joint secretary for the Nepalese ministry for agriculture. The petition demands that concerned authorities and donkey owners introduce a care system for these animals, who offer suffer from malnutrition, open sores, lacerations, and general neglect.
Members of Animal Welfare Network Nepal led by chairperson Pramada Shah urged the joint secretary to implement the existing Animal Transportation Act, and asked to participate in drafting an Animal Welfare Act. Dahal responded positively, and expressed commitment to monitoring the execution of the Animal Transportation Act.

Established in 2008, Animal Welfare Network Nepal is an alliance of six organizations working together to create a cruelty-free society in which all
creatures can live in peace.
--Lucia de Vries
Bagdol, Patan, Nepal
<luciadevries@gmail.com>

PETA & "humane" meat certification

I received an e-mail inviting me to a rally held in Gainesville, Florida on May 25, 2009 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA planned to have two activists shower behind a banner that blared "1 lb. of meat = 6 months of showers." The demonstration was supposed to alert passers-by that the best thing they can do for the environment is not to take shorter showers, but to go completely vegetarian. The e-mail included an invitation to lunch after the demonstration at Merlion Singapore Cuisine in Gainesville. It ended with a request for a donation. Although I wouldn't be able to attend, I became curious if the meat the restaurant serves meets any kind of humane certification standard.

PETA assistant activist liaison for international grassroots campaigns Jeneleen Floyd only informed me that the chosen restaurant had some vegetarian meals on the menu. Her first non-response infuriated me so much that I asked two more times, in e-mail CAPS (shouting): "Do these people serve any meat and if so, has PETA BEEN ASSURED that these ANIMALS are raised and murdered HUMANELY and 100% certainly not on a FACTORY FARM and not LED TO THEIR DEATHS via a LONG UNCOMFORTABLE HAUL after DAYS OF NO FOOD to a KILLING FLOOR where they mentally and physically SUFFER?"

Ms. Floyd's final reply was a forward by someone named Ashley. It indicated a direct link to Merlion Singapore Cuisine, but in reality was from Gainesville.Dining-Guide.com. This link did not have a menu, meat or meatless.

PETA's third reply came to me from Kristie Phelps, Ms. Floyd's supervisor. "I'm sorry you're disappointed with her response and our choice of restaurants" was as close as Ms. Phelps got to answering my question. Ms. Phelps ended her non-reply with another donation request.

PETA, for all its vaunted goals and aims, apparently does not care that there are at least six organizations that monitor codes of humane conduct on American farms. PETA has apparently never heard of Humane Farm Animal Care, a well respected not-for-profit animal advocacy group. PETA cannot even answer if they have asked the restaurant owner if the restaurant only purchases meat products certified by HFAC, the Animal Welfare Institute, or American Humane.  Why is it up to me to do the basic research that PETA should be doing?

Just 2.54 miles from Merlion, with extremely affordable prices, is an all-veg restaurant called Krishna Lunch. Even closer, the University of Florida offers an eatery called Vegan Corner. Why didn't PETA choose either of them?
--Joyce & Henry Rinehart
Ocala, Florida
<perplexed.one@mindless.com>

Sea otters in B.C.

The Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council in British Columbia wants to kill at least 20 sea otters every year for ceremonial purposes. Permitting a sea otter slaughter is not only cruel but opens the door to the killing of other marine mammals such as whales.

In Canada sea otters are listed as a species of special concern. Their exact numbers are not known, but there are fewer than 3,500 in British Columbia. Since having been hunted to the verge of extinction, over many decades they have only repopulated 25% to 33% of their historic territory. The impacts on British Columbia sea otters of fishing, boat strikes, and other causes of death are undetermined. The Nuu-Chah-Nulth are targeting a population of approximately 2,000 in their territory. This population is at risk from an oil spill, pollution, disease, fishing, boat strikes and a potlatch fur trade.

Instead of killing healthy sea otters, if remains are needed for religious reason, there are alternative sources. Sea otters drowned by net entanglement and crab traps could be used, or sea otters who die from natural causes, following necropsies. In the U.S., according to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spokesperson Deanna Lynch, "Sea otter parts (specifically skeletons and pelts) originating from Washington and California are loaned to organizations for education or scientific purposes only, but ownership is retained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." This policy could be emulated.

"We do receive a few carcasses of animals who have been found dead and we examine them (including necropsy) to investigate of cause of death, and to develop an understanding of health and disease of sea otters," Department of Fisheries & Oceans Canada representative Linda Nichols told us. "I expect that if a carcass were relatively fresh, that the skin of a beach-cast sea otter carcass could be used," she said.
In addition, many items in the inventories of original potlatch fur garments in museums may be available to borrow or purchase.

Lifeforce urges all to help stop the slaughter of precious sea otters by writing to Department of Fisheries & Oceans Mininister Gail Shea, c/o <Shea.G@parl.gc.ca>, and to the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, c/o <cliff.atleo@nuuchahnulth.org>.
--Peter Hamilton
Lifeforce Foundation
P.O. Box 3117
Vancouver, BC V6B 3X6
Canada
Phone: 604-649-5258
<lifeforcesociety@hotmail.com>
<www.lifeforcefoundation.org>

Kerala street dogs

The May 2009 ANIMAL PEOPLE article "Kerala capital to obey Indian dog law?" mentioned that Thiruvanathapuram, India in April 2009 quit killing street dogs after the Animal Welfare Board of India informed the city that the program violates a December 2008 ruling by the Supreme Court of India. The article concluded, "Animal Rescue Kerala founder Avis Lyons contested the Thiruvanathapuram policy, but in April 2007 the Kerala High Court authorized the city to continue killing dogs."

This is wrong. The high court did not say that Thiruvanathapurm (formerly called Trivandrum) could continue killing [in April 2007]. But the city told the High Court in September 2007 that they had an Animal Birth Control program, which is untrue.

We have had an ongoing case against Thiruvanathapuram since January 2007, and we have a contempt order against the city government in high court that will come up after the summer recess at the end of May. Meanwhile, Thiruvanathapuram officials have killed more than 29,500 dogs.
--Avis Lyons
Animal Rescue Kerala
Chanalkara Road
Kovalam 695523, Kerala
<iarkerala@yahoo.co.uk>

Editor's note:

The actual Kerala High Court ruling appears to have been issued on March 3, 2006, in response to a 2004 petition. It was somewhat ambiguous, pertaining chiefly to the extent of municipal jurisdiction, and was read in different ways by defenders and foes of street dogs. The Thiruvanathapuram municipal government cited the ruling in April 2007, when Kerala state minister for local self-government Paloli Mohammed Kutty ordered the government to "end the stray dog menace before May."

Friends of the Cat stand up for whales

State of the Nation, a South African radio program, on May 2009 hosted a discussion of whale hunting. The participants were Sarah Holden of Greenpeace Netherlands, Glenn Inwood of the Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research, and Andrew Darby, author of Harpoon: Into the heart of whaling.  It went very badly for the whales.

Holden immediately stated that her objections to whaling are not moral but purely environmental, and that Greenpeace does not condone violence, referring to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society protest activities, but not the actions of the Japanese whale hunters. Holden did, however, condemn the excuse that Japanese whaling is for scientific research.

Darby said that the International Whaling Commission has reached an impasse with Japan, whose ultimate aim was to return to commercial whaling.

Inwood said that whales are "amorphous resources of the sea."
Holden asked why we are worrying about a few hundred whales in the Southern Ocean when "300,000 whales are trapped in nets annually around the world," counting dolphins in this estimate. Inwood loved this. He said she had made a very good point, that commercial whaling should resume, and that the IWC in its present form should be disbanded because it "does not have a future."

Inwood pointed out that there is no outcry about people eating cows, pigs, sheep etc., so why, he asked, do people get upset about killing and eating whales?  This is a difficult question. Only vegetarians hold the moral high ground. Many carnivorous people also object to killing whales. We cannot afford to lose their support. Can anyone offer a strong argument to counter the criticism that meat-eaters are applying a double standard? We encounter this parry every time we protest against animal abuse.  During the next few weeks we'll harass the Japanese embassy in Pretoria, as in previous years. They hate bad publicity, so we'll give it to them.
--Joan Norman
Friends of the Cat
P.O. Box 85094
Emmarentia
Johannesburg,
South Africa 2029
<friendsofthecat@wol.co.za>

Elizabeth Morris & Annie Waln introduced hands-on humane work

PHILADELPHIA--Was the American SPCA really the first U.S. humane society, in the generally recognized sense of the word? Is it even the oldest that still exists?

The continuing influence of ASPCA founder Henry Bergh and the organization he created in 1867 is not to be denied, with annual income and expenditures of about $60 million, and more than $100 million in assets. Yet other animal aid societies much like those of today existed much earlier.

Henry David Thoreau mentioned an anti-hunting humane society in his 1854 opus Walden, as humane movement historian Phil Arkow noted in a May 2003 letter to ANIMAL PEOPLE. No further trace of that humane society has been found, but Elizabeth Morris and Annie Waln founded the Animal Rescue League of Philadelphia in 1858.

The Animal Rescue League of Philadelphia has two active direct descendants. One is the Women's Humane Society, incorporated by Carolyn Earle White with the support of Morris and Waln in 1869, a year after all three helped to form the Pennsylvania SPCA but were excluded from leadership roles on basis of gender. The Women's Humane Society was the first in the U.S. to do humane education. The other living Animal Rescue League of Philadelphia descendant is the Morris Animal Refuge, incorporated as the Morris Refuge Association in 1888, with the property and assets of the Animal Rescue League. It was reincorporated in 1971.

Sydney H. Coleman in Humane Society Leaders in America, published by the American Humane Association in 1924, traced the origins of the U.S. humane movement back to the vegetarian teachings and animal sheltering traditions of India. Coleman credited Morris and Waln with operating the first U.S. animal shelter founded in the spirit of ahimsa, to aid animals, as opposed to merely impounding strays.
Coleman also identified Morris and Waln as the first animal rescuers to euthanize animals with chloroform, then considered the gentlest method, and credited them with being the first animal advocates to take an animal control contract, to abolish the then prevalent practices of disposing of impounded animals by clubbing them, drowning them, or selling them for vivisection.

Morris and Waln took the Philadelphia animal control contract in 1874 under the auspices of the Women's Humane Society, as the Animal Rescue League was apparently not properly incorporated. They used the Animal Rescue League premises to house impounded animals. Initally Morris and Waln tried to avoid killing healthy animals. Overwhelmed by the numbers of animals impounded, they first turned to chloroform, formerly reserved for emergency cases. Later they turned the animal control contract over to the Pennsylvania SPCA, which kept it for 100 years and recently reclaimed it, after a six-year hiatus.
However, after Coleman devoted the longest chapter of his book to Bergh and the ASPCA, he gave Morris and Waln barely one page, in a chapter covering most of the women who helped to build the U.S. humane movement with little more than recitations of names. Among them, only Carolyn Earle White is well-remembered today, chiefly for founding the American Anti-Vivisection Society in 1881. Yet these women had established Women's Humane Societies in almost every major U.S. city by 1900, many of which sheltered animals, orphans, and battered women, and often did much more hands-on animal care and rescue than the male-directed humane societies which later absorbed the remnants of the Women's Humane Society network as auxiliaries.

Perhaps Coleman and others chronicling the early U.S. humane movement dismissed the contributions and influence of Morris, Waln, and other women just because they were women. Alternatively, because others before Coleman had ignored Morris, Waln, et al, relatively little information about them may have been accessible.

Yet Morris' family had been Philadelphia community leaders since the 17th century. The Morris family had helped to found dozens of philanthropic and civic institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin was kin by marriage; Richard Nixon was a descendant. In short, Elizabeth Morris was not obscure.

The biggest issue may have been Coleman's beliefs about what a humane society should be, derived from the teachings of Bergh and Massa-chusetts SPCA founder George Angell. Though Bergh and Angell rescued animals, as did White, all three of them outspokenly believed that the focal job of an authentic humane society should be moral education and public advocacy. Animal rescue, they believed, was worth doing, yet not sufficient by itself for an organization which chiefly did animal rescue to fully meet their definition of a "humane society."

According to IRS Form 990, the Morris Animal Refuge ended 2008 with assets of $3.5 million, spent $548,501 on program service, and spent $125,559 on fundraising and management. It took in 2,884 homeless animals, rehomed 783, killed 2,101 "because of illness or lack of adopters," and facilitated 2,630 dog and cat sterilizations.

The Women's Humane Society as of 2008 had assets of $8.8 million, spent $1.9 million on program service, and spent $519,947 on fundraising and management.

Responding to the end of the age of horsepower
Commentary by Merritt Clifton

Completing a defacto "trade" of star players, the Brooke Hospital for Animals, the world's largest equine aid charity, on May 4, 2009 announced the appointment of Peter Davies as board chairperson.
Davies, director general of the World Society for the Protection of Animals since 2002, succeeds North Carolina Zoo director David Jones, who had served as interim Brooke chair since the November 2008 death of predecessor Hilary Weir.

Succeeding Davies at WSPA will be Mike Baker, chief executive for the Brooke since June 2001.
All trades are billed as likely to help both teams. Only time will tell what this one achieves, but it is possible that this one moved players into new positions well suited to their experience. Baker, previously in management roles with the British Union Against Vivisection and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, is more a career animal advocate on multiple fronts than a horse enthusiast taking on a broader field. Davies, previously director general for the Royal SPCA, is a horse enthusiast with a global perspective.

Both Baker and Davies have already been helping the developing world to meet the many challenges presented by the accelerating transition away from use of horses, donkeys, and mules for farm work and transport. The job ahead is nothing less than easing the largely voluntary dissolution of the second largest and oldest of all of the animal use industries, after raising animals for slaughter.
The U.S. and Canada made transition away from equine use relatively gradually during the first half of the 20th century. Western Europe achieved the same transition during the same decades, but with two major hiccups, as both World War I and World War II depleted the regional horse population, never to recover either time to the numbers preceding the conflicts.

Unfortunately, the North American and European humane communities of the early to mid-20th century were too overwhelmed to do much more for displaced equines than to document what happened.
Using fewer working equines will prevent animal suffering in the long run, as many millions of sentient creatures are replaced by machines. During the transition, unfortunately, more horses, donkeys, and mules are likely to be abandoned, abused, neglected, and trucked to slaughter under horrific conditions. Foals will have declining value, so will be increasingly mistreated or just killed as surplus.

The working conditions for equines still in service will become ever harsher, as more roads are paved, more motor vehicles spew hot exhaust into the animals' faces, watering troughs are removed from crossroads as obstacles to speeding cars and trucks, and the remaining equine users--usually the poorest of the poor--overload and overdrive the animals more, in a losing struggle to economically compete with mechanized transport.

As equine use decreases, accidents involving equines increase. Motorists typically do not understand animals' needs and abilities, and kill and injure many in collisions.

Stones flung up by speeding tires often blind working equines--a problem that was little known before animals shared the roads with cars, but is now endemic to the lives of working animals the world over.
Equines tend to get used to the passage of motor vehicles relatively easily, but only by overcoming their instinct to bolt at the rapid approach of something large approaching from behind. Those who spook are among the first culled as team owners downsize.

Not to be overlooked is the pass-down factor, frequently noted by early 20th century U.S. humane commentators. The most affluent people in a community get motor vehicles first. They then sell or give away their working animals to people who formerly could not afford them. Inevitably the transition to motor power includes a transition from teamstering being a well-paid and respected profession to being an occupation of the underclass.

The last operators of horse-drawn vehicles selling vegetables and dairy products in U.S. cities, the last Romanian gypsies collecting scrap in horse-drawn wagons, and operators of carriage and pony rides are often seen as survivors of long traditions of an equine-centered life-style. Many actually have little background in animal care, and are heirs to work abandoned by the families who formerly did those jobs, back when the work was much more lucrative. Thus animal care degenerates at the same time that the working conditions for animals deteriorate.

Last ride

The last and most brutal part of the phase-out of working equines is that tens of thousands are transported to slaughter in unsuitable vehicles, often for huge distances, since equine slaughterhouses and consumers of horse meat are relatively few in all parts of the world.

Often the drovers hauling the horses have little if any awareness that horses have higher centers of gravity than cattle and pigs, so fall much more often if the vehicles suddenly slow or turn; that horses need to stand upright, not ride in double-decked vehicles that force their heads down into unnatural postures; and that horses should ride facing backward, not forward, to avoid injuries both in transport and in unloading.

Horses suffer from the same neglect and mistreatment that afflicts all livestock in transport. Then the killing may be done at facilities unsuited to horses, by personnel using antiquated methods, recently documented in undercover videos of horse slaughter in Mexico and eastern Europe.

Most of the largest, most populous nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with the greatest numbers of working equines, are now either at or fast approaching phase-out. This occurs in two stages. The first is when equine use rapidly declines relative to human population. The actual numbers of working horses, donkeys, and mules may level off, or even modestly increase, but as ever greater shares of the workload are done by motor vehicles, both the economic and physical environments become less conducive to continuing to use equines.

The second phase is a steep drop in the actual numbers of equines. Societies relying on equines for farm work and transport usually sustain equine slaughter industries, to dispose of animals who are too old, ill, or badly injured to be economically productive. During the end phase of equine use, fewer equines fit those definitions, but users and former users begin selling healthy animals to slaughter, until the equine use industries contract to little more than recreational use.

Then, as societies become more affluent, more horses may be raised for riding and racing, as in the U.S., which had only 2.4 million horses in 1961, when farm and transport use had effectively ended, but now has about 9.2 million.

1961 was the first year for which the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization assembled statistics on agricultural animal populations worldwide. The numbers for the most populous nations that have cooperated with the FAO effort from the beginning show the trend since then, as well as the magnitude of the challenge ahead:

Nation Million equines Equines/humans
         1961 2008 1961 2008
Brazil 5.5 5.9 1/14 1/33
China 14.1 15.1 1/44 1/83
Egypt 15.3 3.1 1/ 2 1/21
India 2.4 1.4 1/18 1/82
Mexico 7.0 9.6 1/ 5 1/12
Pakistan 1.0 4.3 1/47 1/40

The Brazilian, Chinese, and Mexican equine populations have all slightly increased, but have declined by half relative to the workload needed to sustain their respective societies. The Egyptian equine population, 97% of them donkeys, has fallen from the largest on record anywhere to a normal level for an agrarian society in the developing world. Only Pakistan relies more on equine labor today than 48 years ago.
The fourfold increase in the number of working equines in Pakistan may reflect a decrease in the use of bullock carts, long the primary mode of transport throughout the Indian subcontinent. Bullocks were abundant because the dominant Hindu culture inhibited slaughtering healthy bovines for meat, and to this day do much of the work done elsewhere by horses, mules, and donkeys.

Pakistan, mostly Muslim, separated from India in 1947. Cattle slaughter has increased in Pakistan ever since, while bullock carts have nearly disappeared.
  

Mumbai U.S. consul Henry D. Baker reported in 1914 that motor vehicles already appeared to be replacing bullock carts in urban India, but lack of domestic oil reserves and lack of foreign exchange inhibited the transition for another 80 years, until India became a global hub of electronic communication.

Since then, Indian use of motor vehicles has increased at the rate of 20% per year, use of equines and bullock carts has plummeted, and what to do with surplus male calves has become one of India's most vexing and politicially charged problems. Indian milk production is comparable to that of the U.S., but milk yield per cow is so much less that Indian cattle birth as many as 10 surplus bull calves for every one born in the U.S.

All of the same issues associated with the transition from equine use to use of motor vehicles are involved in the transition from using bullock carts. The economic and cultural issues differ, however, since horses, donkeys and mules have little religious significance in most of the world, and are deliberately produced for work, whereas bullocks are a byproduct of milk production plus cultural resistance to slaughter.  Rural regions of eastern Europe still relied heavily on horses for farm work and transport until after the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s. Cruelty in the export of horses to slaughter subsequently became an internationally publicized scandal in nation after nation, moving from those closest to horsemeat consumers in Belgium, France, and Italy to those farther away.

Most of eastern Europe is now close to completing the replacement of working equines with motor vehicles, as the numbers from Poland most clearly show:

Nation Million equines Equines/humans
1961 2008 1961 2008
Poland 2.7 0.3 1/11 1/130
Romania 1.0 0.8 1/19 1/28
Ukraine 1.0 0.6 1/43 1/77

The transition in Romania has gathered momentum since Romania was admitted to the European Union in January 2007.

Gandhian economists, in particular, have predicted for decades that eventually declining global oil reserves will force a return to greater use of animal power, but even where the actual numbers of equines are still about what they were in 1961, breeding enough to re-establish the ratios necessary to provide for the present human population would take many years.

Producing an adequate fodder supply to sustain a return to animal power would be harder still. Most fodder crops can also be used to feed humans, to feed animals raised for meat, or to manufacture biofuels, and these uses are all considerably more lucrative. As gasoline prices soared in 2008, the cost of feeding a donkey became higher per mile traveled in most of the developing world than the cost of fueling a motorcycle--especially if the motorcycle ran on ethanol.

Such ratios wobble with the world economy. Replacing equines with motor vehicles is likely to progress much more rapidly in some nations than others, and may still take decades in the poorest parts of Africa and Latin America. But easing the lives of equines in the nations where the transition is coming fastest is challenge enough.

ANIMAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett has initiated three projects working toward that end in the past three years.

The first ANIMAL PEOPLE equine aid project, begun in January 2007, is a mobile clinic serving the donkeys and horses who toil along the highway between Delhi and Agra, India. The clinic is staffed and operated by Friendicoes SECA.

The second project, begun in September 2008, enables Jakarta Animal Aid to treat carriage horses and teach their drivers proper equine care.

The third project, begun in January 2009, is relief outreach meant to assist all of the animals who were isolated by warfare in Gaza, carried out by the Palestine Wildlife Society and Let The Animals Live, of Israel. In practice, the program has mainly helped horses and donkeys.

ANIMAL PEOPLE also funds the salary of African Network for Animal Welfare founder Josphat Ngonyo. Ngonyo's work in recent years has included coordinating a vaccination drive to stop an unusual rabies outbreak among donkeys in the Kenyan crossroads city of Isiolo, and treating and feeding the donkeys and other animals who were displaced by deadly rioting in several parts of Kenya during January 2008.

IFAW is latest wealthy animal charity to lay off staff due to cash flow crunch

YARMOUTHPORT, Mass.--The International Fund for Animal Welfare in early May 2009 was identified by Sarah Shemkus of the Cape Cod Times as yet another of the growing number of animal charities with huge financial reserves to introduce deep budget cuts because of declining cash flow.

"A recent internal message from IFAW president Fred O'Regan to employees, obtained by the Cape Cod Times, cited a need to cut the organization's operations budget from $53.6 million to $36.1 million," reported Shemkus on May 9, 2009. " Net revenues for fiscal 2009, which ends on June 30, are down by 32% from what was budgeted, the message says." IFAW had total income of $25.6 million in the preceding fiscal year, and entered the 2008-2009 fiscal year with $41.6 million in total assets, despite net losses of $4 million.

"Throughout last fall," Shemkus wrote, "IFAW trimmed its operations budget without reducing staff. In January, IFAW laid off 10% of its worldwide work force," including 26 employees at the newly built IFAW head office in Yarmouthport. The office building was constructed with the help of a $10 million bequest from Juliana Kickert, 64, of Sedona, Arizona, who died in March 2006.

"Those cuts left a staff of approximately 140 working at the headquarters," said Shemkus. Shemkus anticipated "further layoffs," based on the O'Regan memo to staff.

"We now need to find additional structural ways to reduce expenses so that we operate in a way that is proportionate to our substantially decreased budget," the memo said, to make IFAW "a smaller, more flexible and financially secure institution."
IFAW did not answer Shemkus' questions before her deadline, she said, and has apparently not disclosed particulars about the downsizing to other reporters, but Shemkus did receive a statement from "IFAW's executive team."

"At this time we do not anticipate that our finances will recover during the coming year," said the executive team statement.

"According to the executive team," summarized Shemkus, IFAW has adopted a three-year plan which "will include efforts to consolidate program and operational services, leverage program work to generate revenue, rely more on partnerships with other organizations to deliver program services, diversify sources of revenue and expand the revenue base in the United States."

The plan appears to involve outsourcing program activity to overseas charities such as the Wildlife Trust of India, a longtime IFAW funding recipient, which can perform high-profile projects at less cost than staff directly employed by a U.S. organization.

IFAW presently has offices in 17 nations. Most of the offices have local program partners. Partnership arrangements may be financially attractive to the parties involved, but as more overseas charities develop programs attractive to U.S. donors, many are preferring to work with U.S. affiliates that are focused on the overseas charities' programs-- like Wildlife SOS.

Founded at about the same time as the Wildlife Trust of India, Wildlife SOS has had a longstanding philosophical conflict with WTI over how best to rescue and rehabilitate bear cubs, who usually are confiscated from poachers and smugglers, or are surrendered by dancing bear keepers getting out of the trade.

Focusing on obtaining bears by helping former dancing bear keepers into other occupations, Wildlife SOS now houses more than 500 bears at sanctuaries near Agra, Bhopal, and Bangalore.

Favoring returning bears to the wild, IFAW and WTI in late May 2009 jointly announced only their third release of orphaned Asiatic black bear cubs. One of the first two cubs they released was killed by a leopard in 2005, WTI acknowledged to ANIMAL PEOPLE, after the Assam Tribune alleged that leopards killed both. Two released in 2007 survived for at least seven months before losing their radio collars. Their release was disclosed in March 2008.

Financial structure

The source of the IFAW cash flow problem--beyond the weakened state of the U.S. economy--is believed to be essentially the same as for the Massachusetts SPCA and the Massachusetts Audubon Society, which disclosed big cuts earlier in 2009: Massachusetts is among about two dozen states that prohibit drawing down reserve funds that are invested in stocks and other growth-oriented investments, if the value of the investments falls below their original value.

Meant to protect charitable endowments against gambling in investment markets, such legislation has cumulatively put billions of dollars out of reach of the charities that raised the money. Educational and medical charities have been far harder hit than animal charities, few of which have built reserves large enough for interest and dividends to be a major part of their revenue.
But the MSPCA, Massachusetts Audubon, and IFAW, among others, came to depend on interest and dividends to underwrite their operations. A formula popular among charity managers is that interest, dividends, and profits from securities sales should ideally be enough to finance the public fund-raising that pays for program work.

According to their most recent available IRS Form 990 filings, the MSPCA was still achieving this formula as of the end of 2007, despite a 23% decline in endowment value since the end of 2006--but the MSPCA had an operating loss of $15 million in 2008.

Massachusetts Audubon, with financial reserves of nearly five times the organization's total annual budget, received more in interest, dividends, and net from securities sales in fiscal year 2007-2008 than it spent on fundraising plus administrative expense. But the value of the Massachusetts Audubon endowment fell 28% in 2008.

IFAW in fiscal 2007-2008 spent about twice as much on fundraising as the sum it received from interest, dividends, and net from securities sales, but still had a net decline in value of assets of about 8%. The losses included a decline of about $1.3 million in the value of IFAW-held securities.

MSPCA shelters

Downsizing for the second time in five years, the Massachusetts SPCA on February 5, 2009 announced the impending closure of shelters in Brockton, Martha's Vineyard, and Springfield, facilitating layoffs of 38 staff, while eight vacant positions were eliminated. The MSPCA had operated in Springfield since 1933, at the present site since 1996; in Brockton since 1945, at the present site since 1989; and in Martha's Vinyard since 1947. The cuts left MSPCA with shelters and animal hospitals in Boston, Centerville, Methuen, and Nantucket.

All three of the former MSPCA shelters are now expected to continue operations under new management.

Fifty years after the MSPCA opened the first Katherine M. Foote Memorial Shelter in Edgartown, 23 years after the present shelter was built after an eight-year fundraising drive led by summer Martha's Vinyard resident Anna Bell Washburn, the newly formed Animal Shelter of Massachusetts opened on May 1, 2009.
"The MSPCA sign came down and the last remaining animals were adopted or sent to the MSPCA shelter in Centerville," wrote Jim Hickey of the Vineyard Gazette.

The Animal Shelter of Massachusetts "signed an open-ended lease with the MSPCA allowing them to rent the building and take over most of the equipment at no cost," said Hickey. "The building must be used as an animal shelter in perpetuity, and the new facility will no longer receive funding from the MSPCA. The shelter will for now be owned and managed through a public-private partnership that includes a nonprofit board and county government. Dukes County Commissioners have agreed to provide funding to run the shelter for the next six months."

The former MSPCA shelter and animal hospital in Spring-field has been sold to the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society, already operating an adoption shelter in nearby Leverett and an animal rescue and rehabilitation center in Greenfield. The MSPCA had closed the Springfield hospital in 2007, and closed the shelter on March 31, 2009. Paying $1.2 million for the property, the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society expected to spend several months in renovating the facilities before reopening on August 1. The former hospital is to become a sterilization clinic. The Greenfield site is to be closed, with the Greenfield workload being moved to Springfield.

The MSPCA plans to leave the Brockton shelter on September 30. Brockton shelter manager Kim Heise in late April said "she is among a group forming a nonprofit that would take over the shelter," wrote Maria Papadopoulos of the Brockton Enterprise News, and hoped to continued operations as an open admission shelter.

But others "have a different idea of how the facility should be used and we're not being allowed to participate in how the new organization is going to operate," ojected Brockton Cat Coalition founder Marcia Motta.

Motta said "she is forming a nonprofit entity called the Bay State Animal Cooperative, which would operate a no-kill shelter and low-cost spay and neuter clinic in Brockton," added Papadopoulos.

Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania SPCA, coping with budget issues similar to those of the MSPCA, in mid-May 2009 quit trying to sell the Stroudsburg shelter that it closed in January, and announced that it would instead lease it for $1.00 per year to either the Animal Welfare Society of Monroe or the Pocono Animal Welfare Society.
Monroe County in March 2009 asked the PSPCA "to give the property back to the community," reported Pocono Record writer Beth Brelje. "The PSPCA acquired the land for $1.00 in 1951. If it were to give back the shelter, the land would be deed-restricted and it would be operated by a nonprofit representing the community."

"Giving it back is not an option," responded interim PSPCA chief executive Beth Ann Smith-White. "We put almost $1 million in renovations into the building. If for some reason one group fails, we'd like to have another group come in. Who knows, the PSPCA may come back in there," she said.

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Vietnamese cholera outbreak from dog meat

HANOI--The National Institute of Hygiene & Epidemiology on May 18, 2009 temporarily closed at least a dozen dog slaughterhouses.

"Samples of dog meat, both cooked and uncooked, from the Ha Dong district of Hanoi tested positive for the cholera bacterium," The Youth newspaper reported. Nine northern Vietnamese provinces have had recent cholera outbreaks. Bureau of Preventive Health chief Nguyen Huy Nga warned on May 15 that up to 70% of the patients became ill after eating dog meat.
The cholera outbreaks came two months after two Hanoi-based national health institutes linked a pair of human rabies deaths to eating dogs.

Verdict pending in trial of two Sea Shepherd crew

SYDNEY, Nova Scotia-- Provincial court judge Jean Whalen on April 30, 2009 said she would rule on June 30 as to whether Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew members Alex Cornelissen of Sweden and Peter Hammarstedt of the Netherlands sailed closer to sealers three times in 2008 than is allowed without an observer permit.

Cornelissen and Hammarstedt, captain and first mate of the impounded Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat, were tried in absentia. Deported from Canada after the Farley Mowat was seized, they were barred from re-entering, according to the Sea Shepherds. The prosecution claimed that defendants in trials are allowed to return to Canada to face charges in court proceedings.

The Canadian government in March 2009 solicited bids on the Farley Mowat, to sell it in satisfaction of unpaid docking fees, accumulated since the Farley Mowat was taken to Sydney by the Canadian coast guard in April 2008. The 52-year-old former Sea Shepherd flagship was due for retirement, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson said earlier in 2008, but before the solicitation for bids was issued, Watson warned that, "Whoever buys the ship should be aware that we retain the registry and bill of sale and will take back what is ours...You don't steal a ship from a pirate without repercussions."

Marooned dogs' howls echo in Turkey

Marooning the dogs of Palau Ketam had two notorious precedents near Istanbul, Turkey, recalled by Companion Animal Network founder Garo Alexanian in the November/ December 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
The first marooning off Istan-bul occurred at some point prior to 1869, when Mark Twain described it in The Innocents Abroad, along with "the howl of horror" from citizens that stopped the practice.
The second marooning came in 1910. "This act so disturbed the modern Turkish republic," Alexanian wrote, "that newspaper columnists have attributed difficult economic times in Turkey to the curse of Turks having done it."
Turkish legislation has since 2004 mandated neuter/return for dog population control, but as Linda Taal of the Dutch/Turkish animal rescue group Actiezwerfhonden noted on May 30, to this day "More dogs are killed or dumped than caught, neutered, and returned" to their habitat.
Taal feared that disregard of the Turkish law would increase and that dog massacres might erupt in other nations as result of the May 24, 2009 election of Turkish agriculture ministry deputy undersecretary Nihat Pakdil to become European Region secretary-general of the Organization for Animal Health. (See page one.)

BOOKS

Tails of Recovery: Addicts & the Pets That Love Them
by Nancy A. Schenck
HarperCollins Publishers (10 East 53rd Street., New York, NY 10022), 2009. 175 pages, hardcover. $29.99.

Tails of Recovery offers a glimpse into the tangled lives of substance abusers, whose behavior does not always elicit sympathy. While high, their behavior is often not only illegal but disdainful and dismissive toward the norms and values of civilized society.

In recovery, most ask for forgiveness. Some do not. The people profiled in Tales of Recovery may be loved by their pets, but they have not all shown responsible behavior, even though all of them are years into recovery, following twelve-step programs and typically holding jobs.

A few treated their dogs and cats badly while under the influence. Others were indifferent to their pets' needs. One moved from criminal behavior to a legal activity which may contribute at least as much to animal suffering.

"Around the corner of the house, I was confronted by the worst nightmare I could imagine. Rasputin," his pit bull terrier, "had starved to death," recalls this man, a drug addict 21 years into recovery. Haunting recollections of Rasputin's skeletal remains changed the addict's life--but he was not prosecuted for starving the dog, a misdemeanor in all states and a potential felony in several. Concerned neighbors had called animal control but the addict fed them excuses and no one else intervened.

Once clean, instead of serving homeless or victimized dogs at a shelter, this former addict claims to be atoning by breeding pit bulls. Puppies, he says, helped him heal.

Yet a million homeless pit bulls per year are killed in U.S. animal shelters: half of all dogs killed in shelters. Even if there were no safety issues involving pit bulls, there is no need to breed more.

I have more understanding for a New Orleans woman who is described in Tails of Recovery. When she was nine years old her dysfunctional family adopted a mixed breed pup named Happy. Alcohol ruled both parents' lives, so Happy provided comfort and safety to the girl. Years later, Happy got out one night and a car struck him, causing grave injuries. Euthanasia ended his suffering. The young woman couldn't cope with either losing Happy or the chaos at home, so she too spiraled out of control for 15 long tortuous years. After overdosing, she landed at a psychiatric hospital.

Recovery followed. Eventually she settled down, met a man, and moved to Las Vegas. The couple adopted a mutt named Sophie who kept them grounded. Her partner asks, "Can we love her any more?"

The recovered addict says, "I think so."

Another recovered addict found solace in fish. Early into his recovery a faulty heater killed nearly all of his fish. The loss evoked empathy and concern for the helpless beings, feelings buried by years of substance abuse. With a new tank and more fish, he devoted himself to responsible fish care.

"I watched a butterfly fish and looked into her eyes," he says. "I realized she had a soul." His tank is always clean. His fish are well fed. Tending a tank full of fish aided his recovery, says the addict.

A scrappy cat named Delia became a companion to a 48-year-old female recovering addict. The addict preferred dogs, but the constraints on her time resulting from a busy work schedule and twelve-step meetings suggested a cat would be all she could handle. So she adopted Delia.

The cat taught her patience, tolerance, and acceptance, traits she often lacked during her years of addiction. Keeping a pet instilled in her a sense of responsibility. As a drug user, she lived only for the next high. Now she had to consider the cat's needs in addition to her own.

Addiction does not discriminate. Corporate executives hooked on cocaine throw away promising careers and scrape by on the streets. Inmates with substance abuse problems overflow our prisons. Children removed from addicts live in an overburdened foster care system that may not be able to protect them any better than their tattered parents.

Tails of Recovery is recommended for counselors who work with substance abusing clients. This may include humane workers in a variety of contexts, including managing personnel with substance abuse problems, in a field where substance abuse associated with the stress of euthanizing animals--although visibly diminished during the past 20 years--is still believed to be the most common occupational health and safety issue.

Most of all, Tails of Recovery affirms animals' devotion to their people. Even when the animals are mistreated, most remain loyal and loving. --Debra J. White

Flyaway: How a wild bird rehabber sought adventure and found her wings
By Suzie Gilbert
HarperCollins Publishers (10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022), 2009. 352 pages. $25.99 hardcover.

"And I see these two robins, and one is kicking the crap out of the other one. Beating the bejesus out of him.  And he's out there right now waiting for you."

Bird rehabilitator Suzie Gilbert, of Hudson Valley, New York, answers frequent calls of a similar nature, concerned about birds but not necessarily well-informed about their behavior.

Her mother fed wild birds, so maybe Gilbert was destined for this career. But getting there took time. Gilbert repeatedly changed directions in pursuing her education and a career, traveling extensively abroad. She found her calling by volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center in 1990.

After Gilbert married and had two children, Mac and Skye, she began to rehab wild birds at home. Gilbert and her husband John soon built flight cages, deepening their commitment. Eventually their entire house was retrofitted to accommodate birds. Initially Gilbert intended only to handle birds who had been rescued by other rehabbers. However, in New York state she needed both a state license to rehabilitate wildlife and a federal permit to keep native birds. Meeting the licensing requirements qualified her to do rescue herself.

A finch with a dislocated wing arrived first, then a red-tail hawk. There were injured ducks, northern goshawks, parrots, crows, owls, turkeys and sparrows. Each came with a special story. Some were hit by cars. Thugs shot some for spite. Other birds were injured by free-roaming cats.

Gilbert in one short chapter addresses the ongoing controversy between cat and bird advocates as to whether free-roaming and feral cats are a significant threat to birds and other wildlife. Gilbert says yes, as most bird rehabilitators do.

Flyaway takes the readers through the daily routines of bird rehabilitation. Birds require cages to fit their extremely variable sizes, especially their wing spans. According to Gilbert, "Wild birds can't be kept in regular bird cages as they will damage their feathers by brushing them against the metal bars." She improvises with roomy reptile enclosures made of light plastic. Avian diets vary from fresh fish to seeds to dead rodents to bugs. Some need antibiotics; others need life-saving surgery. Some need "snowshoes," lightweight plastic devices that straighten a bird's foot when it has become curled or clenched too tightly.
Working with wildlife, which now and then includes endangered species, requires filings with both the state and federal government. Penalties ensue for those who do not comply. Gilbert and every reputable wildlife rehabilitator must keep copious notes. Their records are often used to track diseases--for example, the dangerous West Nile virus, whose progress has been followed primarily by rehabilitators' reports since first appearing in the U.S. in August 1999.

Many of the birds whom Gilbert takes in are seriously injured and do not survive. The mortality rate in avian rescue is much higher than in rescuing dogs, cats, horses, and livestock, partly because a wild animal tends to be in worse shape than a domestic animal before attracting human intervention.

Wild birds, as Gilbert notes, cannot be released until perfectly healed. Except among flightless species, none native to the U.S. and therefore ineligible for release, a bird who cannot fly will not survive in the wild. When birds suffer permanently disabling injuries to their wings or beaks, Gilbert works with other rehabbers to find appropriate lifetime sanctuary care.

Gilbert's family were unperturbed when a bathroom became a makeshift bird clinic and dead rodents filled their freezer. Postal employees were less amused when a box of live crickets unexpectedly opened, releasing more than 1,000 crickets, who hopped over packages, letters, and a conveyor belt carrying mail until Gilbert and her husband could contain them.

The financial burden of caring for so many birds eventually obliged Gilbert to incorporate Flyaway Inc. as a nonprofit organization. This was accomplished in 2002.

Nearly all my experience has been with dog and cat rescue, so reading about avian rescue was an informative introduction to a very different branch of animal welfare. I was disappointed in the family's choice to buy rather than to adopt a puppy, but Flyaway is a worthwhile read, even if the family dog came from a breeder. --Debra J. White

Watching Giants: The Secret Lives of Whales by Elin Kelsey
U. of Calif. Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704), 2008.
216 pages, paperback, illustrated. $17.95.

"Whales inspire me to contemplate connections," says Elin Kelsey, author and faculty member at Royal Roads University in Canada. "They inspire me to act more generously. They inspire me to experience life in whale scale." Kelsey's book Watching Giants takes us into the fascinating world of all 32 species of the mammoth yet graceful creatures.

Watching Giants begins with mature gray whales. The females are either pregnant or lactating 80% of the time. Like the mothers of many other species, whale moms stick together. To avoid oceanic predators such as sharks and orca whales, gray whale mothers and their calves swim close to shore or dive deep. Gray whales gather by the thousands every year off the Baja Peninsula of Mexico to give birth in one of four lagoons. Arriving around January, they don't return to their summer feeding regions more than a thousand miles to the north until May. Calves are raised on stored milk that is 50% fat.

Other baleen whale species and their calves hang around too. Experts suggest that at least 15,000-20,000 gray whales and 3,000-4,000 humpbacks visit each year. And they're all unique says Elin and usually do not follow the same behavior patterns.

Diane Gendron, a blue whale expert at the Interdisciplinary Center for Marine Sciences at La Paz, apparently knows many by name. "Every January I can't wait to get out and see who has come back," says Gendron. Her favorites include Nina, who later turned out to be male.
Studying whales is mostly done by observation. And that takes time and lots of it, says Doc White, a marine mammal photographer whom Kelsey interviewed for this book. About ten pages of White's stunning photographs appear in Watching Giants.

Many whale species appear to live their lives in slow motion compared to smaller species. Sperm whales, for example, may live seventy years or more, and may nurse their young for 10 years or more. Bowhead whales, found only in the Arctic, are known to live nearly twice that long: a bowhead killed by Eskimos off Alaska in May 2007 had been wounded by a "bomb lance" fragment in approximately 1890, and might have been born as early as 1877. This was only the most recent of many similar finds.

Humans nearly hunted whales to extinction before the International Whaling Commission declared a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986. Japan, Norway, and Iceland continue to defy the moratorium, Japan on the pretext of killing whales for scientific research, while Norway claims the IWC has no jurisdiction over whales in Norwegian territorial waters.

California gray whales appear to have recovered, and in 1994 were taken off the U.S. endangered species list, but are the only large whales to have made such a comeback. Meanwhile, removing gray whales from Endangered Species Act protection brought more than 15 years of litigation and political pressure from the Makah tribe of Neah Bay, Washington, who seek to resume whaling.

Makah whalers killed one gray whale legally in 2000, and one illegally in 2007. The 2007 victim was identified in April 2009 as CRC-175, who had been photographed by scientists 143 times since 1995, at locations from the northern California coast to waters off central Vancouver Island, according to Cascadia Research Inc. Her five killers were convicted; two were sentenced to short federal prison terms.

Whale society is complex. They communicate through vocalizations only they can understand, partly because their tonal range goes beyond the limitations of human hearing. Says Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University, "When we found that there were, in each area, different clans producing different vocalizations, we then went to the other things we can measure, such as movement patterns and micro-distribution."

Elin discusses the whale's private parts and how they reproduce but I'll leave that for the reader to discover. Whale sexuality is among the most interesting sections of her book. --Debra J. White

--

Horse racing casualties

MELBOURNE, Australia--The Racing Victoria Limited Board suspended jumps racing for 11 days in May 2009, after seven horses in two weeks were euthanized due to injuries suffered in jumps competition of training, including three in two days at the Warrnambool May Racing Carnival.
Racing minister Rob Hulls lifted the suspension on May 18, after intensive lobbying by the Victorian Jumps Racing Association. However, Racing Victoria Ltd. on May 11 suspended four-time Grand Annual Steeplechase winning rider David "Butch" Londregan, now a trainer, for threatening in a radio interview to shoot his horses and send their heads to Hulls.

Among the Warrambool casualties was Pride of Westbury, who fell at the last hurdle in the Grand Annual on May 6. The longest thoroughbred race in Australia, the 137-year-old Grand Annual features 33 jumps--believed to be the most of any horse race anywhere--over 3.4 miles. Pride of Westbury's stablemate Hassle was euthanized due to injuries suffered in a preliminary event. Also euthanized due to injury in the Grand Annual was Clearview Bay.

Their deaths followed those of Shrogginet, Taken At The Flood, Wool Zone, and Hanging Rock at other meets. Hanging Rock had a seemingly insurmountable lead at Yarra Valley on April 26, but fell at the last hurdle.

Racing Victoria Limited is expected to introduce new rules for jump racing, including a different starting method, stricter qualifications for participating horses, and eliminating the last hurdle of each race, to give tired horses an easier run to the finish.

Five horses died at the April 2009 Grand National in Aintree, England--the most prestigious of jumping events. Exotic Dancer placed second in his race on the first day, then died of a heart attack. Mel In Blue suffered a broken neck. Moscow Catch suffered an apparent broken neck on the second day. Lilla Sophia was euthanized due to a broken leg. Hear the Echo and Butler's Cabin collapsed after the climactic race on the third day, but Butler's Cabin revived after being given oxygen.

Two horses died at Churchill Downs in preliminaries to the Kentucky Derby--Raspberry Miss, a two-year-old filly who was run over in a training session on April 27 by Doctor Rap, a three-year-old colt, and Stormalory, who broke a leg in the American Turf Stakes race on May 1.

Following the high-profile deaths of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro and 2008 runner-up Eight Belles due to racing injuries, the Kentucky Derby in 2009 introduced the use of padded starting gates, required jockeys to use riding crops instead of whips, banned a type of cleated shoe that has been associated with injuries, and strengthened enforcement of laws against giving steroids to horses before they race.

Obituaries (human)

Princess Elizabeth de Croy, 88, died on May 18, 2009 at the Refuge de Thiernay she founded in 1968, three miles from the Chateau d'Azy, her birthplace and the de Croy ancestral home. The Princess worked as a flight attendant in the early years of commercial aviation, traveled with actor Rex Harrison, and knew General Charles DeGaulle. She did humanitarian relief work in Biafra, and with her six sisters, helped to raise funds for Mother Teresa. Her first experience in humane work included introducing the use of captive bolt guns to French slaughterhouses in 1962, as a member of the French organization ‘uvre d'Assistance aux Bêtes d'Abattoirs. She demonstrated stun guns donated by the International Society for the Protection of Animals, a subsidiary of the Massachusetts SPCA which was in 1981 merged with a subsidiary of the Royal SPCA of Britain to form the World Society for the Protection of Animals. The Princess started the Refuge de Thiernay and the Association Defense et Protection des Animaux, she told Alice Furlaud of The New York Times in 1988, "with a very small legacy from my aunt, Princess Marie de Croy, and people gave me building materials." Her mother contributed the farmhouse that became the refuge headquarters. The Princess in 1980 joined Michael Seymour Rouse in founding Eurogroup for Animals, which represents humane concerns to the European Parliament; accompanied Annabella Singh, the Maharani of Udaipur, India, in a landmark 1981 investigation of the largest slaughterhouse serving Delhi, India; and beginning in 1980, actively encouraged the growth of humane societies in Poland. "Animals and animal groups in Asia could always count on her help," testified Pei-Feng Su, executive director of ACTAsia for Animals. "In the last 20 years, the Princess was an advocate for animals in Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan and China," Pei-Feng Su remembered. "In 2006 she supported ACTAsia's first workshop in China. The day before she passed away, I was at her bedside. I thanked her on behalf of all the animals who benefitted from her presence in this world."

Anna Worth, DVM, 55, died of pancreatic cancer on May 16, 2009 in Bennington, Vermont. Worth and her husband Robert Bergman, DVM, founded the West Mountain Animal Hospital in Shaftsbury, Vermont in 1978. They relocated to Bennington in 2007. Named "veterinarian of the year" in 1992 by the Massachusetts SPCA, Worth later chaired the Vermont Animal Cruelty Task Force, the Vermont Animal Welfare Committee and the Euthanasia Board for Animals; was for seven years the Vermont delegate to the American Veterinary Medical Association; and served terms as president of the Society for Veterinary Medical Ethics and the Vermont Veterinary Medical Association. She was immediate past president of the American Animal Hospital Association.

Charlotte Baker Montgomery, 98, died on April 28, 2009 in Nacogdoches, Texas, from complications of Alzheimer's disease. The daughter of author Karle Baker, Charlotte Baker Montgomery became a prolific writer and illustrator of children's books. "Her many titles placed special emphasis on being kind to our 'animal friends,'" recalled Trent Jacobs of the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel. "In 1959 Montgomery and her husband Roger led the effort to organize the Humane Society of Nacogdoches County, and inspired the formation of other animal welfare groups throughout East Texas." In 1983 Montgomery donated a 16-acre conservation easement on property that became the Banita Creek Nature Preserve. In 1993 she deeded 15 acres of the site to the Texas Land Conserv-atory. Tthe Humane Society of Nacogdoches County continues to lease the last acre.

Carole C. Noon, 59, died on May 3, 2009 of pancreatic cancer in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her sister Lee Asbeck told Bruce Weber of The New York Times that her feelings for animals became known to her family wehn they saw the 1955 Walt Disney animated film Lady & the Tramp. Then Carole Cooney, age 6, she cried so hard when the Tramp was taken to the dog pound that she had to be carried outside. Becoming Carole Noon through a brief early marriage, she "often said her career path was set when she heard Jane Goodall lecture in 1984. She went on to earn a master's degree in anthropology and a doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of Florida," wrote Weber. "Her specialty was socializing captive chimpanzees. She did much of her field research at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia." Noon in 1997 founded Save the Chimps, hoping to win custody of the former U.S. Air Force research colony, who had been housed by the Coulston Foundation in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and were to be given to the Coulston Foundation, then the world's largest supplier of chimps to laboratories. Suing the Air Force, Noon in 2001 obtained 21 ex-Air Force chimps as part of an out-of-court settlement. When the Coulston Foundation declared bankruptcy in 2003, Noon bought the Coulston facilities in Alamogordo, with the aid of $3.7 million from the Arcus Foundation, and acquired the 266 Coulston animals. Her 150-acre sanctuary near Fort Pierce grew to house 148 chimps, with a staff of 46. Another 134 chimps remain in Alamogordo, in improved facilities, being introduced to living in compatible social groups prior to moving with their groups to Fort Pierce. Noon told ANIMAL PEOPLE in 2003 that the process would probably take longest for the chimps who had the least social contact as experimental subjects, and that some might never become de-institutionalized. Succeeding Noon as interim director of Save the Chimps is Jen Feuerstein. Feuerstein became Save the Chimps' director of operations after six years as a caregiver at the Yerkes Regional Primate Center in Atlanta turned her against the use of sentient species in biomedical research.

Eva Majlath Rhodes, 65, missing since September 10, 2008, was confirmed dead on April 28, 2009. Her remains were found on March 18, buried near the Puss in Boots Animal Trust shelter she founded in 1996 in Bony, Hungary, near Gyor. A Puss in Boots worker, not named by police, was charged with beating her to death, trying to burn her body, and finally burying it after he could not get it to burn. "The killer was identified as a suspect after CCTV footage showed him with his 65-year-old boss on the day she disappeared," reported the Austrian Times. "Her home was ransacked and a laptop computer and telephones were stolen. Her office records and files were partially destroyed and her car was found abandoned nearby." Her disappearance left 70 dogs and 50 cats temporarily neglected. Believing this to be grossly out of character, her daughter Sophie Rhodes, of Chelsea, and sister Judith Majlath, of Vienna, pushed Hungarian officials for seven months to pursue a criminal investigation--and pushed British officials to push Hungary. "The disappearance provoked an international row," recalled Austrian Times, "when British Member of Parliament Malcolm Rifkind accused the Foreign Office of not doing enough. Foreign Secretary David Miliband had dismissed the disappearance as a missing persons case, saying there was no 'hard evidence' of a crime." Born in Hungary, Eva Majlath fled with her family after the 1956 Russian invasion. Relocating to Britain, she took up modeling. Yoko Ono and John Lennon cast her as the never-named victim of a camera-carrying stalker in Ono's seldom-shown but recently revived and critically acclaimed 1968 film Rape. Promised £25,000 for her performance, Eva Majlath received only a signed album from Ono and Lennon at the time. Marrying architect Mark Rhodes, she became an antiques dealer in East Anglia. After their divorce, Eva Rhodes, as she had become known and remained, returned to Hungary and invested £150,000 of her own money to start the Puss in Boots Animal Trust. Learning of the project and the unpaid 1968 debt, Yoko Ono donated £25,000. Puss in Boots was warmly profiled by former veterinary nurse Patricia Johnson in the summer 2003 edition of The Ark, the journal of the Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare, but was often in conflict with the Gyor police detachment, whom Eva Rhodes accused of ignoring dogfighting and illegal sales of dogs to laboratories. "It ended with a victory for Mrs. Rhodes in the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld her claim that police had acted over-aggressively towards her," wrote David Williams of the Daily Mail.

Mallige, 29, a forest watcher at the Bannerghatta Biological Park safari near Bangalore, India, was trampled on May 6, 2009 when he tried to distract a bison named Bheema from charging a vehicle carrying visitors to the park.

Suhendra, 37, an elephant trainer at Way Kambas National Park in East Lam-pung, Indonesia, was on May 6, 2009 thrown and trampled by the elephant he was riding, for whom he had been mahout for five years.

Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton, WA 98236

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