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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, SEPTEMBER 2009:

EDITORIAL: Time to stop declawing, ear-cropping, & tail-docking

Declawing cats and ear-cropping and tail-docking dogs have in common that they are frequently performed surgical mutilations, lucrative for veterinarians who are willing to do them, which convey no benefit whatever to the animals.
The exception is when cats and dogs fall into the hands of humans who may mistreat them further if the animals fail to conform to the humans' sense of aesthetics.
   Then, in theory, the cat whose paws have been cut at the bone equivalent to the first knuckle of the human hand will be less likely to be dumped at a shelter for scratching furniture. The dog whose ears are disfigured and whose tail no longer visibly wags a greeting will somehow become a more desirable pet.
Indeed, some people will not keep cats who scratch furniture, and no amount of alternative scratching opportunities or behavioral intervention will reform certain cats, though others never scratch furniture at all. Some people insist that a dog of their favored breed is not really of that breed, despite any amount of genetic evidence, if the dog has not been reconfigured to have ears and tails resembling the breed standard.
   But pervasive as the belief remains among humane workers that clawing furniture contributes significantly to cat surrenders at shelters, there has never been much data supporting it. More than a decade ago the National Council on Pet Population Study funded University of Tennessee researcher John New to coordinate the largest study ever undertaken of reasons for cat and dog surrenders to animal shelters. Scratching furniture did not factor in even 1% of cat surrenders, except as a possible reason for some landlords not allowing pets.
   However, inappropriate elimination was among the top 10 reasons why cats were left at shelters. Declawing is a long-recognized factor in cats refusing to use litter boxes, since digging in litter can irritate a declawed cat's stumps. No reason associated with canine appearance or breed standards was cited at all as a reason for dog surrenders. Biting, often associated with humans misreading dogs' intentions, was among the top 10.
   The original idea behind tail-docking was to keep fighting dogs from signaling intent to avoid a fight. The first practitioners of tail-docking appear to have been Elizabethan-era dogfighters, who also introduced ear-cropping to avoid having their dogs lose fights due to ear bleeding. Cropping and docking spread from fighting dogs to other breeds through emulation of the "dog fancy," which now means exhibitors of show dogs, but as recently as the early 20th century was a term used by The New York Times and other major newspapers almost exclusively in reference to betting on dogfights.
   Ironically, dogfighters largely abandoned ear-cropping and tail-docking by the mid-20th century, to avoid being conspicuous, after dogfighting was outlawed in most of the U.S.Dogfighters preparing cats and kittens for use as live bait in training dogs meanwhile became the first practitioners of onychectomy, as the most common declawing operation is formally called. Veterinarians later refined, commercialized, and popularized the procedure.
   Helen Keller, though deaf and blind, recognized the cruelty inherent in ear-cropping and tail-docking more than 100 years ago, and backed legislative efforts to ban both procedures. Almost certainly she would have opposed declawing too, had she known about it. As it was not common among pet keepers of her time, anti-declawing activism did not begin for another three generations.
   Anti-ear-cropping and tail-docking bills won legislative approval in various states as early as 1913, only to be vetoed by governors under pressure from the "dog fancy."
Pennsylvania finally enacted an anti-ear-cropping bill that received gubernatorial approval in 1933. The Western Pennsylvania Humane Society won the first conviction under the new law just two months later. The law was later repealed due to veterinary opposition, but the repeal may have been most profitably exploited by puppy millers who did their own knife work. Representatives of the humane community on August 28, 2009 applauded as Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed into effect a new law which allows only licensed veterinarians to perform ear-cropping, and allows puppy millers to dock the tails of puppies only within five days of birth and then only under veterinary supervision.
   Though this represents substantial improvement from the status quo of the past half century, it is still well short of regaining the reach of the law passed in 1933.
But the attitudes of the majority of small animal veterinarians have changed. Even though there is still big money in ear-cropping and tail-docking, vets have been distancing themselves from both procedures for nearly 20 years.
   The first big break from tradition came when British Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in November 1992 asked Parliament to ban tail-docking; Parliament complied in 2007. In November 2008 the American Veterinary Medical Association executive board adopted a resolution stating that the AVMA "opposes ear cropping and tail docking of dogs," when done for cosmetic reasons. The AVMA asked breed fanciers "to remove mention of the procedures from their standards." The American Animal Hospital Association and the Canadian Veterinary Association had already adopted similar resolutions, as had the AVMA House of Delegates in 1999.
   Governor Rendell endorsed the new Pennsylvania bill two weeks after Banfield pet hospital vice president for medical quality advancement Karen Faunt announced that the 730 Banfield locations and 2,000 Banfield veterinarians will no longer crop ears, dock tails, or debark dogs. Debarking, another common surgical mutilation, reduces the ability of dogs to signal intent, and is believed to increase the risk that dogs may bite.
"After thoughtful consideration and reviewing medical research, we have determined it is in the best interest of the pets we treat, as well as the overall practice, to discontinue performing these unnecessary cosmetic procedures," Faunt told Elizabeth Weise of USA Today.
   Banfield recommends against declawing, but continues to perform declaw surgery if a cat keeper insists that it must be done.
   Opposition to declawing--at least at the national level--began in the U.S. when Friends of Animals founder Alice Herrington in the early years of the organization introduced a policy of refusing to honor coupons for discounted sterilization if declawing was done at the same time. FoA president Priscilla Feral in the November 1993 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE defended the policy against a pro-declawing vet. Individual animal advocates who wrote in response to the debate favored Feral; shelter representatives favored the vet. About 25 nations have reportedly banned declawing since then, including the United Kingdom, but the most of the humane community continues to accept declawing, albeit with misgivings, in hopes that it might reduce the volume of cats coming into shelters.
   The most prominent legislative response to declawing in the entire U.S. remains an anti-declawing ordinance adopted by West Hollywood, California, in 2003. Former California state assembly member Paul Koretz of West Hollywood introduced a bill to ban declawing statewide, but it was amended to cover only exotic and wild cat species before winning passage in 2004. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a non-binding anti-declawing resolution in 2003, and filed a brief in support of West Hollywood after the California Veterinary Association sought to overturn the West Hollywood ordinance in court.
The California State Court of Appeals ruled in June 2007 that cities have the right under current California state law to ban declawing. Opponents of declawing anticipated that the verdict would encourage other cities to pass anti-declawing ordinances. Such an ordinance was passed in Norfolk, Virginia, two months before the California appellate ruling. In July 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives directed the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development Department to quit telling applicants for subsidized housing that they had to have their cats declawed. As the Humane Society of the U.S. pointed out at the time, "HUD rules require no such thing, but some agency authorities took it upon themselves."

Weak response & what comes of it
Momentum against declawing appeared to be building. But in California, instead of pursuing anti-declawing ordinances, most of the humane community stood aside while the CVMA and other organizations of health care professionals pushed to passage a bill called the "Licensing Freedom Act." This bill, according to the official summary, "Makes it unlawful for a city, county, or city and county to prohibit a licensed healing arts professional from engaging in any act or performing any procedure that falls within the licensee's professionally recognized scope of practice."
   Somewhat surprisingly the "Licensing Freedom Act" appears to have eluded the attention of abortion opponents. Indeed, though written to apply to every "healing art" with practitioners licensed by the California Department of Consumer Affairs, the act appears to have been regarded by just about everyone--if noticed at all--as nothing more than a bill to ensure that veterinarians are allowed to continue declawing, ear-cropping, and tail-docking.
The "Licensing Freedom Act" does not repeal the West Hollywood ordinance, nor will it repeal any other anti-declawing ordinance that wins passage before the end of 2009, but it does preclude the passage of any similar ordinances anywhere else in California.
   There is obviously a case to be made for statewide uniformity in health care regulation. Yet there is also a case to be made for allowing communities to exercise their collective conscience in banning cruelty, when state laws fail to address the matter at hand, and for testing legislative approaches at the local level before introducing them at the state or even federal level, if a federal jurisdiction is involved.
   The San Francisco Animal Welfare Commission is now trying to pass an anti-declawing ordinance before the window of opportunity closes at the end of this year. "In this pet-crazy town, it sounds like a no-brainer," observed San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Marisa Lagos on September 6, 2009. "But the ban is opposed by the San Francisco SPCA."
   "The SF/SPCA is opposed to declawing," president Jan McHugh-Smith told Lagos, "but we are concerned about the option being taken away. The guardian could potentially give up the pet, and the pet could end up in a shelter and be euthanized."
Apart from the lack of empirical evidence that this happens with any but anecdotal frequency, this is the same argument that several of the leading dog charities in Britain used for not supporting the Hunting Act in 2004: dogs might be surrendered to shelters and killed if not allowed to be used in blood sports.
   The hidden issue may be donor relations. Some high donors to British dog charities ride to hounds. Some high donors to U.S. humane societies may declaw cats.
   The consequence of not taking a strong stance against cruelty, lest it put some animals at risk of abandonment, is by now clearly evident in Britain. Introduced to prohibit pack hunting, the Hunting Act was weakened with exemptions, has been poorly enforced, and is now threatened with repeal by lawmakers who see little political risk in undoing it.
In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promptly signed the 2004 bill that prohibited declawing wild and exotic cats. Schwarzenegger has had a good record on other animal issues. But in July 2009, within days of signing the "Licensing Freedom Act," Schwarzenegger repeatedly ridiculed a bill by California Senate majority leader Dean Florez to ban cutting off cows' tails. Schwarzenegger even posted a video about it to YouTube.
   Practiced by some farmers to keep cows from flipping flecks of manure around milking parlors, "docking cows' tails is already outlawed in many parts of Europe," explained Lindsay Barnett of the Los Angeles Times, "including the U.K. and the Netherlands, and is opposed by the AVMA. It is already illegal in California to dock horses' tails. The new bill would tack on the words 'and cattle' to language of the existing law." Despite Schwarzenegger's ridicule, the bill against docking cows' tails won overwhelming approval from both houses of the California legislature, and is awaiting his signature--or veto. If endorsed, the new law will be a valuable precedent against mutilating animals in ways which, unlike sterilization surgery, convey no direct benefit to them.

Obituaries

Danny Bampton, 9, of St. Charles County, Missouri, was killed on August 19, 2009 when hit by a car. "Investigators say the boy was riding with his mother when he saw an injured duck in the road and asked her whether he could save it. After she pulled the car over, Danny hopped out and put the duck in a roadside culvert on the south side of the highway. When he tried to cross back over the rural, two-lane road to his family's car, Danny was struck by a westbound Subaru Legacy driven by Alayna R. Hitz, 18, of Wentzville. He died at the scene," wrote Joel Currier of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. ANIMAL PEOPLE reminds readers that the safe way to rescue animals from roadways is from the side of the road that the animals are on, using one's vehicle to block traffic, with four-way flashers on.

Alister Rodgers, 55, a veterinarian in Queensland, Australia, died on September 1, 2009 after two weeks in a coma. Rodgers and two employees of a stud horse farm at Cawarral near Rockhampton contracted Hendra virus from a horse who died of the virus on July 28. The cause of the horse's death was confirmed on August 10, three days after federal budget cuts forced the closure of the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Disease, the main institution researching Hendra virus. Rodgers was the seventh human to become infected with Hendra virus since 1994, and the fourth to die from it.

Henry Sheldon Fitch, 99, died on September 8, 2009 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. From 1948 until 2006 Fitch was resident naturalist at the Kansas University Natural History Reservation, eventually renamed the Fitch Natural History Reservation in his honor. "It is not an exaggeration to say that Fitch was the father of snake biology," said Cornell University professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Harry Greene. Green was the 2004 recipient of the Henry S. Fitch Award for Excellence in Herpetology, presented by the American Society of Ichthyologists & Herpetologists for outstanding field work.

Hot car death of Richmond SPCA director's dog may have helped to lower summer 2009 hot car death toll

RICHMOND, Va.--The Richmond Animal Care & Control Division on August 28, 2009 announced a finding that "no willful intent was found" in an investigation of the death of Louie, a 16-year-old deaf and blind cocker spaniel/poodle mix who died of heatstroke on August 19, 2009 after being left in the back of Richmond SPCA director Robin Starr's station wagon.
   Starr's husband, Ed Starr, stated that he put Louie into the vehicle as his wife prepared to return to work after a 10-day vacation, but forgot to tell her that he had. Robin Starr found Louie when she started to go to lunch at noon. "Louie died around midnight after veterinarians were unable to restore the pet's kidney functions," reported Jeremy Slayton of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
   "Robin Starr, a lawyer and an outspoken advocate, viewed Louie's death as a private matter," wrote Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams, calling for her resignation from the SPCA post she has held since 1997. "She didn't disclose the death until a week later," Williams continued, "after the Times-Dispatch received a tip. Even then, the SPCA asked a Times-Dispatch reporter not to write a story. But it became national news."
   Starr was strongly defended by the Richmond SPCA board and donors.
The Starr case appears to have been the most publicized animal--or baby--death in a hot car of 2009, and may have helped to prevent deaths during the last five weeks of summer. Fewer than half as many children and animals died in hot car cases known to ANIMAL PEOPLE in the summer of 2009 as in any of the four preceding summers.
   Data published in 2002 by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention indicates that about 40 small children per year die in parked car accidents, chiefly in cases involving heat stress.
   Reported cases involving animals average about half as many. About a quarter of the animal toll during the past decade were police dogs. Most were trapped in police cars with faulty air conditioners, while their handlers were out of the cars on duty.
   Helen Woodward Animal Center publicist John Van Zante, the longtime national leader in hot car death prevention, did his annual demonstration of the dangers of leaving animals or children in cars during summer on July 16, 2009, but a test on July 13 produced a more dramatic result: the temperature inside a closed HWAC van rose from 77 degrees Fahrenheit to 110 in seven minutes, and reached 147 in 25 minutes.

Animal obits

Hugo Bear, recalled as "one of our most beloved rescued dancing bears at the Agra Bear Sanctuary" by cofounders Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani, died on August 7, 2009.

Emi, 21, a Samatran rhino who was imported to the Cincinnati zoo in 1995, died on September 5, 2009. Her first of three calves, Andalas, born in 2001, was the first Sumatran rhino bred in captivity since 1889.

KM04, a puma blamed for killing 15 bighorn sheep in seven months in southwestern Arizona, was shot on September 2, 2009 by state wildlife staff, under pressure from conservationists and trophy hunters.

Animals key in Le murder & Dugard kidnap cases

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut; ANTIOCH, Calif.-- Animals were central to two of the most sensational crimes against humans coming to light in late summer 2009.
   Yale University lab animal technician Raymond Clark III, 24, was on September 18, 2009 charged with killing Annie Le, 24, a pharmacology Ph.D. candidate. Le disappeared on September 8. Her remains were found on September 13--scheduled to have been her wedding day--hidden behind a wall in the lab where she and Clark both worked.
   Previously convicted kidnapper and rapist Philip Garrido, 58, was arrested on August 26, 2009 and charged again with kidnapping and rape. Garrido and his wife Nancy, 54, who was also charged, allegedly kidnapped Jaycee Dugard, then 11 years old, in South Lake Tahoe, California, in 1991, and held her hostage in Antioch, California, for 18 years. Garrido fathered two daughters with Dugard: Starlit, now 15, and Angel, 11.
   ABC News, Javier C. Hernandez and Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times and Ray Henry and Michael Hill of Associated Press all hinted soon after Clark was charged that a dispute over animal care preceded the Annie Le murder.
   "Animal technicians must also be watchdogs, making sure that in the bureaucratic world of animal research, all documents have been filed and all ethical standards obeyed," noted Hernandez and Kovaleski. "They might remind a student to put on a gown before entering a room, or chide a researcher for failing to separate a litter of mice or clipping a mouse tail for a DNA sample, a practice that Yale forbids."
   According to ABC News, Clark sent a text message to Le on the day she disappeared, requesting a meeting to discuss the cleanliness of mouse cages.
   Dugard and her daughters were to be reunited circa September 18 with their five cats, two dogs, three cockatiels, a pigeon, a parakeet, and a white mouse. The animals had been kept at the Contra Costa County animal shelter since Dugard and her daughters were discovered and freed.
   "Dugard, her daughters, and her mother are with counselors in an undisclosed location," reported CNN.
Perplexing investigators and commentators is that Dugard and her daughters apparently made no attempts to escape or seek help, despite many chances to do so. The importance of animals to them may provide the explanation. Offenders in domestic violence cases often use animal companionship as a controlling device. Access to animals is allowed as a reward for compliant behavior, while the threat of harm to the animals is used to keep the victims from leaving.
   Photographs of the tents, sheds, and patio area where Dugard and her daughters were held showed dozens of books about animals, animal figurines, and art objects with animal motifs.

BOOKS

Dogged Pursuit: My year of competing Dusty, the world's least likely agility dog by Robert Rodi Hudson Street Press (c/o Penguin, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2009. 288 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

Dusty the Sheltie spent his early life tied outside a trailer. He endured savage Midwestern winters, blistering hot summers, and crippling isolation. Demented teens pelted him with stones. Food and water were probably scarce. He probably never saw a veterinarian. Somehow he found refuge with Central Illinois Sheltie Rescue.
Chicago resident Robert Rodi and his dog Carmen, also a Sheltie, were newcomers on the agility circuit. Carmen won a few novice awards, encouraging Rodi to pursue more challenging courses. He enrolled in weekly classes to hone their skills, but hip dysplasia abruptly ended Carmen's short but potentially successful agility career.
Rodi missed weekends on the agility circuit. He was still welcome to attend, watch, and visit, but he needed a competitive dog to be a full participant. He found dusty on the Central Illinois Sheltie Rescue web site.
  "Dusty broke the mold," says Rodi. "He looked, well, funny."
   As an outside dog, Dusty lacked socialization. He hid when Rodi came to adopt him, lunged at other dogs on walks in their Chicago neighborhood, and sometimes aimed for people.
   Behavior training proved essential before Dusty could be introduced to agility work, but agility training gave him something constructive to do with his energy. Rodi took him to the same agility classes he had attended with Carmen. Rodi and Carmen had worked up to the advanced level. He and Dusty started as novices. "Well, he did jump," Rodi shrugged after their first session.
   Rodi persisted even though Dusty resisted learning agility routines. "He responded to no incentive known to man," Rodi says. Dusty adjusted somewhat at home, but in class he would completely shut down. Still, Rodi refused to give up. He entered Dusty in a trial, and was proud of Dusty's performance as he dashed through weave poles, teeters, tires and broad jumps. His times were too slow to qualify for the finals, but his showing was respectable.
   At subsequent competitions Dusty sometimes performed adequately, but oher times was distracted and refused to follow Rodi's commands. Yet he improved enough to earn a blue ribbon. Calling Dusty his little hero, Rodi entered him in more competitions. Dusty won a few more awards. Yet his performances remained inconsistent.    At key moments he balked, losing points. Still, Rodi was pleased by Dusty's hard work. He didn't scold or berate his dog. "We not only enjoyed ourselves but strengthened our rapport," Rodi says.
Star status as an agility dog eluded Dusty. But even though he spent his earliest years chained outside with no training, he enjoyed some success. He made friends. And Rodi loves and adores him.
Dogged Pursuit is a delightful book about the inner world of the highly competitive agility circuit, the hours of training involved, and the companionship that evolves among training clubs. This book should interest anyone involved or considering agility. It requires hard work, dedication and commitment. Of course Dogged Pursuit is also a good "rescued dog" story. Dusty's rise from trailer park dog to the agility circuit is inspirational, even if he doesn't nab the top awards.
   Rodi eventually retired Dusty. but remained involved in agility by adopting a collie. --Debra J. White

The Horse: A miscellany of equine knowledge
by Ian Whitelaw & Julie Whitaker
MacMillan (175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010), 2007.
244 pages, illustrated. $19.95 hardcover.

Horse by Elaine Walker
Reaktion Books Ltd. (33 Great Sutton St., London EC1M 3JU, U.K.), 2008. 216 pages, illustrated. $19.95 paperback.

The Horse, by Julie Whitaker and Ian Whitelaw, is an A to Z compendium of information about equine history, anatomy, grooming, health, behavior, and dressage, among other topics, with even a touch of Hollywood thrown in. Short paragraphs carry the reader on a fascinating journey, starting with the origins of the horse.
   American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) uncovered equine fossils in Nebraska, Wyoming and the Dakotas. "Marsh determined a clear line of equine descent," say Whitaker and Whitelaw. An excellent chart on page 17 outlines this order, including the contributions of the Ecocene equids Mesohippus, Hypohippus, Megahippus, and Dinohippus. These were also ancestral to the donkey, the zebra, and the Asiatic ass.
A fact-filled historical chapter describes the role of horses in establishing the Persian Empire. Alexander the Great rode a horse named Bucephalus into numerous battles. Bucephalus eventually died of war wounds.
Horses later helped to spread Islam across the same region, and enabled Genghis Khan to sweep through several centuries after that.
   Effective military use of horses was a defining trait of most dominant cultures from the dawn of recorded history until the annihilation of the Polish cavalry by Nazi tanks in 1939.
Not surprisingly, horses were elevated into the pantheons of most polytheistic cultures. Greek mythology, for instance, features Pegasus, a winged horse who was the son of Medusa and Poseidon. Poseidon, the sea god, had a chariot drawn by a hippocamp, described as "a seahorse-like creature with the head and forelegs of a horse and the body of a fish."
   The Industrial Revolution eventually replaced horses with machines, whose output is still measured in terms of "horsepower." Yet the Industrial Revolution could not have occurred without the contributions of the horses, donkeys, and mules who worked in mines, in agriculture, and in transport.
  Much of the same history is covered, in more detail, in Horse, by Elaine Walker, who lectures in English and creative writing at the University of Wales. Walker also reviews the evolution of horses from Eohippus to domestication, offering sketches of what ancient horses might have looked like. Walker cites the Shetland pony, the English thoroughbred, and the Appaloosa as examples of very different horses bred to fit divergent human needs.
  As well as discussing Pegasus, Walker mentions the horses featured in Canterbury Tales and 1001 Arabian Nights. The Celtic goddess Epona is associated with horses, and at the opposite end of the Eurasian continent, horses are prominent in the mythology of Turkic Siberia.
  The earliest known images of domesticated horses, produced around 2,000 B.C., show them pulling war chariots. Like Whitaker and Whitelaw, Walker describes the use of horses by Alexander and Genghis Khan. Walker also reviews the use of horses in the Crusades and in the U.S. west.
Only humans are known to have died at war in greater numbers than horses. 18,000 to 43,000 horses died from wounds, hunger, or bad weather in the War of 1812 alone. The toll in some individual battles in the U.S. Civil War and World War I may have been even higher.
   Working equines are still in the line of fire in Afghanistan, and are sometimes loaded as walking bombs in the Middle East.
   Walker goes on to discuss the roles of horses in books, television, and films.
   As valuable as horses have been to humanity, they are often severely abused. The earliest humane societies sought to prohibit flogging horses. Their efforts were supported by authors William Hogarth and John Hawkesworth, among others. Yet horse protection gained momentum as a cause only after the 1877 publication of Anna Sewell's enduringly popular book Black Beauty.
   Walker unfortunately neglects the exploitation of racehorses, many of whom end up in slaughterhouses. She omits mention of the surplus wild horses in custody of the Bureau of Land Management: more live in government corrals, after decades of ill-advised roundups, than remain on the range. But these are not situations without parallel. Horses are exploited and neglected all over the world, especially in regions afflicted by war and famine, like Darfur, and in nations such as Romania and Albania, which are still transitioning from reliance on horses to mechanization.
   While Walker provides more historical and cultural context about horses, Whitaker and Whitelaw take a practical turn, describing horse anatomy and basic terminology.
Body language, Whitaker and Whitlaw say, reveals much about a horse's moods and intentions.
"An annoyed horse will screw up his nose in disgust," explain Whitaker and Whitelaw. An angry horse will "pin the ears back flat against the neck." If you see a horse swishing her tail from side to side, that too is a sign of annoyance.
   Horses are beautiful animals, but if approached the wrong way they can bite or kick. Even now, when little human contact with horses occurs unawares, only dogs and fellow humans more often break people's bones.
   Like Walker, Whitaker and Whitelaw discuss the use of horses in entertainment, including racing and screen work. Their chapter about horse racing thoroughly explains the origins of racing, introduces famous jockeys and racehorses, and profiles notable races such as the Belmont Stakes and the Kentucky Derby. Also like Walker, unfortunately, Whitaker and Whitlaw do not mention the contentious side of racing.
   Anyone thinking of adopting or buying a horse should first read the Whitaker and Whitlaw chapter about keeping horses. If you can't afford every item they list, horsekeeping is probably not for you. Besides a clean, ventilated, well-maintained barn, a horse requires bedding, shoes, grooming, access to fresh water, good quality hay and fresh grass, and apples and carrots. If horses are to be taken anywhere, a horse keeper will need a trailer and a vehicle large enough to tow it.
   Whitaker and Whitelaw end with a chapter on horse health care, including equine first aid. -- Debra J. White

Animal Migration: Remarkable Journeys in the Wild by Ben Hoare
University of Calif. Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704), 2009. 176 pages, 200 color illustrations. $34.95, hardcover.

Though recognized by humans for far longer than recorded history has existed, there is still no universally accepted definition of just what migration is.
   "Animals make all kinds of different movements--short and long, seasonal and daily, regular and once in a lifetime, highly predictable and seemingly random," explains Animal Migration author Ben Hoare.
Hoare in Animal Migration explores the often mysterious migratory patterns of at least 50 different species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Most migrate as a necessity of survival, in search of food and water, mates, and/or safe places to lay eggs. When threatened, they move to avoid predators. Climate chance or bad weather may force migration, or migration may be caused by a combination of factors.
   Some migrations are repetitively predictable, such the breeding season movements of sea turtles. Sea turtles' soft-shelled eggs need beaches that lie at the right angle for the turtles to drag themselves out of the water and back. Turtles dig pits in the sand that operate as incubators. The temperature of the sand determines the gender of the hatchlings. Sea turtles make repeat migrations to nesting sites where--until global warming began altering the conditions--the sand temperature tended to remain within a range ensuring gender balance.
   Lemming migrations are by contrast unpredictable and sudden. The "lemming migration" depicted in the Walt Disney documentary White Wilderness (1958) was a notorious fake, in which Disney unwittingly used freelance footage of Canadian voles being tossed over a waterfall as "lemmings rushing into the sea. " Yet lemming irruptions [sudden surges of animals into new habitat] do occur, as do irruptions of other rodent species. They may react to food shortages or overcrowding. Some investigators believe disease outbreaks are involved. As yet, no one really knows.
   Migration can be punishing on the animals during their journeys, which can be quite long. Monarch butterflies, for instance, migrate up to 3,000 miles. Many migrating animals never reach their destination.
   "The majority of small land animals simply cannot afford the energetic cost of migration," says Hoare. They may be eaten by larger animals along the way or succumb to hunger or fatigue. The survivors tend to be those who have prepared themselves with intensive feeding to boost their fat reserves. Birds replace old and worn plumage, as newer feathers improve their aerodynamics.
   Migration is almost always a group phenomenon. Often wind or water currents funnel migrating birds, insects, turtles, and fish into the same travel corridors even when they start and finish at different points. Mixing and mingling along the way helps some species to maintain genetic diversity.
   Like humans on long trips, migrating animals rest as they travel. For some there may be safety in numbers at resting points, but migratory waterfowl are most vulnerable to hunters when they congregate at lakes or ponds.
Among the largest migratory waterfowl assemblies on record were gatherings of 1.2 million snow geese counted at Sand Lake, South Dakota in April 1991, and 800,000 seen at the De Soto National Wildlife Refuge on the Iowa-Nebraska Border in November 1995.
   Migrating insects gathering to rest and feed may be perceived and feared like the Biblical plagues of locusts. Locust plagues still afflict arid regions in Africa and the Middle East. Insect migrations have caused havoc in Australia and parts of Latin America, and grasshopper plagues were harbingers of the Dust Bowl in the U.S. during the 1930s.
   Other insect migrations are easily seen, yet barely noticed by anyone but entomoligysts--and, sometimes, by feasting birds.
  "Swarms of butterflies and moths settle on trees and buildings to roost overnight or until a spell of bad weather has passed," notes Hoare. This can be followed by unusual numbers of insect-eating birds colliding with windows.
   Inclement weather often disrupts migrations. Human habitat modification is also increasingly problematic. Beachfront development confuses hatchling sea turtles around the globe. The adults already at sea find their traditional nesting beaches, but instead of crawling toward the surf, guided by starlight, hatchlings may head toward illuminated roads.
   Within 10 or 20 years a newly lighted road may bring an end to millions of years of turtle nesting migrations.
Hoare believes that seals and whales "can probably recognize features on the seafloor," which serve as roadmaps for their migratory journeys, but polar bears often travel comparable distances within the Arctic Circle through a landscape with few if any semi-permanent features, completely dark for half the year. Polar bear migrations tend to follow the movements of their major prey, including ringed seals and walruses. Now rising temperatures are shrinking the polar icecaps, shortening the bears' feeding seasons.
   More than 300 color pictures and maps complement Animal Migration: Remarkable Journeys in the Wild. Hoare anticipates that drought, floods, and hotter temperatures resulting from global warming will disrupt the migratory habits of many more species than polar bears. Animal Migration: Remarkable Journeys in the Wild will be helpful in understanding the changes we may soon witness. --Debra J. White

The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter
by Holly Robinson
Random House (1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019),
2009. 304 pages $23.00, hardcover.

Publisher's Weekly says that author Holly Robinson "intersperses her compelling narrative with accounts of gerbil mayhem, managing to milk a great deal of humor and pathos out of the rodent that eventually became a common children's pet."
   Gassing "extra inventory" as her father, Navy commander and gerbil farmer Donald Robinson calls the victims, is not my idea of compelling. Rather, it is disturbing and cruel--and so is much of the rest of Holly Robinson's account.
   Holly Robinson grew up around pets, but how her family treated them was questionable even by the standards of her childhood in the 1960s and 1970s. A fox terrier, Tip, was kept chained, and was sold when Navy commander Robinson transferred to another post. Years later the family adopted a shelter dog. For misbehaving, he too ended up on a chain, instead of in a behavior class.
   The Robinson family bred goats. Holly's younger brother Donald ornamented his bedroom with a goat's skull, "with a couple of Ping-Pong balls painted bright green glued into the eye sockets." A pair of horned toads "eventually starved to death because we didn't ever manage to feed them the right mealworms and they wouldn't eat anything else."
   The Robinsons' parents debated "the pros and cons of raising lizards." Mrs. Robinson opposed the idea. They once had an iguana. To scrimp on electricity, Mrs. Robinson turned off the iguana's heat lamp. "The air-conditioning froze Mr. Green Jeans to death right on his sleeping branch," Holly Robinson remembers.
   That left gerbils. Commander Robinson raised gerbils by the thousands in Kansas, Virginia, and Massachusetts, selling them to pet stores and laboratories. He wrote and lectured extensively about gerbils, too. Before he turned to gassing "excess inventory," he drowned unlucky gerbils in a nearby lake. Holly Robinson tried to save a crook-tailed gerbil named Kinky, but does not seem overly concerned that her father "did everything he could to induce seizures in gerbils," such as shining lights at them and holding them upside down. Discovering that gerbils can be bred to suffer epileptic seizures made Commander Robinson the world's largest supplier of gerbils for biomedical research.
   The business exploded in 1969, when the family bought a remote farm in rural Massachusetts. "It's pretty much like propagating seeds. You just put the gerbils in a box and watch them grow," said Commander Robinson.
On page 35 Robinson mentions that, "As we waited for the sailors and Marines to board the ship, Donald, Gail and I pelted rocks at the jellyfish that flowered blue and purple in the water below the pier."
   Younger sister Gail died of cystic fibrosis at age four. Neglect and abuse of animals often follows a family loss, but in the case of this family the pattern appears to have already been established. After his retirement from the Navy, Commander Robinson sold the gerbil business to a large New England research lab. What labs do to gerbils is also often disturbing and cruel. But it is not passed off as humor.
--Debra J. White

All My Patients Have Tales:
Favorite Stories from a Vet's Practice
by Jeff Wells, DVM St. Martin's Press (c/o MacMillan (175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010), 2009.
240 pages, illustrated. $24.95 hardcover.

"A sharp pain shot up my arm," Dr. Wells says as he describes a frantic feline named Henry, one of his first patients. "The familiar sensation of warm blood washed over my palm." The unhappy cat sank his teeth into the vet's index finger during the examination.
   So began Jeff Wells' intriguing career as a country veterinarian. A graduate of the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Wells worked first at a private clinic in South Dakota, and later in Colorado, assisted by a short young woman named Jenny who appropriately wore overalls and boots to work.
Wells slides on long latex gloves, covered with lubricating jelly, and sticks his hand into horses' rectums to determine pregnancies. He performs emergency Cesarian sections on distressed cows in labor to safely deliver their calves, sometimes with snow trickling from the sky. Moisture from the ground once froze his jeans while he worked on a bovine patient.
   A traveling circus hired Wells to perform blood tests and health certificates required for entry into Canada. Wells and Jenny squeezed blood from an elephant, checked horses for contagious diseases, and wiped camel spit from their faces.
   Most days bring a challenge. Dogs protecting their turf are a constant menace to visiting veterinarians, encouraging Wells to be cautious when he checks on livestock whose people are not around. Once a trio of male turkeys nearly pecked Wells and Jenny off the premises. As they ran for the safety of the vet's pickup truck, the turkeys cut them off, ready for a fight. Wells chased them back by wildly swinging a stick.
"Jenny and I were a little too embarrassed to tell anyone right away," Wells says.
   Visits with house pets can be as difficult, and sometimes sad. Fred the cat was a stubborn patient. Actually a spayed female, Fred "had grown to hate her trips to the clinic." So Wells checked on Fred at home. Fred tolerated examinations on the kitchen counter. That worked for a few years, until Fred developed an abdominal malignant mass. Medication bought Fred just a few weeks.
   Cats, Wells says, are usually smart enough to avoid painful encounters with porcupines. Dogs sometimes are not. Three Jack Russell terriers, for example, roamed their owner's land in Colorado. The three Musketeers, as Dr. Wells calls them, pounce a porcupine together. Hundreds of quills were embedded in each dog. The trio learned nothing from their first encounter with the porcupine. Soon after they go home, they found the same porcupine and finished him off. Back to the vet they went. Their person kept them inside for the next few weeks.
   Wells had a close call with a mutt named Bingo. Owned and adored by a bank president, Bingo was left at the clinic for a simple neuter, but wanted no part of Wells or Jenny. Just as he raced out of the exam room, into the office, someone opened the door. Fortunately Wells and Jenny were able to find and net Bingo, after a long search.
   All My Patients Have Tales honors in title the prototypical veterinary memoir, All Creatures Great & Small, by "James Herriot," the pen name of British country veterinarian James Alfred Wright. Like All Creatures Great & Small, All My Patients Have Tales offers a delightful perspective on the demanding, challenging, and often rewarding life of a country veterinarian. Each story is unique and illustrates the many different roles of animals in our lives.
   I would have suggested that the roaming Jack Russell terriers live on property fenced to keep porcupines out. But maybe Wells did and their person ignored his advice.
—Debra J. White

The Smartest Animals on the Planet: Extraordinary Tales of the Natural World's Cleverest Creatures
by Sally Boysen & Deborah Custance
Firefly Books (P.O. Box 1338, Ellicot Station, Buffalo, NY 14205), 2009. 192 pages, illustrated. $35.00, hardcover.

Ohio State University in February 2006 retired to Primarily Primates a colony of seven chimpanzees kept since 1983 by researcher Sally Boysen. Opposing the transfer, Boysen allied herself with PETA. Ensuing litigation, ended by settlement in August 2009, led to Friends of Animals annexing Primarily Primates later in 2006, and appears to have cumulatively cost Primarily Primates, FoA, and PETA approximately $1 million.
While all this was underway, Boysen was apparently writing The Smartest Animals on the Planet.
   "Previous observations in the wild have provided documentation," Boysen says, that New Caledonian Crows "are capable of using different types of tools to exploit different food sources." But she does not say who made the observations and when.
   Boysen adds that Oxford University researchers wondered if crows understand the relationship in tasks that require tool use. They supposedly devised a series of "exciting studies" that led them to a "number of conclusions." But all we learn from this anecdote is that according to Boysen's summary, observations suggest that crows are born with a predisposition for tool use. Who the Oxford researchers were, when, and what their actual findings were cannot be verified or followed up easily from the clues Boysen shares.
   Even casual visitors to sea otter coves along the west coast of the U.S. may have watched sea otters using stones to break open shellfish and crustaceans. For those who have not, Boysen offers no attributed eyewitness testimony in describing this behavor.
   "New observations of wild chimpanzees in Senegal, West Africa," Boyson adds, "reveal that they manufacture and use spears to hunt small primates."
   According to a graphic on page 38, a female chimpanzee picks out a sturdy stick that she whittles down with her teeth. She plunges the spear into the hole of a tree-a hiding place for bush babies-and that's dinner. Relatively few people have ever seen this. Again Boysen refers to studies and observations, but offers no dates, names or locations.
   Boysen does detail some research, including Irene Pepperberg's work with African gray parrots and Otto Koehler's experiments with birds in the 1930s and 1940s, done to determine their ability to crunch numbers. But when did a young chimp named Ali, born in West Africa, learn an artificial language system in Japan? One may find out through web searches. One will not find out from Boysen's book.
   "Recent field studies by primatologists have revealed that the vocalizations of baboons have far more substance than previously thought," Boysen says. How recent? Last year or last decade? Who were the primatologists? Where was the study done, using what methods?
   Stanford University researcher Robert Sapolsky has done decades of work, both in labs and in the wild, that may fit Boysen's description. If Boysen means Sapolsky's work, he deserves credit. If she means someone else's work, this should be identified.
   Boysen credits Austrian bee researcher Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) with spending hundreds of hours studying bee intelligence and communication, but again fails to say when or where.
Von Frisch, who discovered the scientific foundations of bee behavior and beekeeping. is often mentioned with fellow Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz and Otto Koehler (1889-1974) as pioneers of ethology. Unlike Lorenz, whose publications about wolves and dogs have been debunked as colored by Nazi idiology, Von Frisch produced work which has mostly stood up. But, in common with Lorenz and Koehler, Von Frisch advanced theories that tended to reinforce tenets of Nazism.
   Boysen reportedly lost her chimp colony after nine successive grant applications failed to win funding to continue her work with them. A reader may wonder whether those applications failed through a comparable lack of supporting documentation.
--Debra J. White

U.S. Marine Corps pit bull, Rottweiler, & wolf hybrid ban is now in effect

HEADQUARTERS MARINE CORPS, Virginia--Residents of U.S. Marine Corps base housing worldwide have until October 11, 2009 to meet new requirements for keeping any pit bull terriers, Rottweilers, or wolf hybrids they already have. No resident of Marine Corps housing has been allowed to acquire any new dog of these breeds since August 11, 2009.
   Signed by Major General Edward Usher, deputy commandant of installations and logistics worldwide, the Marine Corps order was finalized nine days after Trista Talton of the Marine Corps Times published excerpts from a draft version and predicted that it might take effect in September.
   The Marine Corps order closely parallels an order issued by the U.S. Army on January 5, 2009, covering Army base housing worldwide.
   "Pet ownership for service members and their families," wrote Usher, "provides a real and tangible benefit, and contributes to quality of life for resident families. However, the rise in ownership of large dog breeds with a predisposition toward aggressive or dangerous behavior, coupled with the increased risk of tragic incidents involving these dogs, necessitates a uniform policy to provide for the health, safety, and tranquility of all residents of family housing areas.
   "Pit bulls, Rottweilers, canid/wolf hybrids, or any canine breed with dominant traits of aggression present an unreasonable risk to the health and safety of personnel in family housing," Usher assessed. "Con-sequently, full or mixed breeds of pit bulls, Rottweilers and canid/wolf hybrids are prohibited aboard Marine corps installations."
   Stipulated Usher, anticipating possible disputes over breed identity, "In the absence of formal breed identification (e.g. certification by a civilian organization such as the American Kennel Club), a determination of 'majority breed' will be made by a Veter-inary Corps officer or a civilian veterinarian."
   Banned breeds who already live in Marine Corps housing may remain, under a "waiver and grandfather clause," but "must pass a nationally recognized temperament testŠSuch tests include Canine Good Citizen," administered by the AKC, "and the Delta Test," administered by the Delta Society. "These animals will be required to certify every two years," wrote Usher.
   As in U.S. Army base housing, "There is no requirement that dogs or cats be spayed or neutered," the Marine Corps order continues, "but owners are encouraged to pursue this procedureŠThe choice to spay or neuter a pet is a responsible and prudent measure which ultimately benefits all residents."
   Like the U.S. Army order, the Marine Corps order restates all of the rules applying to keeping dogs and cats in base housing worldwide.
   "This policy does not address feral animals, which are covered under installation pest management plans," says a paragraph of definitions. The U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force have global policies against allowing feral cats and dogs to live on bases.

"One free bite" common law premise is overturned in Ohio & Texas

COLUMBUS--Ruling against the centuries-old "one free bite" presumption of common law, the Ohio Supreme Court on August 26, 2009 upheld the constitutionality of a Youngstown ordinance that defines a vicious dog as any dog who has "a propensity, tendency or disposition to attack, to cause injury to or otherwise endanger the safety of human beings or other domestic animals," or any dog who "attacks a human being or another domestic animal without provocation."
   The Youngstown ordinance breaks from common law in that it does not require a prior history of dangerous behavior to define a dog as vicious. The Youngstown ordinance itself is not breed-specific, but it implements an Ohio state law which defines pit bull terriers and other fighting breeds as inherently vicious. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the state law in 1991.
   The case producing the August 2009 verdict "involved an incident in April 2007," recalled Reginald Field of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "in which two unattended Italian mastiff/Cane Corso dogs attacked and bit David Roch of Youngstown and his small dog, who were walking in a city park. One of the large dogs was owned by resident Jammie Traylor, who was later convicted under the ordinance and fined, sentenced to 90 days in jail, ordered to pay restitution to Roch and ordered to own 'nothing bigger than a Chihuahua' as a condition of probation."
The Ohio 7th Court of Appeals reversed Traylor's conviction, accepting his argument that the Youngstown ordinance violated his right to due process because it held his dogs to be vicious before they had actually attacked anyone.
  "Traylor's dogs, unprovoked, attacked Roch and his dog while the dogs were off their property," Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton wrote for the majority in the 5-2 split verdict. "Traylor argues that an owner cannot know that his dog is vicious until he is convicted under the ordinance. To hold otherwise, however, is to permit each dog 'one free bite,' a result that would clearly leave society at risk. A responsibility of dog ownership is to maintain and control the animal. This ordinance requires no more and no less, and, therefore, it does not violate procedural due process."
   Justice Paul Pfeifer in a dissenting opinion held out for the traditional common law definition. "Traylor's dog was not 'vicious' until the moment he bit a human, at which point it was too late for Traylor to restrain his dog," Pfeifer contended.
   Responded Stratton, "Youngstown's ordinance "does not classify or label dogs as vicious. Dogs are rendered vicious under the ordinance by their propensity to attack or by their attack, and dog owners are merely required to keep such dogs confined."
Pfeifer is noted in the annals of dog law for writing the majority opinion in a July 2008 Ohio Supreme Court verdict that upheld the Columbus barking dog ordinance.
   Of that case, Pfeifer wrote, "By a seven-to-zero vote we concluded that the Columbus barking dog ordinance is not unconstitutionally vague, because it sets forth sufficient standards to place a person of ordinary intelligence on notice of what conduct the ordinance prohibits."

Texas case

The Texas legislature in 2007 "eliminated the 'one free bite' law," recalled Judith Pannebaker of the Bandera County Courier, because it "prevented owners from being charged" with a criminal offense for reckless dog-keeping behavior "unless their dog had been involved in a previous attack."
Under the new Texas law, owners of dogs who attack without provocation may be charged with a felony if the attack occurs off the dog owner's property and results in serious bodily injury or death.
   Among the first court tests of the new law will be the pending trial of Rosalia Clarice Sclafani, 46, of Bandera. Sclafani possessed as many as 17 dogs on October 11, 2008, when three of her Rottweilers allegedly mauled passer-by Nina Truax, 69.
   In a related preliminary case Sclafani was convicted on August 26, 2009 "of fabricating evidence to alter and affect an on-going criminal investigation, a second-degree felony," wrote Pannebaker. "The felony indictment stemmed from Sclafani producing a falsified rabies vaccination certificate for one of the dogs involved in the alleged attack."
   Assistant prosecutor Steven Wadsworth asked that Sclafani be given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, as a previously convicted felon. Judge Keith Williams deferred sentencing until October.
   A felony conviction for the dog attack would be Sclafani's third strike, resulting in a mandatory life sentence.
"In 1983, as Rose Galvan, Sclafani was convicted of injury to her own child in Williamson County was sentenced to 50 years confinement. She was paroled in 1989 and remains on probation," recalled Pannebaker.
   The victim, Christopher Paul Galvan, died at the age of six months, dehydrated and malnourished, suffering from cuts, bruises, and ulcerated sores. Forensic pathologist Linda Norton of Dallas testified that, "He was neglected to death." His father, Paul Galvan, also drew a 50-year prison term.
   Then-Bastrop County district attorney Neal Pfeiffer told Mark Edgar of the Dallas Morning News that the Galvans had another baby boy who died about 18 months before Christopher. The parents claimed both deaths were sudden and unexpected. The first child was buried without forensic investigation.

Disasters strike abroad 

An electrical fire razed the Qatar Animal Welfare Society on September 3. The founders evacuated more than 100 animals, but 35 dogs, cats, rabbits, and a possum were killed. "All QAWS now has is the surviving animals and the collars they were wearing," said an appeal e-mailed to supporters. Updates were posted at <www.qaws.org>.
   Torrential rains meanwhile inundated much of the Istanbul region of Turkey. "Besides human casualties, there are many animal casualties," reported Linda Taal of the Dutch-based organization Actiezwerfhonden (Action for Dogs), which assists several Turkish animal aid projects.
  "The dogs in the forest shelter are doing okay," Taal continued, referring to the facility at the Kemerburgaz landfill that ANIMAL PEOPLE profiled in July/August 2001, "but thousands of strays were drowned, and one shelter was flooded, with at least 130 animals killed. Flooding at a vet clinic killed 40 animals."  Earlier, Typhoon Morakot damaged 10 animal shelters in two counties of Taiwan, which among them housed about 1,000 dogs. About 100 dogs were drowned or were missing, the Central News Agency said on August 10.

Southern California sanctuaries survive wildfires

LOS ANGELES-- Winds gusting over 50 miles per hour drove the second major wildlife in the Los Angeles area in less than a month south from Fillmore toward the city of Moorpark as ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press on September 22, 2009. Evacuations of large animals were ordered in three areas believed to be in the path of the fire.
   Ironically, the animals included some of the more than 600 horses who were moved earlier from the path of the 160,000-acre Station Fire, east of Los Angeles, a few weeks before. The Station Fire on September 22 was reportedly 94% controlled, after ravaging the Angeles National Forest for four weeks, but threatened to blow up again due to the wind storm.
  "Some horses were taken to the Santa Anita racetrack," ahead of the Station Fire. "Others were trucked to a community college in the San Fernando Valley. Others were transported north to Ventura County. The Los Angeles Equestrian Center, in Burbank," accepted 330 evacuated horses, wrote David Finnigan of Agence France-Presse.
   Most homeowners who had to evacuate were able to take smaller pets with them. But some needed help. "The Pasadena Humane Society suspended normal shelter operations to become a 24-hour emergency center for needy pets," wrote Lindsay Barnett for the Los Angeles Times. "The society operated two evacuation centers. At peak the shelter was home to more than 370 dogs, cats, and assorted wildlife" displaced by the fire, "in addition to the homeless pets it already housed."
   The Station Fire raced out of control in the hills between the DELTA Rescue, Shambala Preserve, and Animal Acres sanctuaries to the north, and Wildlife Waystation to the south. The fire burned toward the north first.
Animal Acres evacuated all 125 resident animals to a temporary site near Palmdale, and postponed and relocated a fundraising gala, eventually held on September 12.
  "Fire officials ordered Shambala founder Tippi Hedren, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror classic The Birds, to evacuate days ago," reported Associated Press writer Solvej Schou on September 1. "But she sees no need to load up the animals yet."
  "Nobody wants lions and tigers going down the road," responded Hedren, 79. But she kept transport crates and trailers ready to move the 64 big cats at Shambala if necessary. Meanwhile, Hedren told Schou, Shambala clears fire breaks every six months and has a 22,000-gallon water tank, a lake, pumps, and backup generators on site for firefighting.
   DELTA Rescue is comparably equipped, and has a helipad used by county firefighters. Both Shambala and DELTA Rescue fought Station Fire sparks at their fencelines until the wind turned the fire toward the Waystation.
   Waystation staff and volunteers scrambled to haul animals to the Los Angeles Zoo, Hesperia Zoo, and other locations. Short of transport cages, Waystation founder Martine Colette appealed to the public in search of more. Two Waystation chimps briefly escaped while being unloaded at the Los Angeles Zoo. One chimp got into adjacent Griffith Park, but both were soon recaptured.
   "We are safe now," Waystation board member Peggy Summers told ANIMAL PEOPLE on September 8. "We were told by the fire department that the last 30 animals left would be protected at the center of the compound.        These were very large and old big cats and a couple of bears, who might not have survived sedation and moving. The fire department and Forest Service set backfires, dug trenches, removed brush, and were there for four days. The fire raged around us and came within a ridge, but was contained. There were water drops and chemical drops to protect the perimeters.
   "Not one animal has been injured," Summers said, "and we are now bringing more than 350 of our beloved animals home. Volunteers stayed with the animals where they were placed, so that they would be fed, loved, and see a familiar face. We have never had to evacuate before in 37 years," Summers recalled.
   The effort to save the Waystation was expected to increase the longtime Los Angeles County pressure on Colette to relocate. An inholder within the Angeles National Forest, the Waystation has reportedly operated without a conditional use permit for years, in part because it lacks water reserves.
   A major blaze hit the Auburn area in northern California while the Station Fire burned. Called the 49 Fire, it roared toward the Animal Spay & Neuter Clinic in Auburn and "circled the parking lot but didn't reach the building. The lone cat there managed to retain one of her threatened nine lives," reported Auburn Journal staff writer Gus Thomson. The Placer County Animal Shelter housed 48 animals for evacuees.

Not vaccinating beyond rabies hot zone leads to more human rabies deaths on Bali

TABANAN, Bali--The rabies situation on Bali "remains dire," assessed International Society for Infectious Diseases ProMed forum moderator Craig Pringle on September 15, 2009.
"Little progress appears to have been achieved in containing the outbreak," agreed fellow ProMed moderator Tam Garland on September 18.
   The most recent human victim, Ni Ketut Sari, 47, died on September 14. "She got bit by her own dog," who "was suddenly destroying her kitchen" on July 20, reported the Bali Post. "She was rushed to the health clinic in Kediri and got a tetanus shot," but was not given post-exposure rabies vaccination--apparently because her home in Tabanan was outside the radius of officially acknowledged rabies cases.
   "According to her husband Ketut Sunarta," the Bali Post said, "a few weeks after being bitten she was scared of water and wind, but was always thirsty and shivered."
   On September 12, the Bali Post continued, she "experienced drastic sweating around her head, chest pains, and had difficulty to breath. She was then taken to Tabanan Hospital," and received "two types of medications," but "was told to rest at home." Only on September 13, 24 hours before Sari died, was her condition recognized as rabies.
   Because Bali is a hub of tourism, including by yachters who carry dogs aboard, rabies experts are increasingly concerned that Bali may become the point from which canine rabies jumps to Australia and other Southeast Asian islands which are now free of rabies.
   Boat traffic is believed to have brought a rabid dog to Bali from Java at some point in early to mid-2008.
Human rabies deaths in Tabanan in July, August, and early September 2009 demonstrated that the Bali outbreak has now spread from the Bukit peninsula, at the far south of the island, to possibly the whole of Bali. Beween the Bukit peninsula and Tabanan is Denpasar, the Bali capital city.
   "Bali is divided into eight regencies and one city, Denpasar. Three of these-- Badung, Denpasar, and now Tabanan--must be considered confirmed or probable rabies epidemic areas," warned Garland.
   The "confirmed or probable" area now covers the whole of the most densely populated part of Bali.
   The first known bite of a human by a rabid dog came on September 6, 2008. That bite and others leading to eight human fatalities through March 2009 were all on the Bukit peninsula. As the Bukit peninsula is almost entirely cut off from the rest of Bali by the Denpasar airport and access roads, a vigorous vaccination program combined with halting all transport of dogs from the peninsula could have stopped the outbreak right there.
Instead, ineffective efforts were made to massacre dogs in the afflicted areas before any vaccination was done.    The Bali government enforced a policy in effect since 1926--since Indonesia was under Dutch rule --against allowing any dogs to be vaccinated outside of areas where rabies was already officially recognized to exist.          Private dogcatchers continued to trap and transport dogs from the Bukit peninsula and nearby parts of Bali to dog meat restaurants on the north coast. The official response to the Tabanan deaths was little different.
  "Officials have killed 320 stray dogs and have ordered owned dogs to be chained inside houses and to be vaccinated," Bali animal husbandry department chief Ida Bagus Alit told the Bali Post on September 14, 2009.       "At the moment," Alit said, "they have vaccinated 5,700 dogs from 10,000 available anti-rabies vaccines, which are provided for Tabanan only. Nyoman Sutedja, the head of the Bali health department, has been in correspondence with the central government to request more vaccines.
   "In regards to closing the borders in different regencies," to curtail the possible movement of infected dogs by meat traffickers, Sutedja "strongly suggests to all head villagers that that they should monitor animal transport and have ports quarantine any incoming animals from Java," Alit summarized. "Local governments with Animal Husbandry are accelerating mass elimination of all stray dogs and stranded dogs," Alit said. "A stranded dog," he defined, "is an owned dog who is left wander around outside with no food or care. There are many of these dogs in Bali."
   The extermination campaign continued to rely on distributing poisoned meat. The same edition of the Bali Post that reported Alit's remarks mentioned that a 44-year-old man "was taken to hospital this week after eating a spicy Balinese-style pork sausage that had been covered in poison to kill dogs. The victim was found unconscious at his home in Banjar Dukuh, Penebei."
   Exactly what poison was used was unclear. Bali officials have repeatedly claimed to be using strychnine, after rejecting the use of injectible substances that would require workers to have direct contact with dogs, but three ProMed experts including cofounder Jack Woodall agreed that the victim probably would not have survived ingesting strychnine.
   The spread of rabies on Bali both refuted the most optimistic claims and underscored the fears expressed in two papers presented at the May 2009 Australian Veterinary Conference by Helen Scott-Orr, director of an Australian Centre for International Agricul-tural Research aid project in Bali. Scott-Orr has advised the Bali rabies control program, and arranged for it to receive $100,000 in Australian aid funding, she told Sarina Locke of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  "About 42,000 dogs [were] vaccinated and 2,000 strays eliminated in the target area near confirmed outbreaks by May 2009," Scott-Orr and Indonesian colleagues reported. "An intensive program of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis of people bitten by dogs was instituted," which "has so far prevented further human deaths," Scott-Orr stated before the most recent deaths occurred, "but may be masking further spread of the virus in dogs.          Massive effort only achieved an approximate 40% vaccination coverage of the estimated total dog population in the target area. This is well below the minimum 70% needed to break the rabies virus transmission cycle."

Counting dogs
Scott-Orr and colleagues guesstimated that the present Bali dog population is about 700,000, more than twice the ANIMAL PEOPLE estimate projected from local counts in various parts of the island, done in September 2008. Scott-Orr et al noted that the Bali dog population was estimated at 220,000 by the World Health Organization in 1984, but was said to be 875,000 by a local source; was said to be 125,000 by another local source in 1992, but was projected to be 540,000 ten years later by the Yudisthira Foundation; and was estimated at 425,000 by the Badung Livestock Service in early 2009.
   Similar discrepancies have plagued the rabies control program in Flores, the focus of the other Scott-Orr paper presented to the Australian Veterinary Conference.
   "Rabies entered Flores in 1997 and gradually spread east to the adjacent island of Lembata and west throughout Flores island. It is now endemic, with approximately 1,000 post-exposure prophylactic treatments and some human deaths each year," reported Scott-Orr and colleagues. "A strategy of mass dog vaccination with effective oral and injectible vaccines is being developedŠThis mass vaccination would aim to achieve at least 80% coverage of the dog population across Flores and Lembata within a period of one month. It would be repeatedly annually for one or more years depending on disease and population modeling, as well as the results of intensive surveillance of subsequent rabies incidence in humans and dogs, and of vaccination coverage and immune response in the dog population."
   Dogs "are eaten as a major source of animal protein and are required for particular ceremonies in different parts of the island," Scott-Orr et al wrote. "This leads to a lot of dog trading between districts and the import of dogs from other islands.  Dogs are also highly valued as guards," around houses and villages, and "also to guard crops on steep mountainsides from wild pigs and monkeys. As well, they are used for hunting wild deer and pigs, and are considered essential companions for fishers undertaking long trips in small boats."
   Due largely to cultural resistance, Scott-Orr et al concluded, "Rabies will not be eradicated from Flores and Lembata in the foreseeable future using the current tools of injectible killed vaccines and dog elimination."
Australian veterinarian Stephen Cutter in an influential 2003 paper entitled Rabies & Dog Ecology in Flores estimated that the Flores dog population was about 600,000, or two dogs for every human resident, when rabies arrived. This would have been more than twice the ratio of dogs to humans found in the U.S. and Costa Rica, which have the highest documented ratios of dogs to humans of any nations, and would have been more than four times the highest ratio ever found in Asia.
   The Cutter number was derived from interviewing residents about the numbers of dogs kept by their households, rather than by actually counting dogs.
   Government officials during the first four years of the rabies outbreak reported killing 295,569 dogs. The Flores dog population by 2002 was officially down to 127,482, rose to 169,035 in 2003, soared to 250,372 in 2005, and was 203,478 in 2007. Throughout this time the dogs to humans ratio has remained close to 1/12.
   Taking into account the effects of the four-year dog purge, the carrying capacity implied by the post-2002 data, and the reproduction rate of dogs, ANIMAL PEOPLE projects that the actual Flores dog population in 1997 was probably 125,000 to 150,000, was not more than 200,000, and was probably down to about 57,000 in 2000, when the dog purge was at peak intensity.
   Using the Cutter estimate of the dog population when rabies arrived has allowed Indonesian officials to claim that killing dogs had an effect in reducing rabies which could be accurately attributed only to subsequent vaccination efforts. The success of the vaccination campaign, in contrast to the earlier emphasis on killing dogs, was detailed in The Rabies Epidemic on Flores Island, Indonesia, 2001-2003, by Caecelia Windiyaningsih, Henry Wilde, Francois Meslin, et al.
--Merritt Clifton

Dogs unchained by the book this time

TIPTON, Pa.--Three years after seizing a chained dog without a warrant, and paying a high price for it, Dogs Deserve Better founder Tammy Ci Thayne on September 6, 2009 freed four dogs from chains and did it all by the book.
   Receiving an anonymous tip that "at least two starved, chained German shepherds were abandoned at a property in Centre County near Tyrone, Pennsylvania," Ci Thayne recounted, she "journeyed to the location to assess the situation and document the neglect" on September 5, "armed with camera, food, and water." She found not only the two German shepherds, "covered in fleas, with fly strike on their ears and lacking food and water," but also "one blind and deaf Pomeranian in a pen with only a crate for shelter, and a chained black Lab/border collie mix."
   Not expecting to get help from law enforcement, Ci Thayne on September 5 posted photographs of the scene and a description on her Facebook page. Someone at the Pennsylvania SPCA saw the posting. "The PSPCA acted quickly to get an officer to the property on Saturday, September 5," Ci Thayne continued. "Finding sufficient cause to warrant removal of the dogs, the organization obtained a warrant on Sunday, September 6, brought a truck from Philadelphia, found the property owner, and won the release of all four dogs" to PSPCA custody. "The dogs are being taken to the PSPCA shelter in Philadelphia, evaluated for health issues, and then may be released to Dogs Deserve Better's foster program or adopted out to loving homes and families," Ci Thayne said. "This is the first time in my seven years of working for chained dogs that the system has worked the way it should work."
   Ci Thayne, then known as Tammy Grimes, was in February 2008 sentenced to do 300 hours of community service, in a capacity helping humans rather than animals, and to spend a year on probation, for taking an old and apparently painfully dying dog from a yard in East Freedom, Pennsylvania on September 12, 2006. The Central Pennsylvania SPCA and Blair County district attorney Richard Consiglio refused to press a cruelty case against the couple who chained the dog. Ci Thayne was convicted of theft and receiving stolen property in December 2007. She was ordered to cease posting photos of the dog and selling merchandise bearing images of the dog via the Dogs Deserve Better web site, and to pay the $1,700 cost of her trial, plus additional fees of $1,500.

Barking over Animals & Society fellowship

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--The Animals & Society Institute had difficult questions to answer in August 2009 after awarding a "Human-Animal Studies Fellowship" to Jere Alexander. Alexander in November 2008 resigned as director of the Fulton County Animal Shelter following an exposé of shelter conditions by Randy Travis of Fox 5 TV and several follow-up exposés by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
The exposés, summarized in the November/ December 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, focused on allegations that Alexander refused to euthanize pit bull terriers deemed dangerous by staff, housed other dogs with pit bulls who killed them, removed 83 cats from the shelter in the name of a rescue group whose existence could not be verified, admitted having attended dogfights in connection with academic research, hired the wife of a convicted dogfighter, and maintained other associations with alleged dogfighters.
"We weren't aware of this," Animals & Society managing director Beatrice M. Friedlander told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "She applied for, and was accepted to, the 2009 Human-Animal Studies Fellowship based on her dissertation research titled Let the Dogs Do the Talkin': Dog-Man Relationships in Dogfighting Culture, an ethnography of gamedog culture in the South. She left the fellowship after several weeks due to illness in her family."
Added Animals & Society executive director Kenneth Shapiro in response to an inquiry from an ANIMAL PEOPLE reader, "She was selected for the Fellowship based on the same criteria we use for all applicants--a review of the research proposal and letters of recommendation."
"We don't ask for--nor do we review--past writings," elaborated Friedlander. "Our review of her and the other applicants didn't involve them submitting large bodies of their work, but rather a description of their research."
The Animals & Society Institute was formed by a merger of Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Animal Rights Network.

De-worming makes a real-life "slum dog millionaire"
Commentary by Merritt Clifton

"I walk through Kalhaar daily with my own two former roadway dogs, so I know all the street dogs here," e-mailed Lisa Warden on August 1, 2009 from the suburbs of Ahmedabad, India."The dog pictured here just turned up three days ago. I guess it's safe to say that he's one of those who isn't going to make it, don't you think?"
Perceiving emaciated street dogs, cats, cattle, horses, and donkeys as starving and irrecoverably suffering is the usual response of Americans and Europeans to those whose bones protrude as much as this dog's did--but I recognized a different issue.
   The problem in such cases is seldom that the animal is not getting enough food, especially in the streets of developing nations, where refuse, rodents, and thriving populations of street animals typically abound.
Rather, the problem is usually that the animal is not getting adequate nutrition from the food due to intestinal worms.
   In this case, I had personally done a dog census in the neighborhood where Warden found the young dog, in January 2007, and had thereby verified the abundance and accessibility of food sources.
"He actually looks quite healthy-- no sign of mange, tumors, or serious injury," I wrote back. "De-worm and fix the poor mutt and he'll probably be just fine. "
   Warden de-wormed him and had him neutered. Three days later Warden posted video of the rapidly recovering little dog to YouTube. On August 8, 2009 Warden posted a second video, showing the dog playing in a small park in front of her home and that of her neighbor, Animal Help founder Rahul Sehgal.
Warden had asked me for advice because Sehgal was away sterilizing street dogs in Bhutan, on behalf of the Humane Society International division of the Humane Society of the U.S.
   In barely more than a week the dog's protruding ribs had receded.
"Someone in Canada saw him on Rajashree Khalap's Indian pariah dog website and wrote me asking if she could adopt him! So now he's going to Canada!" Warden wrote on August 20. By coincidence, adoptor Sarah O'Neill lives in the same Ottawa neighborhood where Warden grew up, but they were not previously acquainted.
Warden meanwhile had written often to Ahmedabad newspapers in favor of restarting the Animal Birth Control program that Animal Help began in 2005, sterilizing 53,000 dogs in two years before political foes cut off the funding. Animal Help is now an Animal Birth Control program service provider in several other cities, including Bangalore, but no longer operates in Ahmedabad.
   Despite repeated efforts, Warden could not get her letters published. But she had an idea about how to remedy that, by prefacing her message with a compelling true-life story and before-and-after photos.
   On August 21 the Times of India carried the story of the "Slum Dog Millionaire" she had rescued and his subsequent adoption on page one. "Unfortunately, they didn't cover any of the substantial points I raised with them about the issues surrounding street dogs," Warden lamented. "I even gave them a media sheet I'd put together, but no luck. I will approach someone at a different paper soon about doing a more serious article."
   On August 28 the Times of India followed up. Warden's father and many longtime friends of ANIMAL PEOPLE in the Ottawa and Montreal areas sent the Times of India coverage to Canadian media, knowing that the large and growing Indo-Canadian community would forward any coverage back home to India--and would thereby increase appreciation of Indian street dogs.
   Fourteen Canadian newspapers picked up the "Slum Dog Millionaire" story within the next three days. It reverberated to India, as anticipated, and back again. On September 8 the "Slum Dog Millionaire" made page one of the South Asian Post, the leading news periodical serving Indo-Canadians. The South Asian Post led from the story of the one lucky little dog into a discussion of Animal Birth Control programs and dog issues in Delhi, Kolkata, Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Mumbai.
   Beyond becoming the most famous dog in both India and Canada, for a few days at least, the dog had become an ambassador for all his kind--before even acquiring a permanent name. And all because Warden de-wormed him.
"I stress the importance of de-worming to our vets, staff and volunteers, etcetra," Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre founder Jan Salter e-mailed from Nepal, "but have been cried down on the premise that the dogs go back on the streets and again pick up worms. I am not a vet, so sometimes what I consider is just common sense is not heeded."
   Every street dog is ex-posed to worms, like every other scavenger and every animal who eats from the ground. Street dogs often expose themselves to worms by eating the feces of other animals. Yet not every scavenging or grazing animal is debilitated by worms. Dogs are known to be especially resistant to debilitating worm infestations.
   "Although nearly all dogs are infested with parasites at one time or another, most develop an immunity that keeps worms in check," explain James M. Griffin, M.D., and Liisa D. Carlson, DVM, in the Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook. "This immunity can break down under conditions of stress or ill health. When that happens, the worms increase in number and eventually produce signs of intestinal infection, including diarrhea, weight loss, anemia, and blood in the feces."
   Among the most intensely stressed and therefore vulnerable street dogs are juvenile pups who have just been weaned.
   Parasitologists have recently recognized that healthy street dogs, like other wild carnviores and non-human primates, keep worms under control to some extent by eating grass. Explained Cindy Engel in Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well & What We Can Learn From Them (2002):
   "Grass seems to have two effects. One is emetic, stimulating regurgitation or vomiting. The other is a purgative scour, ridding the body of worms farther down the intestine. Thus grass could work at either end of the intestine, depending on which orifice is nearest to the problem."
   Noted Engel, "Herbalist Maurice Mességue," author of numerous books on the healing properties of plants, "claims that some dog species discriminate between different grasses for different medicinal functions, using hairy grasses for emetics and couch grass as a purgative."
   Benjamin L. Hart, DVM and colleagues at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine presented further findings at the 2008 Central Veterinary Conference in San Diego.
   "Although the prevalence of plant eating in domestic dogs and cats has not been documented," Hart opened, "wild canids and felids in nature are known to eat grass and plants-plant material has been found in 2% to 74% of scats and stomach content samples of wolves and cougars...One explanation," Hart et al finished, after reviewing and rejecting other theories, "is that plant eating played a role in the ongoing purging of intestinal parasites (nematodes) in wild canid and felid ancestors who were always exposed to intestinal parasites. As observed in wild chimpanzees, who eat whole leaves from a variety of plants, the plant material passes through the intestinal tract, increasing intestinal motility and wrapping around worms and thereby purging the tract of intestinal nematodes."
   Many animals, including street dogs, also control external parasites to some extent by such activities as dust-bathing, swimming, and wading.
   But whatever help these behaviors provide to otherwise healthy animals, a stressed animal may be attacked simultaneously by multiple parasites, including worms, mange, ticks, fleas, and fungal, bacterial, and viral infections. The effects of each parasite increase the animal's vulnerability to others. Thus worm control is an essential part of any sort of effective animal health care.
   This is no new observation. It is part of Ayurvedic medical teaching, which includes recommendations of herbal oils that have been given to dogs and other animals since ancient times, to deworm them, fight mange, and keep their coats healthy.
   Giving dogs and cats an occasional dose of an edible oil to keep their fur shiny is also part of the western pet-keeping tradition.
   Recalled Salter, "Our in-house dog Lucy, whom we often mention in our blurbs, had extremely bad mange. For years every volunteer vet we had tried to treat it. Lucy would improve for a while, but continued to have outbreaks, and always had a nasty mousey smell, until a volunteer vet from the Ukraine came a year ago and treated her with mustard oil. It not only did the trick at the time; she has not had an outbreak since. And the smell is gone."
   Mustard oil is a natural fungicide. In Lucy's case, the mustard oil may have killed a persistent fungus that infected her after the severe mange made her vulnerable.

Pro-animal White House appointee is at last confirmed

WASHINGTON D.C.--The U.S. Senate on September 10, 2009 confirmed the appointment of legal scholar Cass Sunstein to head the Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs, one of the most influential non-cabinet positions in the Barack Obama administration. Repeatedly denounced as a would-be "czar" by Fox network commentator Glenn Beck, Sunstein had become one of Obama's most controversial appointees, largely for views about animal rights. Sunstein has argued for expanding the ability of humans to file lawsuits on behalf of animals, and has called sport hunting morally unjustifiable.
   Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum in 2004 co-edited the anthology Animal Rights: Current Debates & New Directions. The 338-page volume includes contributions by many prominent pro-animal legal thinkers and philosophers. Wrote Sunstein in the preface, "It would not be a gross exaggeration to say that federal and state laws now guarantee a robust set of animal rights," albeit rights not yet effectively defended by the courts.

All-India dogs thrive at Chennai exhibitions

CHENNAI--Nature selected the humble All-India street dog as the best-suited dog for the Indian environment at two of the most renowned Indian dog shows, in a manner no exhibitor wanted.
"Heat and humidity took a toll at the Madras Canine Club's championship show, where a Rottweiler collapsed and died due to dehydration and two mastiffs were hospitalized," reported Shalini Umachandran for the Times of India on September 14, 2009.
   "We had a vet and emergency facilities available, but we were informed too late," said Madras Canine Club committee member Sanjay Reddy.
   The show included 350 purebed dogs, many of them reportedly visibly suffering. "As the afternoon progressed, German shepherds and golden retrievers lay panting on sheets, St. Bernards rolled in the mud while handlers tried to groom them, Great Danes stood patiently as owners squirted water to keep them cool, and Chihuahuas, miniature Pomeranians and pugs looked exhausted," Umchandran wrote.
   "These dogs are not used to the heat as they are always in air conditioning," said an exhibitor of St. Bernards.
Formed in 1976, the Madras Canine Club is among the older south Indian affiliates of the Kennel Club of India, begun in 1896 as the Northern India Kennel Association. The 38 Kennel Club of India affiliates and 300 member breeders have created a boom in purebred pet dog acquisition, even as the central government funds a national Animal Birth Control program to reduce the population of street dogs.
   "As more Indians enter the middle class, having a Pomeranian, Shih Tzu or Neapolitan mastiff at the end of the leash has become a symbol of new wealth and status," observed Lydia Polgreen of New Delhi Journal in August 2009. "Unlike backyard Indian mutts of old, these dogs, like the pampered pets of affluent Westerners, are part of the family. With young middle-class Indians waiting longer to get married and have children, and with would-be grandparents impatient for grandchildren, designer dogs have filled a void created by the realities of modern urban life."
   The Animal Birth Control program has cut the Indian street dog population to about eight million, down from 10 million in 1997, but the total Indian dog population has increased to more than 12 million over the same time. Of the four million dogs claimed as pets, about half are believed to be purebreds or the accidental mongrel offspring of purebreds.
   Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna conceptually outlined the Animal Birth Control program in 1966, and established ABC as Chennai city policy in 1996, after conducting numerous demonstration projects. Watching the growth of the Madras Kennel Club meanwhile, Krishna by 1984 recognized the possible consequences of a purebred dog acquisition boom, if it occurred before pet sterilization became widely accepted as necessary. He also recognized the adaptations of street dogs to the Indian climate.
   First Krishna posted signs at the Blue Cross of India shelter (now four shelters) and at his electrical engineering plant: "If you can't decide between an Alsatian, a Doberman or a Poodle, get them all. Adopt a mongrel from the Blue Cross shelter and get everything you are looking for--all in one dog. The intelligence of a Poodle and loyalty of a Lassie, the bark of a Shepherd and the heart of a St. Bernard, the spots of a Dalmatian and size of a  Schnauzer and the speed of a Greyhound. A genuine all-Indian has it all. Get the best of everybody. Adopt a mongrel!"
   The several dozen all-Indian former street dogs at Krishna's home and on his factory grounds reinforced the point.
   To further promote adoptions of all-Indian street dogs, Krishna founded the Blue Cross Well Dog Show, held each year two weeks before the Madras Canine Club show, usually in the most intense heat and humidity of the Chennai summer. The venue is the C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation Arts Centre, directed by Krishna's wife Nanditha--a prominent cultural anthropologist. The surroundings help to emphasize that the all-India dog is in truth a breed as much as any other, produced by nature rather than human manipulation.
   "The show brought together 75 rambunctious non-pedigree dogs, along with about 200 of their human friends," wrote Shonali Muthaly of The Hindu. "There were the showoffs, like Devi, who did the moonwalk with her person Bryan. The rock stars, who defiantly mooned the judges while waggling furry eyebrows at their delighted audience. And then there were the busybodies who pawed the table and stuck their nosy snouts into the paperwork (and occasionally into an amused judge's water glass). There was even one dog--who shall remain nameless to protect her reputation--who slunk behind the table to butter up Letika Saran, Additional Director-General of Police, in a brazen attempt to win the crown. None of the participants were forced to perform," Muthaly explained. "The bottom line was to organise a stress-free show and demonstrate how affectionate, colorful and interesting a nonpedigree dog can be. Twenty-six puppies were adopted over the three hours that the show ran."
   Among the contestants were a one-eyed dog, a three-legged dog, and dogs who had recovered, with loving care, from horrific cases of mange.
   "There were only two conditions to participate: your pet should be non-pedigreed and on a leash," added G.C. Shekar of The Telegraph. "The unwritten rules were that you should love them, and not care if they stopped to pee on a potted plant before walking up to the judges."
   Noted Shekar, "Even Chennai's Airport Authority of India sent its candidate, the sprightly and well-trained Asha, discovered by the railway tracks, adopted by officials, and trained to be a sniffer dog."
As Asha performed, Blue Cross veterinarian R. Sivashankar seized the teachable moment. "It's a misconception that non-pedigree dogs cannot be trained or imparted special skills," he told the assembled media.
   "This is probably the only dog show where the owners ask each other from which street they picked up their dog," said Krishna. "We have nothing against foreign breeds, but pride in owning and loving Indian dogs is what we recognize. Our people are proud to own and display mongrels."
And the all-India dogs --and people--at the Blue Cross show clearly had a lot more fun than the purebreds did two weeks later.

Philippine opponents win a "hold" on greyhound racing with help of Massachusetts allies

MANILA--The Philippine House of Representatives on September 7, 2009 "agreed to hold in abeyance its approval of a second franchise for greyhound dog racing after animal protection groups prevailed upon the Senate to defer action on the first franchise," reported Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Romblon representative Eleandro Jesus Madrona "said the House was forced to make the move after seven senators vowed to block the introduction of greyhound racing in the country because it is 'immoral' and 'cruel to animals,'" Cabacungan wrote. The Philippine House approved the nation's first greyhound racing franchise in December 2008.
   Actually, "Thirteen Senators sent pledges to vote no to the introduction of greyhound racing in the Philippines," e-mailed Anna Nieves Cabrera of the Philippine Animal Welfare Society. Cabrera added special thanks to Senator Jamby Madrigal and Cardinal Ricardo J.Vidal of Cebu for helping to lead the campaign, and to the Massachusetts-based anti-greyhound racing organization Grey 2K, for rallying supprt beyond the Philippines.
   Other groups backing the campaign included the Animal Kingdom Foundation, Feathered Friends, Compassion And Responsibility for Animals, and PETA/Asia.
"I am not only against animal cruelty but against gambling as well," said Madrigal, who took her greyhound Prasad with her to speaking appearances and press conferences.
   Grey 2K on September 18, 2009 celebrated the suspension of live racing at the Valley Greyhound Park in Texas and the last day of racing at the Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere, Massachusetts. Opened in 1935, Wonderland was both the oldest and last greyhound track in the state, where voters in November 2008 banned greyhound racing, effective at the end of 2009.
   The Belmont, Rockingham, and Seabrook greyhound tracks in New Hampshire were authorized by the June 2009 state budget bill to drop all live racing and operate exclusively as simulcast betting parlors.
The Twin River track in Rhode Island closed on August 8, 2009. The owners filed for bankruptcy in July 2009, after they were not allowed to offer gambling without live racing. "We will now introduce legislation to end dog racing as a matter of law," said Grey 2K cofounder Christine Dorchak.
   Greyhound racing continues in the U.S. only in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Greyhound racing remains legal in Kansas, with three licensed tracks, but the Camptown Greyhound Park has not run a race since 2000, the Wichita Greyhound Park quit live racing in 2007, and The Woodlands quit in 2008. "The state racing commission on September 11, 2009 decided to give the owners of the three tracks another 10 months to take steps to reopen their businesses before they face losing their licenses," said Associated Press writer John Hanna. The track owners want the state to let them keep more of the take from slot machines operated on the premises.
   Financially struggling greyhound tracks in Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama were in August 2009 purchased by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, subject to approval of the National Indian Gaming Commission. The Poarch Band already operates three electronic bingo halls. "The tribe in 2006 asked the U.S. Department of Interior for permission to offer poker games at its facilities in Alabama, but was denied," recalled Associated Press writer Bob Johnson. Buyng the tracks may offer the Poarch Band another way to enter the poker business, but in Alabama they will be opposed by anti-gambling Governor Bob Riley, noted Mobile Press Register staff reporter Ben Raines.

1990s HFA campaign still bringing vealer convictions

MILWAUKEE--Brown Packing Company, a leading U.S. veal producer, on August 10, 2009 agreed to plead guilty to felony conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, and to pay a fine of $2 million for illegally giving hormones and steroids to veal calves between 1997 and 2004, while marketing the meat as "all natural."
   The case was the latest of a 15-year series of successful prosections of major players in the veal industry for misuse of hormones and steroids. An informant tipped the Food & Drug Administration to the violations in 1989, but serious investigation did not start until February 1994, after an outbreak of poisoning caused by the synthetic steroid clenbuterol hit at least 140 people who ate contaminated veal in an unrelated case in Spain. Pressured by the Humane Farming Association, the U.S. Department of Justice eventually won convictions of at least eight executives of leading veal firms. Among them were the Dutch entrepreneurs who brought the crated veal industry to the U.S. in the first place, circa 1962.

Mercy for Animals exposé brings hatchery horror into living rooms

DES MOINES--The Iowa egg production giant Hy-Line North America admitted on September 8, 2009 that an independent audit found "animal welfare policy violations" at a hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, where a Mercy for Animals undercover operative videotaped unwanted male chicks being killed for two weeks in May and June 2009.
   "But West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North America said that it won't release further details," Associated Press reported.
   Summarized Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer and Melanie S. Welte, "The video shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards. These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine.
   "In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.
   "Hy-Line said the video 'appears to show an inappropriate action and violation of our animal welfare policies," referring to chicks on the factory floor."
The Hy-Line hatchery produces 33.4 million laying hen chicks per year, according to the company web site. Mercy for Animals projects that the hatchery therefore kills a similar number of male chicks each year.

200-235 million a year

Nationally, Mercy for Animals founder Nathan Runkle estimates, about 200 million chicks are killed each year at U.S. hatcheries. Runkle's estimate is significantly lower than industry figures published by Poultry Times writer Barbara Olenik in September 2003. According to the Poultry Times data, the U.S. egg industry then killed about 235 million male chicks per year, plus about 170 million "spent" hens, who were no longer productive egg-layers.
   Almost all of the male chicks were killed by live maceration, as the Mercy for Animals video showed. About 111 million spent hens were killed in U.S. and Canadian slaughterhouses in 2002, while nearly 59 million were macerated. Olenick expected the volume of live maceration to increase by about 21 million in 2004, due to industry growth.
  "The egg industry is perhaps the cruelest industry on the face of the planet," Runkle said. "The entire industrial hatchery system subjects birds to stress, fear and pain from their first day."
   Thirty states, including Iowa, exempt standard agricultural practices from prosecution as cruelty. This, Runkle suggested, is "the same as handing over power and authority to chemical companies to decide what is an appropriate level of toxic waste to dump into nearby streams and groundwater."
   The Mercy for Animals video was extensively aired by mainstream broadcast and web news media, beginning September 1, 2009. It was hardly the first major exposé of live maceration, called by Vermont veterinarian Peggy Larsen "just a fancy name for crushing and killing baby chickens" in a March 2004 ANIMAL PEOPLE exposé.
   But the Mercy for Animals exposé was the first with illustrative support that wrenched the hearts of mainstream Americans. Said Runkle at a Des Moines news conference, "We have to ask ourselves if these were puppies and kittens being dropped into grinders, would we find that acceptable? I don't think that most people would."
   South Bend Tribune staff writer Lou Mumford recounted the effect of the Mercy for Animals video on Emma Burdett, age 10, of Cassopolis, Indiana. After bursting into tears, Burdett "launched a petition drive protesting the practice," Mumford wrote, "shortly after making telephone calls to The Tribune announcing her intentions.
Last year, her mother Tracy Burdett told Mumford, her daughter wanted to confront the manager of a local store where she saw a worker casually discarding two live birds. Wrote Mumford, "Emma said she already has accumulated more than 50 signatures from shoppers at Rite Aid and Harding's Market, some of whom told her that disposing of chicks in such a manner should be considered animal cruelty. Emma said she doesn't like eggs much anyway and she doesn't intend to eat any more."
   Iowa State University sociologist Paul Lasley, co-chair of the Iowa Farm & Rural Life Poll, also "cringed when he heard about" the Mercy for Animals video, said Associated Press writer Nigel Duara--but his concern was about possible harm to the Iowa economcy from people eating less eggs.
   "When our parents made the decision to send this cow or pig or lamb to market, it was a sad day," Lasley told Duara. "But it would be sadder if we couldn't make the payment on the farm."
Noted Duara, "Animal rights groups also oppose a variety of hog lot practices, particularly the castration of hogs and the removal of their tails without anesthetics."
   "Most people think their food comes from a grocery store," National Pork Producers Council spokesperson Dave Warner told Duara. "In processing food animals, there are things that you have to do to get them there."

Pulling back the curtain

That is precisely the point of undercover videos, responded Humane Society Legislative Fund director Mike Markarian. "Most people don't know how animals are raised for food and how their animals get to their plate," Markarian agreed. "The more we can pull the curtain back on these practices, the more we can have support for reasonable reforms."
   Researchers from three Dutch agribusiness research groups in October 2008 presented to the lower chamber of the Dutch Parliament the findings from an apparent first-ever survey of consumer opinion about culling male chicks. More than 60% of respondents disapproved of the practice. The researchers told the politicians that they would begin researching ways to abolish it. Possible methods include identifying "male" eggs before they hatch, and manipulating the environmental factors involved in the gender determination of chicks.
The Australian Poultry CRC research group in January 2009 announced that it has developed and patented a way to "silence the expression of genes that tell the growing embryo to become female or male, without having to genetically modify the chicken."
   "Hatcheries, farmers, and most importantly, ethically minded consumers will all benefit," said Australian Poultry CRC commercialization and technology transfer manager Lloyd Thomsen.
Live maceration was introduced for hatchery use in 1937, and caught on during the World War II farm labor shortage. The first mainstream newspaper descriptions of the process appeared in 1942 and 1943.
Not mentioned in the 2000 edition of the American Veterinary Medical Association Report on Euthanasia, live maceration was added to the 2007 edition after United Poultry Concerns in 2004 led an attempt to prosecute AVMA Animal Welfare Committee member Gregg Cutler for ordering that 30,000 chickens be thrown alive into a wood chipper. The chickens had been exposed to exotic Newcastle disease at a farm in southern California. Workers who attended cockfights in their off-hours were suspected of bringing the fungal infection in on their boots and clothing.
   Says the Report on Euthanasia, "Maceration is an alternative to the use of carbon dioxide for euthanasia of day-old poultry. Maceration is believed to be equivalent to cervical dislocation and cranial compression as to time element, and is considered to be an acceptable means of euthanasia for newly hatched poultry by the Federation of Animal Science Societies, Agriculture Canada, World Organization for Animal Health, and European Union.
   "Death is almost instantaneous," the Report on Euthanasia continues. "The method is safe for workers. Large numbers of animals can be killed quickly."
   The Report on Euthanasia cautions that, "Maceration requires special equipment that must be kept in excellent working order. Chicks must be delivered to the macerator in a way and at a rate that prevents a backlog of chicks at the point of entry into the macerator and without causing injury, suffocation, or avoidable distress to the chicks before maceration." In addition, the Report on Euthanasia notes that "Macerated tissues may present biosecurity risks."

Upset in South Africa

"Some producers, such as Sun Ray Chicks Hatchery in Hazelton, have found other options," reported Duara of Associated Press. "Sun Ray owner Elaine DeGraw said her small operation, which raises 8,000 to 9,000 chicks a week, gives the males to raptor conservation groups. They feed the chicks to injured birds of prey."
   Boskop Layer Chicks of Potchefstroom, South Africa, "used to gas the chicks to death and the carcasses were disposed of to lion farmers," but now kills the chicks by maceration, attorney George Gibbens told the South African Press Agency in August 2009, after public upset resulted from videos taken by former Boskop employee Kobus Van Zyl.
   Representing Boskop, Gibbens spoke to SAPA after portions of the Van Zyl videos were broadcast by the current affairs television program Carte Blanche. The video showed chicks whom van Zyl said had been dumped into pits to die. Van Zyl said that Boskop has dumped as many as 70,000 chicks per week for 70 years. "Van Zyl said sometimes it would take up to five days for the chicks to die, mainly of starvation or suffocation," reported SAPA.
   One of the three biggest poultry farms in South Africa, Boskop Layer Chicks is owned by Jan Serfontein Sr. and his son. The elder Serfontein was formerly the North West Province Member of the Executive Council for agriculture, conservation and the environment.
   National SPCA spokesperson Christine Kuch "was surprised that we were so shocked about the situation," she told SAPA. --Merritt Clifton

LETTERS

Financial tables

I recently received the 2009 edition of the ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on Animal Charities, and wonder if you have a spreadsheet summarizing the financial data included in the report. I seem to recall that earlier reports had tables such as that, and hoped they would be available for 2009. This would make it much easier for me to compare the various organizations.
--Christopher Hersha
Information Technology Manager
SPCA Tampa Bay
9099 130th Ave. N.
Largo, FL 33773
Phone: 727-586-3591, x161
<chersha@spcatampabay.org>

Editor's note:

Those tables appeared in the ANIMAL PEOPLE newspaper each December for 14 years, but became redundant when we started publishing the Watchdog Report in 1999. After rising newsprint and postal costs obliged us to reduce our page count and frequency of publication, we dropped the tables to keep more for news and reader response.

Cats helped us type

Thank you for the citation of the Alley Cat Allies survey about pet cat sterilization in your July/August article "Decade of adoption focus fails to reduce shelter killing." We went through the process of getting our article peer reviewed so that the wider animal protection community could use our research, and it is nice to see that it is happening. Also, it's always nice to see my name in print. I did notice two typographical errors which need to be corrected. The primary author's name is Karyen Chu, not "Karyn Ch," and the percentage of female cats spayed before any litters is 81.7%, not 81.2%.
--Micha Rieser
Policy Research Analyst
Law & Policy
Alley Cat Allies
7920 Norfolk Ave., Suite 600
Bethesda, MD 20814
Phone: 240-482-1992
Fax: 240-482-1990
<MRieser@alleycat.org>

Hoping to save Pablo Escobar's hippos

As you may know, there is a horrible situation with some hippos in Colombia, who were brought from New Orleans in 1981 by cocaine trafficker Pablo Escobar, who was killed in a shoot-out with law enforcement in 1993. Escobar kept the hippos in a private zoo, which is now defunct. No one has the resources to take care of them. Originally there were four hippos. Today there are at least 28 of them. Some have escaped and our government is trying to kill any who leave the Escobar hacienda. There are people in the world who do not want to let that happen. I am one of them, but unfortunately, I have neither the resources or the contacts to save them. I have contacted many wildlife organizations. I have gotten a lot of positive answers from concerned people who want to help, and they have given me many other contacts. I am still struggling to find a proper solution.
I know how difficult the situation is, but I would appreciate if you have any ideas on how to solve this problem.
--Ana María Velásquez
Bogota, Colombia
<amvdesign.anamaria@gmail.com>

Editor's note:

New York Times correspondents Simon Romero and Jenny Carolina González reported on September 11, 2009 that a judge in Medellín had "issued a ruling suspending the hunt." Frankfurt Zoological Society consultant Peter Morkel "compared the potential for the hippos to disrupt Colombian ecosystems to the agitation caused by alien species elsewhere, like goats on the Galápagos Islands, cats on Marion Island between Antarctica and South Africa, or pythons in Florida," Romero and González wrote. Countered Aníbal Vallejo, president of the Medellín SPCA, "In Colombia there is no documented case of an attack against people or that they damaged any crops. No sufficient motive to sacrifice one of these animals has emerged in the 28 years since Pablo Escobar brought them."

South African rhino poaching boom

In the short space of 19 months, rhino poaching in South Africa has accelerated to a rate almost six times higher than in the previous eight years. South Africa has abruptly become the conduit for most of the rhino horns leaving the African continent.
   Now a new ARA Report, Under Siege: Rhinoceroses in South Africa, reveals that there is an urgent need to improve data collection at both the provincial and national level; re-examine the permit system under which government sellers of rhino abrogate their responsibility with regard to what happens to the animal after sale; end all rhino hunting in South Africa, because it has been proven to be as great a problem as poaching; re-examine the entire South African procedure for reporting data to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, because often limited and inaccurate information is submitted; open to public debate the government policy of encouraging "sustainable use" and trophy hunting; publish through websites up-to-date applications for hunting permits and hunting statistics; and impose an immediate moratorium on all capture, sale, translocation and hunting of rhinoceros.
The report is available on the ARA website.
--Steve Smit &
Michele Pickover
Animal Rights Africa
Box 3018
Honeydew 2040
South Africa
Phone: 27-11-472-2380
<info@animalrightsafrica.org>
<www.animalrightsafrica.org>

Comment opens on Chinese animal welfare law

On September 18, 2009 at a legal conference in Beijing the first draft of the new Chinese animal protection law was published online for public comment. In addition to releasing the draft animal protection law, the expert team who drafted the law, led by Professor Chang Jiwen of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also suggested changes in Chinese criminal law, making animal abuse a punishable offence.
   The draft law outlines guidelines for disease prevention and meeting the medical needs of animals. It covers wildlife, farm animals, companion animals, laboratory animals, and work animals, and stipulates welfare requirements for animals in transport and slaughter.
While the International Fund for Animal Welfare supports this first Chinese animal welfare legislation, we feel that the draft could benefit from further input from concerned citizens and animal welfare groups, particularly in the wildlife and companion animal sections. We thus encourage public comment and suggestions to the law during the public comment period.
   The draft of the law, in Chinese, can be found at <www.china.com.cn/-news/law/2009-09/18/content_18551113.htm>
--Grace Ge Gabriel
Asia Regional Director
Intl. Fund for Animal Welfare
<ggabriel@ifaw.org>
<www.ifaw.org>

Dog attack deaths & risk of lightning

In an article in my local newspaper today, a spokesperson for a major humane organization, in an attempt to minimize the risk to the public from dog attacks, is quoted as saying that more people are killed by lightning than dogs.
   The National Weather Service said there were 27 lightning deaths as of this date in 2009, 28 in 2008, and 45 in 2007. This reflects the success of efforts to reduce the numbers of deaths from lightning strikes, which have historically killed an average of 73 Americans per year.
   The highest number of people ever killed by dogs in one year in the U.S. was 33, in 2007. The average in this decade is more than 20, about double the average of the preceding two decades. Thus the death tolls from lightning and dog attacks are converging.
   The humane society spokesperson failed to point out that even though lightning deaths are rare and becoming fewer, we still do whatever we can to minimize the risk, e.g., clearing public swimming pools during electrical storms, suspending golf games, installing lightning rods, and doing public education.
Attention to any public health risk is influenced by severity, the impacted population, and the economic interests of those affected.
   Minimizing rabies has a huge veterinary and pharmaceutical establishment supporting it, so we respond to the disease despite its extremely rare occurrence in the U.S.
   Minimizing dog attacks has no such economic support, so we minimize their importance by minimizing perception of the occurrence, even though fatal and disfiguring dog attacks are hundreds of times more common in the U.S. than human cases of rabies.
   As they say at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, it is naïve to think disease is simply the presence of a pathogen.
--Alan M. Beck, Sc.D. Professor & Director
Center for the Human-Animal Bond
School of Veterinary Medicine
Purdue University
625 Harrison St.
West Lafayette, IN 47907
<abeck@purdue.edu>

Recycling hotel linens

I volunteer for the Phoenix chapter of the Sierra Club. Office space is rented in a motel on the edge of downtown. Hotels routinely throw out slightly stained linens because they are unfit for human use. I asked management for the unusable linens because I am also involved in animal rescue. Slightly stained but clean linens can be used many times by rescue groups and shelters. I got my first big batch today with promises of more to come. Hotels, motels and resorts could be a good source of bedding for animal rescue groups, shelters, or zoos. This helps the environment by reducing waste, and provides comfort to needy animals as well.
--Debra J. White
Tempe, Arizona
<whitedebraj@yahoo.com>

Clouds gathering over BLM horse program by Willis Lamm

Most wild horse advocates recognize that the wild horses roaming our public lands require some degree of management. Herd population growth, loss of predators, intrusion by other land uses, extreme weather, and the horses' inability to migrate to new ranges due to human-made barriers require some intervention so that the horses remain in balance with range resources. It is in the application of horse management techniques that the Bureau of Land Management has demonstrated both competent resourcefulness and gross incompetence.
   The recent roundup of the iconic wild horse Cloud and his herd in the Pryor Mountains of Wyoming and southern Montana have provided a shining example of incompetence. There were no major injuries to either horses or humans, according to the BLM, but videos posted to YouTube showed horses who were unnecessarily stressed, limping, and frightened, and local news coverage described incidents and procedures which could have had disastrous consequences.
   The Pryor Range horses are believed to be direct descendants from some of the first Spanish horses brought to the Americas, relatively little mixed with other domestic horses. The BLM initially announced that it would capture all 188 mustangs dwelling on the 38,000-acre Pryor Range. About 70 would be offered for adoption. The rest would be released, after giving a contraceptive vaccine to most of the mares.
   The roundup was halted, after a week of intense protest by horse advocates nationwide, with 147 horses corraled, 57 put up for adoption, and about 25 family bands left on the range.
   The BLM helicopter contractor for the Pryor Mountains round-up was Dave Cattoor.
   Once, while observing a relatively safe and sane round-up in the Buck & Bald Horse Management Area of Nevada, I asked Cattoor why this particular gather was going so smoothly when a month earlier a gather at the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge was embroiled in chaos. The answer Cattoor gave was simple: "It's the contract."
Cattoor and others in his business perform to the specifications set forth in the gather contracts that they accept. At Buck & Bald, the BLM wasn't hellbent to bring in every horse. The horses were moved in slowly. Bands with young foals were left alone. Horses who showed lameness were left alone. Cattoor was not asked to bring in old horses, and if some arrived in the corral, enough tail hair was cut so that the helicopter pilot could recognize them as being released after they were returned to the range.
   Apparently the specifications for gathering Cloud's herd were far different than what we in Nevada recognize as appropriate for safe and sane gathers of wild horses.
   But perhaps far more telling than the gather specifications for the Pryor Range roundup was the BLM's attitude toward observers.
   Gathers can be dangerous, so it is appropriate for the BLM to not allow people to just wander around during gather activities. Someone in the wrong place can spook the horses and get them and the gather staff hurt.
However, in Nevada the BLM customarily makes accommodations for responsible observers to see and report on gather activities. We stay at safe vantage points on the range that are designated by BLM. At the sorting corrals we usually find a spot atop a transport or water truck where we can see the whole operation and not spook the horses. While we may not agree with many of BLM's gather decisions, the Nevada BLM's reasonable openness instills some confidence that the gathers here are not organized catastrophes.
   I was not at the Pryor gather. However from first person accounts, videos, audio recordings and other evidence, including mainstream news coverage, the BLM's whole approach to this gather was faulty. Instead of making adjustments and improvements where warranted, it appears that they turned this event into a covert operation and displayed a hostile attitude against some of the private citizens and advocates present.
Having been a public employee myself for 30 years, I have to say that the snips of recorded conversations that I heard were totally improper.
   The general attitude within the Department of Interior, of which BLM is a subordinate bureau, has fostered a new round of legal actions brought by private citizens and advocacy groups. There is evidence that some of the data upon which many of the Department's past management decisions were based were altered. It is therefore reasonable for citizens to question the validity of reports and studies used to justify BLM's current activities, especially when they simply look wrong. In fact our Founding Fathers considered it to be our responsibility as citizens to hold our government and its agencies accountable. However the Department of Interior has apparently chosen to be confrontational with the American public rather than engage concerned critics and adjust its policies where appropriate. In this writer's opinion, the present conduct of the Department of Interior serves as an example of bureaucracy at its worst.
   Ironically, America's wild horses are just among the more immediate victims of such tunnel-visioned bureaucracy. Over the long term it is likely the Department of Interior and its subordinate agencies that will suffer most. Aside from a growing pile of lawsuits, Congress is becoming increasingly tired of flawed policies that rack up unnecessary costs and at the same time produce anger among the American constituency.
If the executive branch of our federal government doesn't drag the Department of Interior onto a more appropriate path, Congress will. If one believes the lessons of history, Congress' solutions may be far more burdensome on the Department than any prompt and appropriate corrections that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or President Barack Obama might impose.
   Advocates across the world feel badly about the mistreatment of Cloud and his famous herd. However the Department of Interior and the BLM may have reached the proverbial bottom with respect to horse management policies. Surely they have no other direction to go than "up."

Post Script:

Horseback Magazine has posted a story about the Cloud roundup in which BLM spokesman Tom Gorey was quoted as saying, "The Cloud Foundation is not a credible source for information."
Scores of Department of Interior and/or Bureau of Land Management personnel have been exposed and often indicted during the past three years for altering data, corruption involving millions of dollars, and even accepting drugs, sex and gifts from energy companies.
   As Chris Frates of Politico.com recently summarized, "Interior has [also] been rocked by ties to the dirty dealings of convicted lobbyist Jack AbramoffŠThe department's former #2 official, Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles, served 10 months in prison for lying to a Senate committee about his relationship with Abramoff, who is in prison."
   Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney in December 2008 reported of Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary who oversaw the Fish & Wildlife Service, "Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every Endangered Species Act decision issued during her tenure," which ran from 2002 until May 2007.
I find it ironic that a spokesman for what could be reasonably be described as the most incredible department in our government's history would cast dispersions upon an established non-profit group for its criticism of the agency.

Willis Lamm, a retired fire service officer, is now president of Least Resistance Training Concepts, a nonprofit organization that works with various agencies. Lamm is a member of the Lyon County, Nevada Advisory Board for Wildlife, vice-chair of the Lyon County Animal Control Advisory Board, and communications officer for the Alliance of Wild Horse Advocates.

Busting puppy mills vs. busted budgets

LANSING, MI; WASHINGTON D.C.-- Impoundments of dogs from alleged puppy mills are coming at a pace, entering the last quarter of 2009, that could top 10,000 for the year--up from about 8,000 in 2008 and 3,000, then the most on record, in 2007.
   Many of the seizures are enabled by the passage of new legislation regulating conditions at dog breeding facilities, at pet stores, and in transit. The impoundments are in turn attracting the attention of lawmakers, bringing further regulatory reinforcement.
Among the last acts of the 2009 California legislature was sending to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger "The Responsible Breeder Act of 2009, " limiting the number of dogs and cats an individual or business may keep to breed for the pet market.
   "Arizona, Indiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington passed legislation [earlier] this year to address puppy mills. In 2008, Virginia, Louisiana and Pennsylvania passed similar laws," recounted Humane Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian, celebrating the passage of a second round of legislation in Pennsylvania.
   "The Pennsylvania bill to prohibit large-scale puppy mill operators from crudely performing certain surgeries on dogs without anesthesia-such as ear cropping, tail docking, debarking, and Caesarean births-was the 107th new animal protection law passed by state legislatures in 2009," Markarian said. "It helped to shatter last year's record of 93 new state laws" passed on behalf of animals.
   But the busts cost money. Donors and volunteers typically help animal shelters cope with the sudden influx of animals from a puppy mill raid, many of the them in urgent need of special care. The cost of inspections, criminal investigations, prosecutions, fighting appeals of convictions, and enforcing penalities, however, falls mostly on state taxpayers. Many states are in economic trouble, due to declining property values and unemployment cutting into their revenue.
   That means less money for law enforcement, including humane law enforcement. Hard times appear to have encouraged more people than ever to jump into dog breeding, in hopes of turning a quick buck with relatively little cash outlay, with often catastrophic consequences for the animals. Yet, despite the new legislation and recent busts, the resources available to detect and deal with neglectful animal breeders and dealers are in jeopardy in many of the states most affected by the past two years of recession.
Michigan was first to drop the ax.
   "The Michigan Department of Agriculture is no longer regulating pet stores and riding stables, a move that saves the state about $150,000 a year," Detroit Free Press staff writer John Wisely revealed on August 20, 2009. "Earlier this month, the state ended a 40-year system of licensing and inspecting Michigan's 250 or so pet shops, the latest retreat from regulation of the sale of pets. In recent years," also for budgetary reasons, "the state stopped random inspections of stores and stables to save money, and only inspected before a license was issued or in response to a complaint. Now, it won't even do that."
   Pet store inspection is often seen as the most cost-efficient way to monitor puppy mills, since puppies from hundreds of kennels may move through stores that are much more conveniently located and easier to visit than the breeders' premises. If unhealthy pups from a particular breeding kennel repeatedly turn up in stores, follow-up investigation may target that kennel. Meanwhile, an inspector who might be able to visit two kennels in a day's work can often spot-check a dozen or more pet shops in the same time, with a lot less driving.
   Said assistant Michigan state veterinarian Nancy Frank, "I think pet store inspection is valuable, and we're not excited about having to discontinue it. But most pet stores do care about the animals and the law. The public does a very good job of looking after the animals," Frank told Wisely.
   Frank "urges patrons to call police or animal control officers to report abuse or neglect," Wisely wrote.
Countered American SPCA senior vice president Laura Maloney, "It is unfortunate that they are eliminating the only way that you can go behind the scenes at a pet shop."
   Explained Wisely, "Police would need search warrants to enter non-public parts of a store," whereas the Department of Agriculture inspectors operate under enabling legislation that allows them to go wherever they need to.
   Of further concern is that disease rather than symptoms of overt animal abuse is most often the first issue to indicate that animals are coming from a puppy mill. Diseased puppies may be indicative of criminal neglect, but most often are merely indicative of an outbreak that needs to be treated and controlled. Because disease treatment and control is not a criminal matter, police and animal control officers have little relevant training or jurisdiction. Public health inspectors may respond to cases involving zoonotic disease, meaning animal diseases which can pass to humans, but recognizing and responding to signs of puppy mill origins is not part of their training and jurisdiction either.
   Store owner John Stottle also told Wisely that he hated to see Michigan Department of Agriculture store inspections end--because they help to protect his business from the problems that result when sick puppies arrive and infect others at his four Family of Pets outlets in metro Detroit.
"If it's for $150,000, that breaks my heart," Stottle said.
   The Michigan Department of Agriculture pet store inspection program has been effective. Five state veterinarians investigated 113 complaints about pet shops and four complaints about riding stables in 2008, spokesperson Jennifer Holten told Wisely. They detected 19 punishable violations of state law, resulting in fines of $2,150.
   The relative handful of detected violations and low revenue from fines may have convinced higher-ups that the pet store inspections were unnecessary. But that same kind of thinking about automotive quality control helped to get the Detroit car makers in trouble, producing the Michigan economic crisis.
Civilian efforts to enforce pet store and breeding kennel standards have had mixed results in three recent court cases.
   U.S. District Judge David Campbell on August 7, 2009 ruled that a class action lawsuit filed in March 2009 against the 200-store Petland chain failed to demonstrate that the plaintiffs were direct victims of fraud. Representing the Humane Society of the U.S. and six individual plaintiffs, respectively, attorneys Jonathorn Lovvorn and Simon Paris pledged to file an amended lawsuit later, based on more specific allegations.
The original case, summarized the Dayton Business Journal, "alleged that while Petland purports to deal only with quality breeders, it actually buys from 'massive commercial breeders' in the Midwest where dogs are packed into cages in substandard conditions," and "also questioned the chain's assurances that it buys from breeders licensed by the USDA. In reviewing USDA records for more than 100 Petland-linked breeders, more than 60% were found to have 'serious' violations of animal care regulations."
   Los Angeles County Judge John P. Shook on August 4, 2009 awarded a $4.8 million default class action judgement against Pets of Bel Air, a trendy and now defunct store "where customers reportedly included such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Demi Moore and Denise Richards," reported Bill Hetherman for NBC-Los Angeles. "The complaint alleged that Pets of Bel Air 'sold puppies for a premium price and thereby duped California consumers out of millions of dollars."
   Shook approved the default judgment, Hetherman said, "after the defendants ignored court orders to turn over business documents to the plaintiffs and respond to motions in the case."
   About 800 customers who bought puppies at the store between December 28, 2003 and October 7, 2008 "will be joined as plaintiffs once they are identified and notified," Hetherman added.
   Like the failed Petland case, "The lawsuit, originally brought by attorney Wayne S. Kreger, stated that Pets of Bel Air got much of its stock from Midwest puppy mills, all the while claiming the animals were from private breeders," Hetherman summarized.
   Deputy Judge Michael Galligan of the Ontario Superior Court, Small Claims division, on July 22, 2009 ruled against Lorie Gordon, of Brockville, Ontario, in a case brought by Paws R Us Kennel owner Nicole Labombard in response to comments Gordon posted between July 2004 and April 2005 at two web sites for petkeepers. The case was viewed by some Canadian web discussion sites in entirely unrelated fields as a test of online freedom of expression.
   U.S. web libel cases have usually not held individual web commenters to the same standards of factual accuracy that apply to web site owners, journalists, and others who may be presumed to speak with recognized authority. The standard of accuracy expected of individuals has tended to fall somewhere between private opinionated conversation, in which almost anything may be alleged, and the standard required of letters-to-the-editor, in which opinionated statements must be clearly differentiated from claims of fact.
   "Testimony put forward by Gordon and several other witnesses, including representatives from the Montreal SPCA, attempted to portray Paws R Us as a puppy mill," summarzied plaintiff's attorney Luc Barrick to Cheryl Cornacchia of the Montreal Gazette. "They are trying to say a commercial breeder is a puppy mill and they are not," Barrick said. "There are puppy mills out there, but my client is not one of them."
   Gordon was ordered to pay $10,000 in damages to Nicole Labombard and two members of her family, plus $4,000 in court costs. --Merritt Clifton

Activist/industry cooperation saves lab animals from tangled EU regs

HELSINKI--As many as 4.4 million animals will escape use in laboratory testing during the next 15 months as result of unusual behind-the-scenes cooperation among chemical manufacturers and animal advocacy groups to win a September 15, 2009 regulatory clarification from the European Chemicals Agency, an arm of the European Union.
   Collaborating to obtain the animal-sparing clarification were Eurogroup for Animals, the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments, the Humane Society International division of the Humane Society of the U.S., People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
The issue was "the risk of duplicative animal testing being conducted to meet" the requirements of REACH. Created by European Union legislation in 2006, REACH is an acronym for "Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and restriction of Chemicals."
   Explained chemical regulation experts Costanza Rovida and Thomas Hartung in a 2007 summary, "Acknowledging that we lack about 86% of the safety testing data for existing chemicals, the EU legislation aims to collect such data for all chemicals produced or marketed in quantities of more than one ton per year." The previous EU chemical safety regulation had collected safety data only on chemicals first marketed after 1981.
The goal of REACH was to accumulate all the information in a central registry by the end of 2018. Information about short-term effects is due by December 2010.
   Often REACH requires information about possible effects of exposure to chemicals which were not examined in whatever testing was originally done to develop products and put them on the market. Frequently the possible effects that are of current medical and environmental concern were completely unknown several decades ago, when the chemicals were first registered as apparently safe. Sometimes data was collected that permits toxicologists to extrapolate the information now needed. If the necessary data was not collected, REACH requires that new testing be done.
   "It was expected that 27,000 companies would submit 180,000 pre-registrations on 29,000 substances," wrote Rovida and Hartung in the August 2009 edition of the journal Nature. "Instead, some 65,000 companies made more than 2.7 million pre-registrations for in excess of 140,000 substances."
Because of the unexpectedly large number of chemicals that need to be tested to satisfy REACH, "Complying with REACH may use 20 times more animals and cost six times as much as previously estimated," Rovida and Hartung warned.
   Rovida and Hartung took particular note of the limitations of animal testing.
"Our modeling shows that the studies contributing most to animal use and costs are from reproductive toxicity testing," seeking to learn "the effects of the chemicals on reproductive functions," Rovida and Hartung wrote. These studies, Rovida and Hartung estimated, account for "about 90% of projected animal use and 70% of projected costs" in complying with REACH.
   "Regulatory toxicology has neither the high-throughput methods nor alternatives to animal testing to cope," Rovida and Hartung concluded, adding that "A moratorium on reproductive toxicology tests would be wise, until alternatives are approved."
   Chemical makers trying to comply with REACH have been caught in a crunch between the looming December 2010 deadline for providing complete results on short-term effects of chemicals and a lack of alternatives to performing animal tests that have been accepted by the EU and other regulatory agencies. In some cases, alternative tests are in the process of becoming approved. Others are in various stages of research and development. Some are expected to be available in time to meet the 2018 deadline for submission of data about long-term effects of chemicals, but are not likely to be through the regulatory process in time to be used to meet the 2010 deadline for short-term data.
   "Our concerns relate to two areas," wrote representatives of Eurogroup, the European Coalition to End Animal Experi-ments, HSUS/HSI, PETA, and PCRM, in an August 13, 2009 joint letter to European Chemicals Agency executive director Geert Dancet. "First, [we are concerned about] 'pre-emptive' animal testing conducted by companies before options are even assessed. Second [we are concerned about] the conduct of testing to meet mandatory information requirements which could be rendered redundant by later tests.
   "In the case of 'pre-emptive testing,'" the animal advocacy group representatives explained, "we are informed by contacts in the global chemical industry that companies registering chemicals [for which short-term data is required] believe that they may not be able to obtain results from animal tests stipulated [to meet long-term data requirements] in time for the December 2010 deadline, unless they perform them as soon as possible. As a result, they are booking and potentially undertaking testing now, rather than waiting to see if the standard test regimes can be adaptedŠor [be met with] existing data."
   The chemical makers' "concern arises partly as a result of limited laboratory capacity worldwide, which means there may be a delay in commencing studies," the animal advocacy group representatives explained. "There appears to be a genuine belief that it will not be possible to meet this deadline ŠCompanies risk being unable to contract the work and receive the necessary data before the registration deadline, and so feel compelled to conduct the required animal tests without waiting" for the completion of protocols which might make the tests unnecessary.
   "The second issue we wish to draw to your attention," the animal advocacy group representatives told Dancet, "arises from the requirement for registrants of chemicals to provide animal data that could be made redundant by subsequent tests required to meet" the long-term requirements.
   After a month of deliberation and consultation, the European Chemicals Agency on September 15, 2009 issued a clarification that, "Companies who need to provide information based on long-term toxicity studies do not need to also submit the results of screening or short-term studies in order for their submission to be considered 'complete' by the European Chemicals Agency."
   In translation, if chemical makers can get the short-term data they need to meet reach requirements from studies that will be done to comply with the long-term information deadline, they need not commission studies to obtain the short-term data by December 2010. This not only spares animals from use in testing in the immediate future, but also buys time for replacing animal tests with more efficient non-animal methods.
   "The key event that made this possible," Procter & Gamble alternatives to animal testing program director Mark Lafranconi told ANIMAL PEOPLE, was the role of Thomas Hartung, "formerly the director at the European Center for Validation of Alternative Methods," Lafranconi noted, "and now director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Altern-atives to Animal Testing ," funded by Procter & Gamble and other chemical manufacturers.
   Hartung "pointed out the need to bring some common sense to complying with the regulation and the need for more consideration of alternatives," Lafranconi said. "Up to now, the EU authorities responsible for REACH have had little to say about the use of alternatives or other approaches to reduce testing on animals. Hartung's article [in Nature] created a lot of discussion, and more importantly, provided a data-based and credible projection of how many animals would potentially be used. It was the information from these articles that HSUS and the others used as the basis for their letter to the European Chemical Agency. HSUS had been in communication with Thomas as he prepared his reports, and had advanced knowledge of the contents as they prepared the letter."
   "REACH is not the only chemical testing program coming online," Rovida and Hartung concluded in their August 2009 Nature article. "Others are planned in the U.S., Japan, and Canada--but REACH is the biggest and the first to come into effect Lessons learned from REACH should be heeded by the others."
   The cooperation among Hartung and the animal advocacy group representatives contrasted with misunderstanding generated earlier in 2008 when the British group Uncaged Campaigns and In Defense of Animals claimed in online bulletins calling for protest that Procter & Gamble had done tests "not required by any law" on the safety of chemicals called butylparabens, even though this had allegedly "already been amply demonstrated at least 20 years earlier."
   In actuality, ANIMAL PEOPLE learned upon looking into the matter, the European Union Scientific Committee on Consumer Products decided in January 2005 that new Japanese findings indicated that there is a potential safety issue with butylparabens as a possible endocrine-disrupting chemical, specifically in effects on sperm counts and testosterone levels.
   Endocrine system disruption is a category of risk which was not evaluated and was barely even recognized as an issue 20 years earlier. The EU-SCCP required the consumer chemical industry to produce new safety data. Procter & Gamble did the testing, on behalf of the industry, attempting to use non-animal methods where possible, but the EU-SCCP in 2007 rejected the findings from both the animal and non-animal tests.
   As of mid-2009 P&G led an industry effort to avoid doing further animal testing on butylparabens. The EU-SCCP insisted that additional animal testing must be done. The issue remains unresolved.
Through fiscal 2009 Procter & Gamble had spent more than $250 million to fulfill a 1984 pledge to the late Henry Spira of Animal Rights International to phase out animal testing as fast as alternatives can be developed and win regulatory approval.
--Merritt Clifton

Nepal halts monkey exports to labs

KATHMANDU--Nepalese animal advocades on August 27, 2009 celebrated success in preventing Nepal from entering the fast-growing traffic in exporting monkeys from developing nations to research labs.
  "Around 300 monkeys who were to be exported to the U.S. will be able to find their food in freedom, in their own country," headlined the Kathmandu Post.
   "We have decided not to allow the monkeys to be exported," announced Nepal forestry minister Deepak Bohara. "We will ask Pravesh Man Shrestha," the prospective monkey exporter, "to release the monkeys within a week."
   Explained the Kathmandu Post, "After consulting the department heads of the ministry, Bohara came to the conclusion that it was illegal to export the monkeys."
  "The law does not permit the export of any wild animals. Thus giving approval to export the monkeys would contravene the law," affirmed an anonymous ministry undersecretary. "The Ministry has concluded," the undersecretary told the Kathmandu Post, "that the monkeys should be released to their natural environment."
   The monkeys who were to have been exported are the offspring of a wild-caught colony kept at Lele, Nepal. U.S. law forbids the import of wild-caught monkeys, to inhibit the accidental import of diseases caught in the wild. Instead, breeding stock are caught from the wild, and their young are exported. Some sellers have been caught, however, exporting wild-caught monkeys with the claim that they were captive-bred.
The Nepal Biodiversity Research Center and National Biomedical Research Center, both involved in the monkey breeding scheme behind the scenes, according to Nepalese media, had reportedly long lobbied for permission to begin the exports.
   However, "In February 2009 a parliamentary committee ordered the ministry to stop the process of exporting rhesus monkeys for biomedical research. Concerned citizens in January 2009 filed a public interest case at the Supreme Court," recalled Dutch freelance journalist Lucia de Vries, a longtime resident of Nepal. The Supreme Court filing apparently prompted Bohara's intradepartmental consultation.
   Said the Kathmandu Post, "As a first step Shrestha planned to export 25 of the 300 monkeys to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. Shrestha was breeding the monkeys under the auspices of the Nepal Biomedical Research Center. American citizens who financially supported this venture have now landed in Kathmandu looking for compensation."
   Funded by the Nepal Natural History Society and the Washington Primate Research Center, Shrestha reportedly began developing his monkey business in 2001. He bought about 200 wild-caught monkeys in 2003.
"People are catching and selling monkeys to middle men for this purpose at the rate of about $300 U.S. each," de Vries wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE in December 2003.
   Since then, recalled International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal, "Four or five ministers came and went, high level bureaucrats changed posittions, and the population of captive monkeys increased significantly."

Corruption

The most significant change--for the monkeys as well as Nepal--was the abolition of the corrupt monarchy that had ruled Nepal for 240 years. The monkey export scheme was brokered and Shrestha bought the 200 wild-caught monkeys during the five-year reign of King Gyanendra, a prominent practitioner of animal sacrifice. Gyandendra took office after Crown Prince Dipendra, an avid hunter, on June 1, 2001 shot nine members of the royal family, including the previous king and queen, and then shot himself.
   Gyanendra in February 2005 suspended the Nepalese parliament and introduced martial law, in the name of fighting a long Maoist insurgency. He was forced by public protest to reinstate the parliament in April 2006. The Gyanendra regime was formally stripped of authority in December 2006. In March 2008 an audit confirmed years of rumors that the Nepalese royal family had extensively misused their authority over wildlife conservation for personal benefit.
   The most prominent offender was Gyanendra, who had represented Nepal in dealings with the World Wildlife Fund since 1974, and had headed the King Mahendra National Trust for Nature Conservation from formation in 1982 until his ascension to the throne, when he appointed his son Paras to succeed him. The auditors found that the Mahendra Trust had operated as a mechanism for converting conservation funding and wildlife assets to the personal benefit of royal family members.
   "Animal Welfare Network Nepal calls for the professional rehabilitation of the more than 300 monkeys kept at the Lele breeding center. The government is responsible for taking the monkeys out of their cages and rehabilitating them in a professional manner," Animal Welfare Network Nepal spokesperson Manoj Gautam e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE and other media. "Those born in the Lele center need to be taught how to survive in the wild. Those caught from the wild need to be released gradually, as they have spent many years in captivity," Gautam said.
   About 60 wild-caught monkeys and offspring have died since 2003, Animal Welfare Network Nepal estimates.
"Animal Welfare Network Nepal also requests the government to pass an Animal Welfare Act, include a clause on animal welfare in the new constitution, and halt commercial wildlife breeding," Gautam added. "The network is concerned about a possible 'upgrading' of the much criticized Wildlife Breeding Act 2003," produced by the Gyanendra regime, "which would reintroduce monkey business through a back door.
   "The network reminds the minister that Nepal has no animal welfare legislation and that there are no legal tools to monitor and prosecute animal abusers," Gautam said. "Breeding [monkeys] further opens the door for biomedical research within Nepal, which is completely unregulated."
   Formed in 2008, Animal Welfare Network Nepal is a coalition representing Animal Nepal, the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre, Kirtipur Rescue, Roots & Shoots Nepal, the SPCA Nepal, and Streetdogs of Nepal.

Film spotlights Taiji dolphin killing

TAIJI, Japan--The Cove has not stopped the annual Taiji dolphin massacres-- not yet, anyhow. But the award-winning film did appear to slow down the killing at the start of the 2009 "drive fishery" season, and--even before release in Japan--is bringing the massacres to the attention of the often shocked Japanese public as nothing before ever has.
  "Moviegoers who have seen The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos, said they were stunned by the cruelty of the killings, captured by concealed cameras. Many newspapers have blasted the traditional coastal whaling practice in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, which is not subject to the International Whaling Commission's ban on commercial whaling," summarized Toshihiro Yamanaka for Asahi Shimbun. The second largest newspaper in Japan, Asahi Shimbun reaches about 8.2 million readers daily.
   "When I found out, I cried," Osaka resident Keiko Hirao told John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times.
Director Louis Psihoyos, a former National Geographic photographer, has pledged to keep the spotlight on Taiji by making The Cove available in Japan as a free download, if he fails to secure a commercial distributor. The Cove has won more than a dozen awards, including the audience award at the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and has aired widely in other parts of the world, but despite much media notice in Japan, has not yet been screened there.
   The Cove star Ric O'Barry, 69, first visited Taiji in 1993 at invitation of the Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan. Founded in 1976 by Japanese animal advocate Sakai Henni, the Elsa Nature Conservancy was the first organization to oppose the Taiji dolphin killing, but tends to be overlooked when defenders of the massacres assert that only non-Japanese object to it.
   O'Barry has returned often to Taiji ever since, including for the scheduled opening of the 2009 Taiji dolphin slaughter on September 1. "But when I arrived with media representatives from all over the world," O'Barry e-mailed, "there were no dolphin killers in sight. I have often been here alone, or accompanied by a few environmentalists," O'Barry continued. "Sometimes I was able to talk a major media organization into sending someone. But the people of Japan never learned about the dolphin slaughter, because none of the media in Japan, with the exception of the excellent Japan Times, have ever sent reporters. Until today!
  "We would not have had a story," O'Barry added, "except for the police. Nine policemen came to talk to us. Unlike the fishers," O'Barry stipulated, "the Taiji police have always acted professionally, courteously, and fairly. I have never been mistreated or threatened by the police here. I think they are a microcosm of the people of Japan--the very people I am trying to reach about the dolphins! As I was talking with the police, as the international journalists stood around listening, suddenly a camera crew arrived from Japan! And then another! And then still another! For the first time, they showed up, with cameras rolling. The head policeman talking with me even said, for the cameras, that the police are not there to support the dolphin-killing. We shook hands, and they left."

Estranged sister city
Japanese media first took an interest in The Cove in March 2008, when photography web sites and Japan Times took notice of the advanced cameras Psihoyos used in making the film. The coverage crossed into main news sections after the city council of Broome, Australia on August 21, 2009 advised Taiji that it will be "unable to fulfill its pledge as a sister town of Taiji while the practice of harvesting dolphins exists," Broome council president Graeme Campbell told Japan Times staff writer Minoru Matsutani.
  "The Broome sister-city story is getting big play in Japan, one of the first real breaks we have seen in the wall of silence over there by the media," exulted Mark J. Palmer, International Marine Mammal Project director for Earth Island Institute. Palmer visited Taiji with O'Barry for the opening of the dolphin-killing season.
   The first Taiji dolphin roundup of 2009 came on September 9, after more than a week of delay that Taiji spokespersons attributed to bad weather. In the interim most of the outside media left Taiji, and so did O'Barry and the most recognizable activists.
   About 100 bottlenose dolphins and 50 pilot whales were driven into the killing cove for which The Cove is titled, wrote Kyoko Hasegawa for Agence France-Presse. The pilot whales were killed and butchered.
"They plan to sell about 50 dolphins to aquariums and release the remainder back to the sea," Hasegawa reported. "Officials said they would not slaughter any of the dolphins, but denied it was due to international pressure and did not say whether or not they would hunt or cull more of the animals this season." The season will remain open through March 2010.
   Taiji has a federally awarded coastal whaling quota of 2,300 dolphins and small whales this winter. Taiji fishers reportedly killed 1,484 dolphins and small whales in 2008-2009. Representatives of the Save Japan Dolphins Coalition said that they witnessed and filmed 70 bottlenose dolphins being released on September 13. The coalition, formed by O'Barry, includes Earth Island Institute, the Elsa Nature Conservancy, In Defense of Animals, Campaign Whale, Ocean Care, and the Animal Welfare Institute."An official at the Taiji fisheries association, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the town abhors the publicity its dolphin-killing has drawn, said that the decision [to release the dolphins] was made partly in response to the international outcry created by The Cove," reported Associated Press writer Yuri Kageyama."From the viewpoint of resource control, we've been occasionally releasing them on our own judgement in the past," another official anonymously told Kageyama.

Whale tourism
O'Barry said his aim in visiting Taiji this year was "to show journalists the good things about Taiji. With The Cove movie out, we don't have to show the bad things about Taiji. Soon the whole world will know about the Taiji dolphin slaughter," he said.
  "And all Japanese will soon know about the cover-up by the government in refusing to stop mercury-contaminated dolphin meat from being sold to unsuspecting Japanese consumers and children," O'Barry continued.
  "But Taiji can change this image of shame," O'Barry emphasized. "I am telling them that Nantucket used to be the capitol of the whale-killing industry in the U.S. Now it uses its history of whaling combined with whale-watching to market tourism very successfully. Taiji can do this, too. But the killing has to stop."
Whale-related tourism is already Taiji's main summer industry, reported Glionna of the Los Angeles Times. Whale Beach, where freshly slaughtered dolphins are dragged ashore, was in the summer of 2009 an "aquatic petting zoo," Glionna wrote, featuring "two playful dolphins swimming alongside tourists."
   Recounted Glionna, "The local catch once was mostly large cetaceans, a practice that goes back centuries here. Taiji prides itself as the birthplace of Japanese whaling. But ancient scrolls show that dolphins were also hunted here, say officials at the Taiji Whale Museum. The town is dominated by whale statues, whale-tail fountains, and a dolphin-themed resort. Public buses are promoted by cutesy whale cartoon figures."

Captivity connection
Taiji has a dolphinarium, where O'Barry "was outraged that the dolphins were kept in tiny tanks," wrote Kageyama of Associated Press. The dolphinarium is a tourist attraction too, but appears to make money mainly from brokering dolphins captured during the roundups for slaughter. "Meat from one dolphin fetches about $500, but dolphins can be sold to aquariums for 10 to 20 times that price, with some kinds going for as much as $150,000," said Kageyama.
   The Cove "is putting would-be amusement park visitors in an ethical bind and park owners on the defensive," observed MSNBC travel writer Brian Alexander.
  "The captivity industry keeps the slaughter going," O'Barry charges in The Cove, and has told anyone who would listen since his first visit to Taiji.
  "They know who the dealer is: Ted Hammond in Taiji," O'Barry told Alexander. "They could get him under control by isolating him from the rest of the community! Sea World and these other parks know who traffics from Japan and the Solomon Islands. They should see what they could do to stop them."
Noted Alexander, "Hammond has been instrumental in brokering Taiji sales and has consulted for the Solomon Islands capture operations. But he remains a member in good standing of major international organizations. For example, a 2008 Proceedings of the International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine, edited by Sea World's chief vet, lists him as both a founding member and an honorary life member.
   Alexander "contacted Hammond for comment on drive hunts, his role in brokering animals, his relationship with a new aquarium in Beijing which has made Taiji's infamous Whale Museum its sister organization, and the issue of capturing dolphins for tourists. But after first promising to respond, he later declined," because Hammond is a primary witness, he said, in a lawsuit between O'Barry and one of his clients.
"We stopped [buying from drive hunts] and have not resumed, not because we are ashamed, but it was not something that we cared to be involved with any more," Busch Entertainment spokesperson Fred Jacobs told Alexander.
  "Sea World, part of Busch Entertainment, is a division of Anheuser-Busch, which itself is owned by the Belgian beer giant InBev," Alexander explained.
  "I do not know how to answer what our position is," Jacobs continued. "At one point, we collected animals from one of these hunts. We do not want to be accused of being disingenuous. If we go to an aquarium in China and say 'You guys should not be involved,' the first thing out of their mouths will be 'Well, you did it,' and we cannot argue that point."
   But O'Barry first won celebrity capturing and training dolphins for the Miami Seaquarium. He trained the dolphins used in the Flipper television series (1964-1967). That history is precisely why he turned to campaigning against dolphin captures and killing in 1970, and has pursued the effort through many ups and downs ever since.
Gerald Dick, executive director of the Swiss-based World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, told Alexander that WAZA is now "in dialogue" with Japan "to sort out the relationship between the takes for aquaria and the slaughter." A WAZA representative said similar to ANIMAL PEOPLE in 1995.
  "We are not the only nation that kills dolphins," Japan Fisheries representative Shigeki Takaya told Glionna of the Los Angeles Times, mentioning the similar dolphin slaughters conducted annually in the Faroe Islands, a possession of Denmark. "Why not report about that?" Takaya asked.
   Animal advocates have in fact documented and protested against the Faroe Islands dolphin killing almost every year since 1985.
   Two Japanese sources who spoke to Psihoyos about the high mercury content of dolphin meat served in school lunches objected to how their comments were used on camera, they told Kyoko Hasegawa of Agence France-Presse, but one of them seemed to have misgivings about the dolphin killing even while claiming he supported it.
  "It's a betrayal. I thought the film was about marine pollution, but it's about anti-whaling," said Taiji assembly member Hisato Ryono, 52.
   However, wrote Glionna after interviewing Ryono earlier, Ryono "first had doubts about the practice [of killing dolphins] on a kayak trip when he paddled alongside the highly intelligent mammals and felt what he called a sense of peace and healing."
   Asserted Tetsuya Endo, of the Health Science University of Hokkaido, "The overall tone of The Cove is an insult to the Japanese people and the people of Taiji."
  "The Cove is not an attack on the Japanese people," responded Psihoyos. "I believe stopping the killing of dolphins is a win-win situation for both the dolphins and the Japanese people."

--Merritt Clifton

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