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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, MARCH 2010:

EDITORIAL FEATURE: 

Humane education lessons from the Haiti disaster

Inquiries to ANIMAL PEOPLE about how to help the animals of Haiti began even before the dust had settled from the collapse of the Haitian presidential palace and parliament buildings. At this writing at least 170,000 people are known to have been killed by the January 12, 2010 Haitian earthquake, with the toll still rising as more bodies are found beneath the rubble in Port au Prince, the Haitian capital city, and in surrounding suburbs.
As after the Indian Ocean tsunami of late December 2004, Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008, and other disasters of recent years, animal charities rushed out emergency alerts and dispatched rescue teams in the direction of Haiti without waiting to get particulars as to what might be needed or how best to get it there.
Most of the personnel and supplies ended up waiting for days in the Dominican Republic for receiving clearance to proceed into Haiti.
Nineteen nonprofit organizations united as the Animal Relief Coalition for Haiti. The Humane Society of the U.S. and subsidiaries, including Humane Society International and Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association, deployed separately.
PETA offered "funding for euthanasia to put badly injured animals out of their misery," appealing to anyone "who comes across animals who are suffering without any hope of being saved, to attempt to be strong and to quickly-and as humanely as possible-put them out of their misery."
The first animal rescuer to reach Haiti appeared to be Rebecca Berg, DVM, sent from the Dominican Republic by the local organization SODOPRECO on behalf of HSUS. Berg entered Haiti about 10 days after the quake hit. Others followed in the next several days.
But details went unchecked both before the mobilization and during the delay while the would-be rescuers looked for ways to reach the disaster area. The lack of reliable local liaisons on the ground in Haiti proved to be the first and greatest of handicaps.
The first, last, and only humane society of even transient success in Haiti was an American Humane Association outpost, founded circa 80 years ago, that treated 1,000 horses, mules, and donkeys per month for about 10 years. Turned over to the American Scientific Mission at the end of 1932, the outpost left as a discernable trace just a watering trough.
Without reliable information about the numbers and species of animals who might have been hurt by the earthquake, animal rescuers made presumptions based on the experience of past disasters in other parts of the world. This resulted in gross over-estimates.
Yet animal charities were not alone in this. Human relief agencies, used to calculating post-disaster food needs in part from livestock survival, made similar mistakes.
The problem was compounded because the quake hit while many of the disaster relief personnel with the most experience in developing nations were en route to the Asia for Animals conference in Singapore, almost as far from Haiti as it is possible to travel. But the lessons from northern Pakistan in 2005, southern Peru in 2007, and Sichuan in 2008 were of limited applicability. Every other major disaster since the earthquake that struck Bam, Iran in December 2003 has hit a region with a substantial history of agricultural animal husbandry, a significant tradition of pet-keeping, and/or abundant street dogs and feral cats.
Bam had relatively few animals, for a combination of climatic and cultural reasons. But, because westerners were not welcome in Iran, not many people involved in animal rescue planning remembered Bam. And, except in not having a lot of animals, Bam would also have been a poor model for Haiti. Haiti is as wet as the Bam region is dry. Cattle, goats, and poultry are raised in Haiti, but mostly in the rugged interior mountains. Haitian agriculture has for centuries produced mostly plantation crops, especially sugar cane, using human muscle power rather than work animals, for whom quality fodder is scarce.
Chronic food shortages have long kept food waste to a minimum in Haiti. Though most Haitians do not eat dogs, cats, or rats, enough do--out of desperation--that any street animals are at constant risk of being caught for the pot.
Animals who are not eaten might instead be sacrificed. Though Haiti is nominally 80% Catholic, the nation is known for ubiquitous practice of voodoo, involving sacrificial rites brought from West Africa by the slaves who became the ancestors of most Haitians.
"I didn't see one cat while I was there, and I would have noticed that because I'm very much a cat person," James Patrick Jordan told Friends of Animals publicist Anai Rhoads. Jordan, wrote Rhoads, had been in Haiti with a human rights delegation just six days before the quake. "There didn't appear to be a lot of overcrowded factory farming," Jordan added. Indeed, United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization data indicates that there may be almost none. The U.S. produces 33 chickens per resident per year; Haiti produces 0.7.
Lloyd Brown of Wildlife Rescue of Dade County, sent to Haiti with the Humane Society International field assessment team, on January 27, 2010 advised Rebecca Giminez, Ph.D. of TheHorse.com that "it is our professional opinion that no animal issues are here that are related to the earthquake. There are a lot of animal issues," Brown acknowledged, "but after speaking with a local American expatriate veterinarian, who is very well connected, we must agree with her that now is not the time to deal with them. If we were to set up a spay/neuter clinic while so many people are displaced and homeless, it could be disastrous-- they don't understand neutering here," Brown explained. "People are hungry, they have no homes, they are sleeping in the streets. They don't understand the concept of a pet.
"Dairy producers told us that their cows are producing less milk," Brown continued. "There was a recent outbreak of a pig virus that the vet is very concerned with. But it has nothing to do with the earthquake. At this time of year, most animals [in Haiti] are turned out to pasture. At the time of the earthquake, most animals were in the fields--and still are. The only real logistic challenge," Brown said, "was at the zoo," a collection Brown described as "one crocodile in an obscenely small pond and a few rabbits and birds," plus a monkey.
The zoo, Brown explained, "ran out of pigeon feed."
Agreed the World Society for the Protection of Animals on January 30, 2010, summarizing the ARCH relief mission, "The team found limited need for emergency animal relief work. In the three days that the team spent in Haiti assessing the need for veterinary care, they found few stray dogs (and only one cat) and limited numbers of backyard animals."

Humane nation-building

Having raised considerable funds for animal relief in Haiti, the organizations that most vigorously appealed for money soon found themselves trying to explain to donors and bloggers what they would do with the surplus.
Some donors who contacted ANIMAL PEOPLE with complaints overlooked that they themselves had demanded opportunities to donate to Haitian animal relief only days earlier, despite our recommendations to await reliable assessments of need.
The most conscientious of the many organizations to issue emergency appeals on behalf of Haitian animals now correctly understand themselves to be obligated to spend at least a percentage of the money in a manner consistent with donor intent.
The real need in Haiti is for humane nation-building--and the Dominican Republic, sharing the island of Hispaniola, urgently needs help as well, having approximately 20 times more animals of species tracked by the FAO, and a much stronger tradition of petkeeping.
How to do humane nation-building, however, remains mysterious. The 390 delegates from 210 organizations in 26 nations who attended the Asia for Animals conference might be considered the most experienced cohort of humane nation-builders ever assembled. Most of the delegates could describe similar experiences in founding their organizations, finding donor support, opening clinics and shelters, and introducing dog and cat sterilization programs, rabies vaccination, humane education, and projects on behalf of farm animals.
Yet some of the societies in which Asia for Animals delegates have built fast-growing humane movements have little in common. Nations with increasing animal advocacy include both some of the most affluent and some of the poorest. Some are thriving democracies; others are authoritarian states which, for whatever reason, permit animal advocates more freedom to organize than is tolerated on behalf of other causes. Most have growing economies, but the same is often true of nearby nations where little progress is evident.
More than 200 years into the evolution of the humane movement, with dozens of successes in building strong networks of humane societies and passing animal protection laws, cause analysts have yet to identify more than a handful of national traits that consistently predict either a positive outcome or failure.
Humane Society International chief executive and HSUS chief of staff Andrew Rowan has repeatedly looked for indicators in his periodic State of the Animals reports, for example, finding mainly contradictions. Among the contradictions is that humane work, like businesses, tends to thrive most readily in stable societies. Yet successful humane movements often emerge out of extreme instability, and become part of the stablization process. Examples include the British humane movement rising out of the Industrial Revolution, the U.S. humane movement emerging after the U.S. Civil War, and the explosive growth of humane work in eastern Europe after the collapse of Communism.
One reasonably ubiquitous trend is that women usually make up about 80% of the donor and volunteer base of humane organizations. The most evident exceptions are in India and parts of Africa.
Hypothetically, wide gender gaps in personal income and literacy rates might suggest a cultural environment where animal advocacy will not thrive. Yet India trails only the U.S. in numbers of animal advocacy and rescue societies, has one of the fastest-growing humane movements as well as the oldest, and has literacy rates of only 73% for men, 48% for women. Conversely, many nations with literacy rates above 90% for both genders--such as Japan, at 99% each--have much less humane activity than might be expected.
Haiti has only 55% male literacy and 51% female literacy. Lack of literacy is likely to inhibit humane outreach and education, but from a gender perspective as regards humane work, the most significant difference between India and Haiti may be that thousands of literate women in India have already long been involved; no one has been involved in Haiti.
Literacy is both the primary vehicle and primary measure of education, for either gender, but much of education is the process of acculturation. Where the prevailing cultural view of animals is already positive, and the prevailing values of society include being kind to animals, literacy helps to create a climate for humane work to thrive. Where the prevailing cultural view of animals is negative or indifferent, literacy may help only to the extent that it enables those who can read to obtain perspectives external to the norms of their society.
The value of external perspectives is not to be overlooked. Britain from Elizabethan times into the 18th century was notorious throughout Europe for sadistic public entertainments including bear-baiting, bull-baiting, dogfighting, cockfighting, and tormenting the lions at the Tower Menagerie. Early British animal advocates gained influence by making known to fellow citizens the views of continental visitors. Then British military officers who had served in India brought back the notion of founding the London SPCA. Rapidly growing, it spun off several other organizations, attracted royal patronage in 1840, and, as the Royal SPCA, has helped to encourage humane work in other nations ever since. By the end of the 19th century Britain was proud to be known as a nation of animal-lovers.
The U.S. in the post-Civil War era was a comparably unlikely place for humane work to grow and thrive. Quite apart from the trauma and deprivation of the war itself, the enduring popularity of blood sports in much of the country, and a then low literacy rate, the U.S. for 200 years has led the world in accepting immigrants, albeit often grudgingly, who bring with them whatever customs and attitudes involving animals prevailed in their former homelands.
The closest Rowan has reached to a conclusion is that ultimately the success or failure of humane nation-building depends most on the quality of humane leadership. Inspired and inspiring leaders tend to succeed, regardless of the challenges presented by culture, education, gender factors, and economic status.
Ultimately any enduringly successful humane movement requires leadership from within the society it seeks to transform. Yet there are now many examples, in all parts of the world, of expatriate "humane missionaries" discovering and empowering such leadership, and of meanwhile becoming heard and respected where would-be local leaders are ignored or shouted down.
The common denominators among successful "humane missionaries" are relatively easily recognized, and are traits common to outstanding humane educators anywhere. On the one hand, outstanding humane educators clearly care deeply both about animals and about the people they hope to teach. On the other, they are unfraid to denounce cruelty or neglect, even when it is rationalized as a cultural tradition. Outstanding humane educators distinguish between the offense against animals, which may be left in the past, and the offender, who may be encouraged--especially by positive example--to abandon the offensive practice.
Our hope for Haiti is that the mission which began a few weeks ago as emergency animal rescue will evolve into extensive and effective humane education, and will involve the Dominican Republic too. There is no clear demographic reason why humane nation-building cannot succeed in both places, with leadership, patience, and a vision of what can be achieved, despite the depth of human misery and the many cultural and economic impediments to rapid progress. Indeed, some presumed impediments could become advantages, for example the limited involvement of most Haitians in animal use industries.
The greatest challenge may be finding leadership who will not be discouraged by the chaos, violence, and suffering of every sort that afflicts Haiti, who will be able to communicate to poor Haitians that the treatment of animals tends to set the floor for the treatment of humans.
Haiti may be the toughest territory where humane work has ever been seriously attempted. But we can remember similar things being said of many other places that now send large, enthusiastic delgations to Asia for Animals, the Middle East Network for Animal Welfare conference, and other international gatherings of humane workers, whose leaders now teach others how to emulate their successes.
The numbers of both hunters and fishers may be expected to continue to fall. With the decline will come a loss of hunter and fisher influence over wildlife policy, especially after opponents of consumptive wildlife use become as politically mobilized as hunters and fishers long have been.

—Merritt Clifton

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

"Saving" tigers by selling them

JAKARTA--The Year of the Tiger on the Chinese calendar opened on February 14, 2010 with schemes to "save" tigers that posed perhaps a greater threat to tiger welfare and wild tiger survival than even aggressive poaching that has cut the wild tiger population in half since the last Year of the Tiger in 1998.
For nine days in January 2010 the Indonesian wildlife protection organization ProFauna enjoyed a rare victory against both tiger poaching and the exploitation of captive tigers. ProFauna helped to send the most brazen tiger poacher in memory to prison, for the August 22, 2009 pre-dawn killing and butchery of a 20-year-old tiger named Sheila in her cage at the Taman Rimba Zoo in Jambi, capital of Jambi province.
"As result of ProFauna's intensive lobbying to the police and forestry department," ProFauna international communication officer Butet Sitohang e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE, "the [apprehended] perpetrator on January 11, 2010 received a three-year-and-ten-month prison sentence and a fine of one million Indonesian rupiah," worth about $107 U.S. The maximum prison sentence that the convicted perp could have received would have been five years. Killing Sheila was reportedly at least his third convicted offense.
But the poacher's scheme was picayune compared to the notion floated on January 20, 2010 by Indonesian director general of forest protection and nature conservation Darori, who uses no surname. Darori proposed that his agency should sell tigers as pets, at the equivalent of $107,100 U.S. apiece.
"This idea came about after several wealthy businessmen proposed buying them," ministry official Didi Wuryanto told Agence France-Press. "But we're not in it for the money. We want to save the tigers," Didi Wuryanto insisted.
Purchasers would be required to keep pet tigers in cages not less than 16 feet high, 19 feet wide, and 32 feet long.
Like counterparts in China, India, and Thailand, who have challenged the Con-vention on International Trade in Endangered Species prohibition on trans-border sales of captive tigers and parts in recent years, Darori argued that tigers can best be preserved as a quasi-domesticated species.
"Conservation of wildlife, including tigers, should be taken up as an enterprise," agreed Indian former principal chief conservator of forests S. Parameshwarappa a few days later. "Farmed tiger products could be sold to countries like China where there is a demand. Money from this venture can be invested back into conservation," Paramesh-warappa told The Hindu.
But Darori's proposal differed from the schemes advanced by Parameshwarappa and others, in that it would put potential tiger breeding stock into private hands, without overtly involving the Indonesian government in tiger farming.
Darori spoke just as the Worldwide Fund for Nature introduced an Adopt-a-Tiger fundraising theme for 2010. But WFN, known in the U.S. as the World Wildlife Fund, recommended adopting tigers only in the metaphorical sense--at least officially. As the leading exponents of "sustainable economic use" of wildlife since 1961, the Worldwide Fund for Nature does not oppose commercialization of wildlife if it contributes to the survival of species in the wild.
Both Darori and Parameshwarappa spoke on the eve of the first Asian ministerial conference on tiger conservation, held in Hua Hin, Thailand. The ministers resolved to double the wild tiger population before the 2022 Year of the Tiger.
But this resolution appeared to be seen by at least some of the ministers as an invitation to breed even more tigers in captivity than the thousands of captive tigers who already exist, on the pretext of eventually "re-introducing" some to habitat which mostly no longer exists--with the admitted goal of removing captive-bred tigers from CITES Appendix I, so that tigers and tiger parts may be freely sold. "Close to 6,000 tigers have been artificially bred and raised in China," said Yin Hong, vice head of the China State Forestry Administration. China "can breed over 1,000 baby tigers every year," Yin Hong told the China News Service.
The world now has just 3,200 wild tigers, according to official estimates. India, with the most wild tigers, claims 1,411. China, with the fewest wild tigers among nations known to still have any, may have as few as 20, all of them of the far northern Amur subspecies.
Darori in advancing the sale of tigers as pets did not mention that trying to preserve tigers in the wild is costly, inconvenient for development schemes, and dangerous for humans who live or herd livestock near tigers.
These issues were already evident when Jim Corbett in 1944 assessed them in Man-Eaters of Kumaon, the first book-length plea for saving wild tigers. After decades of hunting tigers who killed humans in hopes that other tigers would become better tolerated, Corbett came to fear that tigers were doomed by human economic interests--and that was before the present demand for tiger parts for use in "traditional Chinese medicine" emerged.
Truly traditional Chinese medicine is mostly herbal. The "medicinal" market for wildlife parts, like the bushmeat trade in Africa, exploded from obscurity to menace entire species mostly after logging, road-building, and plantation clearing gave poachers unprecedented access to wildlife.
Commerce in wildlife parts and bushmeat developed first to exploit displaced animals. As demand grew, a business niche opened for farming species such as tigers who breed readily in captivity--but raising animals in captivity remains far more costly than poaching them. Tiger breeders, however, can offset the expense of raising tigers by exhibiting them. And, while poaching Sheila at the Taman Rimba Zoo shocked Indonesia, hardly anyone notices the turnover of cubs at many zoos, where some are almost constantly on display at photo concessions, drugged and accessible to cuddling.
Until under 20 years ago such practices occurred often at U.S. zoos too. But reinforcements to federal law and to the American Zoo Association code of ethics mostly ended the involvement of AZA-accredited zoos in back-door tiger dealing before tiger parts became big business. Seventeen people were convicted in 2001-2002 of selling tigers from U.S. roadside zoos to canned hunts and trafficking their parts. Since then the racket, if it persists, has had a low profile.
Tiger parts are the main business for several of the largest and most notorious Chinese tiger exhibitors. "With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher," reported Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times on February 13, 2010. "If there is any mystery about what happens to the big cats at Xiongsen Tiger and Bear Mountain Village in Guilin, it is partly explained in the gift shop," where tiger bone wine is sold.
"Opened in 1993 with financing from the state forestry administration, Xiongsen is China's largest tiger-breeding operation," Jacobs added. "Some of its 1,500 tigers roam treeless fenced areas, while many others are packed in small cages where they agitatedly pace."
Similar scenes are often reported from the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park, along with feeding cattle and poultry to tigers alive, to thrill paying visitors. Several other such facilities are known to exist. Live feeding is illegal at Chinese zoos that are regulated as zoos, but the tiger farms, though open to the public, are regulated by a different agency.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Florida conservationists cold toward iguanas & pythons in record chill

MIAMI--Conservationists rushed to help endangered sea turtles and manatees during one of the coldest winters on record in Florida, but many vocally hoped that the January 2010 cold snaps would extirpate non-native iguanas and pythons.
"Anecdotally, we might have lost maybe half of the pythons," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission exotic species coordinator Scott Hardin told David Fleshler and Lisa J. Huriash of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in mid-February, after several weeks of doing habitat assessment.
Hardin also estimated "more than 50 percent fatality on green iguanas."
The cold weather also killed thousands of Mayan cichlids, walking catfish, and spotfin spiny eels, among other tropical colonists of Florida habitat.
The python deaths revitalized opposition to U.S. Senate Bill 373, which seeks to ban the import of pythons into the U.S. Contrary to a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimate that pythons could potentially colonize most of the South, "Pythons can't exist more than a short period of time north of Lake Okeechobee," U.S. Associ-ation of Reptile Keepers president Andrew Wyatt told Fleshler and Huriash.
But the 50% mortality rate among pythons and other immigrant species was well below the minimum of 70% mortality that would be necessary to suppress the numbers of any of them for very long.
"Green iguanas have been thudding to the ground at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park in Key Biscayne and other leafy areas," reported Robert Samuels of the Miami Herald at the depth of the freeze. "When temperatures plunge into the 30s, iguanas become catatonic," Samuels wrote, "falling from trees in a state of suspended animation. When the weather warms, they reanimate, sometimes worse for wear."
Dogs who gnawed dead reptiles were also among the victims. Veterinarians throughout South Florida were baffled near the end of January when they began seeing unusually large number of dogs coming to them with creeping paralysis, starting in the hindquarters, moving forward, and in extreme cases causing the dogs to suffocate. Intubation saved some, but "In at least two such South Florida cases, dogs who could not breathe were euthanized," reported Elinor J. Brecher of the Miami Herald.
Veterinary neurologist Brian Roberts of Veterinary Specialists of South Florida in Cooper City eventually recognized the symptoms as possible botulism poisoning--rare in mammals, but treatable with an antitoxin if promptly recognized. Roberts alerted fellow vets. The International Society for Infectious Diseases amplified the warming, but appealed for confirmation of the unprecedented finding.
Botulism is caused by an anaerobic bacterium, most notorious for contaminating canned food that has been inadequately cooked before canning. In nature botulism most often attacks waterfowl, but may be found in the remains of other species.
University of Florida wildlife scientist Frank Mazzotti in an early February assessment of field reports noted "at least 70 dead crocodiles, 77 manatee carcasses, and perhaps the biggest fish kill in modern Florida history," recounted Curtis Morgan of the Miami Herald. The manatee deaths from cold exceeded by 21 the then-record losses from a 2009 cold snap. Morgan called the crocodile deaths "a significant hit to a species removed from the endangered list only three years ago."
"What we witnessed was a major ecological disturbance equal to a fire or a hurricane,'" Mazzotti said. But Mazzotti noted that iguanas in particular appear to have increased their resiliance in response to previous Florida cold snaps. "Although the population gets knocked back a bit, iguanas don't seem to be disappearing," he told Morgan.
Even shallow water corals were reportedly afflicted in the Florida Keys, from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas beyond Key West. "It's ecosystem-wide mortality," said Nature Conservancy marine science coordinator Meaghan Johnson.
"Star and brain corals that can take hundreds of years to grow are white and lifeless as bones. Dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish litter the bottom," wrote Morgan.
About 4,300 of more than 5,000 hypothermic sea turtles who were found still alive were successfully treated at rescue centers around the Florida coast, including at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, opened just a few days before the crisis began.
Gumbo Limbo staff and volunteers from the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, Walt Disney's Wild Animal Kingdom, and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center took the opportunity to remove fibropapilloma tumors from 35 of the 170 sea turtles who were treated at Gumbo Limbo, reported Palm Beach Post staff writer Samantha Frank. Left untreated, the tumors can kill sea turtles.
The January cold hurt sea turtles as far west as Corpus Christi, Texas. Texas rescuers found about 425 hypothermic sea turtles, but Sea Turtle Inc. of South Padre Island, the Animal Rehabilitation Keep, and the Texas State Aquarium among them were only able to save about 100, Lynn Brezosky of the San Antonio Express-News reported.
Most of the Florida and Texas turtle victims were green sea turtles, but two rare Kemp's Ridley sea turtles washed ashore in Alabama. One was found dead. The other recovered and was returned to the sea on January 22, reported Ben Raines of the Mobile Press-Register.
Contrasting with the conservationist concern for the endangered and threatened species was the glee of many, including on the Miami Herald staff, at the deaths of pythons.
More than 1,000 Burmese pythons have been found in the Everglades in recent years. Python trappers working on behalf of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission in January 2010 also captured three African rock pythons and an anaconda, believed to be the first giant snake of South American descent to be found in Florida. Nile monitors have been found in the past.
All are believed to have descended from released or escaped pets. Florida did not regulate the reptile trade until 2008.
Pythons in their native habitat usually respond to cold weather by burrowing into the deepest, dryest places they can find and going into torpor. Frezing rain may have thwarted that strategy in Florida.
Whether the presence in Florida of either iguanas or pythons should be regarded as an ecological problem is a matter of debate.
Iguanas inhabit most of the Carrib-ean region, and Florida is within their normal climatic range.
Pythons--and anacondas--evolved, long before mammals existed, as predators of crocodilians. The constricting method of killing used by pythons and anacondas takes advantage of the "death roll" used by crocodilians to drown prey and fend of attackers.
Historically, giant constricting snakes occur wherever crocodilians--such as American alligators and crocodiles--are abundant. The U.S. until recently was an exception, lacking giant constrictors since the Ice Ages, but as the alligator population native from Florida to Texas expands northward and westward, with no other major predators except humans, pythons and anacondas enjoy a growing habitat niche, from which extirpating them may not be possible.
Captive pythons have killed humans, including a two-year-old girl in Sumter County, Florida, in July 2009, but wild pythons so rarely harm humans that in much of India and Southeast Asia the presence of a python is believed to indicate a safe place to wash clothing and bathe, as the python affords protection against leopards and crocodiles. --Merritt Clifton

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Tiger defenders sued

BANGKOK--Wildlife Friends founder Edwin Wiek and representatives of the Bangkok Post on February 3, 2010 entered their responses to a defamation case filed against them by the Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno Forest Monastery, better known as the Tiger Temple.
According to Tiger Temple publicity, the facility "started in 1999," with "a sick baby tiger, orphaned by poachers," and expanded to house other tiger orphans."
Under Buddhist influence, the tigers "even sit for the meditating sessions with the monks," and also are extensively handled by thousands of paying visitors.
The British wildlife charity Care for the Wild International contends that investigations it did of the Tiger Temple in 2005-2008 "revealed evidence of tigers being regularly beaten, having urine sprayed into their faces, being forced to sit in direct sunshine for hours on end, and being kept in poor conditions with inadequate feeding."
Care for the Wild "also uncovered evidence of illegal trade and breeding of tigers at the temple," according to the Care for the Wild web site. "Tigers are reported to be extremely lethargic during photo sessions," the web site adds, "leading to concerns they may be drugged."
The actual origin of the temple tigers is unclear, Care for the Wild found, but because they appear to be hybrids of Southeast Asian and Siberian subspecies, Care for the Wild believes they were captive-bred.
The Thai Department of National Parks, Plants and Wildlife in 2002 declared that the temple was operating illegally, but allowed it to remain open because there was nowhere else for the tigers to go, according to Care for the Wild.
Wiek and the Bangkok Post were sued for reporting about the Care for the Wild findings.
Wiek has coped with legal threats before. In 2004, after Wiek exposed the possession of more than 70 smuggled orangutans by the Safari World zoo, Wildlife Friends was repeatedly raided and Wiek himself was briefly jailed. Eventually Wiek was fined $525 and given an eight-month suspended jail sentence for possessing 11 former pet macaques who had been given to the Thai Animal Guardians Association by their keepers, and were relocated to better housing at Wildlife Friends after the Thai forestry department declined to take them.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Israel to ban fur?

TEL AVIV--The Israeli ministerial committee on law and constitution on February 7, 2009 unanimously approved a bill to ban the import and export of fur garments, except for shtreimels, a type of fur hat traditionally worn by Hassidic Jews.
"The bill, prohibiting originally only trade in cat and dog fur, has been expanded to include all fur from all mammals," explained Let The Animals Live founder Eli Altman. "Now the Education, Culture and Sports Ministry committee will vote on the amendment," Altman added. "With their approval the bill will be put to a second and then third reading before finally being past into law."
Introduced by Knesset member Ronit Tirosh, and passed by the Knesset on first reading as initially written, the bill was expanded at request of agriculture minister Shalom Simchon. Simchon argued that wild animals suffer the same cruelties in fur production as dogs and cats, and that having to distinguish one type of fur from another would excessively burden customs officers.
Nitzan Horowitz, member of the Knesset from Meretz, introduced a bill to ban fur garments in early 2009, but it did not advance. Knesset member Ronit Triosh introduced the bill to ban dog and cat fur.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Farm animal initiative in Ohio builds on California success

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Ohioans for Humane Farms, a coalition headed by the Humane Society of the U.S. and Farm Sanctuary, on February 1, 2010 began gathering signatures to place an initiative on the November 2010 Ohio state ballot which, if approved by voters, would require the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board to ban lifelong confinement of veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens.
The initiative would also require that downed pigs and cattle must be euthanized by methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association, and would ban transporting downed cows and calves to be slaughtered for human consumption.
"The measure directs the Livestock Board to adopt these standards within six years," said HSUS president Wayne Pacelle. "I have encouraged the Livestock Board," yet to be appointed, "to do so immediately, and not to wait for the six-year clock to run out."
The 13-member Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board was created by Issue 2 on the November 2009 Ohio ballot, an agribusiness proposal that was put before the voters by the Ohio legislature. Agribusiness lobbyists hoped to thwart any attempt by animal advocates to regulate farming by initiative in Ohio, after a measure similar to the Ohio proposal was approved by 63% of the California electorate in November 2008.
"In February of last year," recounted Pacelle, "I met with the leaders of the Ohio Pork Producers Council, the Ohio Farm Bureau, and other agribusiness leaders and asked them to work with us to find a pathway to improve farm animal welfare in Ohio. Unlike agriculture leaders in neighboring Michigan, who sat down with us and hatched a compromise," passed in September 2009, "Ohio's agribusiness trade associations refused even to entertain a dialogue."
Proponents of Issue 2 reportedly anticipated that an HSUS-backed initiative to help farm animals would also be on the November 2009 ballot, or at least that HSUS would spend heavily to try to defeat Issue 2, which nonetheless would pass handily by appearing to favor animal welfare.
But instead of fighting Issue 2, HSUS opted to accept the creation of the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board at face value, and work to make it responsive to animal welfare concerns.
"HSUS spent nearly no money opposing Issue 2," Pacelle said, "while proponents used millions from factory farming giants to pass it. Now that it's passed, we look forward to working with the Livestock Board," with "a very specific and reasonable plan of action for the members to consider: pass the farm animal welfare initiative."
The Ohio initiative process began by submitting to the Ohio Attorney General a petition including signatures from voters in 48 of the 88 Ohio counties. This was done with the endorsements of 15 animal protection organizations, including four of the largest humane societies in Ohio, and 12 other organizations representing environmental, consumer, public health, occupational safety, and food safety concerns.
Ohioans for Humane Farms now has until June 30, 2010 to gather 403,000 valid signatures of registered voters on petitions to qualify the initiative for the state ballot. This will require actually collecting about 600,000 signatures, since signatures collected in initiative campaigns are often disqualified.
Predicted HSUS factory farming campaign director Paul Shapiro, "This is sure to be the most hard-fought of the farm animal ballot measures to date."
Agreed Pacelle, "Our polling numbers are about the same as in California," at the same stage in the California initiative campaign, "but if agribusiness outspends us by a factor of two to one, then we'll have our hands full. But we're playing to win here. We're charging ahead because the numbers are at the threshold of what we need to win.

HFA role

Pacelle credited an undercover investigation by the Humane Farming Association with helping to awaken Ohio voters in support of farm animal protection.
"A factory farmer in Wayne County, Ohio decided that he'd kill lame or otherwise unwanted pigs on his farm by hanging them by a chain from a fully extended front-end loader," Pacelle recounted. "The HFA undercover investigator recorded it all. A trial ensued. The operation's owner and his allies in agribusiness mounted a defense. He was found not guilty for the hangings.
"The judge ruled that Ohio had no standards forbidding strangulation and hanging of farm animals. The Ohio Pork Producers Council declared the outcome a 'huge victory.' The agribusiness lobby provided $10,000 for the defense. This was a shameful outcome, and proves that there is a gap in the law.
"Sadly," Pacelle said, "the Ohio Farm Bureau has never supported the most fundamental animal welfare improvements in their state. It has not supported efforts to crack down on cockfighting, to upgrade the cruelty law, or to check the excesses of puppy mills."
As Pacelle spoke, Missouri Farm Bureau director of marketing and commodities Kelly Smith told a gathering of the Polk County Farm Bureau that an initiative petition seeking to place a "Puppy Mill Cruelty Protection Act" on the 2010 Missouri state ballot is a front for seeking "the abolition of all animal agriculture."
Earlier, Missouri Farm Family Agriculture Alliance spokesperson Sharon Oetting in a press release charged that HSUS is "targeting Missouri dog breeders in a veiled attempt to regulate animal agriculture in Missouri."
HSUS is a part of a coalition called Missourians for the Protection of Dogs, who need to collect about 130,000 valid signatures from Missouri voters by May 2, 2010.
Efforts to improve regulation of commercial dog breeders in Missouri actually predate the 1954 formation of HSUS by about 20 years, and have been introduced in almost every state legislative session since then. The issue has not previously been taken directly to Missouri voters.

AR excluded

"South Dakota's laws governing the treatment of livestock and work animals will come under review this year, and changes could be made during the 2011 legislative session," predicted Peter Harriman of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader on January 26, 2010. A South Dakota law that was last reviewed by the legislature in 1991 prohibits "inflicting unnecessary and unjustifiable pain and suffering on animals," Harriman explained, "but holds the standard of care to be generally accepted practices in agriculture."
The meaning of "generally accepted practices" has changed since 1991, and may change further, in part as result of amended laws in other states, South Dakota state veterinarian and Animal Industries Board executive director Dustin Oedekoven told Harriman.
"Notably excluded from the [review] process will be animal rights groups," Harriman noted. "The South Dakota Farm Bureau hopes to use the review to prevent changing ethics about livestock in other states from being adopted in South Dakota. Farm Bureau executive director Mike Held notes docking tails of dairy cattle is a common practice, but in big dairy states such as Washing-ton and California, there are strong efforts to ban it. He also wants to derail an attempt to reclassify horses as companion animals."
The Farm Bureau and other agribusiness lobbies have repeatedly thwarted attempts to introduce felony penalties for cruelty to animals in South Dakota. Only three other states lack felony penalties for animal cruelty.

Docking bans

Docking cows' tails was banned in California in October 2009, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed a bill that he had threatened to veto during a prolonged budget dispute with the state legislature.
New York State Assembly member Linda Rosenthal introduced a similar bill in January 2010, days after ABC World News Tonight, Nightline, CNN, and many other broadcast, online, and print media aired undercover video of tail-docking and dehorning obtained by the Chicago-based vegan advocacy group Mercy for Animals.
Mercy for Animals founder Nathan Runkle said the video images were collected between December 2008 and February 2009 at Willet Dairy in Locke, New York, 30 miles southwest of Syracuse. Willet Dairy is reportedly the largest dairy farm in New York state.
Before releasing the video material to media, Mercy for Animals and American SPCA director of farm animal welfare Robert Baker sought unsuccessfully to prosecute Willet Dairy. The Cayuga County District Attorney's Office declined to press charges in August 2009, Runkle told Mary Esch of Associated Press.
Runkle said the video led to the Denver-based cheese producer Leprino Foods dropping Willet as a milk supplier. Leprino customers include the Pizza Hut, Dominos, and Papa John's pizza chains, the three largest in the world.
After Schwarzenegger signed the California law against docking cows' tails into law, but before the Mercy for Animals video aired, the National Milk Producers Federation introduced a new standards program called Farmers Assuring Responsible Management.
According to the free downloadable National Milk Producers Federation Animal Care Manual, "Tail docking of dairy calves is not recommendedŠSwitch trimming is recommended as a preferred alternative."
"The federation figures self-imposed regulations are better than having HSUS force them on the industry through referendums," commented Associated Press writer Tracie Cone. "They believe the Humane Society-led ban this year on tail docking at dairies in California, the nation's No. 1 dairy state, signaled a new focus on the milk industry."
"Anecdotal reports of the benefits of tail docking are not currently supported by data in the scientific literature," commented the American Veterinary Medical Association in a January 10, 2010 background report entitled Welfare Implications of Dairy Cow Tail Docking. "Tail docking has been experimentally shown to cause minimal adverse physiologic effects," the AVMA conceded. "However, fly avoidance behaviors are more frequent in docked cattle, suggesting potential long-term adverse behavioral effects. Increased temperature sensitivity and the presence of neuromas suggest that chronic pain may be associated with the procedure."
Tail-docking horses was already illegal in both California and New York. Belgian-breed draft horses' tails were commonly docked for decades, but Belgium banned docking horses' tails in 2001.
Nearly 30 nations now prohibit docking dogs' tails.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Beef ranchers lean on Cal Poly

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.-- "Top officials at Harris Ranch are trying to use their clout as big-money donors to censor what's taught at Cal Poly's College of Agriculture," editorialized the San Luis Obispo Tribune News on January 17, 2010.
"Specifically," the editorial charged, "they threatened to withhold $500,000 in donations for a new meat-processing center, unless the university tones down teaching about alternatives to the traditional factory farming methods practiced by Harris Ranch."
The editorial came after Tribune News reporter Nick Wilson and columnist Bob Cuddy cited e-mails obtained through a Public Records Act request to disclose that Harris Ranch lobbied to have California Polytechnic State University faculty member Robert T. Rutherford quit teaching an Issues in Animal Agriculture course he had initiated more than 10 years ago.
Rutherford, a Cal Poly animal science faculty member since 1974, told The Tribune News that he voluntarily turned the class over to another faculty member, yet to be named, because he expects to retire within a few years.
"Harris Ranch, based in Selma near Fresno, is one of the nation's largest beef-processing centers," explained Wilson. Harris Ranch is headed by Cal Poly alumni David Wood and Michael Smith. "Wood had pledged to donate $150,000, and company owner John Harris pledged $350,000 toward Cal Poly's new meat-processing center," Wilson continued. Construction is to start this spring.
But the plans were jeopardized, Wilson and Cuddy wrote, when Wood and Smith learned that Rutherford's reading list included Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, and Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser. Both books criticize factory farming.
"After a September 14 (2009) phone conversation between Smith and Rutherford, Wood sent an e-mail to Cal Poly President Warren Baker seeking Rutherford's removal from teaching the course," Wilson summarized.
Wood objected in later correspondence that Rutherford had said "grain-fed production systems were not sustainable, that corn should not be fed to cattle, and especially not in large-scale animal feeding systems. Mr. Rutherford then had the audacity to offer Mike (Smith) an entirely unsolicited opinion that water should have never been provided to farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley," Wood said. "As Harris Ranch operates one of the largest farms in this region, Mr. Rutherford implies Harris Ranch should not be farming."
Apparently speaking of Pollan, Wood added, "I do not need Cal Poly making this business even more difficult by giving this activist an audience."
Facing the consequences of a January 21, 2010 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that will allow agribusiness to increase spending in support of favored political candidates, Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle acknowledged to ANIMAL PEOPLE, "We've been following it a bit."
Pacelle called the Harris Ranch corres-pondence a "Typical heavy-handed approach from agribusiness. There is an unholy alliance between industry, government, and academia," Pacelle charged, "and Harris Ranch is seeking to rein in a university flirting with the idea of exposing students to alternative views of conventional agriculture."
Farm Sanctuary president Gene Baur described the Harris Ranch pressure on Cal Poly to ANIMAL PEOPLE as, "The actions of an industry that depends on keeping the public in the dark about the abuses animals are forced to suffer behind closed doors. If Harris Ranch is so interested in education," Baur challenged, "they should open their doors to visitors."

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Discussion of draft Chinese animal welfare bill ignites over eating dogs and cats

BEIJING--Released in late 2009 to promote public discussion, a draft Chinese animal welfare act produced by an academic committee had by mid-February 2010 generated a media storm nationwide.
"The proposed draft will be submitted to relevant government departments in April," reported Deng Shasha, editor of China Daily, the largest Chinese newspaper. "Before being adopted as a law," Deng Shasha explained, "the draft must go through the State Council and then receive three readings at the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the top legislative authority. The draft is not included in the legislative agenda for 2008-2013 released by the National People's Congress Standing Committee," Deng Shasha cautioned, "indicating it might be a few years before it is adopted as a law."
"It may be months or a year before the draft bill is actually voted on by lawmakers, but the plan is to submit it to the legislature and State Council by April," elaborated Xinhua News Agency editor Li Xianzhi. Li Xianzhi paraphrased drafting committee chair Chang Jiwen, director of the Social Law Research Department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The most vocal opposition to the draft law--and the most vocal praise for it-- concerned a ban on eating dogs and cats described by Chang Jiwen to staff of the Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, Beijing Legal Evening News, and Global Times on January 25, 2010.
The ban on eating dogs and cats was not in the English translation produced two months earlier by Royal SPCA senior manager of international programs Paul Littlefair. According to the Littlefair translation, Article 162 of the draft bill provides only that, "People's Governments at the provincial level may prohibit or restrict the slaughter of dogs, cats and other animals in their jurisdiction."
Littlefair and Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, were members of the drafting committee, along with one Australian academic of Chinese descent, Chang Jiwen, and 17 other Chinese university professors.
Speaking after Chang Jiwen on January 25, China National Native Produce & Animal By-Products Import and Export Corporation spokesperson Shi Yufan told the assembled media that her company supports the draft bill. "It may help remove trade barriers faced by China's exporters of products such as wool and feathers," the Beijing Legal Evening News said.
"It is everyone's responsibility to treat animals well and use them in the most humane way," Shi Yufan stated. "We human beings take too much from them," Shi Yufan continued, "but never learn to repay them."
Beijing attorney Lu Junxiang, of the Dongwei Law Firm, predicted that the draft bill would not take effect, because it "fails to consider the people who eat dog and cat meat as a folk custom."
Chang Jiwen "conceded that the draft will respect local cultures, such as Korean eating habits, and may exclude them from the ban," wrote Li Xianzhi.
"Though most Western cultures view the consumption of dog or cat meat as a taboo," Li Xianshi noted, "the practice has been considered a cultural tradition for those living in China's southern provinces like Guangdong and Jiangxi, as well as in northeastern provinces neighboring the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."
Elsewhere, Chang Jiwen said, "few people still eat dog or cat meat in China."
Informally polling more than 100,000 users, the Chinese web portal Sohu.com found that 52% of respondents would ban eating dogs and cats, and 48% would punish the offense--but 33% oppose such a ban and 45% would not punish eating dogs and cats. This division of opinion is far wider than the appearance of near-unanimity that the Chinese government usually seeks before introducing new legislation.
Paraphrasing the Chongqing Evening News, Liu Zhen and Lucy Hornby of Reuters noted opposition from officials in Jiangsu province, where dogs are often eaten.
"Cooking them alive must be punished, but which meat to eat should be people's own choice," asserted a commentary in the Nanjing edition of China Daily.
Veterinarian Kati Loeffler, an IFAW consultant best known for treating giant panda bears in China, cautioned members of the Asian Animal Protection Network that the debate over eating dogs and cats might sidetrack momentum toward passing the draft animal welfare act.
"The issue here is not whether the consumption of dog meat should be punished," Loeffler wrote. "The issue is the development of a law that addresses the welfare of animals. Initiating argument over an issue that challenges Chinese tradition will weaken public support for the law," Loeffler worried. "Of course I think the slaughter of dogs is wrong, as I think about the slaughter of any sentient creature. But the development of an animal welfare law in China needs to focus on the issue that everyone agrees on: the need to protect animals who are directly under the care or power of human beings. The politics of the drafting of this law have been weak from the start and have now slid badly sideways," Loeffler said.
"There are still many difficulties to overcome before legislators incorporate the article against consumption of dog and cat meat into the draft law," Chang Jiwen acknowledged. The Beijing Legal Evening News reported that four months of public consultation had generated more than 300 emails and more than 400 telephone calls to Chang Jiwen. "Some said they cannot accept the proposals related to 'animal protection' or 'welfare for animals' because they think that the first priority is to protect human welfare," Chang Jiwen said. "The panel decided to change the name of the draft bill to Law on Anti-cruelty to Animals," to get around that objection.

Lab animals

Generating less public debate, but much concern among animal advocates, is that the draft bill sought to incorporate whatever animal welfare provisions and regulations existed in previous law. This meant that some parts of the draft bill are quite detailed and specific, sometimes in problematic ways, while others include few specifics and leave drafting enforcement regulations until later.
As public discussion of the draft bill intensified, new rules governing the use of laboratory animals came into effect in Chongqing, Wang Huazhong of China Daily reported on January 28.
"Lab animals, who already have their contributions engraved on a monument here, will be tested while under anesthetic, and not in the presence of the same species during experimentation, according to new rules introduced by the local science and technology commission," Wang Huazhong wrote. "Institutes and individuals conducting scientific and medical research are required to follow the management provisions for lab animals."
The monument in honor of lab animals was dedicated by Chongqing university researchers in 2003.
"Every year in Chongqing about 130,000 animals, including rodents, are used in labs," Wang Huazhong noted. "Research institutes in Chongqing breed annually more than 170,000 animals, including rabbits, dogs, and 50,000 mice and rats. They use 80% of the animals for scientific and medical research. Use of lab animals nationwide is increasing at an annual rate of 20% to 30% in the past three years," Wang Huazhong finished, citing Chinese Association for Laboratory Animal Sciences data.
Unclear was whether the new Chongqing rules were introduced separately from the provisions governing lab animals in the draft animal welfare bill, or represent a local attempt to implement the draft provisions before they become national law.
--Merritt Clifton

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Letters

Rhinos & elephants

Re "Zimbabwe suspends hunting to save rhinos," in your January/February 2010 edition, I have no doubt that rhino poaching is closely linked to ivory trade. I have circulated your article to the Kenya Elephant Forum. As a forum we oppose Tanzania's current proposal to downlist the African elephant population from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species appendix I, meaning that elephants and their parts may not be sold internationally, to appendix II.
Tanzania and Kenya share elephant populations. Kenya was not consulted by Tanzania before Tanzania prepared their proposal.
--Steve Itela
Youth for Conservation
P.O. Box 27689
Nyayo Stadium
Nairobi 00506, Kenya;
Phone; 254-733-617286
<itela@youthforconservation.org>

Sacrifice

A couple of articles in the November/December 2009 edition of Animal People dealt with animal sacrifice (although one of the mentioned slaughters did begin with drops of blood from the body of a human leader).
The normal concept of sacrifice is giving up something of personal value, as in Jesus sacrificing his life on the cross, parents sacrificing their vacations for a child's education, etc).
We need--all of us--to engender personal responsibility. Killing an animal doesn't require anything of us other than blatant cruelty. Unless the animal is voluntarily willing to die for our religion, what some call "sacrifice" is nothing more than self-serving slaughter.
--Tim I. Martin
<whatifi@earthlink.net>
Corona, California

King pigeons

People here in the San Francisco Bay area are buying baby king pigeons from live food markets and setting them "free," either to save them from being butchered for the dinner table or to release them as part of a wedding or funeral ceremony--in which case they should be using white homing pigeons who are trained to return home and have a home to return to!
What these people are doing is just dumping helpless creatures into a short life of fear, misery and death. King pigeons are domestic birds who have no survival skills. They don't know where to go or how to find food. Few survive long enough to get to shelters. Those who do are sick, injured, and starved.
These birds are extremely smart, sweet creatures, and if people were better informed, they would never want them to be wandering around lost, hungry, doomed.
--Elizabeth Young
San Francisco, California
<adoptkings@gmail.com>
<www.RescueReport.org>

Eating birds

After implementing neuter/return of feral cats here in my corner of the world, I got some criticism from bird lovers. When I asked them if they eat chicken or turkey, almost all said they do. I tell them that chickens and turkeys are birds too; are they less sacred? That usually ends it and they walk away angry.
--Michael Sowders
Life Time Friends Animal Sanctuary
P.O. Box 54
Careywood, Idaho 83809
(208) 755-6298

Russian animal labs

Perm State Pharmaceutical Academy on February 4, 2010 became the 10th Russian higher education institution to work with InterNICHE to introduce alternatives to animal labs. We provide computer programs for use instead of dissection and animal experimentation, while the academy agrees to stop all student animal labs.
The St. Petersburg State Academy of Veterinary Medicine in October 2005 became the first Russian higher education institution to work with us, cancelling pharmacology and toxicology experiments. The Velikie Luki State Agricultural Academy signed an agreement in 2006 that covers the whole faculty of animal science. At both institutions there has been significant further progress.
--Nick Jukes, coordinator
InterNICHE
98 Clarendon Park Road
Leicester LE2 3AE, U.K.
Phone: 44 116 210 9652
<coordinator@interniche.org>
<www.interniche.org>

Breeders & taxes

Backyard breeders of puppies, birds, snakes, big cats, and other species sell them, but, do they pay taxes on the sales? The IRS hates tax evaders.
--Karen Benzel
Carmel, California
<KarenBenzelPR@Comcast.net>

India, China, DVDs

I was just looking back through past issues of ANIMAL PEOPLE, especially noting the recent progress in India and China. I hope your realize what a part you have played in this. Without your in-depth coverage, we would have no connection with those in other nations who are so dedicated and working against such odds.
I still get numerous requests monthly for our DVD Prosecuting Animal Cruelty & Illegal Animal Fighting, reviewed in your April 2004 edition, and for QuickSpay, reviewed in October 2005. Both are distributed to bona fide humane organizations free of charge. I sent out more than 100 copies of QuickSpay in January, and am burning 200 copies of the Spanish version for a veterinary conference in Mexico in April. I hope to make a couple of new ones soon.
--Phyllis M. Daugherty, director
Animal Issues Movement
420 N. Bonnie Brae St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
Phone: 213-413-SPAY
<ANIMALISSU@aol.com>

Friends of Plymouth Pound & PetSmart Charities

After mentioning that PetSmart Charities had achieved four million adoptions since 1992 through the PetSmart adoption centers, the November/ December 2009 ANIMAL PEOPLE editorial noted that "Friends of the Plymouth Pound, on Cape Cod, called a boycott of PetSmart because, after 10 years, the PetSmart store in Hyannis chose to work with a different adoption partner."
ANIMAL PEOPLE had on November 17, 2009 received an e-mail from Friends of the Plymouth Pound board member Beth Hennessy stating, "I am boycotting PetsMart and am encouraging everyone I know to do so also."
Wrote Friends of the Plymouth Pound founder Gayle Fitzpatrick to ANIMAL PEOPLE on January 28, 2009, "Friends of the Plymouth Pound never called for a boycott of PetSmartŠBeth made a mistake and I am certain that this will never happen again...She was not speaking for the organization."

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Good winter for bison

WEST YELLOWSTONE--Montana hunters killed only one bison who roamed out of Yellowstone National Park during the winter of 2009-2010, after killing only one the previous winter. The state issued 144 bison tags to members of the Nez Perce tribe, and 144 to other Montana hunters.
During the harsh winters of 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 more than 1,000 bison were either shot or trucked to slaughter after testing positive as potential carriers of brucellosis, feared by the Montana cattle industry, but few bison left Yellowstone during the mild past two winters.
With less work to do protecting bison from being shot or slaughtered, the Buffalo Field Campaign on January 15 removed two miles of abandoned barbed wire fencing from a wildlife migration corridor within Gallatin National Forest.
The Bureau of Land Management is coordinating a similar volunteer fence removal project at Carrizo Plain National Monument in California, primarily to help young pronghorn antelope, who are often cornered against old fencing by coyotes.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Animal welfare is Chinese tradition, says prof

CHENGDU--Legislating on behalf of animals is not a break with Chinese culture and tradition, but rather a rediscovery of ancient Chinese values, Central Institute of Socialism professor Mang Ping recently told an ActAsia forum on promoting animal welfare legislation.
"In Chinese history there is a long tradition of protecting animals, but we forget about the past. We have the same sympathy and mercy as the West towards animals," Mang Ping declared, according to notes taken by Animals Asia Foundation founder Jill Robinson.
"The Tang Dynasty," for example, "was a glorious period of civilisation," Mang Ping continued. "During the 300-year rule of the Tangs, demonstrating the mercy of Buddhism and Taoism, slaughter was suspended each year for one third of the 365 days. People were not allowed to slaughter animals, nor to buy fish in the markets.
"Our culture is embedded in benevolence, which is the core of Buddhism," Mang Ping emphasized. "If we lose benevolence, we lose Chinese culture. In the Qing dynasty we introduced Buddhism and Taoism into Confucianism. Buddhism introduced the mercy of not killing into Confucianism.
"Ancient manuscripts show that animal protection was the first activity to be regulated by the ancient dynasties," Mang Ping said. "People under the Qing dynasty were not allowed to kill cubs, or pregnant animals, or working animals. Today you can see people eating young animals," Mang Ping acknowledged, "and this is a shame on the Chinese people."

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

The importance of humane education by Wu Tianyu

Among the few nations which have almost every type of ecosystem, from tropical rainforest to desert to steppe, China has great natural bioversity, including such species unique to China as giant pandas, 19 varieties of pheasant, three golden monkeys, Przewalski's Horse, Przewalski's gazelle, wild yaks, and Tibetan antelope.
China also breeds 1 billion pigs, 10 billion chickens, and 200 million cattle each year-more than any other nation.
In addition, China breeds more wildlife in captivity than any other nation.
Even by the lowest recent estimates, Chinese people also keep more pets than any other nation: two to seven times more pet dogs, and more pet cats than dogs.
Yet our wildlife, our farm animals, and even our pets are often badly treated. Lacking animal welfare legislation, China is in this sense behind more than 110 other nations. Animals suffer from low status in China because the national education system does nothing to promote animal welfare.
When we understand the relationship between humans and animals, it is clear that treating animals with compassion is essential to fostering human virtue.
The more civilized a society, the wider is its scope of care. The moral shortcomings of a nation cannot be overcome through economic development and scientific advances. This requires enlightenment and education. Therefore, it is essential to integrate humane education into the Chinese educational system. China has more students than any other nation. This means that China has huge potential to promote humane values through education, from kindergarten to university. When humane education is a part of most people's education, most people will recognize the importance of treating animals in an ethical manner, and will support legislation prohibiting cruelty.

Wu Tianyu founded Animal Rescue Beijing in 1987, and established the China University Union for the Protection of Animals in 2009. CUUPA, now including 110 chapters at 110 universities in six provinces, advocates the integration of humane education into the Chinese curriculum, and promotes the passage of animal welfare legislation in China.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Retired cavalry general rides to the rescue of Animal Birth Control programs

CHENNAI, AHMEDABAD-- Responding to alleged corruption that has in recent years crippled the Indian national Animal Birth Control program, Animal Welfare Board of India chair Rammehar Kharb warned the cities of Ahmedabad and Ludhiana against employing unauthorized ABC providers.
"You are requested to cancel your ABC contract awarded to Animal Shelter & Hospital at Ahmedabad Foundation, which is not recognized or registered with AWBI," Kharb wrote to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, "failing which AWBI will be constrained to initiate action in the matter."
A similar warning went to Ludhiana for contracting for ABC services with the Amritsar-based firm Doggie Lane.
Kharb, a veterinarian and retired general in the Indian Army Remount Corps, notified ABC providers after the mid-2009 publication of the AWBI Standard Operating Procedure Manual for Sterilization of Stray Dogs that they must comply with the SOP to continue to receive AWBI funding.
The AWBI, a federal agency, underwrites city ABC services on a matching basis. Monitoring performance, however, has lagged behind allocating funds. This has attracted unscrupulous service contractors.
"There are two kinds of unscrupulous contractors," explains Abodh Aras of the Mumbai ABC service provider Welfare of Stray Dogs. "Some do this for the money, and show fictitious figures. The public then believes that many more sterilizations have been conducted than have actually been done.
"Others catch dogs who have already been sterilized, or do surgeries with a high mortality rate, which is akin to a killing rate. Then there are well-meaning people who either have no expertise in running an ABC program, or are misguided, or are plain stupid," whose incompetence calls the value of ABC into doubt.
Aras in August 2009 recommended that the AWBI should publish a list of ABC service providers whose performance has flunked the AWBI standards.
Clementien Pauws, founder of the Karuna Society in Puttaparthi, added detail to Aras' descriptions of ABC mismangement.
Once, responding to a complaint from a veterinary student who found five badly spayed dogs dead on a road, Pauws said she found that the local ABC facility "was an old chicken barn without electricity or water, and only mesh instead of windows. The operating theatre consisted of an old table," Pauws remembered, with "no medication or other equipment. Inside were no holding facilities. The building was dirty and unused for a long time," Pauws found. "Outside it was painted nicely, with a sign. We took photos and reported our findings." Despite Pauws' report, she testified, the organization received funding to perform another 1,000 ABC surgeries, after purportedly doing 500.
"We went to their office and asked for the details," Pauws said. "On paper, 500 dogs were sterilized or castrated. Not one dog died, not one had a problem, none had internal bleeding, none were pregnant, none had a pyometra, none had distemper, there were no maggot wounds, and none had dog bites," indicating a need for rabies quarantine. "Yet everything was properly signed for by the relevant authorities," Pauws marvelled.
The AWBI "has received several complaints against ASHA Foundation for claiming money for bogus sterilizations," Kharb wrote to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.
The first Ahmedabad ABC service provider was the Animal Help Foundation, founded in 2000 by Rahul Sehgal, who now coordinates ABC programs in several other Indian cities and in Bhutan, where he works under the auspices of Humane Society International. In 2005-2006 Animal Help sterilized 55,000 dogs in Ahmedabad, introducing to India the use of gas anesthesia and same-day release of dogs, if they are operated on without complications.
ASHA bid against Animal Help for the Ahmedabad ABC contracts in 2007. The contract allocation was delayed for more than six months. Unable to pay the Animal Help veterinarians to work in Ahmedabad, Sehgal transferred teams to Bangalore, where they are still active, and to Hyderabad, where the Blue Cross of Hyderabad had already withdrawn from providing ABC service after encountering alleged corruption.
Animal Help left Hyderabad after experiencing mob violence allegedly incited by the same factions who had discouraged the Blue Cross of Hyderabad.
Meanwhile the Animal Help surgical methods became controversial after several veterinarians who claimed to have been trained by Animal Help botched numerous surgeries while working for other ABC programs.
An eight-member veterinary team sent by AWBI to investigate the Animal Help surgical approach evaluated, vindicated, and recommended it in 2009.
In the interim, two persons associated with ASHA invaded the Animal Help office in Ahmedabad on July 30, 2007, menacing Sehgal with staves while destroying three computers and damaging his vehicle. Kharb urged the Ahmedabad police commissioner to prosecute the alleged offenders, but ASHA nonetheless ended up as the major Ahmedabad ABC contract holder, with Animal Help handling only a small part of the city.
On November 30, 2007 ASHA director Harmesh Bhatt appealed to ANIMAL PEOPLE for funding with which to buy vehicles and surgical equipment, claiming that ASHA was "a registered trust approved by the Government of India."
Two years later, on November 20, 2009, Jamalpur district councillor Imran Khedavala asserted to the High Court of Gujarat that the Ahmedabad street dog population had increased from 230,000 to more than 300,000. Unsuccessfully seeking an order that Ahmedabad should begin killing street dogs, which would contradict the national law that created the ABC program, Khedavala blamed both ASHA and Animal Help.
Khedavala's action encouraged Zahid Qureshi and Ruturaj Jadav of the Ahmedabad Mirror to investigate. They found that 13,691 dogs had been sterilized in Ahmedabad, mostly by Animal Help.
"We neutered 1,400 dogs in one and a half months," Harmesh Bhatt told them. "Our participation ended four months ago."
The one and a half months coincided with the summer visits of German veterinary students Alina Pohl and Laura Schueller, who recounted their experiences on personal web sites and to the Times News Network. In their first three weeks, they told the Times News Network, they operated on 45 street dogs. In subsequent correspondence they clarified that they did no sterilization surgery.
An investigator who reported to the AWBI found no evidence that ASHA employed any other veterinary help. Yet ASHA claims to have won the ABC contract for the city of Surat, as well.
In Ludhiana, meanwhile, "Steriliz-ation of stray dogs in the city, which was to get under way on February 10, 2010, has been put on hold," reported Kuldip Bhatia of the Ludhiana Tribune. Doggie Lane had contracted to sterilize 20,000 dogs in 2010, but "lacked the required number of skilled and qualified veterinary professionals and also did not have the necessary experience in conducting surgical procedures at such a large scale," Bhatia reported.
"We have invited the second lowest bidder to take up the work," said Ludhiana commissioner A.K. Sinha.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Interest in the Chinese draft bill around Pacific Rim

TAIPEI, SEOUL-- The Chinese draft animal welfare bill attracted keen interest elsewhere around the Pacific Rim, especially as a potential precedent for strengthening the animal welfare laws of some of China's major Asian trading partners.
Business news media discussed whether the introduction of a Chinese animal welfare act will lead to international regulation of animal welfare comparable to the regulation of commerce in endangered species. Most pundits appeared to agree that whatever animal welfare legislation China enacts will become the default standard for Asia, and that no nation will prosper in trade if it has lower standards.
The Taipei-based China Post likened the persistence of dog-eating in China to the consumption of whale meat in Japan, "now marginally eaten by many of the younger generation, who see the habit as a cultural remnant."
Recommending compromise, to ensure passage of a Chinese animal welfare act without a protracted conflict over dog-eating, the China Post concluded that, "Taken as a culturally legitimate food source, dogs raised for food must be given the same humane treatment that animal welfare groups advocate for farm animals."
Changkil Park, founder of the South Korean organization Voice 4 Animals, took an opposite tack, urging China to prohibit eating dogs and cats at a February 2, 2010 rally in Seoul. "It's only a draft," Park acknowledged, "but it is important and greatly welcomed with open arms!"

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

China reportedly bans bullfights

"China has decided not to allow bullfights," International Movement Against Bullfights coordinator Maria Lopes e-mailed to supporters on Feb-ruary 7, 2010, citing "several Spanish newspapers published today." The Spanish newspapers reported that a plan by matador Manolo Sanchez to build a 7,000-seat bull ring in the Beijing suburb of Huairou had been scuttled.
The Spanish accounts were not immediately confirmed by Chinese media, but the Beijing Global Times on January 27, 2010 reported about Chinese opposition to repeated attempts to introduce Spanish-style bullfighting to China.
Global Times noted that Huairou officials had developed doubts about the project. Global Times mentioned that bullfighting was recently banned in Catalona province, Spain, and that the number of bullfights held in Spain dropped 30% in 2009. Global Times noted that news about efforts to promote bullfighting in China has usually been reported first in Spain.
A Portuguese-style bullfight was held in Shanghai in 2004, but plans to build a 6,400-seat bull ring at the Beijing Wild Animal Park were cancelled later that year.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Taipei animal rescuers tap Pacific Rim rivalry
by Merritt Clifton

TAIPEI, TAIWAN--Taipei is not a city that likes to be seen as trailing economic rival Hong Kong in anything--and that tends to help animals.
The almost equal heights of the tallest building in Taipei and the three tallest in Hong Kong attest to the intensity of the civic sibling rivalry. The three tallest Hong Kong office towers are actually slightly higher, but the Taiwan tower has six more stories.
Now fundraising to build a state-of-the-art Taipei animal adoption center is gettiing underway with quiet descriptions to affluent and influential people of what Hong Kong did ten years ago. The adoption center may be built by Animals Taiwan, or by a coalition of organizations, perhaps with government help. The details have yet to be negotiated. But there is agreement among the Taiwan animal care and advocacy community that the time to do it is now.
Hong Kong SPCA director Sandy MacAlister and director of animal care Fiona Woodhouse have recently given grand tours to several delegations of Taipei animal advocates, with more scheduled to visit soon. The Taipei visitors expect potential funders to follow, as word circulates about what they are seeing.
Hong Kong SPCA shelter architect Jill Cheshire's many innovations are now so widely emulated that few people remember where they began--but they are still revolutionary to the Taiwan visitors.
The Taipei region as yet has no gleaming no-kill adoption center, conveniently located and resembling a shopping mall. Neither does Taipei have any totally clean, quiet, odor-free animal control shelter. Taipei might still be deemed to be about 15 years behind global "best practice" standards.
Yet Taipei has compressed 150 years of shelter evolution in other parts of the world into barely 15 years of increasingly ambitious development. The fast-growing Taipei animal advocacy community shows no hint of losing momentum. To the contrary, as more is done, more is expected, pushed by a generation of young Taiwanese activists with U.S. and Canadian educations, allied with well-connected expatriates.
Hardly any of the present Taipei animal advocacy leaders were involved a decade ago, when Animals Taiwan and Taiwan SPCA founder Sean MacCormack arrived from England. MacCormack, a former bartender, had no animal advocacy or shelter management background either. He came to Taiwan to work in sales, then became a promoter of professional mixed martial arts cage fighting.
Twin sisters Connie and Annie Chiang, who coordinate most of the Taiwan SPCA activities, were then in grade school. Animals Taiwan board member Faye Angevine, the Taipei antique dealer who is now the biggest current Animals Taiwan funder, was not yet involved in organized animal work. Most of the other key volunteers, staff, and major backers of the fast-growing constellation of Taipei-area animal welfare organizations were in Taiwan and concerned, but had yet to bring their abilities and resources together.
MacCormack admits he was an unlikely galvanizing personality, but he was also an unlikely sales person and fight promoter, not knowing a word of Mandarin when he arrived, not knowing anyone in Taiwan, and having no background in martial arts. Already a vegan, MacCormack struggled for a year just to read menus and signs well enough to eat. Vegan food is widely available in Taiwan, called "monks' food," but is rarely labeled in English.
Struggling in the cage fighting business, MacCormack discovered his calling as a polite British-accented counterpart of the screen character Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, played by Jim Carey. Usually looking as sleepless and disheveled as Ace Ventura, racing around Taipei with a van full of newly rescued animals en route to veterinarians and foster homes, MacCormack soon attracted media notice through colorful animal rescue exploits. Easily recognized on the street, MacCormack had difficulty at first accepting donations and offers of help, but eventually realized "It's not for me--it's for the animals."
In other words, MacCormack laughs, "I became desperate enough to accept."
That mental breakthrough enabled MacCormack to start asking for more help, including the help of people with the skills he didn't have. "That was every skill," MacCormack admits. "I had a good idea what a successful humane society should be doing, and what attributes our staff should have, but I either had to learn how to do everything on the fly, or find volunteers who could do it. I had the good fortune that many talented volunteers found me."
The original shelters in Taiwan were, and remain, the shacks of "kind mothers," as local rescuers are called. Most are older women, but not all. The shacks are basically feeding stations for street dogs and feral cats, with some protection against the elements and sometimes cages for puppies, kittens, and sick or injured animals. Crudely built with scrap materials, they are typically to be found back in the bushes near shrines where people dump unwanted pets and litters.
MacCormack's first humane project in Taiwan was encouraging "kind mothers" to cooperate with efforts to sterilize the animals in their care, and to rehome those who might be adopted. This needs to be done all over the island, MacCormack says. "The 'kind mothers' are going to be finding and feeding animals anyway," MacCormack said, "so we might as well bring them into a program--there isn't any point in just telling them not to do what they are doing just because it is perceived by other people as creating a nuisance. There are 'kind mothers' everywhere, and if we can get them to work with us, to get all the animals treated in whatever way they need, we won't need anyone else to catch the animals or to look after those who can be fixed and returned to a habitat."
Like most beginning animal rescuers, when MacCormack started, he thought first of founding a shelter. Animals Taiwan resulted from that effort. Like many of the "kind mothers," MacCormack and his newfound allies feared becoming overwhelmed by abandonments--so, though they hoped to promote adoptions, they hid, converting an old house into a shelter without signage.
Within a few years MacCormack came to believe that education and advocacy were more critical missions than animal rescue, and that a humane organization needed to be formed to help encourage enforcement of the 1998 animal welfare law.
MacCormack had not lost interest in hands-on animal rescue, still an around-the-clock pursuit, nor in sheltering per se, but Animals Taiwan had attracted other people who could operate an animal shelter. Animals Taiwan will also soon have the opportunity to relocate and rebuild to better specifications, "with a real architect," MacCormack suggests, since the original site is slated for government redevelopment.
Leaving Animals Taiwan on mostly friendly terms, MacCormack founded the Taiwan SPCA--"or rather," he says, "I let Annie and Connie found it. I do the little bit that I'm good at, and try to stay out of the way while they and our volunteers do everything else."
While I visited, Annie and Connie Chiang spent nine-hour days introducing visitors to the Taiwan SPCA at a pet fair, alongside representatives of Animals Taiwan and half a dozen other relatively young animal rescue groups; helped to coordinate fundraising dinners on back-to-back nights, featuring a galaxy of local celebrities who volunteered their time and talents; and coordinated my visits with volunteer translators to most of the animal shelters in the Taipei area.
The Chiang sisters also found the volunteer translators, using social networking web sites, and directed bewildered drivers to the shelters by cell phone.
MacCormack did the driving in the rugged mountains rising abruptly from the edges of Taipei. At the wooded southern edge of Yonghe, near where the roads end, MacCormack stopped to offer help to a man who recycles junk and feeds half a dozen mangy dogs. MacCormack explained everything that could be done, with Taiwan SPCA help, to cure the dogs.
The man had one question: could the Taiwan SPCA have the dogs sterilized, too?
"Of course," MacCormack assured him.
"That would not have happened even five years ago," MacCormack said later. "Offering to fix the dogs would have been seen as interfering in the life process. Now people ask for our help."

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Buddhist monk & U.S. teen sparked the Taiwan animal cause
by Merritt Clifton

TAIPEI--Horror stories about Taiwan animal shelters still surface, despite the progress of recent years, long after an international hue-and-cry brought the 1998 passage of the first Taiwanese humane law.
The law forbade dog-eating, rare in Taiwan even then, and addressed individual acts of abuse and neglect, but focused on animal control practices.
Taiwan animal advocates are still struggling to ensure that the law is observed, and to win improvements.
Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan director Chu Tseng-hung, known in the west as Wu Hung, in November 2009 reported that 83% of Taiwanese townships still relegate animal control duties to garbage collectors. Wu Hung told Jamie Wong of The China Post that he and other EAST investigators had discovered many examples of neglected shelters, animals left without food or water, and "animals eating moldy feeds from containers with worms, ants and droppings mixed in the boxes," Wong summarized.
Wu Hung noted that many badly designed shelters were wrapped in canvas and plastic sheets to try to stop the winter winds. The government shelters in the Taipei suburbs of Tucheng, Yingge, and Hsindian prohibited EAST from taking photographs.
Visiting some of the same facilities, and others, I verified Wu Hung's complaints. But, largely through Wu Hung's work, the worst examples of Taiwan shelter neglect have receded from the Taipei region, where about 10% of the Taiwanese population lives, out into the rural districts--which 12 years ago usually had neither shelters nor animal control departments. Problematic dogs were typically poisoned, using strategms that enabled the poisoners to pretend that the dogs' deaths were accident, and would therefore not bring bad karma to those who put the poison out.
Since 1998 the reported volume of animals killed in Taiwanese shelters, including through neglect, has dropped by 40% to 70%, depending on how the somewhat ambiguous official statistics are read.
Wu Hung founded EAST after leaving the Life Conservation Association, his first organization, began in 1994. Sponsored by the late journalist and animal advocate Ann Cottrell Free, who reported on the retreat to Taiwan by the pre-Communist Chinese government that made Taiwan a nation, Wu Hung later in 1994 toured the U.S.

Blunt words

Wu Hung vigorously exposed and denounced the then-common Taiwanese practice of deliberately locking up problematic stray dogs to starve to death. This, like the "accidental" poisoning, was done to avoid directly killing the dogs.
Wu Hung, a Buddhist monk, pointed out that this was a travesty of Buddhism. He took his campaign on to Europe. By 1996 the World Society for the Protection of Animals, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and the Humane Society Inter-national division of the Humane Society of the U.S. had all sent investigators and consulting experts to Taiwan--who all affirmed Wu Hung's charges, and pressed the Taiwanese government to do something about it.
In 1997, a year before passage of the humane law, the Taiwanese government announced a costly plan to end the controversy and foreign criticism by exterminating all street dogs. Two visiting consultants encouraged the plan by demonstrating the use of pentobarbital to kill dogs, unaware that importing or possessing pentobarbital, at the time, was illegal. One of them also asserted that Taiwan, where up to 93% of the residents observe Buddhism or Buddhist-influenced faiths, needed to scrap the Buddhist life ethic in order to accept routinely killing homeless dogs.
Taiwan moved toward U.S.-type animal control, including killing impounded dogs after a holding period, but the scheme to annihilate street dogs was not seriously pursued. Instead, Taiwanese street dogs found an unlikely young defender.

Sharpe critique

At age 12, in 1994, American teenager Mina Sharpe, living with her parents in Taipei, formed the Taiwan Abandoned Animal Rescue Foundation to find U.S. homes for rescued street dogs. As one of the first activists to demonstrate use of the Internet to promote adoptions and rally global support, Sharpe inspired a legion of others.
In March 2000, shortly before returning to the U.S. with her family, Sharpe contributed to ANIMAL PEOPLE a cutting critique of the international interventions in Taiwan. She blamed the international delegations for fueling intolerance of street dogs and for introducing the use of gas chambers without ensuring that they were properly used.
Sharpe scolded Wu Hung as well, for acquiescing to the recommendations of international consultants, even when the half-followed recommendations appeared to make the treatment of shelter animals worse.
Sharpe in 2006 was twice convicted of hoarding animals at addresses in southern California. She is, nonetheless, remembered in Taipei by Taiwanese and expatriates alike as the firebrand who--with the quiet, studious Wu Hung--provided the yin-and-yang forces that kindled the Taiwan humane movement. Ten years after Sharpe left Taiwan, I heard spontaneous praise of her influence at shelters, veterinary clinics, and gatherings of activists throughout Taipei.
Wu Hung's most recent investigations followed reports in August 2009 that Typhoon Morakot had killed as many as 7,000 dogs at overcrowded shelters in Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties, along the south coast.
In actuality, ten animal shelters, housing about 1,000 dogs among them, were badly damaged. About 100 dogs were killed or lost, the Central News Agency found.
But there are reportedly several severely overcrowded shelters in the area, most of them haphazardly privately funded to house dogs who have been removed from cities lest they might be killed.
Many changes
The Taiwan Council of Agriculture in January 2009 disclosed that around 1,000 dogs at shelters in four counties were poisoned by aflatoxin fungi that accidentally contaminated locally manufactured food. The maker, Ji-Tai Forage, recalled and composted 29 metric tons of "Peter's Kind-Hearted Dog Food," produced only for shelter consumption.
Gruesome as the incident was, it illustrated the changes in Taiwanese sheltering since Wu Hung began his campaigns: producing food for shelter dogs, even from potentially contaminated materials, was not even imagined then as a potential business niche, because then shelter dogs were usually not fed, unless visited by "kind mothers" as Taiwanese animal rescuers are commonly called.
"Kind mothers" have been supplanted in some communities by privately funded "no-kill shelters" and "charity animal hospitals," whose goal is often just preserving animal life, with little apparent concern for the quality of life the animals endure.
I visited one of the oldest and largest, the Life Caring & Animal Rescue Organization "hospital" in Yingge. About two dozen dogs, several with debilitating injuries, sprawled on dirty rags in the reception area. Two of the healthiest, including a young golden Labrador retriever, were chained to the wall in a manner that prevented them from lying down. Other animals were in cages or carriers. Most of the multi-floor building consisted of rooms of animals in wire-bottomed cages, without resting boards, usually without bedding, in filth and darkness. Many were so closely caged that they could barely move.
Shelter scores
ANIMAL PEOPLE has long used a 100-point scoring system for shelters based on the "Five Freedoms" promoted by Compassion In World Farming. Up to seven points per criterion are awarded for a shelter ensuring that animals are free from thirst, hunger, and malnutrition; free from discomfort; free from pain, injury, and disease; free to express normal behavior; and free from fear and distress.
Up to seven points per criterion are also awarded for a shelter being open to visitation and easily located; clean and attractive to visitors; having an active sterilization program; having an effective adoption program; having an effective humane education program; having effective odor control; having effective noise control; having adequate community-based fundraising to maintain and improve operations; and actively striving to realize potential.
Two points may be given for attempted innovation.
An average U.S. shelter score is 75.
The largest complex of "kind mothers" shacks scored 19 points. The Life Caring & Animal Rescue Organization "hospital" scored 14. Only four shelters that ANIMAL PEOPLE representatives have ever visited have scored worse.
The three government shelters that I visited around Taipei scored 23, 42, and 70 points, respectively.
The lowest score went to a shelter on a tea plantation outside Hsindian, located so far up a steep, winding road as to be almost inaccessible to all but the most determined visitors. The shelter design was conceptually flawed because all male dogs were to be kept in one large open area, with all female dogs in another. In practice this meant that the larger and more aggressive dogs were able to monopolize the apparently inadequate food rations. One German shepherd had been removed from the run for male dogs for food aggression, and was instead kept in a wire-floored cage barely larger than himself.
The 42-point score was awarded to the Zhonge shelter, almost as remote, atop an overgrown former landfill. The Zhonge shelter features an agility course, but the unworn grass where dogs should be wearing grooves demonstrates that it is seldom used. Built and managed to a close approximation of U.S. animal control norms, the Zhonge shelter appeared to be understaffed, and appeared to have been designed with the notion that volunteers would help it to do much more than it is now accomplishing. The location, unfortunately, keeps volunteers away.

Design flaw

The Taipei Animal Shelter in ShiJr combines similar animal facilities with a large office and reception area that includes a pet care library and a mini-classroom. A lack of signage in the neighborhood makes it, too, somewhat difficult to find, but it is accessible.
The major fault at the Taipei Animal Shelter is a well-intentioned design flaw. Correctly understanding that maintaining air exchange is essential to keeping a healthy shelter environment, the designers installed huge fans at one end of the kennels that create a constant draft, especially for the dogs housed closest to the fans. Besides chilling dogs in cold weather, the fans suck any airborne diseases through the entire kennel area.
Air exchange in a shelter is best accomplished, as the North Shore Animal League has shown and taught since 1991, by a system of heating from above the human head level, contrary to how heating is done in most buildings, and then drawing the warm air downward through each cage or run, to draw odors and aerosolized disease-bearing particles down, away from the noses of the animals and visitors. Each cage or run should have a separate air intake and draw-down vent, so that any disease-bearing particles released in one animal's living space do not infect any other.
Conceptually counter-intuitive, this type of air exchange system is now used by progressive shelters throughout the world.

Promising example

Promise for the future of sheltering in Taiwan is presently best exemplified by Love for Animals, Care for Life, locally called LCA. A high-volume dog and cat sterilization clinic in ShiJr that offers discounted or free care, LCA serves a clientele including "kind mothers" from everywhere within a reasonable taxi ride.
Funded for two years by a bequest administrated through a local university, LCA has now operated for just over one year, performing 8,000 surgeries. It will need to develop new funding to continue past 2010.
Though a perhaps doomed prototype, sharing a building with a garage, LCA shows that animal care in the Taipei region can be provided in a manner meeting world standards, and that humane awareness already goes beyond sheltering, to preventing the need for shelters.

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Merritt Clifton

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Bob Barker also funds SHARK anti-pigeon shoot campaign

HOLLYWOOD--Donating $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and $1 million to Showing Animals Respect & Kindness, former television game show host Bob Barker, 86, in January 2010 outfitted two of the most confrontational of animal advocacy groups for campaigns against two of the most ruthless opponents.
Named in Barker's honor, the former Norwegian whaler Bob Barker on January 6, 2010 joined the Sea Shepherd vessels Steve Irwin and Ady Gil in pursuit of the Japanese whaling fleet off Antarctica.
"Barker has also funded the cost of a helicopter that will accompany the society's ships. The aircraft is named The Nancy Burnet, after the president of United Activists for Animal Rights, an organization that Barker also supports," said Sea Shepherd media director Amy Baird.
Secretly bought, refitted, and sailed from Mauritius, the Bob Barker reached the Antarctic just in time to rescue the crew of the Ady Gil, rammed and cut in two by the Japanese whaler Shonan Maru 2 less than 24 hours later.
The Barker donation to SHARK was issued in specific support of SHARK-led efforts to end live bird shoots at the Philadelphia Gun Club, whose patrons reportedly include a luxury car with the license plate "NRA 1." SHARK founder Steve Hindi believes the car belongs to a senior officer within the National Rifle Association.
Founded in 1877, the Philadelphia Gun Club is believed to be one of the last three active venues for pigeon shoots. The others are in Berks and Dauphin counties, also in Pennsylvania, says Hindi.
Pigeons are released from cages at the shooting contests only seconds before they are shot. Many are wounded but not killed outright, and may struggle for hours before dying or being decapitated by shoot staff.
A July 1999 Pennsylvania Supreme court verdict that pigeon shoot promoters and participants may be charged with cruelty halted the Labor Day pigeon shoot held for 65 years in Hegins, but the Superior Court of Berks County in January 2004 ruled that pigeon shoots do not violate state anti-cruelty law if "reasonable efforts" are made to minimize the resultant animal suffering.
Since then, local prosecutors have refused to press charges against hosts of pigeon shoots. Hindi sought to change that state of affairs after shooters peppered him with birdshot on February 20 as he sat in a boat beyond the shooting range, hoping his presence in the line of fire would halt the day's pigeon killing--as it later did.
The range faces the Delaware River, forming the boundary between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The Bensalem Township solicitor served a cease-and-desist notice on the Philadelphia Gun Club in 2002, but Bensalem public safety director Fred Harran told Gloria Campise of the Philadelphia Daily News that the notice was not followed up after the county district attorney decided that the state anti-cruelty law does not protect birds.
"It is time that Pennsylvania's elected officials be held accountable for this, and SHARK will now do just that," said Hindi.
Hindi, a former hunter, gave up hunting and became a vegan animal advocate after witnessing the 1989 Hegins pigeon shoot. In 1992 Hindi led the campaign that halted pigeon shoots in Illinois.
SHARK has maintained video surveillance of pigeon shoots at the Philadelphia Gun Club since December 2009, posting to YouTube documentation of birds suffering after being shot and of shoot supporters harassing and at times assaulting SHARK volunteers. Philadelphia Gun Club attorney Sean M. Corr pleaded guilty and paid a small fine after assaulting Hindi on December 5, 2009.
Barker, who retired in 2007 after 50 years hosting TV game shows including The Price Is Right, has previously funded animal studies and animal rights law programs with $1 million donations to the University of Virginia, Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, Georgetown, UCLA, and his alma mater, Drury Univeristy in Springfield Missouri.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Sea Shepherds count a success, despite loss of racing yacht Ady Gil

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson considers the 33-year-old organization's most costly campaign yet an unequivocal success.
The $3 million bio-diesel-powered racing yacht Ady Gil lies on the ocean floor about 180 miles from the French Antarctic research base Dumont d'Urville. Rammed by the Japanese harpoon boat Shonan Maru #2 on January 6, the Ady Gil sank on January 8, 2010 after a failed towing attempt by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Bob Barker. "Fortunately, all fuel and lubricants had been removed from the Ady Gil hours earlier," the Sea Shepherds e-mailed to media.
Ady Gil skipper Pete Bethune was headed to Japan as a prisoner on the Shonan Maru #2, the whale-killing vessel that rammed the Ady Gil on January 6.
"I think we can guarantee now that the Japanese whaling fleet will fail to get their kill quota by 30% to 55%. They will not be seeing any profits this season," Watson assessed on February 18.
The whalers are believed to have killed about 350 minke whales, about a third of their goal, before February 5, but none after the Bob Barker and the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin caught up to the whaling factory ship Nisshin Maru, after two months of atttempting to evade the Shonan Maru #2. The Shonan Maru #2 appeared to have been assigned to running interference for the rest of the fleet. Sending the Shonan Maru #2 to Japan with Bethune "removes the fourth harpoon boat from the fleet," Watson observed.
Bethune on Valentine's Day morning, February 14, "boarded the whaling ship under cover of darkness from a Jet Ski," recounted a Sea Shepherd media release. "His first attempt failed when he fell into the frigid waters, but despite this the crew of the Shonan Maru #2 failed to see him and he successfully boarded the whaler without detection."
Bethune remained undetected for an hour and a half. "Once the sun had risen, Bethune calmly knocked on the bridge wing door, entered the wheelhouse, and presented himself to the captain of Shonan Maru #2," Hiroyuki Komiya, the Sea Shepherd release continued. "He informed the skipper that he was under arrest for sinking the Ady Gil." A Sea Shepherd video showed Bethune knocking on the wheelhouse door, then entering.
Japanese chief cabinet secretary Hirofumi Hirano told a news conference that Bethune would be brought to Japan for questioning, and would probably face criminal charges. Bethune and the Sea Shepherds "were prepared for this possibility prior to the boarding," the Sea Shepherds said.
Three videos of the ramming, taken from the Bob Barker, the Ady Gil, and the Shonan Maru #2, all showed that the Ady Gil was dead in the water, with the six-member crew all topside, waving to the Shonan Maru #2 and laughing, until the Shonan Maru circled, accelerated, and hit the Ady Gil broadside, shearing off the bow.
"The incident injured one of the six crewmembers and could have killed all six," said Watson. "Who are the pirates here? If the Japanese put Bethune on trial in Japan," Watson added, "it will be a case that will draw the attention of the world."
Such a case was already underway. Greenpeace Japan activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki pleaded not guilty on February 15 to charges that they stole a box of whale meat from a warehouse in Aomor, Japan, in 2008. The trial was then adjourned until March 8.
Sato and Suzuki admitted taking the box, but contend that they took it as evidence in pursuing a case against both individual whalers and the whaling company Kyodo Senpaku. "Greenpeace said it had evidence to prove that at least 23 members of the Nisshin Maru's crew smuggled more than 90 boxes of salted whale, disguised as personal baggage, and accused them of defrauding the Japanese taxpayer with the approval of Kyodo Senpaku," summarized Justin McCurry, Tokyo correspondent for the British-based Guardian newspaper chain.
"Kyodo Senpaku insisted the packages were a bonus for crew. Prosecutors, who initially agreed to pursue the embezzlement claims, dropped the investigation on the day Sato and Suzuki were arrested," McCurry continued. Held for 26 days, including 23 days without charges, Sato and Suzuki were interrogated for up to 12 hours a day. The United Nations Human Rights Commission's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded in early February that Japan thereby violated several articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
With both the detention of Bethune and the Greenpeace case whetting demands that Australia act to keep Japan from killing whales in Australian waters, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd said in a Seven Network broadcast that while his government would prefer to use diplomatic means, "If that fails, then we will initiate court action before the commencement of the [next] whaling season in November 2010." Rudd spoke on the eve of the first visit to Australia by newly appointed Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada.
Earlier, Hiroshi Hiyami of Agence France-Presse reported, "Japan will propose scaling down its troubled annual whale hunt in Antarctica on condition it is allowed to whale commercially in its own coastal waters. Tokyo will present its proposal to the International Whaling Commission at its annual meeting in Morocco in June," Hiyami said, citing a senior Japanese fisheries official, "even though a similar plan was rejected by the 85-nation body last year."
The plan rejected in 2009 was favored by then-IWC chair William Hogarth, who headed the U.S. delegation by appointment of former President George W. Bush. His term expired after the 2009 IWC meeting.
The Ady Gil ramming was only the most serious of many other clashes between the Sea Shepherds and the Japanese whaling fleet during January and February 2010. Another collison occurred on February 6.
"The Bob Barker had been actively blocking the slipway of the Nisshin Maru, the Japanese whaling fleet's factory ship when the collision occurred," said Sea Shepherd media director Amy Baird. "Four harpoon ships, the Yushin Maru #1, #2, and #3 and the Shonan Maru #2, were circling and making near passes to the stern and bow of the Sea Shepherd vessel. The Bob Barker did not move from its position." Sea Shepherd video showed the Yushin Maru #3 racing with apparent intent to cut off the Bob Barker's pursuit of the Nisshin Maru, in sight ahead, and remaining in sight throughout most of the incident. The position of the Nisshin Maru relative to the Bob Barker did not change, indicating that the Bob Barker kept a straight course.
The Yushin Maru #3, however, backed off to avoid crossing in front of the Bob Barker, which could not have stopped in time to avoid ramming the Yushin Maru #3. The Yushin Maru #3 then turned parallel to the Bob Barker, and kept turning, away from the Bob Barker. As it did, the stern of the Yushin Maru #3 hit the side of the Bob Barker. Had the collision occurred seconds later, the impact would probably have damaged the Yushin Maru #3's rudder and propeller. Both vessels made repairs at sea.
On February 11, the Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research claimed that Sea Shepherd crew injured the eyes of three members of the crew of the Shonan Maru #2 with butyric acid, better known as rancid butter. The Sea Shepherds have often hurled bottles of rancid butter on the decks of Japanese whaling vessels, but Sea Shepherd video of the incident showed nothing being thrown in the direction of the Shonan Maru #2 at the time. Instead, recounted Baird, "The three crew were injured because they shot themselves in the face with pepper sprayŠThe video shows two crew with the tanks aiming their nozzles at Sea Shepherds in an inflatable boat," but wind blew their blasts of pepper spray back in their faces.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Jockeys strike over horse treatment, owner quits

PHILADELPHIA--Michael Gill, the winningest racehorse stable owner in North America in 2009, on February 2, 2010 announced that he would sell his horses and sue his critics for defamation.
The Pennsylvania Racing Com-mission and the Penn National Race Course in Grantville, Pennsylvania, opened investigations of Gill's racing practices after jockey Thomas Clifton led fellow jockeys in a boycott of any race in which a Gill horse was entered. The racing commission later barred Gill horses from PRA-sanctioned events.
Gill leases 49 stalls at the Penn National track, typically running about five horses per racing card. Nationally, Gill has fielded as many as 400 horses, but told media that he now has about 100. His horses won $6.7 million with 370 victories in 2,247 starts in 2009, according to the data firm Equibase.
Thomas Clifton was the best known of several jockeys who fell after the Gill horse Laughing Moon collapsed at the finish of a January 23 race--the 10th time in 13 months that a Gill horse at Penn National required euthanasia, and the second time in three days.
Gill was already widely accused of treating horses as expendible commodities in the quest to win.
The Delaware Park raceway banned Gill's horses due to breakdowns in 2003.

--

BOOKS

The Poet-Physician & The Healer-Killer:
Vivisection & the Emergence of a Medical Technocracy
by Roberta Kalechovsky, Ph.D.
Micah Publications (225 Humphrey St., Marblehead, MA 01945), 2009. 230 pages, paperback. $22.00.

From childhood Roberta Kalech-ovsky was at heart an animal advocate. Yet, discouraged by her family and other elders, she long pushed that part of herself aside while pursuing her "serious" career as author and publisher. Literary, feminist, and religious studies nonetheless led Kalechovsky back time and again to the topics that became five previous non-fiction books about the intersections of animal rights, human rights, vegetarianism, and Judaism.
All the while Kalechovsky gathered the material that coalesced over more than 20 years into The Poet-Physician & The Healer Killer. In particular, Marie Carosello, director of the 1983 film Tools for Research, in 1997 bequeathed to Kalechovsky a collection pertaining to the life and times of the 19th century feminist, mystic, and anti-vivisectionist Anna Kingsford.
Eventually Kalechovsky realized that her jigsaw puzzle of evidence presented a new perspective about how vivisection came to be the chief mode of biomedical research.
The traditional defense of vivisectors, from Rene Descartes (1596-1650) on, has always been that animal studies, no matter how cruel, are essential to gaining knowledge that may improve both human and animal health. The historical fault in that argument is that vivisection became the basic method of biomedical research even as other approaches to preventing and curing disease produced much more demonstrable results. Louis Pasteur's demonstrations of the vaccination principle were the first really big practical success attributed to vivisection, but came more than 200 years into the rise of vivisection as a research method, and even at that, vaccination for the next several generations protected just a fraction as many humans and animals as improvements to sanitation and diet.
The traditional lament of vivisectionists is that pro-vivisectionists have always held control over public policy and access to research funding. Yet as recently as the end of the 19th century, Kalechovsky shows, about 80% of the world's leading intellectuals were anti-vivisectionists, as were many prominent political figures. Had anti-vivisectionism followed the same trajectory as other causes, science might long ago have turned decisively away from most animal experimentation.
Kalechovsky has probably imagined her literary works becoming films, but The Poet-Physician & The Healer-Killer might have the most cinematic potential. Kalechov-sky thoroughly develops characters including Kingsford; Pasteur; the French vivisector Claude Bernard, a Faustian figure who all but admitted selling his soul to the devil; the proto-feminist politician and anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe; and the pioneering female physician Elizabeth Blackwell, who was enduringly influential in many respects but not in her opposition to vivisection.
Making cameo appearances are vivisector Jean Guillotine, best remembered for his role in the French Revolution, and Swedish activists Liesa Schartou and Luise Lind-af-Hageby, who enrolled in medical school in 1903 to expose vivisection.
The "poet/physician" was John Keats. At his death in 1817, at only 25 years old, Keats was as well-known as a medical doctor as he was as a poet. His medical education, Kalechovsky explains, emphasized deriving medicines through botany and the equivalent of a modern-day hospital internship. Surgery was part of Keats' medical training and experience, but not a large part, generations before the development of reliable anesthetics. Dissection and vivisection were not part of Keats' training.
The theoretical understanding of disease that Keats learned was incorrect in almost every detail. Yet Keats' approach to preventing and treating common diseases was not greatly different from the state of the healing arts today. Keats believed in listening to his patients. Keats understood the value of empathy and sympathy in helping patients to rally their immune response. His basic prescription was essentially "Take two aspirin and get some rest." Both in his medical practice and in his poetry, Keats emphasized the healing value of nature, and deplored the unhealthful effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Like the other poets now known as as the English Romantics, Keats was a proto-environmentalist. Today he would probably have become a holistic practitioner.
Animal studies have been used to validate most of the medical breakthroughs since Keats' time. In particular, animal studies have furthered the development of surgery and toxicology. But vivisection might not have been the only way to gain much of this knowledge. The gradual scientific acceptance of "reduction, refinement, replacement" as the most ethical approach to designing animal studies has markedly reduced the numbers of animals used per study over the past 50 years, with no sacrifice of scientific validity or rigor.
Perhaps this could not have been done with earlier technology; but perhaps medical research technology could have advanced more rapidly if the most commonly used tool for so long had not been the knife.
In truth, Kalechovsky explains, vivisection before the first half of the 20th century often had a motive beyond scientific rationale. Neither was this motive hidden by many of the most fervent vivisectors, including in debate with opponents as outspoken and prominent as Anna Kingsford.
"Speaking for myself and my brethren of the Faculté," Facultié de Médicine d'Paris professor Léon LeFort wrote to Kingsford, "I do not mean to say that we claim for that method of investigation [vivisection] that it has been of any practical utility to medical science, or that we expect it to be so. But it is necessary as a protest on behalf of the independence of science against interference by clerics and moralists. When all of the world has reached the high intellectual level of France, and no longer believes in God, the soul, moral responsibility, or any nonsense of that kind, but makes practical utility the only rule of conduct, then and not until then can science afford to dispense with vivisection."
One may hear in LeFort's words an echo of the French Revolution rallying cry "Man will be free when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." Uttered first by the atheist priest Jean Meslier, 1664-1789, the phrase was popularized by Denis Diderot, 1713-1784. Diderot made use of information obtained from vivisection in his translation of Robert James' Medical Dictionary and in his opus, the first encyclopedia, but --ironically--he opposed the Cartesian view that animals are mere machines, questioned human consumption of animals, and contributed to the philosophical basis of later arguments for animal rights.
Vivisection, like the ruthless doctrines that later fueled Marxism and Nazism, was introduced, promoted, and defended as an allegedly necessary catharis to institutions that obstructed progress--or at least thwarted certain ambitious young men.
At issue for LeFort, Bernard, and many of their peers and successors was who would control interventions in life and death, from birth and baptism to last rites. Their struggle continues today in ethical and legal disputes over abortion, euthanasia, and--still --the use of animals in experiments.
But vivisectors were--and are-- scarcely the only aspirants to dethrone "clerics and moralists."
Wrote Kingsford, "As I am against the orthodox priest, I am against the orthodox doctorŠTrue prophylactics consist not in the inoculation of disease, but in living so as to make disease impossible."
Her view might have prevailed, despite her penchant for bizarre behavior, including claiming to have willed Bernard and another notorious vivisector to their deaths. But, widespread though opposition to vivisection was, the cause was split between "clerics and moralists," whose focus was preventing cruelty to both humans and animals, and innumerable proponents of alternative approaches to health and medicine, including faith healers and out-and-out quacks.
If Bernard sold his soul to the devil, Kalechovsky hints, the devil himself might have been Stephen Paget, who founded the Research Defense Society in 1906.
"Stephen Paget cleverly disunited the broad class structure from which anti-vivisectionism drew support," explains Kalechovsky. "The cause was popular with working class and unemployed, the disenfranchised and the politically powerless who had been preyed upon as charity patients, along with orphans in public institutionsŠBecause of this Stephen Paget could accuse the anti-vivisection movement of appealing to class hatred."
That wasn't all.
"The anti-vivisection movement and the feminist movement crossed each other's paths in the Victorian Age, and for a brief period galvanized each other," Kelechovsky relates, but "Paget severed the feminist movement from the antivivisection movement. Without women, whom Paget managed to convince the public were retrograde sentimentalists, the argument that vivisection was necessary became respectable."
Within less than a decade of antivivisectionism reaching heights of inflence, Kalechovsky writes, "Neither prophets nor poets nor political protest could halt the momentum toward animal experimentation and scientific medicine," even when the 'science' was eventually shown by new approaches to have often been shaky and sometimes falsified. --Merritt Clifton

Mark Twain's Book of Animals
Edited with Introduction, Afterword, & Notes
by Shelley Fisher Fishkin
University of Calif. Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704), 2009. 325 pages, hardcover. $27.50.

"Animals were integral to Mark Twain's work as a writer from the first story that earned him national renown to pieces he wrote during his final years that remained unpublished at his death," notes Shelley Fisher Fishkin. "Twain is famous for having crafted amusing and mordant quips about animalsŠHe is less known for being the most prominent American of his day to throw his weight firmly behind the movement for animal welfare."
Twain's mother, Jane Clemens, was a cat feeder and rescuer, who deplored killing any animal and forbade keeping any animal caged. Twain's daughters Suzy and Clara, became humane society volunteers; daughter Jean made her career in humane work. Twain himself, the middle generation, took frequent note of animals, deploring cruelty and neglect, years before the U.S. had any organized humane societies. Much as Charles Dickens saved the two-year-old Battersea Dogs & Cats Home with an 1862 essay entitled Two Dog Shows, Twain boosted the American SPCA in 1867, when it was barely one year old.
"One of the most praiseworthy institutions in New York," Twain wrote, "and one which must plead eloquently for it when its wickedness shall call down the anger of the gods, is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Its office is located on the corner of Twelfth Street and Broadway, and its affairs are conducted by humane men who take a genuine interest in their work."
Unfortunately, Twain interupted this otherwise effective appeal, complete with address for sending contributions, by noting that the founders, led by Henry Bergh, "have worldly wealth enough to make it unnecessary for them to busy themselves about anything else." The remainder of the essay was perhaps the earliest of many laudatory profiles of Bergh and his work to enforce the first New York state humane law.
Shelley Fisher Fishkin in Mark Twain's Book of Animals collects Twain's chief contributions to animal literature.
Twain's first famous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, has long been misused to rationalize the capture and abuse of frogs in jumping contests. Indeed, this was among the few Twain stories which at a careless glance does not appear to clearly damn cruelty. The "hero," Jim Smiley, is a gambler who kept a fighting pit bull terrier, and "had rat-tarriers and chicken cocks, and tom cats, and all of them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you."
A closer look reveals that Twain's story, narrated by "good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler," is a damning expose of Leonidas W. Smiley, an alleged "young minister of the gospel," who morphed into a mining camp rogue.
Much of Twain's early satire was double-edged, but there is no mistaking his admiration of coyotes in "The Cayote, Allegory of Want." A chapter of Roughing It, published in 1872, this essay incorporated every common slander of coyotes, and turned the slanders into virtues in the context of coyotes' ecological roles and habitat. In conclusion, writing in the singular of all coyotes, "remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune," Twain "made shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day's good luck and a limitless larder the morrow."
The next prominent defenders of coyotes were Walt Disney, who produced his first of three films on behalf of coyotes in 1960, and Chuck Jones, the Warner Brothers animation director who first rehabilitated Bugs Bunny from inept and racist early versions by others, acknowledging inspiration from Twain, then in 1948 created Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Jones in his autobiography Chuck Amuck acknowledged that encountering Roughing It at age seven had shaped his life--especially his portrayals of coyotes, which drew upon negative stereotypes to bring first laughter and then sympathy.
Lamentably, as Twain grew older and more popular, and perhaps more sensitive about being misunderstood, his satire became more pointed and often counterpointed by sentimentality that the younger Twain would have mercilessly burlesqued.
Twain cannot be faulted for having devoted the last several decades of his life to using his stature on behalf of good causes, especially opposition to racism, imperialism, and cruelty to animals. However, by the time Twain wrote a series of stories attacking sport hunting, bullfighting, and vivisection, he had degenerated as a fictionist into an author of melodramas. Essays were by far the strongest part of Twain's later work, but because Twain hoped to reach a wide audience with his messages on behalf of animals, including children, he wrote on behalf of animals mainly in fictional form. --Merritt Clifton

The Animal Manifesto:
Six Reasons for Expanding Our Compassion Footprint
by Marc Bekoff
New World Library (14 Pameron Way, Novato, CA 94949), 2010.
192 pages, paperback. $14.95.

"Animals are constantly asking us in their own ways to treat them better or leave them alone," opens Marc Bekoff in The Animal Manifesto. The six chapters illuminate, through both anecdote and scientific citation, that "All animals share the Earth and we must coexist. Animals can think and feel. Animals have and deserve compassion. Connection breeds caring, alienation breeds disrespect. Our world is not compassionate to animals. Acting compassionately helps all beings and our world."
Asks Bekoff, an eminent researcher of animal behavior, "Is such a manifesto radical? I think it's common senseŠYet, even though these ideas reflect common sense, I think that they are often denied or resisted because people intuitively understand that following them--respecting what we see before our own eyes--would lead to radical changes in how we live and what we do."
Most of the examples in The Animal Manifesto have been reported in ANIMAL PEOPLE news coverage. Probably few ANIMAL PEOPLE readers will dispute more than occasional passages of The Animal Manifesto--but Bekoff did not write this book for animal advocates. Rather, his intended audience appears to be newly matriculated university students, enjoying the freedom to rethink their beliefs away from the constraints of the family dinner table.
This is a book to give as a graduation or birthday gift to 18-to-21-year-olds, who are likely to discuss it later in dorm rooms and freshman composition class exercises, and perhaps go on to read some of the many works cited as references. --Merritt Clifton

Heritage of Care:
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
by Marion S. Lane & Stephen L. Zawistowki
Praeger Publishers (88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881), 2008.
185 pages, hardcover. $39.95.

"The ASPCA story is one that I've been trying to tell in one way or another for the past 19 years," writes American SPCA executive vice president Stephen L. Zawistoski in introducing Heritage of Care, co-authored with former ASPCA AnmalWatch editor Marion S. Lane. Working primarily from the ASPCA's own archives, Zawistowski recalls, "We decided that we had neither the time nor training to write a scholarly history of the organization. We agreed that what we wanted to do was spin a yarn," covering the first 140 years of the history of the ASPCA as informatively and honestly as possible.
Like most institutional histories, Heritage of Care begins with the story of the founder, progresses more rapidly through the middle years of the the organization, then reviews recent changes and describes present programs.
Henry Bergh, who founded the ASPCA in 1866, remains such an influential and legendary figure that nearly half the book summarizes his biography--which has already filled or formed major portions of many other books.
Yet, as ANIMAL PEOPLE pointed out in June 2009, Elizabeth Morris and Annie Waln of Philadelphia founded a more direct ancestor of most contemporary American humane societies in 1858. Their organization, the Animal Rescue League of Philadelphia, has two living direct descendants, the Women's Humane Society and the Morris Animal Refuge. Morris and Waln's protégé Carolyn Earle White went on to found the American Anti-Vivisection Society.
The claim of the ASPCA to being the first American humane society actually rests on Bergh's conception of it as America's first animal rights group. Bergh understood that the need for animal rescue work would be endless without laws and law enforcement to establish for animals the right to not be mistreated, and humane education to ensure that this right became broadly accepted.
While Morris and Waln took over the Philadelphia animal control contract in 1874, and soon resorted to killing animals with chloroform, Bergh refused the New York City animal control contract because he did not want to see ASPCA resources diverted into catching and killing animals.
Only after Bergh's death did the ASPCA move into animal control. When it did, members David and Diana Belais, considering themselves the true heirs to Bergh's spirit, broke away to form the rival Humane Society of New York. Diana Belais also founded and eventually disbanded the New York Anti-Vivisection Society, 1908-1935, whose assets helped many other humane societies to survive the Great Depression. In 1921, as described in the October 2009 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, Diana Belais cofounded the short-lived First Church of Animal Rights, which in concept was an animal rights group more than half a century ahead of its time.
Wrote Zawistowski after the ANIMAL PEOPLE article appeared, long after Heritage of Care went to press, "I had never seen this material. It does not appear in any of the ASPCA archival records." Probably anything pertaining to the Belais' split with the ASPCA was purged long before Zawistowki's time. Ironically, the Humane Society of New York also seems to have little awareness of it.
Zawistowki and Lane acknowledge that the ASPCA post-Bergh drifted far from his vision, becoming little more than an animal control contractor in the mid-20th century. Zawistowki and Lane describe the lawsuit by the late actress Gretchen Wyler that pulled the ASPCA closer to Bergh's course during the 14-year presidency of the late John Kullberg, who hired Zawistowki to do humane education in 1988.
The history omitted from Heritage of Care is not whitewashed, just incomplete. Included with fully developed characters, it would make an even better yarn--and there are further chapters yet to be excavated and told, pertaining to the ASPCA associations of Helen Jones (1915-1998) and Christine Stevens (1918-2002). Jones, a former ASPCA secretary, went on to cofound the Humane Society of the U.S. in 1954 and the National Catholic Animal Welfare Society in 1959, renaming it the International Society for Animal Rights in 1977. Stevens, a former ASPCA volunteer, founded the Animal Welfare Institute in 1952.
Both appear to have become alienated from the ASPCA in 1951, when as Zawistowski and Lane write, "Many in the humane movement were stunned when the ASPCA failed to mount a strong effort to block" a bill allowing biomedical researchers to seize animals from animal control shelters.
Instead, explain Zawistowski and Lane, the ASPCA won a concession that "ASPCA agents would be allowed to inspect all laboratories in the state that used animals in research, whether or not they received those animals from the ASPCA." Laboratory inspection was a signature role for the ASPCA for the next 25 years.
Zawistowski and Lane give the entire episode, pivotal in the history of the humane movement, barely one page. Indeed, the stories of Jones and Stevens would go beyond the compass of Heritage of Care--but they were among the most direct philosophical descendants of Bergh, who would have recognized his own intent in the organizations they created.
--Merritt Clifton

Ape by John Sorensen
Reaktion Books Ltd.
(33 Great Sutton St., London EC1M 3JU, U.K.), 2009.
224 pages, illust. $19.95 paperback.

Ape, by Brock University sociologist and professor of critical animal studies John Sorenson, is the 25th in a projected series of 40 titles edited for Reaktion Books Ltd. by Jonathan Burt. Burt himself produced the series template in Rat (2006). Each volume is succinctly titled for the species or order of animals that it covers. Each summarizes the state of knowledge about how the animals behave, where they live, and how they evolved, but the focal topic is the influence of the animals on human culture.
Ape raises knotty ethical questions about the close kinship of humans to other apes. Sorenson discusses the use of apes in experimentation, exhibition, and the bushmeat trade; reviews legal and political efforts to establish "personhood" for apes; discusses the decline of wild apes, such that all wild populations of nonhuman apes are now considered critically endangered; and takes particular note of the role of apes as mirrors of human behavior.
Centuries before Charles Darwin deduced the evolutionary relationship of humans to other apes, medieval artists depicted apes as shadows of humanity. At times apes have represented negative aspects of human behavior, but surprisingly often they have also represented positive qualities. The fictional King Kong and the apes featured in the many incarnations of the Tarzan story have been played both ways, sometimes in the same film.
Both King Kong and Tarzan's ape guardians have been used to explore human racial tensions, to comment on ecological concerns, and to express anxiety about scientific tinkering with life. No version, no matter how well-crafted, seems to have remained the definitive version for more than a decade. Each generation appears to require a new King Kong and Tarzan story to reflect the angst of the times.
Yet, despite the Hollywood penchant for contrived happy endings, most King Kong and Tarzan variants have ended much like the Dian Fossey autobiography Gorillas In The Mist, with dead apes, heartbreak, and disturbing questions raised about human nature. --Merritt Clifton

Planet Ape
by Desmond Morris with Steve Parker
Octopus Publishing Group (2-4 Heron Quays, London E14 4JP, U.K.), 2009.
288 pages, hardcover. $ 49.95.

The DNA of the great apes and humans differs by only a hair. Desmond Morris and Steve Parker in Planet Ape show us the similarities between humans and the other great apes, especially in behavior such as tool-making, using politics to gain community influence, and killing other species for food. We differ most prominently in that humans are bipedal, walking upright while other great apes walk upright only for short distances. Also, humans lost the heavy coat of fur characterizing other apes, and now wear clothes. Well, most of us do.
Use of language and the power of complex thought also sets us apart. Human mental development and that of the other apes progresses similarly for several years, but the human brain continues developing long after the mental growth of other apes is complete.
Planet Ape examines gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, and the four orders of gibbons, among whom there are 14 living species. A chart outlines the evolution of the primates. From the earliest known primate ancestor, Purgatorius, about the size of a rat, we progressed through Prosiminans, the Old World and New World monkeys, gibbons, several ape species who long ago died out, orangutans, and then the relatively recent splits from whom the surviving offspring are gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans.
Gorillas, the giants of the primate world, are actually two closely related species, with either four or five subspecies, depending on defininitons. Mountain gorillas have dark shaggy coats, while the coats of western or lowland gorillas are gray, short and coarse. Once spread over much of Africa, western gorillas now occupy only parts of Angola, Congo, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea.
Morris and Parker also discuss monkeys to some extent. At least 200 monkey species live in Africa, Asia, and the tropical forests of South America. Capuchins are among the most intelligent, with a fine eye for food. Morris and Parker say they have been seen cracking open crabs and shellfish with stones. Some have even painted pictures, as have various great apes and elephants.
"There have always been tales about great hairy beings lurking in the hidden corners of the world," Morris and Parker open in a chapter about the cryptozoological quest for more ape species. Among the best known, Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, supposedly lives in heavily forested parts of the Pacific Northwest--but there is no scientifically credible evidence to prove Bigfoot's existence, and most sightings are easily ascribed either to black bears or hoaxters.
Reports of another hairy beast called the yeti surfaced in Nepal during the 1920s. A journalist spiced up the story in 1930 by calling the unknown creature the Abominable Snowman. Even the famed Sir Edmund Hilary claimed to see the yeti's footprints. Expeditions sent to track down the yeti could not find the elusive creature. DNA analysis of purported hair specimens has established that some of the samples came from other Himalayan wildlife, but tests of two samples collected in 2008 were inconclusive.
A discussion of ape anatomy features many sketches and colorful pictures. The orangutan's foot is so long, the authors say, that it makes up almost one third of the length of the species' entire hind limb, with toes four fifths the length of their fingers. These adaptations reflect the orangutan's largely tree-living, limb-swinging lifestyle. Other great apes spend most of their time on the ground.
A chapter on diet tells us what the great apes eat and how they acquire their meals. Though chimpanzees hunt, and eat some meat, they live mainly on fruit, flowers, nuts and yes, termites. A gorilla packs away as much as 33 pounds of food per day, including bamboo, wild celery, and tree bark.
Planet Ape concludes with a jolting look at how our distant cousins are challenged to survive amid human transformation of their habitat. Loggers and developers tear away their natural habitat, poachers mercilessly slaughter them, and many more are collateral victims of warfare. Morris and Parker praise the conservation efforts promoted by the Jane Goodall Institute and other esteemed organizations in the developing world. Perhaps they make a difference, but often the habitat protected by conservationists tends to become an isolated island, where the remaining apes must be managed more or less like a zoo population, with no adjacent habitat to expand into if their numbers increase.
Planet Ape is a gem of a book. It is easy to understand how Jane Goodall got hooked on studying chimpanzees more than half a century ago in Gombe. The great apes are fascinating creatures. --Debra J. White

Space research repeats experiments of 1950s

TEHRAN, BROOKHAVEN--Iranian State Television on February 3, 2010 showed the launch into sub-orbital space of a missile carrying two turtles, an intubated white rat, and several worms.
The Iranian State News Agency later said the capsule carrying the animals returned to earth safely, but did not specifically describe the condition of the animals, whose behavior was reportedly monitored throughout the flight by video cameras.
"The turtles were red-eared sliders supposedly just bought before the launch at a local pet shop," elaborated HerpDigest editor Alan Salzberg.
"The scientific arena is where we could defeat western domnation," exulted Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But the spaceflight was a first only for Iran.
"This is not the first time turtles have been sent in space," recalled Salzberg. "On September 15, 1968, Russia sent the Zond 5 up with a variety of animals, including two Testudo horsfieldi. They circled the moon three days later, and survived re-entry and splashdown on September 21. The tortoises had lost about 10% of their body weight, but remained active and showed no loss of appetite. These turtles and their fellow travelers were the first earth lifeforms to complete Moon orbit and return safely."
The Iranian experiment most closely paralled the two sub-orbital space flights survived by the Russian space dog Albina in 1957. Her flights preceded the November 3, 1957 launch of Laika, another former Moscow street dog who orbited the earth several times before she died of stress and overheating between five and seven hours later.
Sputnik program scientist Dimitri Malashenkov revealed Laika's fate in October 2002, after decades of reports that she might have survived for as long as four days of her planned 10-day one-way mission.
Said project director Oleg Gazenko in 1998, "The more time passes, the more I am sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of a dog."
The Soviet propaganda machine made Laika probably the most famous dog in history before discovering that millions of people were more upset about her plight, isolated and doomed, than were thrilled at the scientific triumph that she represented.
The world was then largely unaware that impounded dogs were being experimented upon, electrocuted, decompressed, poisoned, shot, or gassed by the tens of millions.
After the Royal SPCA and the National Canine Defence League (now Dogs Trust) led protests outside the Soviet embassy in London, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev authorized the formation of the Animal Protection Society, the first and only humane organization in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Animal Protection Society was disbanded and supplanted by independent nonprofit humane groups after the 1990 restructuring of the USSR into the present Russian Federation and several independent nations.
The Iranian space feat added to widespread concern that Iran might be developing both nuclear weapons and the ability to use them, but as a purported prelude to human space flight did not impress most observers.

Not the right stuff

To test the ability to send a human into space, scoffed James Lewis, senior fellow at Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, "the obvious choice would be to send a monkey. Worms in space serve no purpose," Lewis told Associated Press writer Ali Akbar Dareini.
John Paul Stapp, the first U.S. space research supervisor, opposed animal use in experiments, and in 1946-1947 used himself as the subject of rocket sled experiments designed to test the impact of accelerated gravitational force on the human body.
From 1948 to 1963, however, the U.S. made extensive use of monkeys and chimpanzees in space research, before concluding that the most useful studies used actual human astronauts. Thirty-one former NASA chimps were retired to Primarily Primates in 1997, and the remaining 226 chimps plus 61 monkeys were acquired by the Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care in 2002. The $3.7 million acquisition of the former NASA primate colony was partially funded by In Defense of Animals.
Yet, 47 years after NASA abandoned primate use, NASA is reportedly funding a proposed study at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility on Long Island, which would intensively irradiate 18 to 28 squirrel monkeys. Alleging that the study would be redundant, anachronistic, and inhumane, Defense of Animals, the International Primate Protection League, and PETA have mobilized opposition to it.
The Brookhaven monkeys would receive gamma radiation equal to what astronauts might experience during a 3-year journey to Mars and back--in one burst, which does not resemble the prolonged low-level exposure that space travelers would get, PETA research supervisor Justin Goodman recently told Scripps Howard News Service reporter Ilana Strauss.
"There have been literally hundreds of government-funded radiation experiments since the 1950s," said Humane Society of the U.S. director of program management for animal research Kathleen Conlee. "This data is already out there."
Conlee noted that HSUS executive vice president Andrew Rowan "chaired a committee that was convened by NASA itself," which produced guidelines for experimental use of animals that would be violated by the Brookhaven study.
--

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Private eye Norred quarterbacks drive against Georgia dogfighters

ATLANTA--Exit Michael Vick, the ex-Atlanta Falcons quarterback who was among the biggest names in both pro football and professional dogfighting.
Enter Greg Norred, who in 1982 founded the security firm Norred & Associates. "We conduct workplace investigations and provide workplace security for companies throughout the country," Norred recites.
Norred also busts dogfighters.
"Over the past two years our investigations have resulted in 21 raids, 26 arrests, and the rescue of approximately 415 dogs," Norred told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Dogfighting was already a felony in Georgia when Vick was arrested in Virginia in April 2007, but Georgia was one of three states where keeping fighting dogs was not illegal, and one of two states where attending a dogfight was not a crime. In November 1999 law enforcement famously broke up the "Super Bowl of Dogfighting" at Odum, Georgia. Sixty-five people were taken into custody. Most apparently walked with light penalties or none. "Hundreds" were reportedly arrested in a February 2004 dogfighting raid in Newton County, but again most escaped substantial penalties. Except for a previously convicted cocaine trafficker who drew four years in prison in July 2002 for organizing dogfights in Millen, Georgia, Georgia dogfighters tended to get off easy.
The Vick case enabled Woodstock state senator Chip Rogers to pass a bill closing the gaps in the Georgia dogfighting law, after years of effort. But even as Rogers' bill moved toward passage in December 2007, charges against three of four alleged dogfighters were dismissed in a case in Snellville.
Rogers' law took effect in May 2008. Norred had already prepared to enforce it. Working with the Humane Society of the U.S., Norred in January 2008 estabished a hotline to collect confidential tips about dog fighting: 1-877-215-2250, or <helpstopdogfighting.com>.
"Response was good," Norred recalls. "We offer up to $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of dogfighters, but only about 20% of the callers even ask for the reward."
Reports of raids mentioning the Norred role began appearing in July 2008, but the coverage tended to understate the scale of the effort, even when Brooke Baldwin and Susan Brown of CNN took notice in October 2009.
"I'm an animal lover. I've always been an animal lover," Norred told Baldwin and Brown. "In the wake of the Michael Vick case, I thought there might be something I could do."
"All of our work is pro bono and we do not accept donations," Norred told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "I do not have a budget. My company has spent over $200,000 investigating these cases in our first two years, and there appears to be no end in sight yet. Our original goal was that after cleaning up Georgia we would move to neighboring states, but it's a bigger problem than I initially thought. Our biggest obstacle is housing the dogs post-raid. They have to be held as evidence and most counties in Georgia don't have animal control shelters. Those that do, don't have space.
"We have partnered with the Holland Ware Foundation and the Atlanta Humane Society," Norred added. "The Atlanta Humane Society provides care for the rescued dogs and the Holland Ware Foundation funds the care and the reward."

Fake "faux fur"costs sellers real money

DALLAS--Nieman Marcus Inc. in late January 2010 agreed to pay a $25,000 judgement to settle a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the U.S. over the sale of garments with dog fur trim labeled "faux fur."
A Washington D.C. court found that the Dallas firm misled buyers.
Saks earlier settled a similar case brought by HSUS for $6,500.

Hunters still boss after changes at Sierra Club, Audubon

SAN FRANCISCO, NEW YORK--January 2010 leadership changes at both the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society appear to leave both organizations squarely in the hunter/conservationist camp.
Michael Brune, 38, heading the Rainforest Action Network since 2003, succeeded Carl Pope as executive director of the Sierra Club, but Pope remained the senior figure in the organization, as executive board chair.
Holding undergraduate degrees in economics and finance, Brune previously worked for Greenpeace and the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, now called ForestEthics.
Both Brune and Pope stated as Brune assumed Pope's former post that the Sierra Club priorities would continue to be promoting clean energy and combatting climate change.
Under Pope, the Sierra Club chief executive since 1992, the club did a great deal to raise awareness of the environmental cost of meat-eating--mostly without mentioning animal welfare issues. But the Sierra Club also aggressively courted fishers and hunters, for reasons Pope explained in 2006 to Washington Monthly managing editor Christina Larson. In the mid-1980s, Larson wrote, Pope "noticed articles in Outdoor Life attacking the Sierra Club as anti-hunting,"
"At that point," Pope told her, "I realized we were dealing with a conscious political strategy to separate rural hunters and fishers from urban environmentalists. It wasn't about hunting and fishing. It was about politics."
Pope created a section of the Sierra Club web site especially to attract hunters, including photos of club officers posing with huntng trophies. Offended, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founder Paul Watson resigned from the Sierra Club board in 2006, after an e-mail dispute with Pope over which of them best represented the spirit of John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892.
Muir condemned sport hunting as "the murder business," but eventually admitted hunters as Sierra Club members and officers as a matter of political expediencey. Muir's most enduring political success was courting the support of Theodore Roosevelt, an avid hunter. As U.S. president 1901-1908, Roosevelt designated 150 National Forests, five National Parks, and 18 National Monuments, together protecting 230 million acres of wildlife habitat.
The Sierra Club today has an annual operating budget of $85 million, with 1.3 million members and donors, and a staff of 530.
The National Audubon Society, founded in 1905, is so close to the same size that which is bigger tends to reflect relative fundraising success in any given year.
John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society since 1995, resigned at the end of 2009, turning the office over to Frank Gill.
Flicker, who came to the National Audubon Society from The Nature Conservancy, sought to redefine the Audubon focus from traditional habitat conservation to nature education, via the 43 Audubon regional nature centers.
The National Audubon Society was founded by George Bird Grinnell, who earlier cofounded the Boone & Crocket Club with Theodore Roosevelt to regulate trophy hunting. The initial focus of the National Audubon Society was regulating competitive birding. Birding, until Roger Tory Peterson popularized non-lethal sighting verification with a camera during the 1930s, was done mainly with shotguns. Species "life lists" were compiled from inspecting the dead. Painter John James Audubon was honored in the title of the organization as the shotgunner with the best-verified "life list" of birds killed.
Under Flicker, the National Audubon Society remained mostly aligned with hunters, but opposed the use of lead shot, and agreed with the humane community that the deadly avian flu H5N1 is a global public health threat chiefly due to factory farming.
Flicker's successor, Frank Gill, and his wife Sally, are both self-described "avid hunters." Gill was the National Audubon Society chief scientist 1996-2005, after spending 25 years at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, eventually becoming vice president, and serving a stint as president of the American Ornithologists' Union.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Dogs Deserve Better founder charged

TIPTON, Pennsylvania--Dogs Deserve Better founder Tamira Ci Thayne told ANIMAL PEOPLE on February 17, 2010 that she expects to appeal a trespassing conviction adjudicated against her the day before by Portage magistrate Galen Decort.
Decort fined Thayne $25 plus $167 court costs for allegedly remaining on the property of Jason and Krystal Cann, of Lilly, Pennsylvania, after being ordered to leave.
Decort dismissed Thayne's video of the incident on grounds that a video might be altered.
According to Thayne, the incident began when she "spotted two skinny dogs with inadequate shelter, minimal straw, no food, and no water." She knocked on the door, "and when no one answered, left a Dogs Deserve Better calendar and stuffed the doghouses with straw to save the dogs from immediate danger of death by freezing. "
She saw no one on that visit, she said, but was accosted by Krystal Cann on a second visit three days later.
The Cambria County Humane Society told the Canns to repair their doghouse, Thayne said, but did not bring charges against them for keeping the two dogs in conditions that Thayne contends fail the Pennsylvania requirement that dogs must have "sustenance, drink, and sanitary shelter which will protect the animal against inclement weather and preserve the animal's body heat and keep it dry."
Thayne, who changed her name from 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 removing an old and apparently painfully dying dog from a yard in East Freedom, Pennsylvania in September 2006.
The Central Pennsylvania SPCA and Blair County district attorney Richard Consiglio refused to press a cruelty case against the people who chained the dog. Thayne was convicted of theft and receiving stolen property in December 2007. Thayne was ordered to cease posting photos and selling merchandise bearing images of the dog, and to pay the $1,700 cost of her trial, plus additional fees of $1,500.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

Crashes kill biologists in California and Oregon

FRESNO, CORVALLIS--Air-craft accidents during wildlife population counts killed five wildlife agency workers in two weeks in January 2010.
California Department of Fish & Game biologists Clu Cotter and Kevin O'Connor, and scientists' aide Tom Stolberg, died on January 4 when their helicopter hit a power line while they were counting deer near Redinger Lake, in the Sierra National Forest.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service pilot Vernon Ray Bentley and David Pitkin, a former Fish & Wildlife Service employee working as a consultant, were killed on January 17 when their single-engine Cessna crashed west of Philomath, Oregon. They were returning to Corvallis after surveying duck and goose populations in coastal estuaries, said Fish & Wildlife Service spokesperson David Platte.
The incidents recalled the October 2009 death of Friends of Animals consultant Gordon Haber during an aerial wolf survey in Denali National Park, Alaska, and the September 2007 death of Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife carnivore specialist Rocky Spencer in a helicopter accident.
Bentley and Pitkin were reportedly the first human deaths in the 54-year history of the Fish & Wildlife Service aerial bird surveys. However, 10 employees have been killed and 28 injured in more than 50 aircraft crashes since 1979 during coyote-killing missions by the former Fish & Wildlife Service agency that now is USDA Wildlife Services. The agency was moved to the USDA in 1986.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2010:

OBITUARIES

Godofredo Stutzin, 93, died on February 11, 2010 at his home in Chile. Born in Germany, originally surnamed Lipinski, Stutzin fled to Chile in 1935, at age 19. Becoming an attorney, Stutzin founded the Union of Friends & Animals in 1955, and the National Committee for the Defense of Fauna & Flora in 1967. For decades Stutzin served as Chilean representative to the Animal Welfare Institute, the International Primate Protection League, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Stutzin was perhaps best known for his 1976 effort to protect Lake Chungara, located at the highest elevation of any lake in the world, but his first concern was animal welfare. As well as advocating for fish in the wild, Stutzin spoke forcefully and often against both recreational fishing and keeping pet fish. "Stutzin almost single-handedly created the modern environmental/animal protection movement in South America," recalled ANIMAL PEOPLE web producer Patrice Greanville. "He was my friend, one of those that neither distance nor time could diminish in affection or stature."

Jack Faxon died on January 5, 2010. He had been under treatment for cancer. Jack and Sheila Faxon, his wife of many years, were involved in animal, environmental, peace, and vegetarian activism in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts for more than 40 years.

Cole McFarland Jr., 59, died of a heart attack on December 28, 2009 in Thousand Oaks, California, while exercising his dogs at a park near his home. McFarland on June 10, 1985 dived across railway tracks in Carlsbad, California, to push his dog Nobel out of the way of an Amtrak passenger train, and lost his left leg just below the knee. The incident led indirectly to seven years as executive editor and photographer for the Animals Voice magazine, founded in 1984 by Laura Moretti, who has continued the publication in web format after discontinuing the printed periodical. After Animals Voice suspended publishing in print format in 1992, McFarland served for several years as managing director of the Labette Humane Society in Parson, Kansas, where he was among the first humane society directors in the U.S. to promote neuter/return of feral cats.

Patti Lewis, 75, died from complications of diabetes on January 15, 2010 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Founding the Humane Society of Charlotte in 1978, Lewis in 1982 opened the first low-cost dog and cat sterilization clinic in the Carolinas, against strong veterinary opposition. By 1989 the volume of animals killed in local shelters had fallen by 60%, and the rate of shelter killing per 1,000 humans in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area remained below half the North Carolina state rate even as the state rate fell 80% by the end of her tenure. The Humane Society of Charlotte did relatively little sheltering until 1991, when Lewis leased a former city shelter, converting it into a no-kill adoption center. Under Lewis, the Humane Society of Charlotte was chiefly funded by a thrift store. By 2003 the thrift store revenues were no longer enough to subsidize the growing demand for humane society services. Clients reportedly waited up to six weeks for sterilization appointments. A year of public controversy over Lewis' management style led to her forced retirement in mid-2004.

Ron Telles, 55, an administrative support staff member since 2008 at the Clatsop County Animal Shelter in Warrenton, Oregon, died of a heart attack on January 27, 2010.
   Gus Thornton, 76, died on January 24, 2010 at his home in Medfield, Massachusetts. Raised on an Oklahoma farm, Thornton earned his veterinary degree at Oklahoma A&M College, then took an internship in 1957 at Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston, operated by the Massachusetts SPCA. Promoted to chief of staff in 1966, Thornton "quadrupled its veterinary staff, instituted a residency program, and built the country's first veterinary intensive care unit," according to his MSPCA biography. Thornton also helped to create the World Society for the Protection of Animals in 1981, by merging an MSPCA subsidiary, the International Society for the Protection of Animals, which had earlier absorbed subsidiaries of the Humane Society of the U.S. and Royal SPCA of Britain, with the Dutch-based World Society for the Protection of Animals. Thornton later served two terms as WSPA board president. Becoming president of the MSPCA in 1989, Thornton retired in 2002. MSPCA annual income more than doubled during his tenure, and net assets nearly doubled.

Charlie Wilson, 76, died on February 10, 2010 in Lufkin, Texas. A Texas member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1996, Wilson was best known for his support of the Afghan mujahedeen during their struggle against Soviet occupiers in the 1980s, dramatized by Tom Hanks in the 2007 film Charlie Wilson's War. Wilson entered politics in his mid- teens, as the film depicted, after a city official in Trinity, Texas killed his dog with broken glass mixed into the dog's food. Running against the official in the next election, Wilson drove 96 voters from poor neighborhoods to the polls, winning by 16 votes. Wilson's cat Khyber, adopted from the Angelina County Animal Shelter in Lufkin, Texas, was among the most popular residents of the Rayburn House Office Building from 1986 until her death in 1994.

John Thorbjarnarson, 52, died on February 14, 2010 in New Delhi, India. "Known and respected as one of the world's premier crocodilian biologists," remembered longtime friend Chuck Schaffer, Thorbjarn-arson had helped to establish conservation programs for crocodiles, caimans, and alligators in all parts of their global range. "Collapsing after giving a course at the Wildlife Institute of India," Schaffer wrote, "he was diagnosed with advanced falciparum malaria, likely contracted on a recent trip to Uganda."

Stephen Huneck, 60, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, shot himself on January 7, 2010 in nearby Littleton, New Hampshire, after laying off several employees at his economically struggling Dog Mountain art studio and chapel. "A native of Sudbury, Massa-chusetts, he started out whittling wooden sculptures and later dog-themed furniture, like the pews in the chapel," wrote John Curran of Associated Press. Huneck built the chapel in 2000. Made of wood from Huneck's 175-acre Dog Mountain property, it features "stained glass windows with images of dogs," Curran said. Huneck also produced three books about his dogs, illustrated with woodcut prints.

Bernice Warrington, 85, a longtime volunteer humane investigator in Fairfax County, Virginia, died on January 16, 2010 at her home in McLean. Virginia Voters for Animal Welfare has named a bill to reauthorize the appointment of volunteer humane investigators in her honor. Appointments were halted in 2003, according to VVAW cofounder Lillian Clancy, due to opposition from the Farm Bureau Federation.

John A. Caltabiano, DVM, 55, died of cancer on November 6, 2009. A longtime resident of Old Lyme, Connecticut, Caltabiano in 1980 founded one of the first small animal mobile clinics in Connecticut. Financed by the Vernon A. Tait All-Animal Adoption, Preservation & Rescue Fund of Westbrook, Connecticut, Caltabiano in 1997 put the Tait's Every Animal Matters mobile neutering van on the road. TEAM, continued by Caltabiano's longtime partner Donna Sicuranza, of Westbrook, has now sterilized more than 128,000 cats. Caltabiano in mid-2008 began marketing FeralStat, a birth control drug for feral cats, based on a synthetic progestin used for other purposes for about 50 years. The product did not win the approval of the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs. Similar to a prescription product long available for dogs, FeralStat uses a synthetic hormone that U.S. veterinarians prefer not to use because of potentially serious side effects.

Sam Hamilton, 54, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service director since September 2009, died on February 20, 2010 after suffering a heart attack while skiing at Keystone, Colorado. A 30-year Fish & Wildlife Service employee, Hamilton was best known for habitat restoration work in the Everglades and in coastal wetlands after Hurricane Katrina.

Grace Constance Throckmorton, 23, was killed in a December 1, 2009 car crash near Sherwood, Oregon, where she trained horses for the DevenWood Equestrian Center. An animal advocate since childhood, "Grace was a force--and a voice--for all animals," recalled Pasado's Safe Haven, the designated recipient of donations in her memory.

Cynthia Long, 75, of Putney, Vermont, was killed by a car on January 30, 2010 while trying to rescue a cat who was stranded in the median strip of U.S. 91 in Dummerston. A longtime vegan animal advocate and rescuer, Long in 2009 won a struggle to adopt a cat kept by a deceased woman who wanted the cat to be killed so that the cat's remains could be buried with her.

Bonnie Tonetti, 53, was killed by a pickup truck on February 3, 2010 near her home in Port St. Lucie, Florida, along with a golden retriever who was one of two dogs she was trying to rescue from the road. Tonetti was a longtime employee of the Port St. Lucie Hospital psychiatric admissions office.

Helen Zilke, 92, a Safeway produce buyer for 35 years, left $1.1 million to the Wenatchee Valley Humane Society to help build a no-kill shelter, the society learned in January 2010. Zilke died in August 2009.

Norman Buwalda, 66, of Southwold, Ontario, on January 10, 2010 was fatally mauled while feeding his pet Siberian tiger. Police said the same tiger mauled a 10-year-old boy in 2004. Buwalda, who had other exotic pets, was chair of the Canadian Exotic Animal Owners' Association.