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ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008: the HTML edition
Menaced by melting permafront
flooding their dens, exterminated for preying
on Canada geese, and often trapped for fur,
Arctic foxes are another species harmed by
Sarah Palin’s policies as Alaska governor.
(Kim Bartlett)
1. Appalled by Palin, Humane Society Legislative Fund endorses Obama
2. Off-exhibit secrets of troubled zoos
3. Judge tells the USDA to sit out California Proposition Two fight--
4. Closer regulation of exotic cat facilities may follow two tiger attacks in Missouri
5. Hurricanes Gustav & Ike test federal pet evacuation mandate
6. Editorial feature: Animal welfare & conservation in conflict
8. Shelters discontinue killing animals for other agencies, gassing, & drop-off cages
9. Shelter manager sold cadavers for lab use
10. Austrian activists freed after 104 days, still face charges
11. Puerto Rico gains a new humane law; prosecution of animal control contractor fails
12. RSPCA asks EC to publish new lab regs
13. Tigers scarce, poachers zero in on leopards, warns Indian conservationist
14. What became of the puppies after cloning client didn't pay?
15. Courts restore federal protection to wolves in all Lower 48
16. Monsoons bring floods from Himalayas to the Bengal coast
17. BOOKS: Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts & Minds
About Animals & Food by Gene Baur
18. BOOKS: Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader/ Edited by Clifton P. Flynn
19. BOOKS: Pet Food Politics by Marion Nestle
22. ANIMAL PEOPLE needs young artists
23. Please help ANIMAL PEOPLE continue its mission.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
1. Appalled by Palin, Humane Society Legislative Fund endorses Obama
WASHINGTON D.C. The Republican nomination of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to run for U.S. vice president alongside presidential candidate John McCain inspired the Humane Society Legislative Fund to break with precedent in unanimously endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden.
The Humane Society Legislative Fund board includes prominent Republicans as well as Democrats.
≥While we have endorsed hundreds of Congressional candidates for election, both Democrats and Republicans, we have never before endorsed a presidential candidate,≤ wrote Humane Society Legislative Fund president Mike Markarian in his September 22, 2008 blog.
≥As an Illinois state senator, Markarian explained, ≥Obama backed at least a dozen animal protection laws, including to strengthen the penalties for animal cruelty, to help animal shelters, to promote spaying and neutering, and to ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption. In the U.S. Senate, he has consistently co-sponsored bills to combat animal fighting and horse slaughter, and has supported efforts to increase funding for adequate enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act, Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and federal laws to combat animal fighting and puppy mills.≤
Responding to a Humane Society Legislative Fund questionnaire, Obama ≥pledged support for nearly every animal protection bill currently pending in Congress,≤ Markarian said. ≥Obama also commented on the broader links between animal cruelty and violence in society,≤ Markarian mentioned.
Conceded online animal advocacy commentator Karen Dawn, who has frequently praised Republicans, ≥Obamaπs record on animal issues is better than most. I have spoken to him personally, and found a keen awareness of and interest in the connection between the livestock industry and global warming. Yet animal issues are hardly at the forefront of Obamaπs campaign—he is no vegan Kucinich.≤
Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle has also frequently praised Republicans, but Obama appeared to win Pacelleπs support in July 2008 by pledging to adopt a shelter dog for his daughters.
The anti-puppy mill book A Rare Breed of Love, by Jana Kohl, published earlier in 2008, includes a photo of Obama posing with Kohlπs dog Baby in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Obama convinced many pro-animal voters of his sincerity when Entertainment Weekly asked him to name the first film he could remember watching as a child.
≥I don't remember the first movie,≤ Obama replied, ≥but I can tell you that one of the first was Born Free. I remember that movie having an impact on me. I think I may have teared up at the end when they release [the lioness] Elsa. I couldnπt have been more than four or five, but I remember choking up on that.≤
Continued Markarian, ≥Republican Senator John McCain voted for and co-sponsored legislation to stop horse slaughter, and voted to eliminate a $2 million subsidy for the luxury fur coat industry. But he has largely been absent on other issues. The McCain campaign did not fill out the Humane Society Legilsative Fund presidential questionnaire, and has not issued any public statements on animal welfare issues. Yet he did speak at the National Rifle Association convention earlier this year, and was the keynote speaker≤ at a late September conference held by the U.S. Sportsmenπs Alliance.
Endorsing McCain through a ≥Sportsmen for McCain National Steering Committee≤ were National Rifle Association past president Sandra Froman, American Council of Snowmobile Associations executive director Christine Jourdain, former National Wild Turkey Federation chief executive Rob Keck, Boone & Crockett Club past president Robert Model, and Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife founder Don Peay.
McCain has also long enjoyed the backing of prominent members of Safari Club International, whose national headquarters in Tucson is within his home state.
But the League of Conservation Voters, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Sierra Club have all long backed Obama. While all three organizationsπ statements have emphasized McCainπs positions on energy issues in opposing him, mainstream conservationists have been annoyed since February 2003 by McCainπs repeated derisive attacks on a five-year, $4.8 million grizzly bear census based on DNA analysis of hair and scats.
McCain continued to scoff at the study in his September 26 debate with Obama.
≥There are approximately 765 grizzly bears in northwestern Montana,≤ summarized Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello four days earlier, after the U.S. Geological Survey announced the study results. ≥Thatπs the largest population of grizzly bears documented in Montana in more than 30 years,≤ three times as many as were believed to be in the region when the study was first proposed, half again as many as the most recent previous estimates by conventional counting methods.
Supporters of the research included Montana ranchers, farmers and Republican leaders,≤ said Cappiello. They pushed for the study as a step toward taking grizzlies off the endangered species list. Since 1975, grizzlies have been [designated as] threatened in the lower 48 states, a status that bars hunting [grizzlies] and restricts development.
≥While McCainπs positions on animal protection have been lukewarm,≤ wrote Markarian, ≥his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Governor Sarah Palinπs record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals,≤ in only two years in office, ≥than any other current governor in the United States.
≥Obamaπs running mate, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, has been a stalwart friend of animal welfare advocates in the Senate,≤ Markarian wrote, ≥and has received high marks year after year on our Humane Scorecard. In the 108th Congress he was the co-author with California Senator Barbara Boxer of legislation to ban the netting of dolphins by commercial tuna fishermen. He was the lead author of a bill in the 107th Congress to prohibit trophy hunting of captive exotic mammals in fenced enclosures, and he successfully passed the bill through the Senate Judiciary Committee.≤
Palinπs parents, Chuck and Sally Heath of Anchorage, Alaska, ≥have been part-time U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife specialists for the past 15 years, traveling throughout Alaska trapping or killing animals,≤ recounted Associated Press writer Matt Volz. Among their assignments, Volz noted, have been killing Arctic foxes for preying on nesting Canada geese in the Pribilof islands, poisoning rats on Palmyra Atoll, and killing mice and rats in debris from the World Trade Center during the search for human remains in the Fresh Kills landfill in January 2002.
Palin rose to political prominence in Alaska as mayor of Wasilla, a town of 7,000 known chiefly as the starting point for the annual 1,100-mile Iditarod dog sled race. Palin promoted the race, which is opposed by many animal advocates.
As governor, ≥Environmentalists have nicknamed Palin the åkilla from Wasilla,≤ reported Associated Press writer Dina Cappiello.
Upon being nominated to run for vice president, Palin declared that her favorite food is ≥moose burgers.≤ Among the first photographs distributed by Palin boosters after her nomination were several showing her and one of her daughters with a moose whom Palin shot, one showing her speaking in the governorπs office from a sofa with a grizzly bear pelt (head attached) draped over the back, and one of her speaking while wearing fur. A photo of her parentsπ home showed little space that was not stuffed with hunting and trapping trophies.
≥Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill,≤ Alaska Wildlife Alliance president John Toppenberg said. ≥She is in the Stone Age of wildlife management and is very opposed to utilizing accepted science.≤
Continued Cappiello, ≥At the National Governors Association conference where she first met John McCain, Palin had other business: making her case to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species.≤
On August 4, 2008 Palin in her capacity as governor of Alaska ≥sued the government for listing the polar bear,≤ recounted Mark Hertsgaard in The Nation. The listing, Palin asserted, would harm Alaskan oil and gas development.
≥The George W. Bush administration had not wanted to designate the polar bear as threatened in the first place,≤ Hertsgaard explained. Polar bears were protected only under pressure of court orders, based on a finding by the U.S. Geological Survey that two-thirds of all polar bears could be lost by 2050 if Arctic ice continues to melt at the present rate.
≥The listing was the first time global warming had been cited as the sole premise in an Endangered Species Act case,≤ Hertsgaard continued. ≥Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne clearly wanted it to be the last. When Kempthorne announced the polar bear listing, he emphasized that it would not affect federal policy on global warming or block development in the Arctic. On August 11,≤ with Palinπs lawsuit as pretext, Kempthorne ≥proposed new rules that could allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions will imperil a threatened or endangered species. To make sure no one missed the point, Kempthorne told reporters that the new rule would keep the Endangered Species Act from becoming åa back doorπ to making climate change policy.≤
Wrote Alaska Conservation Solutions president Deborah Williams, ≥Palinπs actions and comments regarding polar bears and the impact of global warming on the Arctic ice cap reveal serious problems with her views on science and proper governmental process. Governor Palin asserted that the state did a åcomprehensive reviewπ of the science and found no reason to support a listing. This statement flatly contradicted the conclusions reached and communicated by the stateπs leading marine mammal biologists.≤
Palin also opposes protecting the estimated 375 beluga whales remaining in the Cook Inlet, off Anchorage≠≠less than 20% of the population believed to have inhabited the Cook Inlet in 1959, when Alaska was admitted to statehood.
≥Federal scientists have said the Cook Inlet whales have a 26 percent chance of going extinct in the next 100 years,≤ pointed out Associated Press writer Mary Pemberton.
A decision on listing the Cook Inlet belugas as threatened is due by October 20, two weeks before election day.
Among Palin's many hostile positions toward wildlife, her antipathy toward wolves is best known, amplified in part by a McCain/Palin TV commercial which depicted their political opponents as a wolf pack.
≥I have lived in Alaska for nearly 25 years, long enough to see the on-again off-again cycles of predator control,≤ wrote Friends of Animals member Marybeth Holleman in a statement distributed by FoA. ≥Never has the killing of wolves and bears in order to inflate the numbers of moose and caribou been so widespread and mean-spirited as under Palinπs reign. Under Palin, private citizens kill wolves from planes under the guise of predator control. They run the wolves to exhaustion, and then shoot them. Under Palin, for the first time in 20 years, wolves are also gunned down from state-chartered helicopters. Palin authorized $400,000 in state funds for advertising to persuade Alaskans to vote against a ballot initiative that would have curtailed aerial hunting. Her propaganda was successful; the ballot measure failed,≤ just one day before her nomination to run for vice president.
≥Under Palin, for the first time since Alaska statehood, itπs legal to do land-and-shoot killing of bears and their cubs,≤ Holleman added. ≥Under Palin, predator control has spread from one to five regions of Alaska, to over 60,000 square miles, more than at any time since statehood. Nearly 800 wolves have been shot from planes, and some 2,000 are killed every year by other methods. And thatπs just the reported deaths. Palin even went so far last year as to put a bounty on wolves≠≠ she wanted to pay $150 for a foreleg of each dead wolf. Thanks to Friends of Animals, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, and Defenders of Wildlife, her wolf bounty was ruled illegal by the courts.≤
Palin's speech accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination was ghosted by former White House speechwriter Matthew Scully, author of Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy (2002).
Noted Massimo Calabresi of Time magazine, Scully is best known for his vigorous defense of animal rights. A vegetarian who is regularly critical of the NRA and much of the hunting community, he is a passionate advocate for doing away with the more brutal versions of blood-sport, including aerial hunting, which Palin supports.
Karen Dawn hoped that the Scully/Palin partership might positively influence Palin. The partnership may be more likely to strain Scully's welcome at animal advocacy conferences.
Said Norm Phelps, author of The Longest Struggle (2007), ≥I think the fact that Matthew Scully wrote her convention speech, which was a masterpiece of viciousness, should give us all pause about the notion that conservatives will ever be serious animal advocates.
Added University of Texas at El Paso philosophy professor Steven Best, "Like the politicians he serves, Scully talks out of both sides of his mouth. No principled or consistent person writes a book against hunting, and then writes a speech for a vicious defender of hunting and avid killer."
If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain,≤ concluded Markarian, ≥this could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.
—Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
2. Off-exhibit secrets of troubled zoos
UBUD, GIANYAR—The Bali Zoo, featuring exhibits from which animals often ≥go walkabout,≤ might be described as emphasizing form over substance.
Occupying a six-acre forested ravine in a residential neighborhood in Singapadu, a suburb of Ubud, the Bali Zoo has been described by tourism media as a ≥hidden jewel≤≠≠and it is, at a glance.
A closer look reveals species-inappropriate exhibits, neglect of animal health, and potentially deadly accidents to visitors and neighbors lurking just around many of the bends of the zooπs winding paths.
ANIMAL PEOPLE discovered a long list of problems on two visits to the Bali Zoo in August 2008. Many would by themselves be sufficient to close a U.S. zoo for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, pending substantial improvement.
The much larger Bali Safari & Marine Park, in Gianyar, offers an altogether safer, tamer atmosphere. The menagerie consists chiefly of elephants and big cats. The animals cannot even be seen from most of the park. Few animals are exhibited even in the animal areas. Shops and restaurants may outnumber the resident species.
Jansen Manansang, head of the family-controlled company that developed the Bali Safari & Marine Park, Taman Safari at Bogor, East Java, and the Taman Safari II park at Ragunan, West Java, was honored on August 14, 2008 in Jakarta by Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
But the Bali Safari & Marine Park elephant act, in which an elephant steps through a maze of audience volunteers lying flat on the stage, would not be permitted at an an accredited zoo in most of the world. Insurers and safety regulators would stop it if zoo association standards did not.
Bali Safari & Marine Park visitors for an added fee may be photographed cuddling lions, tigers, and orangutans, at least some of whom are drugged to stupifaction≠≠as ANIMAL PEOPLE witnessed and documented for seven hours on August 31, 2008.
Asia Animal Protection Network founder John Wedderburn had already posted on the AAPN ≥ZooPage≤ that ≥the general good impression≤ that the park presents ≥is spoiled by the photography areas where you can have your picture taken with a drugged lion or tiger cub lying on a table.≤
Wedderburn had earlier noted ≥various big catsächained to a bench for long periods so that visitors can have their photographs taken sitting beside them≤ at Taman Safari in Bogor, West Java, owned and built by the same investors.
Many photos posted to web sites by previous visitors to the Bali Safari & Marine Park and Taman Safari appeared to confirm Wedderburnπs allegations.
But Jansen Manansang, who heads the family-controlled company that developed the Bali Safari & Marine Park, Taman Safari, and the Taman Safari II park, is also president of the South East Asian Zoo Association.
The South East Asian Zoo Associ-ation is a member of the World Association of Zoos & Aquaria. Both associationsπ logos appear on the Bali Safari & Marine Park and Taman Safari web site front pages.
Drugging animals for photography and encouraging the public to handle animals ≥is contrary to the World Association of Zoos & Aquaria ethics and welfare policy,≤ affirmed North Carolina Zoo director David Jones, who is vice chair of the WAZA ethics and welfare committee.
Jansen Manansang was a member of the WAZA working group that in October 2006 produced a document headlined ≥The Global Zoo Community takes up Global Zoo Standards through WAZA.≤
The 21-page document opened with a seven-point ≥Crux of the issue≤ statement, mentioning that ≥a bad zoo conveys unfortunate subliminal messages,≤ and expressing concern about ≥negative impacts on the safety of animals, public, and staff.≤
This all raised two questions preceding the ANIMAL PEOPLE visit to the Bali Safari & Marine Park. First, are the Manansang-directed zoos actually drugging and/or chaining animals for photography? Second, if this is happening, does the Manansang family know about it?
ANIMAL PEOPLE arrived at the Bali Safari & Marine Park soon after it opened in the morning. A lion cub photo concession was already attracting customers. The lion cub offered for the customers to pose with was sedated to the point of unconsciousness. He remained unconscious until about an hour before the concession closed in early afternoon. He then began attempting to move and between frequent bouts of dry heaves appeared to be trying to find something to nurse from≠≠ a hint that he had only recently been weaned, if weaned at all.
Tony Greenwood, owner of the Peel Zoo in Australia, joined ANIMAL PEOPLE in observing the lion cub about an hour after ANIMAL PEOPLE started. Greenwood, also involved in developing and attempting to improve the Bali Zoo, had business at the Bali Safari & Marine Park with general manager Esther Manansang, daughter of Jansen Manansang.
Esther Manansangπs uncles Frans Manansang and Tony Sumampau were Jansen Manansangπs partners in founding all three of the zoos that their family owns.
Esther Manansang boasted to media when the Bali Safari & Marine Park opened that ≥There will be no honking car horns or feeding animals≤ there, but apparently said nothing about drugging animals for photos.
While ANIMAL PEOPLE continued watching the cub, also keeping an eye on two locations at which keepers sold visitors greens to feed elephants, Greenwood met with Esther Manansang.
After five hours the lion cub had almost continuous dry heaves, and was carried to an off-exhibit area over an attendantπs shoulder, past a much smaller and younger tiger cub who had been offered for photography for nearly as longer. The tiger cub, if drugged, was less obviously so. The tiger cub was taken off exhibit soon afterward.
Greenwood emerged from his meeting with Esther Manansang stating that she had confirmed that the lion cub was sedated with a half-and-half blend of Ketamine and Xylazine (sold as Rompazine). Greenwood later posted a similar summary of his discussion with Esther Manansang on the Asia Dana Forum, a web site about Asian charities and travel, maintained by ≥Anada,≤ one of the investors Greenwood introduced to the Bali Zoo.
Esther Manansang did not respond to an e-mail from ANIMAL PEOPLE asking how many lion and tiger cubs are used for photo concessions, how often they are drugged, and what becomes of them when they mature.
ANIMAL PEOPLE forwarded our findings to both David Jones and the WAZA secretariat in Liebefeld, Switzerland, along with seven photos from individual visitorsπ web sites and links to tourism web sites that illustrate and describe the Bafi Safari & Marine Park photo concession practices.
≥The WAZA office have tried to make contact with Manansang,≤ Jones reported on September 19, ≥but have had no response. It appears that this is not for the first time [that similar complaints were made]. Apparently something similar was reported a while back and they asked him about it then, with no response.≤
Jones promised that he would, ≥acting on behalf of the welfare and ethics committee, formally ask for an explanation, and we will do that next week,≤ he pledged, ≥if there is no response to the Swiss office.≤
Sabine Gyger of the WAZA secretariat had already asked Jansen Manansang to ≥Please look into the matter and respond.≤
Taman Safari project consultant Sherman T. Wong on September 25 referred the drugging issue to South East Asian Zoo Association animal ethics & welfare committee chair G. Agoramoorthy.
E-mailed Agoramoorthy on Sep-tember 28, ≥Animal shows and photography are allowed in SEAZA member zoos if they do not violate welfare and ethical standards. The SEAZA Ethics and Welfare Committee carried out†assessment of all three Taman Safari Indonesia parks owned by Jansen [Manan-sang], and did not see any evidence regarding sedating animals for photography,≤ but Agoramoorthy did not say when this assessment was done. Neither did he mention the many web site references to the practice.
≥I discussed [the drugging] with Esther [Manansang]. She had no recollection of speaking to anyone regarding sedating animals for photography,≤ Agoramoorthy said.
Responded Greenwood, ≥The daughter cannot remember talking to me? I have no need to lie and the animals tell the tale any way. We have been in this industry all our lives. We are not silly. You were with me when we videotaped the animals in question This practice is widely known by many visitors. It is no surprise at all.≤
The WAZA 2008 annual meeting is to be held in October in Adelaide, Australia. Jansen Manansang is expected to attend.
≥I am going to suggest that it might be better for him to come to the meeting having stopped the practice, rather than it become an issue in Adelaide,≤ Jones said. ≥One way or another,≤ Jones promised, ≥I will get it looked into and hopefully stopped.≤
WAZA peer pressure may influence the direction of the Bali Safari & Marine Park≠≠or may not. The Bali Zoo does not belong to either WAZA or the South East Asian Zoo Association. And Tony Green-wood, after two years of trying to lead founder Anak Agung Gede Putra by example, is openly running out of patience.
Tony and Narelle Greenwood discovered the Bali Zoo in November 2006. Attendence had collapsed since the terrorist attacks on Bali tourism facilities of 2002 and 2005. With 75 staff to pay and 350 animals to feed, the Bali Zoo was $500,000 in debt.
The Greenwoods bailed the Bali Zoo out financially and began rebuilding, repairing, and re-organizing the animal exhibits, but soon encountered resistance.
For example, Anak Agung Gede Putra, who shares the name of the longtime hereditary rulers of the community, was in early September 2008 negotiating the acquisition of 14 elephants. He hoped to start an elephant trek around the grounds, to compete with the elephant trek offered by the vastly larger Bali Safari & Marine Park. Greenwood wondered where Anak Agung Gede Putra could even find room for 14 elephants to stand. Unused space at the Bali Zoo is chiefly on steep slopes and seasonal floodplain, potentially suitable for expanding existing exhibits, but not for year-round elephant housing.
Seeking expert backup for his recommendations, Greenwood invited attendees at the August 2008 Asia for Animals conference held in Bali to tour the zoo and express their views to Anak Agung Gede Putra.
Among the Asia for Animals visitors who are known for acumen about zoo management standards and practices were ZooCheck Canada founder Rob Laidlaw; Indian Zoo Inquiry Report author Shubhobroto Ghosh; and Amy Corrigan and Louis Ng of the Animal Concerns Research and Edu-cation Society in Singapore. Corrigan and Ng are noted for their campaign seeking to relocate the Singapore Zooπs two lethargic polar bears, both green with algae.
The findings of the Asia for Animals visitors, many of them posted later to the Asian Animal Protection Network discussion group, focused on small and obsolescent enclosures. Some of the birds in the entry corridor were caged so closely that they could barely spread their wings. The lion and tiger exhibits had already been enlarged, but are not yet fully used by the animals, especially the lions, who continue to pace in the dimensions of their former habit. Greenwood had rearranged the monkey and gibbon exhibits to give the primates space more suited to their needs ≠≠but Anak Agung Gede Putra or some of his staff moved most of them back to their former quarters.
The Bali Zoo bear pit harks back to the Middle Ages, when similar pits were built near marketplaces throughout Europe.
Passing animals around for visitors to pet and handle, including an endangered slow loris, would not meet the care standards of most zoo associations and the legal requirements of many nations.
Two Javan cattle stood in a reeking pond of their own diluted excrement, near the zoo restaurant, with no access to clean running water or food. Water pipes run along the back wall of their enclosure. Introducing clean running water would take a plumber just a couple of hours.
But there were less obvious failures of management, as ANIMAL PEOPLE verified on a re-visit with Greenwood two days after the Asia for Animals group visit.
A gate to the crocodile and pygmy hippo pond was open on both visits, with no visible lock. Several primate cages were left unlocked. The inmates of one cage appeared to know how to unhook a lock left open and escape, vocally objecting when Greenwood snapped the lock shut.
Deer of several species, including some with fully developed horns, on both visits hopped casually in and out of their enclosures in a petting area to mingle with visitors.
The tiger exhibit is separated from dense housing just a few feet away by a one-brick-width wall that a tiger might be able to knock down with a charge. Greenwood said that the smaller of the two tigers in the exhibit, a white female, once leaped out of the exhibit to a visitor observation platform. Had she turned right, she could have jumped down into the village. Instead she turned left, into the zoo grounds, where she was shot with a tranquilizer dart and returned to the exhibit.
The worst, however, was behind the scenes, in the off-exhibit area.
A barren concrete cell housed two lion cubs, without food or water. The neighboring cell housed a lion cub with a large and evidently infected head wound. A variety of caged birds nearby also lacked food and water.
Fetching water for first the lion cubs and then the birds, Greenwood explained that the local police and wildlife law enforcement authorities bring to the zoo any wildlife they confiscate in their work. Often they leave animals in the off-exhibit areas to be discovered hours later by staff, who may enter to attend the ponies stabled there between use at a pony-ride concession, or to burn garbage. He believed that the lion cubs were born at the Bali Zoo, but that the birds were probably confiscated from alleged traffickers≠≠with whom they may have been no worse off.
The off-exhibit area also housed seven gamecocks in the baskets in which they are typically displayed and taken to cockfights. Greenwood said the gamecocks belonged to Anak Agung Gede Putra himself, and were formerly exhibited near the Bali Zoo entrance. Greenwood had pressured Anak Agung Gede Putra to disassociate himself and the zoo from cockfighting, he said. This, Greenwood added, was the first that he had seen of the gamecocks since then.
Behind the gamecocks was a lumber pile. Atop the lumber pile, clinging to a board in apparent rigor mortis, recognized immediately by Green-woodπs children, was the slow loris who had been passed around for Asia for Animals conference visitors to handle.
None of the Bali Zoo staff admitted any knowledge that the slow loris had died. Several told conflicting stories about where he was.
Aware that a slow loris, as a fellow primate, may carry any number of diseases communicable to humans, Greenwood and ANIMAL PEOPLE spent the next several hours trying to find a veterinarian capable of performing a necropsy. The slow loris meanwhile passed well beyond rigor mortis. By then, Greenwood believed from his own zookeeping experience, the odor of the remains indicated that the cause of death was salmonellosis. The slow loris might have become fatally ill from being handled by visitors who had previously touched some of the zoo reptiles.
—Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
3. Judge tells the USDA to sit out California Proposition Two fight--
Feds barred from using promo funds on ads backing agribusiness
SAN FRANCISCO—U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel on September 22, 2008 ordered the USDA to stay out of the agribusiness effort to defeat the California Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, Proposition Two on the state ballot. Judge Patel ruled that the USDA may not legally spend funds collected from egg producers by the American Egg Board to promote the egg industry on television ads that may affect the election outcome.
The American Egg Board is a an 18-member panel appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. The two ads at issue suggest buying locally raised eggs. They feature the same spokesperson who appears in ads directly funded by the egg industry which assert that Proposition Two will drive egg producers out of California.
A government lawyer described the ads as åneutral and educationalπ and said they were unrelated to Proposition Two,≤ wrote San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko. ≥Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Arbuckle said the USDA could accept an order not to spend any of the $3 million [allocated to air the ads] on California advertising before the election. But she argued it would be too burdensome to review the egg boardπs national advertising campaigns and remove any California references. Patel replied that the department was skirting the law and would have to take any steps necessary to comply.≤
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schaefer personally approved the $3 million expenditure, Californians for Humane Farms alleged in filing the case.
Even without USDA support, agribusiness is expected to outspend proponents of Proposition Two several times over. If passed, Proposition Two would reduce the stocking density for caged laying hens by 2015, and after 2015 would prohibit raising pigs and veal calves in crates that prevent them from turning around and extending their limbs.
California production of pigs and crated veal calves is almost invisible as a percentage of the national totals, but California ranks fifth among all states in egg production, with approximately 19 million laying hens. Proposition Two would therefore influence the entire U.S. egg industry.
The USDA television ads were only one of several campaign funding issues sending Californians for Humane Farms to the courts in mid-September. On September 11, 2008 Californians for Humane Farms alleged that ≥more than a dozen major out-of-state egg producers may have violated California law in connection with a massive money laundering scheme orchestrated by the No on Two campaign,≤ according to a Yes on Proposition Two campaign press release.
Two days after the Yes on Proposition Two campaign filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission charging that the United Egg Producers and the No on Two campaign were unlawfully concealing out-of-state contributions,≤ the release alleged, ≥the No on Two committee filed a 76-page report disclosing 127 contributions totaling more than $4.5 million. The report claims, incredibly, that every one of these 127 contributions was received on September 5ãeven though many of the contributors are listed as already having committed funds in a July 15, 2008 fundraising letter distributed by UEP.
≥California law generally requires that all donations to a ballot measure campaign exceeding $5,000 be reported within 10 business days, and in the final three months before the election requires that any contribution over $1,000 be reported within 24 hours,≤ the Yes on Proposition Two release explained. At least 17 out-of-state agribusiness firms donated more than $50,000 in previously unreported funds.
AVMA statement
The Illinois-based American Veterinary Medical Association on August 26, 2008 issued a statement criticizing Proposition Two. Approved by the AVMA executive board a week earlier, the statement called Proposition Two ≥admirable in its goal to improve the welfare of production farm animals,≤ but asserted without specifying a reason that ≥it ignores critical aspects of animal welfare that ultimately would threaten the well-being of the very animals it strives to protect.
The best housing environments,≤ the AVMA continued, ≥take into consideration all relevant factors, including: freedom of movement; expression of normal behaviors; protection from disease, injury, and predators; adequate food and water; and proper handling. Proposition Two would clearly provide greater freedom of movement, but would likely compromise several of the other factors necessary to ensure the overall welfare of the animals, especially with regard to protection from disease and injury.≤
Leaving wholly unexplained how giving laying hens more space could in any way compromise the other factors, the AVMA statement concluded by repeating the agribusiness refrain that Proposition Two might end up ≥compromising the sustainability of production systems.≤
Now headed by former USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service director Ron DeHaven, the AVMA published the statement, wrote American Journal of Veterinary Research senior reporter R. Scott Nolen, because ≥Association leaders believe the referendum, sponsored by national organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States...is part of a larger, state-by-state campaign targeting food animal production.
We are not taking a position on Proposition Two,≤ DeHaven claimed. ≥But..we want our members in California and the public to consider these potential consequences when they make their decision on how to vote.
The California Veterinary Medical Association board of governors earlier voted to endorse Proposition Two, Nolen acknowledged, ≥finding it consistent with the associationπs åEight Principles of Animal Care and Use,π which describe veterinariansπ commitment to animals.
This so angered, frustrated, and disappointed≤ some CVMA members, Nolen continued, that CVMA agriculture committee chair Michael S. Karle formed the would-be rival Association of California Veterinarians, with himself as president. ≥The groupπs goal is to become the principal veterinary organization on issues affecting Californiaπs animal agriculture industry. Karle estimates the number of ACV members at around 20 and ågrowing every day,π≤ wrote Nolen.
The San Diego County Veterinary Medical Association meanwhile joined the CVMA in endorsing Proposition Two≠≠a significant endorsement, in historical context, because San Diego County includes several major egg farms, and was in 2003 hard hit by an outbreak of Newcastle disease. A fungal infection deadly to birds, Newcastle in 2003 spread from gamecocks to egg farms. Acting on the advice of AVMA animal welfare committee member Gregg Cutler, several San Diego County egg producers cleared their facilities of hens who might have been exposed to Newcastle by tossing them alive into a woodchipper.
Public outrage over the incident≠≠and the refusal of the AVMA to discipline Cutler, extensively publicized by United Poultry Concerns≠≠helped to attract attention to the routine live maceration of ≥spent≤ laying hens and unwanted male chicks. As awareness of the routine practices of the egg industry increased, support developed for regulation.
Proposition Two partially addresses the most basic issue, the crowding that enables diseases such as Newcastle to spread rapidly among tens of thousands of birds.
The editorial boards of the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times opposed Proposition Two, but the editorial board of the San Diego Union Tribune supported Proposition Two.
≥Food prices would soar? We donπt think so,≤ wrote the Union Tribune editorialists. ≥A study by the University of California Riverside, comparing the price of eggs from cage-free and caged hens, suggested the producer price would increase less than 1 cent per egg. Egg farmers put out of business? We donπt think soä In the end, Proposition Two is about the basic humane treatment of animals, even those raised for food. There are an estimated 40 million farm animals raised for commercial purposes in California. Every one of them deserves at least that much civility.
Battery caging abroad
As the California Proposition Two debate raged, French minister of agriculture and fisheries Michel Barnier told the European Parliamentπs Intergroup on the Welfare & Conservation of Animals that he favors enforcing a European Union ban on battery caging by 2012, as the EU agreed to do in 1999. ≥I would not like to see it postponed. That is the Council position, that battery farming should cease on that day,≤ Barnier said on September 25, 2008
British egg producers in November 2006 asked that the battery cage phase-out deadline be extended.
In Australia, ≥Even though free-range eggs are selling for more than four times the price of conventionally farmed product, consumption has increased to about 45 million dozen a year. They now make up 22% of total sales, even though they cost as much as $9.50 a dozen. Battery hen eggs sell for as little as $2.50 a dozen,≤ Denis Gregory of the Melbourne Age reported on September 28.
However, added Seamus Bradley, also of the Melbourne Age, ≥More than double the number of free-range hens are needed to ensure that every egg sold as free range is genuine. Each day, hundreds of thousands of barn-laid eggs are passed off as free range in an egg-substitution racket that costs Australian consumers billions of dollars each year,≤ according to Ivy Inwood, president of the Free Range Egg & Poultry Association of Australia.
Demand is so great and accountability is so weak in the egg industry that ≥You can call anything free range and get away with it,≤ Inwood alleged. ≥Half the free-range eggs are falsely labeled because theyπre not coming from genuine free-range farms.≤
A similar fraud involving the sale of conventionally produced eggs that were mislabeled ≥free range≤ came to light in Britain in November 2006.
Inwood ≥has called on all Australian governments to urgently develop a nationwide, legally binding definition of free-range eggs,≤ wrote Bradley.
≥Any new laws should require that laying hens be allowed out of sheds at first light, have adequate space for foraging, and that all hens should be reared as free rangers from hatchlings,≤ Inwood recommended.
Misleading≤ egg ads
Eggs in the U.S. are not commonly mislabeled ≤free range,≤ so far as is documented, but the Humane Society of the U.S. alleged in a September 24 petition to the Federal Trade Commission that United Egg Producers and member companies that together produce about 95% of the U.S. egg supply engage in price fixing and false advertising.
In particular, HSUS charged, United Egg Producers has published animal husbandry guidelines that ≥maintain the materially false and misleading impression that egg-laying hens are confined under åhumane and ethicalπ conditions.≤
HSUS also filed the petition with the Justice Department, ≥which is already looking into allegations of price fixing in egg products,≤ noted Diane Bartz of Reuters.
The Wall Street Journal reported on September 23 that the three largest U.S. egg processors had received grand jury subpoenas in connection with the investigation.
HSUS factory farming campaign director Paul Shapiro and vice president for farm animal welfare Miyun Park, who cofounded Compassion Over Killing, enjoyed success at CoK with similar complaints to the FTC alleging that United Egg Producersπ use of the slogan ≥Animal Care Certified≤ on egg cartons was misleading.
United Egg Producers settled FTC charges by agreeing to phase out the use of cartons bearing the slogan by April 2006. However, eggs continued to appear in supermarkets in cartons labeled ≥Animal Care Certified≤ nearly two years after the phase-out was to have been completed. Compassion Over Killing in February 2008 sued United Egg Producers and the egg marketing firm ISE America for alleged noncompliance with the phase-out agreement. ≠≠Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008
4. Closer regulation of exotic cat facilities may follow two tiger attacks in Missouri
ST. LOUIS—Kenneth and Sandra Smith, owners of the now closed Wesa-A-Geh-Ya exotic animal park in Warren County, Missouri, and Wesa-A-Geh-Ya board member Roy Elder were on September 19, 2008 charged with evidence tampering for allegedly trying to mislead the county sheriffπs department into believing that a pit bull terrier rather than a tiger attacked volunteer Jacob Barr.
≥Barr, 26, had part of his leg surgically amputated following the August 3 mauling,≤ recounted Associated Press writer Betsy Taylor. ≥Elder and Sandra Smith are accused of lying to investigators. Kenneth Smith, who shot and killed the attacking animal, is accused of moving the dead tigerπs body to a different location.≤
In Stone County, Missouri, only one day after the Barr attack, ≥Branson Zoo intern Dakoda Ramel, 16, suffered puncture wounds to the neck, head and leg after he entered a tiger enclosure,≤ reported Branson Daily News staff writers Chad Hunter and Donna Clevenger. ≥The Stone County Sheriffπs Department reported that Ramel entered the tiger pen to take photographs for a customer.≤
≥At that point, two other tigers joined in the attack and dragged the victim to a water pool,≤ said a Stone County Sheriffπs Department press release.
Responded a Branson Zoo press release, ≥We do not know at this time why Ramel was in the enclosure, as it is a clear violation of policy, which is both written and verbal. The only persons who saw what happened clearly stated that he slipped and fell and that the cats had not attacked in any way. It is also firmly believed he was unconscious when a female tiger approached, grabbed him by the neck, and dragged him to what she would have felt was safety.≤
Ramel had worked at the zoo, formerly known as Predator World and the Branson West Reptile Garden, for about three years.
Both Wesa-A-Geh-Ya and the Branson Zoo had long histories of alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including failure to maintain secure enclosures.
≥A 2007 safety inspection of Branson Zoo noted three instances of animals getting out of their pens: two wolves who escaped into the community, a grizzly bear that remained on the property but was able to kill a tiger, and a fox that was hit by a car,≤ wrote Hunter and Clevenger.
The Smiths moved to eastern Missouri in 1986 with a tiger and two cougars, and acquired more animals over the years,≤ recalled Taylor.
The business name they adopted, Wesa-A-Geh-Ya, ≥means åCat Ladyπ in Sandra Smithπs native Cherokee language,≤ the Smiths told visitors.
Initiatially operated as a for-profit zoo and breeding compound, Wesa-A-Geh-Yah obtained nonprofit status in 1998 and thereafter claimed to be a sanctuary. ≥Many of the tiger cubs that were sold to others ended up back in Warren County when the new owners couldnπt handle them,≤ noted St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Susan Weich.
The Smiths surrendered their USDA license to exhibit the animals in 2003, after repeated Animal Welfare Act citations, for which they were fined $13,000 and given two years on probation in 2004.
≥That got the USDA off their backs,≤ wrote Weich. ≥It also stopped the Smiths from being able to collect donations from visitors who came to see their animals. Funding for the facility slipped to about $1,200 a year from $40,000 annually. Donations of meat and volunteers help to tend the animals dropped off as criticism by animal rights groups and public scrutiny of the operation increased.≤
The Smiths reportedly also drew probation after convictions in May 2008 for failing to register dangerous animals with the county sheriffπs department.
Unfortunately, Barr, of Warrenton, knew nothing about the facilityπs troubled history,≤ continued Weich. Barr is friends with a volunteer at Wesa-A-Geh-Ya. The two men had been camping together, and when Barrπs friend said he was going to clean the cages, Barr agreed to help. The Barr family sued the Smiths for damages on September 3.
Officials in Warren County said they would consider an ordinance addressing ownership of nondomestic animals in the next month,≤ reported Weich. ≥State Representative Mike Sutherland, who has been trying to set standards for places like Wesa-A-Geh-Ya for five years, is hopeful that publicity about the mauling will help a law get passed this session.≤
Wesa-A-Geh-Ya entered the summer of 2008 with ≥52 animals of the 84 they reported in 2004,≤ longtime critic Rosella Baller told ANIMAL PEOPLE, ≥and this does not include new animals born≤ since then, Baller said. Baller claimed that at least one litter of four tiger cubs was born at Wesa-A-Geh-Ya in 2007.
Sandra Smith told Sarah Whitney of the Post-Dispatch that just one tiger had been born at Wesa-A-Geh-Ya since 1998, a lone cub in 2003.
Wesa-A-Geh-Ya had 49 animals when the Smiths announced on August 5 that they would close the facility. Among the animals were 33 tigers, eight lions, four wolves, a bear, a puma, and a leopard, according to Kevin Murphy of the Kansas City Star. The last animal was a fox whom the Smiths planned to keep.
Joe Schreibvogel, director of the G.W. Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, took in ≥eight lions, the four wolves, four tigers, the bear, the cougar and the leopard,≤ said Murphy. Schreibvogel told Jordan Wilson of Post-Dispatch that the G.W. Exotic Animal Park already had more than 170 big cats and 1,400 animals on 16 acres.
Nineteen Wesa-A-Geh-Ya tigers were sent to the Serenity Springs Wildlife Center in Calhan, Colorado, opened in 1993, already housing 147 big cats, chiefly tigers.
Schreibvogel told Whitney that the Carnivore Preservation Trust in North Carolina had offered to take four tigers, but withdrew the offer after the Smiths refused to sign a contract stating they would never again own exotic animals.
Both Schreibvogel and the Serenity Springs Wildlife Center have also had troubled histories. Schreibvogelπs background, including controversies over the safety of his traveling animal shows, filled 15 paragraphs in the October 2002 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
The Serenity Springs Wildlife Center debuted as a breeding operation in 1993, but turned to rescue in 1995 after taking 12 big cats from a facility called the Alamo Tiger Ranch that was closed due to Animal Welfare Act violations. In June 2003 two Bengal tigers mauled the only Serenity Springs employee. Founders Nick and Karen Sculac lost their home to foreclosure in 2005, after Nick Sculac suffered a heart attack and was unable to continue his contracting firm. Karen Sculac died of pneumonia in August 2006≠≠but Serenity Springs now has nearly twice as many animals as it reportedly did then.
Amid the Wesa-A-Geh-Ya and Branson Zoo episodes, Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida wrote ≥New laws,≤ including the 2003 federal Captive Wildlife Safety Act, ≥have caused such a dramatic decrease in the number of unwanted big cats that we are on the brink of no more abused and unwanted big cats.≤
The long list of individual big cats in urgent need of sanctuary space is much shorter than five years ago, ANIMAL PEOPLE files indicate≠≠but the total numbers in need of placement remain about the same, due to increasing numbers of sanctuary and roadside zoo closures. ≠≠Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
5.Hurricanes Gustav & Ike test federal pet evacuation mandate
HOUSTON, NEW ORLEANS—Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, hitting the Gulf Coast barely more than a week apart in September 2008, brought the first major test of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, passed by Congress in 2006.
The PETS Act was passed after evidence surfaced that many of the human fatalities attributed to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 resulted from people refusing to evacuate because they could not take pets with them. The purpose of the PETS Act is to ensure that provisions for pet evacuation are incorporated into regional disaster planning.
Three years after pet owners were reduced to tears while being forced to leave their dogs and cats in neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Katrina, emergency response officials are taking extraordinary care to ensure animal safety,≤ wrote Alex Branch of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
≥Weπre making sure the pets go where their owners go,≤ United Animal Nations volunteer Sandy Cochran told Branch.
Gustav, doing relatively little damage, proved to be a valuable ≥wet run≤ for Ike, believed to be the third most costly hurricane to ever hit the U.S., after Katrina and Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
In Shreveport, ≥Using lessons from Hurricane Katrina, when people refused to evacuate without their pets, the state created the Louisiana Mega Shelter,≤ wrote Cindy Wolff of the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
More than 800 dogs and cats from residents, local rescue groups and shelters were housed at the shelter, tended by volunteers from national groups. People registered their pets with the state when they left. The animals were loaded into air-conditioned trucks and taken to Shreveport.≤ Their humans were notified when the animals could be reclaimed.
Twenty-nine dogs, four cats, and a bird belonging to Gustav evacuees were housed at the Mobile County Emergency Management Agencyπs temporary shelter at the Boys & Girls Club in Semmes.
≥Weπve been planning this service for two years,≤ Mobile SPCA humane officer Elizabeth Flott told Renee Busby of the Mobile Press-Register.
Dallas Animal Services practiced for the much larger influx of animals received in connection with Ike by housing 43 pets of Gustav evacuees in a temporary shelter in the Reunion Arena parking garage.
≥Officials in cities across Texas say housing the furry, feathered and scaly loved ones of evacuees has for the most part gone well,≤ reported Root and Brown of Associated Press, as the Ike rescue effort wound down.
We are seeing fewer animals left behind,≤ said Humane Society of the U.S. senior director of emergency services Scott Haisley. ≥The PETS Act is not only saving pets' lives≠≠it's saving human lives,"
No reports of human deaths associated with trying to save animals from Gustav and Ike reached ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Gustav approached Louisiana while we were in New Orleans at the Katrina Memorial ceremony on August 30th, remembering the tens of thousands of dogs, cats and other animals who died during Hurricane Katrina,≤ reported Companion Animal Network founder Garo Alexanian. ≥Mandatory evacuation got us out barely in time, and we flew home to New York City to organize a major rescue effort.≤
The Humane Society of Louisiana organized the Katrina Memorial ceremony, and several follow-up fundraisers, but had to cancel everything but the dedication of a statue to the memory of the animals lost to Katrina.
Katrina destroyed the former Humane Society of Louisiana shelter in New Orleans, soon after staff and volunteers evacuated 157 animals to the premises of the St. Francis Animal Sanctuary in Tylertown, Mississippi, a two-hour drive north. The sanctuary also housed the Best Friends Animal Society post-Katrina rescue effort.
Katrina likewise destroyed the Louisiana SPCA shelter. But while the 120-year-old Lousiana SPCA quickly converted a former warehouse into a new shelter and resumed operations in New Orleans after only a brief hiatus, the barely 20-year-old Humane Society of Louisiana has continued to work from Tylertown.
We have been working to transform the former Camp Katrina location in Tylertown into a permanent shelter and evacuation facility, while reestablishing our organization in the New Orleans area,≤ said Humane Society of Louisiana founder Jeff Dorson.
Apart from disrupting fundraising, Gustav destroyed a portable building at the Tylertown site, and blew the roof off a barn in Acadia, Louisiana, where Humane Society of Louisiana volunteers coordinated by Janet Lyons had housed 13 cats and 10 dogs, nine of them puppies.
Ike hits next
While Hurricane Gustav did less damage than expected, ≥Hurricane Ike was bearing down,≤ Alexanian continued, ≥so by September 8 we organized a 12-organization, five-vehicle convoy, boarded our own best friends, drove to North Carolina to pick up our 24-foot mobile clinic, and on September 10 converged on Ascension Parish,≤ which had requested help, ≥with volunteer groups from New Jersey, New York, Colorado and Florida. We had to stay ahead of Ike and get into and out of Louisiana before contraflow was implemented. We slept in our cars for six days in a row, 2-3 hours a day at most. We loaded the animals [who needed to be evacuated] and left.≤
Vehicle trouble and trouble finding open gasoline stations amid widespread electrical blackouts complicated Alexanianπs return to New York, but the mission rescued 58 dogs, he said, ≥who would otherwise have been put down to make room≤ for animals displaced by Ike.
The North Shore Animal League America sent two 40-foot mobile rescue units to help evacuate animals from the Humane Society of Greater Birmingham, the Mississippi Animal Rescue League, and the Humane Society of Louisiana.
Many of the animals were previously relocated from the Plaquemines Animal Welfare Society, ≥which is located below sea level in Louisiana,≤ noted North Shore Animal League operations director Joanne Yohannan. Other animals came from the Humane Society of South Mississippi, St. Tammany Parish Animal Shelter, and Slidell Animal Control.
A second North Shore mission, after Ike, took animals from the Humane Society of Bexar County in San Antonio.
Bay County Animal Control in Panama City, Florida, took in 208 animals from Jefferson Parish.
The Tuscaloosa Metro Animal Shelter in Tuscaloosa, Alabama housed animals for Gustav evacuees, while the Tusca-loosa County Humane Society, and ADAR Rescue took in as many previously impounded animals as possible from the Metro Animal Shelter to help make room for the influx.
In Memphis, the Humane Society of Memphis and Shelby County, West Memphis Animal Services, and the Germantown Animal Welfare League provided similar assistance.
Memphis also accommodated a traveling unit from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, with three Asian elephants and six white tigers, who fled ahead of Gustav from Biloxi to Jackson before settling in Memphis at the FedExForum.
As after Katrina, the Houston SPCA and the SPCA of Texas were also major receiving stations for animals evacuated from Louisiana shelters, initially to make room for the anticipated post-hurricane surge of lost and abandoned animals.
Accepting animals displaced by Gustav complicated matters when animals displaced ahead of Ike began arriving.
The SPCA of Texas took in about 300 animals from Louisiana shelters before Gustav, then accepted 235 more from South Texas shelters in Ikeπs path,≤ reported Root and Brown of Associated Press. The displaced animals were housed ≥in addition to the 500 cats and dogs already at the SPCAπs shelters in Dallas and McKinney,≤ Root and Brown said.
Animal rescue groups in other states helped out by taking cats and dogs,≤ Root and Brown added, ≥but several hundred remain at the Dallas-area shelters, as well as in other cities. They are up for adoption and wonπt return to their former shelters, which have to make room for stranded pets found in the hard-hit cities along the Gulf Coast.
Galveston flooded
Ike killed at least 67 Americans, after killing more than 100 people with more than 400 missing in Haiti, Cuba, and other Caribbean island nations. As well as devastating Galveston on September 12, Ike knocked out electricity across much of Texas and in other regions as far north as Quebec. Ike also briefly flooded parts of Houston.
Ike destroyed the Galveston Island Humane Society, executive director Caroline Dorsett told Leslie Casimir of the Houston Chronicle.
Added the Animal Rescue Central web site, ≥Ike left mass destruction at the Galveston County Animal Shelter in Texas City. The Houston SPCA Disaster Response team rescued 77 dogs, 65 cats, one rabbit, some parakeets and a pelican,≤ from the shelter, ≥along with other wildlife who sheltered in place with staff when the hurricane hit. High winds and pounding rain ripped holes in the ceilings, causing sheets of water to pour into the shelter, leaving slick floors and soaked animals. The air conditioner went out, forcing the animals to survive with insufficient ventilation.≤
Only five dead animals were found on Galveston Island in the first two days after Ike hit, Dorsett said, but the Best Friends Animal Society Rapid Response Team later found many, reported team leader Rich Crook.
More than 200 found animals taken to the Houston SPCA ≥look like they were taken care of,≤ spokesperson Meera Nandlal told media. ≥Iπm sure they all have a story.≤
The Houston SPCA also received more than 1,000 baby squirrels. ≥Kind hearted people picked them up, put them in boxes with soft rags like we told them to, and lined up to drop them off,≤ volunteer Stacy Fox told MSNBC senior news editor Mike Stuckey. ≥Volunteers are feeding the babies around the clock.≤
When healthy and weaned, Fox said, the young squirrels will be returned to the wild.
The Houston SPCA, Denver Dumb Friends League, Code 3 Associates, Humane Society of Pikeπs Peak Region, SPCA of Texas, Humane Society of Missouri and the Louisiana SPCA combined forces to operate an emergency shelter in Galveston and establish an online database of found animals to help return lost pets to their people.
The Brazoria County SPCA and Bay Area SPCA of San Leon assisted with the hands-on rescue.
The Houston Humane Society, on the Gulf side of the city, suffered tree damage, broken fences, and wrecked equipment including a horse trailer that was lost just when it was urgently needed. Most normal operations were suspended, but the Houston Humane Society continued to accept animals throughout the crisis despite operating for more than two weeks on generator power.
The number of animals housed at the Houston Humane Society ≥nearly quintupled, due to the care of animals from La Porte, Pasadena, and other municipalities,≤ the society announced.
The Houston SPCA, on some of the highest land in the city, likewise suspended normal operations while serving as a disaster rescue base. On September 13, said the Houston SPCAπs Animal Rescue Central web site, ≥we sheltered 233 animals from Galveston, took in another 149 at the temporary shelter on the island, and conducted 141 rescues. Overall, nearly 600 animals have arrived from our island temporary shelter and our teams in the field have conducted over 600 rescues. Hundreds of Houstonians responded to our åOperation Safe-a-Lifeπ plea and have opened their hearts and homes to foster Galveston pets for 10 days,≤ to give evacuees who were staying in the Houston area a better chance to find the animals.†
Other Texas shelters, including the Austin Humane Society and Town Lake Animal Shelter in Austin, housed animals for human evacuees who were temporarily bivouaced in their communities.
Big cats
The American SPCA allocated more than $75,000 to Gustav and Ike animal relief work, including grants to the Louisiana SPCA, Humane Society of Louisiana, Animal Rescue New Orleans, Plaquemines Animal Welfare Society, Denham Springs Animal Shelter, Animal Aid of Vermillion Parish, Greater Birmingham Humane Society, and Wild Animal Orphanage.
Wild Animal Orphanage was funded specifically to do animal transport, but a loose tiger was reported at Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula in Galveston County, and lion caretaker Michael Ray Kujawa found refuge for himself and the big cat at a Baptist church on Bolivar Island, after rising water cut off his escape.
≥He headed for the church and was met by residents who helped the lion wade inside,≤ reported Associated Press national writer Allen G. Breed.
Locked in a sanctuary, ≥the lion was as calm as a kitten,≤ Breed said, despite water that rose to the waists of the humans and debris that floated in through broken windows.
≥When you have to swim, the lion doesnπt care about eating nobody,≤ said Kujawa.
≥National Guardsmen dropping off food and water lined up in the choir loft to get a glimspe of the lion,≤ Breed added. ≥The soldiers jumped back when the lion looked up from his perch on the altar and snarled.
Hooved animals
The ASPCA funded three horse rescue projects, including Habitat for Horses, Hopeful Haven Equine Rescue, and the Walter Ernst Foundation, a subsidiary of the Louisiana Veterinary Medical Association.
Habitat for Horses founder Jerry Lynch led horse and cattle rescue efforts on Galveston Island at the request of the Galveston County Sheriffπs Department despite extensive damage to Habitat for Horsesπ own 27-acre rescue facility.
All the shelters for horses have been flattened, including a new barn,≤ spokesperson Valerie Kennedy told Stuckey of MSNBC. ≥All their hay and equipment was completely ruined,≤ Kennedy added≠≠but the 60 horses on the premises all escaped injury.
Among Lynchπs more immediate problems were animals who ≥swam until they found someplace to stand,≤ he told Stuckey, and then were trapped in unlikely locations.
We got one bull down there still standing on a porch,≤ Lynch said on September 17. ≥We canπt get him down yet. The problem in that case is that the legs of cattle are not jointed in a manner that allows them to easily navigate flights of steps.
Livestock rescues elsewhere in the Gustav and Ike disaster areas were coordinated by the National Cattlemenπs Foundation.
Approximately 7,000 cattle are trapped in water or on levies from Cameron to St. Bernard Parishes in Louisiana,≤ Meat & Poultry reported on September 17. ≥[Lack of] fresh water is a concern there, and hay is a critical need.≤
Of the estimated 40,000 cattle kept in Jefferson and Chambers counties in Texas, Meat & Poultry added, about 25,000 were missing.
The Meat & Poultry report went to press shortly before aerial surveys by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service confirmed that at least 4,000 of the missing cattle were dead. ≥Theyπre being eaten by alligators,≤ AgriLife Extension Service spokesperson Kathleen Phillips told Associated Press agriculture writer Betsy Blaney.
As many as 15,000 cattle were roaming at large, without access to clean feed and fresh water.
≥The stormπs surge carried cows up to 20 miles from their pastures,≤ reported Kate Murphy of The New York Times. Two weeks after Ike, Murphy wrote, ≥Dead cows can be seen rotting in the forks of trees, and lone calves wander looking for their mothers. Displaced and severely dehydrated cows have been herded into fenced pastures north of where the storm surge ended. They are marked with brands from the scores of ranches in the area and need to be sorted.≤
There are no fences any more for about 20 miles inland from the coast,≤ Independent Cattlemenπs Association of Texas director Bill Hyman told Murphy.
Cuban chicken rescue
Before approaching Texas, Gustav and Ike struck the Pinar del Rio region of Cuba—and Ike circled back to hit Pinar del Rio again two days later. The hurricanes reportedly destroyed 93 laying hen barns in the Pinar del Rio area, damaging 205 others, leaving just 92 intact, the official Cuban News Agency reported. Workers—about two-thirds of whom lost their own homes≠≠evacuated 350,000 laying hens to other facilities in Pinar del Rio and Havana, said the Cuban News Agency, and were scrambling to feed them, after two local feed mills were damaged.
Mass evacuations of poultry from barns hit by natural disaster is not standard procedure in the U.S., or in most of the world. Usually birds trapped in wrecked barns are either killed on site or just left to die.
The report that Cubans had evacuated so many hens amid the devastation was especially surprising in view of the high cost of fuel in Cuba, the scarcity of motor vehicles, and a mention in the same Cuban News Agency dispatch that the hensπ egg production fell by half as the hurricanes approached.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
6. Editorial feature: Animal welfare & conservation in conflict
While in Indonesia for the August 2008 Asia for Animals conference, the fifth in a series co-sponsored by ANIMAL PEOPLE since 2001, ANIMAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett joined several other conference attendees in a visit to the International Animal Rescue facilities in West Java, near Bogor, two hours by car south of Jakarta.
The visit provided an unexpectedly stark illustration of some of the sharpest edges and conflicts in the three-cornered relationship among animal welfare, wildlife species conservation, and habitat protection.†
In theory, ensuring the well-being of individual animals sounds as if it should be both the starting point and the ultimate outcome of protecting entire endangered or threatened species, and protecting the animalsπ habitat would seem to be implicit in protecting either individual animals or their species as a whole.†
In practice, distinctions among the goals and philosophies of animal welfare, wildlife conservation, and habitat protection emerge almost immediately, beginning with the question of how and when humans should intervene in the life cycles and feeding habits of wild animals:†
• What if preserving a species requires trapping some of the last individual members of the speciesãeven if they are only those animals who are debilitated and unlikely to survive in the wildãand putting them into a captive breeding program, at perhaps significant detriment to their quality of life?†
• What if these animals are predators, whose offspring must be taught how to catch live prey?
• What if there is no longer enough wild habitat to sustain a breeding pool of a species that will be large enough to ensure species recovery?
• What if there is some reasonable hope that sufficient habitat can be acquired and restored at some future time, if the species still exists?†
Such questions are vexing enough by themselves, but are frequently compounded by human economic interests.†
Logging, mining, and real estate development companies, for example≠≠and their executives and shareholders—often contribute generously to animal rescue and rehabilitation, and to species conservation in captive situations such as zoos. The unspoken basis of the relationship is that the companiesπ destruction of habitat must remain unimpeded, since logging, mining, and development generate the revenue that makes the donations possible, including donations of land to conservation purposes after much of the land has already been economically exploited.
Primatologist Dale Peterson and nature photographer Karl Amman devoted much of their 320-page opus Eating Apes (2003) to detailing many such relationships in Africa, linkng private timber and mining companies, major international conservation societies, and some of the worldπs most prominent zoos.
Many of those same corporations, conservation societies, and zoos are involved in similar dealings in Southeast Asia, along with others of comparable modus operandi.
Should animal rescuers, rehabilitators, and conservationists refuse money from resource-based industries, knowing that countless animals might then suffer from lack of help and that whole species might disappear, while habitat-destroying projects proceed anyway?
Habitat preservationists, conversely, often have little or no interest in protecting the lives of individual animals they deem to be problematic or ≥non-native.≤ Historically, habitat preservationists have been most interested in preserving species when the presence of an endangered species provides a legal pretext for protecting broad swaths of ≥critical habitat≤ that include scenic vistas.†
Some habitat preservationists, the Nature Conservancy in particular, have killed tens of thousands of ≥non-native≤ animals to ≥cleanse≤ nominally protected habitats, even when the massacres have put endangered species at risk. The effect on endangered island foxes of the Nature Conservancy-driven effort to purge the Channel Islands off California of non-native hooved species is among the best-known examples. First the fox population rose while feeding on abundant carrionãwhich also attracted golden eagles. Then, as the carrion was exhausted, the golden eagles ate foxes instead.
Island species and habitat are especially sensitive to any sort of environmental change. Indonesia consists of 13,677 islands, many of them the habitat of unique species or subspecies. Because Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world, after China, India, and the U.S., with a rapidly developing economy, almost every part of the country could potentially become a battleground over conservation issues.†
Worse, in Indonesia ≥battleground≤ might be more than a metaphor. A nation only since 1950, Indonesia has seldom been free of civil strife, and environmental conflicts might easily become mixed with some of the regional and ethnic issues that have often erupted in violence. Between suppressing insurrections, Indonesian military officers have frequently exploited their positions for economic advantage, including in facilitating rainforest logging and wildlife trafficking. The well-placed perpetrators appear to have been undeterred by decades of exposÈs published in both western and domestic media.†
As the Brussels-based International Crisis Group reported in December 2001, and The New York Times summarized, ≥Illegal activities are protected and in some cases organized by bureaucrats and the security forces, with the military and police organizations deeply involved in illegal logging,≤ which leaves displaced wildlife vulnerable to hunting or capture.
Sidney Jones, the primary author of the International Crisis Group study, was expelled from Indonesia in June 2004, essentially for knowing too much. Jonesπ expulsion produced yet another round of exposÈs, adding some linkage of military and police involvement in illegal logging and wildlife trafficking to militant Islamicism. Again government pledges to stop log piracy in national parks and to stop trafficking in endangered species brought spasms of well-publicized enforcement, but scarcely stopped the pattern of abuses.
ProFauna Indonesia chair Rosek Nurshid, for example, in February 2005 identified military officers as major participants in exporting as many as 100,000 illegally captured cockatoos per year. His allegation was confirmed in early August 2008 when a Malaysian smuggler named E Kong Seng began talking after police caught him and 10 others in possession of 8.25 tons of frozen anteater meat, 200 tons of dried anteater hide, and 85 anteater gall bladders, all packaged for export.
≥He confessed to having bribed high-ranking police and military officials,≤ wrote Khairul Saleh of the Jakarta Post.
Animal welfare concerns have relatively little organized voice in Indonesia, especially compared to the U.S., India, and much of Europe, but are emerging as a factor, including in the efforts of conflicting economic interests to put a friendly face on their activity.†
Loggers, palm oil plantation developers, and promoters of tourism are often linked through family and business relationships to wildlife exporters and exhibitors, as well as to their facilitators in the police and military.
As tourism gradually supplants resource-based development, first on Bali, now in parts of Java and Lombok, some of the most ambitious developers have learned to put a more ecologicaly friendly face on their work. Some claim to endorse, promote, and teach both conservation and animal welfare. Rhetoric about educating the public is a prominent part of the facade.†Some of the education seems credible and sincere, though some is not; but even at best, it tends to stop short of promoting habitat preservation, and certainly falls well short of promoting activism against economic development.
At the Bali Safari & Marine Park in Gianyar, for example, a captive bird act similar to those offered at many U.S. zoos demonstrates avian intelligence. An elephant act offers some sympathetic discussion of animal welfare. An elephant wields an ankus, or elephant hook, while handlers explain why the park doesnπt use ankuses.††
There are significant animal welfare issues at the Bali Safari & Marine Park, such as heavily sedating animals to give visitors the opportunity to pose for photographs with them (see page 1).† There are also significant economic issues. A newly completed indoor marine mammal stadium resembling an exceptionally tall aircraft hangar stands idle, reputedly because of the potential effects on nearby beach-front habitat if it is allowed to begin pumping in and discharging vast amounts of sea water. The dispute pits developers against developers.
On the whole, however, the Bali Safari & Marine Park appears to promote both animal welfare and species conservation via captive breeding, with scarcely a mention that wild habitat for the species bred there no longer exists on Bali, and is rapidly disappearing from the other Indonesian islands. The likelihood of any captive-bred animal from the Bali Safari & Marine Park ever returning to the wild would appear to be slim, even if returning animals to the wild was actually among the park goals.
Animal Rescue Centers
In recognition of the limitations and problematic alliances of many Indonesian zoos, representatives of the species conservation and animal welfare communities rallied by the Gibbon Foundation met at Bogor in July 2000, producing 11 recommendations for reform.† The recommendations were framed in the context of enabling Indonesia to meet the terms of the United Nations-brokered Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
The Cikananga Animal Rescue Center was among seven officially designated rescue centers that were opened within the next year through partnerships among the Indonesian government, the Gibbon Foundation, and several indigenous Indonesian wildlife charities which had until then enjoyed little official support or recognition.
Initially the Gibbon Foundation pledged only start-up funding for the Animal Rescue Center Network. By 2006 the network members were supposed to have developed the fundraising capacity to operate independently.†
In actuality, as often occurs with externally funded mission-driven start-ups, the Animal Rescue Centers were directed by scientists, activists, and volunteers who had little if any experience in nonprofit capacity-building, and tended to focus on their animal-related programs to the near-exclusion of developing their own donor bases.†
Almost nothing appears to have been done to generate support from the fast-growing educated and affluent sectors of Indonesian society. What fundraising was done appears to have consisted mainly of writing grant applications to other foreign foundations.
Predictably, the animal rescue centers fell on hard times, even after the Gibbon Foundation continued helping some of them beyond the initial five-year cut-off dates. And then the Gibbon Foundation itself faltered.
Recalled International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal in September 2007, ≥Cikananga and the other centers used to have secure and generous funding from the Gibbon Foundation, run by Willie Smits, a Dutch resident of Indonesia. The foundationπs funds came mainly from the estate of the late multi-millionairess Puck Schmutzer,≤ who died in 2006.††≥Besides funding the rescue centers,≤ McGreal noted, ≥large sums were expended to build the luxurious Schmutzer Primate Center inside the appalling Ragunan Zoo in Jakarta,≤ where resident orangutan rehabilitator Ulrike Freifrau von Mengden had worked since 1952, with the support of Smits and Schmutzer.
The foundation was incorporated in Liechtenstein and held its money in a Swiss bank account, so IPPL was never able to locate financial reports,≤ McGreal continued. ≥Now its funds have mysteriously dried up, and the sanctuary animals are suffering.≤
No one appears to blame Smits for the fiasco. As founder of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, Smits and colleagues have rescued and rehabilitated more than 1,200 orangutans since 1991. Smits has also founded and directed conservation projects on behalf of many other species, and has long been perhaps the most prominently outspoken critic worldwide of the habitat destruction by timber and palm oil interests, especially, that threatens to drive wild orangutans, gibbons, and many other Indonesian species to extinction.†
But the collapse of the Gibbon Foundation meant the loss of the resources to continue subsidizing the Animal Rescue Centers, and gave the Indonesian government the opportunity to withdraw support as well.
≥On June 2, 2008 the Government of Indonesia announced an early termination of cooperation with the Gibbon Foundation in the development and management of animal protection centers in Indonesia,≤ stated the official announcement.†
Smits has been on tour outside of Indonesia for much of 2008, promoting a new book,† Thinkers of the Jungle, produced with journalist Gerd Schuster and photographer Jay Ullal. Smitsπ speaking appearances and interviews have drawn more global attention than ever before to the dismal future of wild orangutans. Global demand for biofuels has accelerated deforestation of orangutan habitat to create palm oil plantations, as Smits mentions and documents at every opportunity.†
But while Smits was abroad, the Animal Rescue Center network collapsed, in a pattern both paralleling and contrasting with the destruction a decade ago of much of the orangutan rescue and conservation work conducted since 1971 by Orangutan Foundation International founder Birute Galdikas.
Galdikas, 61, was the third, youngest, and last of ≥Leakeyπs Angels,≤ following Jane Goodall, whom the late anthropologist Louis Leakey sent to study chimpanzees in Tanzania, and Dian Fossey, sent to study gorillas in Rwanda.
Galdikasπ approach soon expanded from scientific observation to hands-on care of orphaned orangutans. This work is continued by the Orangutan Care Centre that Galdkikas established at Kalimantan Tengah, Borneo. The center houses about 200 rescued orangutans at a time, releasing about 30 per year back into the diminishing rainforest.†
As Galdikas came to recognize that the individual cases she handled were representative of threats to the entire orangutan species, she became increasingly involved in habitat conservation. From March 1996 through March 1998, Galdikas served as senior advisor to the Indonesian minister of forestry on orangutan issues, under the former Suharto government, which had ruled Indonesia since a year before her arrival. In that capacity, Galdikas was able to designate 76,000 hectares as an orangutan preserve. But the Suharto regime was toppled in May 1998.
Wrote Galdikas a year later in the Orangutan Foundation International newsletter Pongo Quest, ≥Many people realised very quickly that they could now do whatever they liked. Tanjung Puting National Park,≤ home of about 6,000 orangutans, ≥is a case in point. The 50 square kilometer forest area with Camp Leakey at its center has not been touched. But every other part of the national park has been invaded by illegal loggers. Unfortunately, the situation reflects what is happening across Indonesia. All national parks with stands of timber are being logged and the situation is so bad that illegal logging now outstrips legal timber production.≤
Former Tanjung Puting orangutan conservation volunteer Lone Droscher-Nielsen and Willie Smits in 1998 founded the Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Reintroduction Project to rescue and rehabilitate as many displaced orangutans as possible. The Nyaru Meteng center reportedly now houses 630 orangutans, with little hope of soon finding habitat suitable for any of them to be released.
Galdikas campaigned worldwide to expose the devastation in Tanjung Puting and elsewhere, but ran afoul of conservation politics. In a 1999 biography entitled A Dark Place in the Jungle: Following Leakeyπs Last Angel into Borneo, Canadian author Linda Spalding questioned whether Galdikasπ emphasis on individual animal rescue was an effective approach on behalf of orangutans as a species. Spaldingπs arguments have been amplified ever since by habitat conservationists who contend that Galdikasπ concern for individual animal well-being is a distraction from preserving orangutan habitat.
≥There are concerns that freed orangutans spread diseases to the wild populations,≤ summarized Greenwire senior reporter Darren Samuelsohn in April 2008. ≥At Camp Leakey, there are daily feedings for the wild and former captive orangutans that often also draw tourists. Some of the orangutans have attacked guests and staff.≤
Borneo-based Nature Conservancy scientist Erik Meijaard told Samuelsohn that Galdikas is ≥playing around with symbolism without getting to the core of the issue.≤
The gist of the conflict may be a difference in perception of the future of orangutans, and indeed of most Indonesian wildlife. Galdikas believes that if Indonesians sufficiently take to heart the needs and nature of wild orangutans, plantation developers can be persuaded to leave buffer strips of natural vegetation along watercourses and in places where windbreaks are needed, enabling orangutans and other species to learn to live among humans much as most surviving wildlife does in India, Europe, and North America.†
While protecting large expanses of habitat is ideal, Galdikas learned from her experience at Tanjung Puting National Park that protected habitat in a developing nation may be viewed by many as an irresistible economic opportunity, which one faction will exploit if another does not. Galdikas remains committed to protecting as much habitat as possible, but appears to see raising public concern about animal welfare as the most viable approach to species conservation. As U.S.-based fundraisers learned more than 50 years ago from the success of the first ≥Smokey the Bear≤ campaign against forest fires, the most successful appeals on behalf of habitat begin with appeals on behalf of individual animalsπ needs.
The closure of most of the Animal Rescue Centers, one by one, has not been nearly as dramatic as the invasion of Tanjung Puting National Park by log poachers, and unlike the destruction of many Indonesian parks, it has not been visible from space. Yet the closures have amounted to dismantling much and perhaps most of the fledgling animal welfare infrastructure of Indonesia, and have resulted in wholesale transfers of animals and influence away from independent nonprofit agencies to privately operated zoos.
The message is that wildlife will be rescued and protected in Indonesia only if the effort pays for itself. Since donor-funded nonprofit rescue centers are deemed to have failed, the political path is cleared for proponents of zoological conservation, meaning captive breeding without particular concern for individual animals, and ≥sustainable development,≤ meaning the exploitation of wildlife in any manner which does not lead directly to the destruction of a species.
The Animal Rescue Centers on Bali, on the Jakarta outskirts, at Gadong, at Jogja, at Kulonprogo, and on North Sulawesi all closed during the summer of 2008. The Pentungsewu Animal Rescue Center in Malang, founded and partially supported by Pro Fauna Indonesia, lasted a little longer than the rest, but closed at the end of August 2008.†
Our rare and endangered species have been handed over to Indonesia Safari Park II, the Jatim Recreational Park, and the Malang Municipal Recreational Park,≤ PARC project manager Iwan Kurniwan told Wahyoe Boediwardhana of the Jakarta Post.†
The center was home to 100 rare and endangered species of primates and birds seized from illegal owners,≤ wrote Boediwardhana.
With the closure,≤ Iwan Kurniwan said, ≥the government put all the rare species rescued from illegal trade and smuggling into zoological gardens, whose missions are not purely conservation.≤
That left the Cikananga Rescue Center, ≥fully funded by the West Java provincial government,≤ according to Boediwardhana, but rescued from catastrophe by British-based charity International Animal Rescue in August 2007, after Jessica Boulton of The People reported that ≥More than 200 creatures, including a bear, an orangutan and her baby, and a rare slow loris are fed only once every four days. They were meant to be the åsavedπ ones,≤ Boulton noted, ≥after being plucked from cruel street entertainers, horrific pet markets and roadside traders.≤
Emergency funding from readers of The People,† the International Primate Protection League, and the Born Free Foundation helped International Animal Rescue to intervene.
IAR had become involved in Indonesia one year earlier. ≥Since attending the Asia for Animals Conference in Singapore last year,≤ IAR announced in July 2006, ≥we have been building a relationship with the Indonesian-based group Pro Animalia International, founded in 2004 to protect Indonesian wildlife.≤
In December 2006 the Pro Animalia founders, Spanish veterinarian Karmele Llano Sanchez and Femke den Haas, originally from the Netherlands, merged their project into International Animal Rescue to become IAR-Indonesia.
IAR thus inherited their primate rehabilitation program and an attempted reintroduction of Brahminy kites to the region, beginning with releases on Kotok Island, within Thousand Islands National Park.
IAR has previously melded species conservation and animal welfare work in Britain, Malta, and India, partnering in India with Wildlife SOS to rescue former dancing bears.†
≥The majority of our work is with macaques. We are also trying to help slow lorises, as the Javan slow loris just appeared on a list of the 25 most endangered species in the world,≤ explains IAR cofounder Alan Knight.†
The slow lorises at the rescue center have often had their teeth excised before sale as exotic pets.
Knight ≥is researching the option of dental implants,≤ Bartlett reported. ≥AR will also try to find out if lorises can still kill their prey without teeth, or if they can live without meat. They only have a few lorises at present, but expect to receive more. Knight told me that if they cannot rehabilitate and release the lorises, they will try to use them for captive breeding, with the offspring eventually released into the wild.≤
≥I donπt approve of animal welfare organizations involving themselves in breeding of animals for any purpose,≤ Bartlett noted, while observing that the IAR macaque program takes quite a different approach.
Throughout Asia, as street dog sterilization projects have reduced the numbers of dogs at large, macaques have invaded the dogsπ former habitat, proving much more difficult both to live with and to control. Tens of thousands per year are captured for use in biomedical research. Though U.S. laboratories are the largest purchasers and any macaques sold to the U.S. are supposed to be captive-bred, primate conservationists and investigative reporters who have followed the macaque traffic suspect that wild-caught macaques from all over Southeast Asia are being ≥laundered≤ through southern China and sold to U.S. firms as ≥captive bred.≤
IAR receives both crab-eating and pig-tailed macaques from a variety of sources, but mainly as cast-off pets. The IAR rehabilitation program focuses on integrating the macaques into progressively larger social groups until they form troops big enough to be returned to the wild, mainly in uninhabited areas on smaller islands.
All our macaques are sterilized before starting rehabilitation. The males all have vasectomies, although our first group was castrated with no effect on the social structure of the group,≤ Knight explained, contradicting conventional belief that macaque troupes reject castrated males.†
IAR recently introduced the use of laparoscopic endoscopy, a form of microsurgery, to sterilize macaques with minimal incisions and risk of post-surgical infection.
I am really hoping we can convince the Indian government to set up an Animal Birth Control program for macaques,≤ Knight told ANIMAL PEOPLE, ≥so they can help [humane societies performing the surgery] to purchase the equipment needed for the job. We hope to perfect this technique of macaque sterilization in Indonesia and then take it to India. We have been given the green light to do this by Major General R.M. Kharb, chair of the Animal Welfare board of India, at the Asia for Animals conference in Bali.≤
Though the IAR slow loris project may be constructed to emphasize species conservation over individual welfare, while the macaque project is mostly about animal welfare, both projects are managed in a manner that minimizes a conflict of ethics.†Not so a Javan hawk eagle project begun parallel to the Brahminy kite reintroduction project.
The hawk eagle project, which has released six hawk eagles so far, ≥uses intensively-reared guinea pigs, a non-native species, for live feeding to eagles who are being readied for release into the wild,≤ Bartlett observed. ≥I said I didnπt think animal welfarists should be engaged in live-feeding, much less in raising animals for feeding to other animals in intensive confinement systems that do not incorporate the Five Freedoms,≤ promoted by Compassion In World Farming and other organizations as the minimum acceptable standards for animal husbandry.
I asked if the guinea pigs were also being used as meat for people,≤ Bartlett recalled, but the hawk eagle program staff ≥said they were only for feeding to the birds. The guinea pig dung is used for fertilizing vegetable gardens. They mentioned that sometimes the guinea pigs escape from the eagles, but that because of their bright coloring, they can easily be spotted outside of the flight cages and be brought back in. However, given the fecundity of guinea pigs, it would seem that just a few escaped animals might establish a breeding population in the nearby jungle,≤ Bartlett mentioned, a concern of conservationists who have recently exterminated feral guinea pig populations in Hawaii and New Zealand.†
In addition to the guinea pigs, the eagles are also fed lizards and snakes,≤ Bartlett learned. ≥All in all, this would seem to present a very bad humane education model.
"In my view," Bartlett told the assembled IAR visitors, "it shouldnπt matter to an animal welfarist if an animal is from an endangered species, because it is the individual who suffers, not the species. I tried to explain that when a species is designated 'endangered,' it achieves the status of 'sacred' and then all other animals from non-endangered species can be sacrificed to it 'because they are predators of the endangered species, or competitors, or prey.≤
Wildlfe SOS cofounder Kartick Satyanarayan suggested that if the hawk eagles must learn to hunt live prey before they are released from flight cages, an alternative might be to throw grain down in the cages to attract the native rats.†
This would more closely simulate nature, ≥and the rats would have a choice about whether to risk eating the grain, as well as a much greater chance of escaping from the eagles,≤ Bartlett summarized.
The welfare concerns in terms of live feeding are the same regardless of whether the project uses rats, guinea pigs, lizards or snakes,≤ responded Animals Asia Foundation veterinarian Heather Bacon. ≥I believe it would be speciesist to be concerned only for the welfare of the sole mammalian prey species involved.≤
Knight told the IAR guests that the presentation by the Javan hawk eagle project on the day of their visit was the first he knew that guinea pigs were fed to the hawk eagles alive, and that he had earlier been disturbed by live feeding of fish to sea eagles. ≥I was as surprised as anyone that they use live prey,≤ Knight confirmed later. ≥I reared snakes in my youth and fed them dead prey that had been heated. I will look into the problems with feeding live prey,≤ he pledged, ≥as I am very uncomfortable with this. I can assure you that the Javan hawk eagle project is only $200 a month out of a budget of $20,000 a month, so is 1% of the work we do, and you can rest assured that we will be looking at the feeding of raptors more closely. We will correct the feeding methods or remove our small funding of the project.≤
Claiming to take a broader overview of the project, beyond the live feeding issue, Bacon argued that ≥It is not a question of eagle versus guinea pig, or conservation versus welfareäBy conserving species such as eagles and preparing them for the wild and training them to hunt, you protect not only the welfare of the eagle but also the habitat in which it lives, by providing a reason for maintaining national parks for a species of conservation interest, thus protecting the welfare of all of the other species within that animalπs habitat.≤
But this presumes that the Indonesian national parks are in fact being protected and maintained as wildlife habitat, a debatable proposition in many cases.†
Extended to endangered species and habitat everywhere, Baconπs argument is the reason why U.S. habitat preservationists have focused on lawsuits seeking to protect the ≥critical habitat≤ of broadly distributed rare species such as spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and red-cockaded woodpeckers, instead ofãfor exampleãthe much scarcer 31 endangered and threatened bird species native to Hawaii.†
In consequence, more than a third of all the money spent to protect the 95 officially endangered or threatened U.S. bird species, from 1996 through 2004, went to protecting spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and red-cockaded woodpeckers, as documented by Hawaii Division of Forestry and Wildlife biologist David L. Leonard Jr. in the September 2008 edition of Conservation Biology.†
Whether this skewed emphasis on species with expansive ≥critical habitat≤ has actually helped many other species is questionable. Certainly the endangered Hawaiian birds have not benefitted. Neither have barred owls, who have been killed for hybridizing with spotted owls and for extending their range into former spotted owl habitat.
If the theory that all wildlife can be protected by protecting the critical habitat for broad-ranging endangered species has failed in the U.S., where the federal Endangered Species Act has been in force for 35 years, with billions of dollars and overwhelmingly favorable public opinion behind it, the odds would appear slim that this approach will succeed in the most populated parts of the developing world.
Population pressure
Assessed Bartlett, "Experience in India, and to a lesser extent in Kenya, has demonstrated that national parks and forests will only be protected by government as long as there is no human population pressure surrounding the areas. As soon as there is sufficient human demand to exploit the åprotectedπ natural resources or to establish human settlements in the area, politicians accede to the demands to open the reserves, and the wildlife and plant species quickly decline.†
"There is rapid human population growth in Indonesia, especially on Java, which is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The rising ocean levels caused by global warming may simultaneously shrink land surface of the Indonesian islands, while food shortages increase the demand to turn forests into farms," Bartlett continued.
"Unless we can inculcate an animal welfare perspective, all wild creatures are endangered," Bartlett predicted. "There is a degree of overlap between certain animal welfare projects and conservation efforts, but the goals of animal welfare are to prevent suffering and improve the lives of individual animals, which if practiced widely enough will protect the health of species as well, and the animals' status as endangered or non-endangered is irrelevant."†
The goals of conservation are to preserve native species and their habitat, and to reverse the effects of human disruption of ecosystems and the migration of so-called non-native species into protected ecosystems,≤ whose ideal state is usually supposed to have existed at a relatively arbitrary time before the arrival of technological civilization, western civilization, or people with boats and dogs, for instance.
≥I see little science in the desire to åcleanseπ the environment of åinvasiveπ species," Bartlett wrote, "and
"I believe moreover that it is anti-nature, since migration of species has always been one engine of evolution, as animals move into new habitat, and then adapt (another engine of evolution) and out-compete rival species, often driving them into extinction, which is the principle of survival of the fittest. Ecosystems have never been static environments. I am not in favor of further human intervention that disrupts ecosystems, but neither am I in favor of restoring ecosystems if it means killing animals who have adapted to them. I say leave wild animals alone from now on and let nature take its course. But of course this will not happen."
"The point of conservation is generally perceived as restoring and preserving a healthy environment for the benefit of humans," Bartlett pointed out, "which has led to the concept of 'sustainable use,' now virtual dogma for conservationists. Some conservative animal welfarists accept the idea of humane consumptive use of domestic animals, but even these people generally draw the line at hunting, trapping, and other consumptive use of wildlife, whereas virtually all of the mainstream conservation organizations accept hunting, trapping, and other consumptive use of animals as 'tools of wildlife management' or the means through which 'wildlife' pays for itself."
"Despite all the effort going into preserving endangered species, as soon as a species has årecovered,π it goes back on the list of animals approved for killing. If the point of preserving an endangered species is so that it can eventually be caught, killed and/or otherwise used again in the future, then why should it be preserved at all?"
In effect, the sustainable use≤ mantra calls for treating wildlife like livestock, and is therefore in fundamental conflict with animal advocates who believe that ≥livestock species≤ should not be treated like livestock, either.
Concluded Bartlett, "I think that short of a miracle happening, the only wild animals who have a good chance of surviving the next 25 years in countries with burgeoning populations are those who either have no monetary or dietary value; are prolific breeders; have low territorial needs and can live in proximity to human settlements without causing property damage or crop destruction; are viewed as being harmless to humans; are unafraid of or can cope with humans; and are adaptable enough to survive in a changing environment."†
At some point humans will themselves adapt to changing circumstances, and perhaps then the species who survive in the wild will be allowed to live unmolested, while those who have been kept alive in captivity might be returned to wildlife preserves that are truly protected. But that will only happen when and if people begin to believe that animals have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as human beings, or at the very least that animals do not exist to be props in the human environment, or to be foodstuffs for humans or other commodities.†
I cannot imagine the conservation movement on its present trajectory achieving the necessary change in human perspective, though I applaud the animal welfare initiatives that may accompany certain conservation projects.
We are not going to get ahead long-term by substituting one animal victim for another,≤ such as in conservationist efforts to encourage Africans to eat more dogs instead of bushmeat, Bartlett finished. ≥The whole paradigm has to change, because conservation approaches are not going to be successful in resolving the fundamental problems of how animals and humans can share the earth.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
7. Letters
Turtles
I had my tickets ready to fly to Bali for the 2008 Asia for Animals conference, but was forced to stay back, as I had to take care of around twelve types of endangered tortoises in a pond constructed some 700 years back by a king for his people inside the premises of the Hargrib Mahdab Temple, around 40 kilometers from my home.
The Kamrup deputy commissioner, with funding from the prime minister, in April 2008 constructed a five-foot-high concrete wall around the pond, preventing the tortoises from coming to the shore of the pond to bask in the sun and laying their eggs. They developed fungal infections from staying inside the pond continuously, with water leeches feeding on them. Fifteen tortoises died recently within one months time. Three hundred fifty coconut trees around the pond were felled in the name of beautification, so there was no shade for the tortoises, and the pump for a fountain installed within the pond made the water even hotter.
The wall was built with the advice of one member secretary of the Wildlife Trust of India and the Guwahati University zoology department head. I fought hard against it. The people there called the police to arrest me if I spoke against the deputy commissioner.
I wrote to the prime minister and the chief minister. Ironically, the chief minister inaugurated the pond, but at his initiative the wall has been totally dismantled. Immediately the tortoises came up on the shore.
—Sangeeta Goswami
People for Animals
Guwahati, Assam, India
<sangeeta_goswami2003@yahoo.com>
Kenya dogs fixed
The Africa Network for Animal Welfare initiated a three-year humane dog population and rabies control pilot campaign on September 24, 2008. Our goal is to end the inhumane use of strychnine for dog population and rabies control. We are targeting dog populations in impoverished slum areas in Nairobi and surrounding areas. Our key partners include Worldwide Veterinary Services, the government Department of Veterinary Services, the University of Nairobi, and the Kenya Veterinary Association. ANAW is coordinating it. The Kenya SPCA is helping to coordinate partners and deal with designated areas. We are operating under the umbrella of Animal Welfare Action Kenya (AWAKE), hoping to develop a program to be replicated in other cities in Kenya and Africa at large.
—Josphat Ngonyo, Director
Africa Network for Animal Welfare
P.O. Box 3731-00506
Nairobi, Kenya
Telephone: 254-20-606-510
Fax: 254-20-609-691
<jos@anaw.org>
<www.anaw.org>
Rabies in Sofia
On August 1, 2008 a rabid fox bit a pet dog in Vladaya, a suburb of Sofia, Bulgaria. About 40 cases of rabies per year are discovered in Bulgaria, almost half of them in and near Sofia, said National Veterinary Service deputy director Damyan Iliev.
However, Sofia Municipal Animal Control Agency director Miroslav Naydenov told Darik News on August 11, 2008, that ≥There is absolutely no danger of rabies spreading among homeless dogs in Sofia. There is no single case of a stray dog infected with rabies in Vladaya,≤ because ≥during the last two years we have been vaccinating all stray dogs against rabies,≤ to form a buffer between rabid foxes and pet dogs.
But the influx of unwanted dogs in Sofia does not stop, because most owned dogs remain unsterilizered. There are no educational programs, no low-cost sterilization programs, and no active policy for saving, sterilizing, and re-homing abandoned animals.
—Emil D. Kuzmanov
Animal Programs Foundation
18 Yanko Sofiiski Voivoda Str
1164 Sofia, Bulgaria
<animalprograms@abv.bg>
Why does ANIMAL PEOPLE emphasize overseas news coverage?
Although I get lots of other animal literature and publications, I especially appreciate your overseas coverage. I know we have a long way to go for animals in this country, but in most other countries the needs of animals are so much greater than in the U.S. I find your paper very informative and I don't want to miss an issue.
—Veronica Ferguson
Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Although admirable, I feel ANIMAL PEOPLE's main focus should be the U.S. There seems to be less and less in your paper concerning our own inadequacies.
—Carol Dupuis
Queensbury, N.Y.
The President replies:
Since ANIMAL PEOPLE began publishing in 1992, our goal has been to cover all aspects of animal protection, involving all kinds of animals, everywhere in the world.
We find that most U.S. issues have a parallel abroad, often directly related to the issues here.
For example, dogfighting is a major problem in the U.S., but fighting dogs have been exported from the U.S. to the Philippines, Thailand, and even China, where there was previously no dogfighting tradition. American horses are exported to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. Animal experiments are contracted out by U.S. and European countries to laboratories in developing countries that have no semblance of animal welfare legislation. Wild Asian monkeys are illegally captured by the tens of thousands and appear to be ≥laundered≤ through complex multi-national transactions to be sold to U.S. laboratories as captive-bred. The live animal markets of southern China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia incubate and spread disease outbreaks, including the common strains of influenza that sweep the U.S. each winter, as well as the deadly H5N1 strain and less familiar maladies such as Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Neuter/ return feral cat control was practiced in Kenya, South Africa and the United Kingdom long before ANIMAL PEOPLE had a major part in introducing it to the U.S. in the early 1990s. And most ≥U.S.≤ pet food brands include imported ingredients, as the melamine contamination episode of early 2007 demonstrated.
We try to present coverage of major issues in a holistic way, so that readers everywhere≠≠including the third of our readership who are abroad≠≠can understand the global implications. We feel this is ANIMAL PEOPLEπs unique contribution to the animal protection movement. As the world seems to get smaller every day, we feel our global coverage is all the more important. We do not, however, wish to decrease attention to problems here in the U.S. We will keep your comments in mind as we plan future coverage, and we thank you for sharing them with us.
—Kim Bartlett, President
The Editor adds:
As a postscript to Kim's comments, my first consideration in selecting article topics is relevance to the greater animal protection community, beyond wherever an issue emerges. Animal care and control issues throughout the U.S. are now getting at least 10 times as much local news coverage as in 1992, when ANIMAL PEOPLE started, and often feature an intensity of involvement among local activists, rescuers, and civic leaders that was almost unimaginable then, when most newspapers did not even have a reporter assigned to the animal beat.
Many of the concerns fueling local debate over the direction of animal care and control are those that ANIMAL PEOPLE has explored all along, including as a co-sponsor of the first No Kill Conference in 1995. Most of the topics raised at that No Kill Conference are now central to mainstream sheltering conferences. Premises that ANIMAL PEOPLE advanced when they were new and unpopular are now widely accepted among the leaders in the animal care and control field.
Often these topics and premises are of more urgent interest than ever at the local level≠≠but hundreds of local news media are investigating the issues and advancing the debate, often with behind-the-scenes help from ANIMAL PEOPLE.
We remain deeply involved in U.S. animal care and control issues, but as each local controversy over introductions of change tends to mirror many others, we spotlight in ANIMAL PEOPLE only those that may establish new precedents.
Our coverage of the progress of the decade-old national Animal Birth Control program in India reflects a similar transition. From the introduction of the national ABC program until it became well-established and produced positive results in some of the largest Indian cities, we provided more news about it. Local coverage of animal care-and-control issues meanwhile expanded in India, and in recent years our attention to indvidual citiesπ ABC programs has refocused on improvements that can be emulated elsewhere on the one hand, including in North America, and political challenges that may jeopardize the ABC concept on the other.
We may report developments from other parts of the world that might not be news if occurring in the U.S., India, or western Europe, in recognition that ≥old news≤ here may be an advance somewhere else, and that the U.S., Indian, and European humane communities may have useful experience to share with peers in other places.
—Merritt Clifton, Editor
Moral progress
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated,≤ Mohandas Gandhi reputedly said.
So, what does that say, when one severely starved, tick-infested, mange-covered blue tick coonhound was left to walk around on the main street of Hurtsboro, Alabama and everyone just walked past her?
Barely able to walk, she still wagged her tail at the passers-by. Her front teeth were worn down, probably from trying to chew out of a kennel, and her neck was scarred from a collar that was too tight. Yet this dog still trusted people and looked to them for help.
The concerned receptionist at the local veterinary clinic told me the dog had been wandering around Hurtsboro for a few weeks. The receptionist and a United Parcel Service delivery woman had given her food when they happened to see her.
As a volunteer for the Macon County Humane Society, I brought the coonhound into the vet clinic to get the immediate treatment she desperately needed. We named her Blue Bell. I placed Blue Bell on the Macon County Humane Society web site and Christina and Sean Murdoch of the Windfire Ranch animal rescue facility adopted her within a few weeks. She is now their happy indoor companion.
Blue Bell was the fourth coonhound I found running loose in Russell County this year. I called some coon hunters and asked some questions. I found out that even though turning out or dumping animals is a Class A misdemeanor in Alabama, it is standard practice among some coon hunters to turn loose any dogs they no longer want, often due to being gun-shy, not treeing raccoons, not being aggressive enough, or being too old. Some coonhounds who are not good raccoon hunters are used to chase deer, but are turned loose if they also fail at this.
If Gandhi's quote were changed to ≥The greatness of Alabama and its moral progress can be judged by the way the people of Alabama treat its animals.≤ I would say we are in trouble.
—Sue-Ellen Brown
Clinical Psychologist
Russell County, Alabama
<SEBi2i@aol.com>
Laboratory oversight in Sri Lanka
I am pleased to announce a significantly positive development with regard to using animals in research in Sri Lanka.
This development comes one year after our shelter dogs Polly, Wussie and Perry were obtained by deceit and subjected to unethical research by two veterinarians. The Sri Lanka Veterinary Council judged the two vets to have conducted themselves inhumanely and unethically.
An ethical review committee was established at the Veterinary Faculty of the Univeristy of Peradeniya soon after our complaint to the Sri Lanka Veterinary Council.
As a direct result of this scandal, a workshop organized by a group of eminent medical and veterinary professionals was held on September 11, 2008 at Colombo Univ-ersity. At the workshop a draft document was taken up for discussion to formulate a set of National Guidelines for Protection of Animals in Research.
This set of guidelines incorporates a requirement that ethical review committees must approve research using animals, considering the benefit expected to come from the experiments and whether the research justifies the distress caused to the animals who will be used. Veterinarians must strictly supervise any animal used in research during and after the experiments. The guidelines are to be finalized at a subsequent workshop.
A new Sri Lankan animal welfare act, replacing the antiquated act of 1907 and awaiting to be passed in parliament, will provide the necessary and adequate legal backing to take action against acts of cruelty to animals. The new act will establish an Animal Welfare Authority, consisting of veterinary clinicians and professors as well as animal welfarists. The Animal Welfare Authority will have powers to invesitigate acts of cruelty and take action against perpetrators.
—Champa Fernando
Secretary, KACPAW
191 Trinco Street
Kandy, Sri Lanka
<nihalas@slt.lk>
Donkeys
We have all seen donkeys trudging along in the heat, straining under a heavy load. These gentle animals often suffer from dehydration, untreated sores, and muscle strain. Sometimes they are beaten to force their worn-out bodies to keep moving.
In a perfect world, all working animals would be retired immediately. But until that day comes, it is important to do what we can to make the lives of these animals a little better.
—Khalid Mahmood Qurashi
President
Animal Save
Movement
of Pakistan
H#1094/2
Hussain Agahi
Multan 60000
Pakistan
<thetension@hotmail.com>
Editor's note:
In early 2007, after helping to rescue an injured donkey between Agra and Delhi, while traveling in India, ANIMAL PEOPLE president and administrator Kim Bartlett funded an equine care mobile unit to help the working donkeys and horses along the heavily traveled Agra/Delhi corridor. The unit is operated by Friendicoes SECA, which already had an equine unit in Delhi. The rescued donkey, Marco, recently died (see Memorials, page 21), but the equine aid project continues.
Santa Cruz arsons
The organizations and individuals listed below wish to express our unequivocal opposition to the recent actions of individuals targeting animal researchers and their families in Santa Cruz, California.
We represent organizations that sponsor professional and responsible legislation on behalf of animals. We neither support nor condone criminal behavior as exhibited in the recent Santa Cruz actions. Those responsible should be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
These violent acts must not reflect on the sincere and peaceful efforts of the many organizations and thousands of people who seek to protect animals through lawful means, and we disassociate ourselves and our organizations from any such criminal acts.
—Virginia Handley
Animal Switchboard
—Eric Mills
Action for Animals
—Karen Raasch
California Federation
for Animal Legislation
—Linda Olvera
PawPAC
—Curt Ransom
Humane Society of the U.S.
—Beverlee McGrath
Humane Society of the U.S.
—David Middlesworth
United Animal Nations
—Don Knutson
Sacramento Vegetarian Society
Five-minute cat spay video posted
I recently made a video in our spay clinic on how to spay a cat in five minutes. A group of spay vets perfected this technique while working together for several years on Native American reservations. I think this procedure is faster than the one demonstrated on the ANIMAL PEOPLE web site. The technique is quite different in that we do not tie off the ovarian ligaments with suture or wire. We tie them on themselves like we do with cat neuters. The video may be seen at <http://catspayneuter.blip.tv/#1201259 >, or at <http://www.you-tube.com/watch?v=LGIiES0jyRs>.
—Peggy W. Larson, DVM, MS (Pathology), JD
Consultant, Animal Law & Veterinary Medicine
1876 Mountain View Road, Williston, VT 05495
Phone: 802-879-1465; Fax: 802-879-8364
<meowvet@msn.com>
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
8. Shelters discontinue killing animals for other agencies, gassing, & drop-off cages
TULSA, CLOVIS, MACON, LAKE CITY, HAYWARD—Beginning a ≥new era≤ in animal care and control, according to Tulsa, Okalahoma mayor Kathy Taylor, the Tulsa animal shelter on September 8, 2008 quit killing animals for surrounding communities' animal control agencies.
For at least three decades, the city has charged suburbs $1.00 per animal destroyed at Tulsaπs shelter. Last year, an estimated 4,000 animals from outside the city were killed in the shelterπs gas chamber,≤ recalled Tulsa World staff writer P.J. Lassek.
The new policy was phased in over 60 days to give the Tulsa suburbs time to make other arrangements. Taylor may authorize killing other communitiesπ animals at the Tulsa shelter, in cases of necessity, but not for less than $15 per animal, under a new animal control ordinance that is meant to reduce shelter killing and expedite the transition already underway to using lethal injections instead of gassing.
Shelter manager Jean Letcher told Lassek that lethal injection is already used for about 75% of the dogs whom the city kills. ≥The gas chamber is still used for the remaining 25% who are deemed too aggressive to be handled, or when there is not enough staff≤ to hold animals for injection, Lassek wrote.
The Clovis, New Mexico animal control task force on September 9, 2008 voted 6-3 to recommend an end to gassing to the city commission. The commission is to review the recommendation in November. Task force chair Linda Cross ≥said the city would receive $100,000 from Governor Bill Richardsonπs office, and that Animal Protection of New Mexico would provide free training and a yearπs supply of sodium pentobarbital, the medicine used in lethal injections,≤ if the gas chamber is abolished, reported Clovis News Journal staff writer Gabriel Monte.
The Clovis task force unanimously approved requiring that shelter animals be sterilized before being placed for adoption.
The Tulsa and Clovis transitions mirror changes in animal control modus operandi that have already been adopted in most of the U.S., in some cases decades ago, and are now becoming established in the rural areas that had been the last holdouts. California, for example, has required municipal shelters to sterilize animals before adoption for nearly 20 years. Gassing dogs and cats has been banned by law in at least five states, although in some states shelters that had gas chambers are still allowed to use them.
Killing animals for other agencies, once a significant revenue source for agencies that had gas chambers and crematoriums, has become much less common as agencies compete to lower their death tolls.
Since the advent of microchipping pets began to reveal that ≥owner-surrendered,≤ ≥found,≤ and privately trapped ≥feral≤ animals are often the pets of people other than those who bring them to shelters, many shelters have also begun requiring proof of ownership before agreeing that an animal will be killed.
Exterminators warned
Private exterminators have claimed some of the business from property owners and others who just want to get rid of perceived nuisance animals, but Alley Cat Allies in early September 2008 ≥put a national pest control company on notice that trapping and killing cats can result in criminal convictions for animal cruelty,≤ Alley Cat Allies president Becky Robinson told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Last week we sent a letter to the chief executive officer of Critter Control,≤ Robinson elaborated, alerting him that one of his franchise owners was found guilty on three counts of animal cruelty for killing three feral cats. We forwarded that letter to 170 Critter Control franchise owners across the country. Alley Cat Allies also urged Critter Control to remove a page from its website that suggestedãwronglyãthat unidentified cats are rarely protected under state laws.
Wrote Alley Cat Allies department of law and policy director Wendy M. Anderson to Critter Control CEO Kevin Clark, of Traverse City, Michigan, ≥On August 14, 2008 Keith Copi, the owner of a Critter Control franchise in suburban Richmond, Virginia was convicted in Henrico General District Court.≤ For each of the three convictions, Anderson continued, ≥Copi was sentence to jail for a period of 12 months, suspended on the condition of good behavior. He was assessed close to $1,000 in fines and costs, and he also incurred the cost of hiring a defense attorney.
All cats—pet, stray, and feral—are protected under the animal cruelty laws of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Anderson reminded. ≥Animal cruelty laws apply regardless of whether the cat is owned or unowned, identified or unidentified.
Older state anti-cruelty laws often applied only to owned animals. Such laws were typically widened to cover all dogs and cats as part of introducing felony penalties for animal cruelty, now in effect in nearly all states, to eliminate the defense that a perpetrator did not know a victim animalπs status.
Gassing cost & safety
Anxiety about the cost of converting from gassing continues to be cited most often by agencies that resist switching to lethal injection, despite 35 yearsπ worth of data gathered by shelter management consultant Doug Fakkema showing that the cost per animal difference is negligible. Fakkema presented recent numbers in ≥Comparing costs of carbon monoxide v.s. sodium pentobarbital,≤ in the October 2006 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
After initially resisting movement toward abolishing gassing in Macon, Georgia because of the cost issue, mayor Robert Reichert in June 2008 signed an ordinance authorizing the Community Foundation of Central Georgia to bank $50,000 in donated funds that local activists pledged to collect toward offsetting the expenses, if the gas chamber is scrapped by July 1, 2009.
The initial $50,000 will cover start-up costs including $15,000 for building improvements, about $14,000 for equipment and supplies, and about $13,000 for a yearπs worth of medication,≤ reported Jennifer Burk of the Macon Telegraph. ≥After adding increased salaries for the officers doing the work, which private donations cannot pay for, the total cost could run about $113,000, animal control director Jim Johnson said.
Macon city council subcommittee on animal control issues head Nancy White told Burk that an anonymous donor ≥has offered to match $1 for every $2 contributed to the fund, up to $12,500. To get the full amount,≤ Burk wrote, ≥the fund would have to collect $25,000 in donations by December 31, 2008.≤
Macon gassed 3,970 animals in 2007≠≠85% of the city shelter intake. Only 160 animals were adopted out.
Defenders of gassing contend that it is not only cheaper but safer for workers than lethal injection. This contention is difficult to assess. The only death by a shelter worker while using a gas chamber of which ANIMAL PEOPLE is aware was that of Vernon Dove, 39, at the Humane Educational Society of Chattanooga on March 28, 2000. ANIMAL PEOPLE is aware of about half a dozen suicides by shelter workers who used pentabarbitol apparently obtained on the job, but no fatal accidents.
In any event, the argument that gassing is safer blew up, literally, at the Iredell County Animal Shelter in North Carolina on July 22, 2008 when an electrical malfunction occurred inside the shelter's gas chamber. Ten dogs in the chamber were already deceased, and the chamber was near the end of its 20-minute operating cycle when the explosion occurred. No one was injured, but three emergency vehicles responded to calls about the blast.
Of the 102 licensed public animal shelters in North Carolina, 67 reportedly use only lethal injection to kill animals, 25 use only gas, and 10 use both.
Drop-off cage debate
Drop-off cages to allow the public to surrender animals to shelters after hours or to avoid a long drive to a distant shelter moved closer to abolition in March 2008 when the Lake City Animal Shelter discontinued collecting animals from cages near the town hall in Fort White, Florida. Fort White is about 20 miles from Lake City.
Assistant shelter director Terry Marques told High Springs Herald correspondent Maria Fernanda Castro that the cages were in ≥deplorable condition,≤ and demonstrated ≥inhumane treatment of animals.≤
Katie Rooney, president of the North Florida People for Animal Welfare Society, has been trying to get rid of the cages for years,≤ wrote Castro. ≥Some of the problems the animals were facing in the cages were extreme weather conditions, biting red ants, and the risk of being stolen for nefarious reasons, Rooney added.
Specifically, animals taken from the drop-off cages were allegedly used in dogfights and in training dogs to fight.
Earlier this year, Castro recalled, ≥two men were charged with fighting or baiting animals and unlawful assembly after attending a pit bull fight outside Fort White. Attended by dozens of people, the event was so well organized that there were even generators and portable lights brought to the rural area so that the dogfighting in the woods could be better seen.≤
Drop-off cages have been used by many shelters at least since the early 20th century, and were still recommended in the 1989 edition of the National Animal Control Association training manual, but fell into disrepute and rapidly disappeared in the 1990s.
The Hayward Animal Shelter, among the last in California known to use drop-off cages, closed theirs in mid-2007.
Objected Hayward Friends of Animals president Steve Sapontzis, to Hayward Daily Review staff writer Matt OπBrien, ≥The Hayward Animal Shelter has, since at least 1985, had the boxes open to provide shelter for stray animals at night, whenever. Even when they cut back on animal control officers, they kept the boxes open, because thatπs the humane thing to do.≤
Wrote O'Brien, ≥Sapontzis said some people are reluctant to drop animals off during regular shelter hours because of a surrender fee that averages $90, although shelter officials say they reduce it on a case-by-case basis if owners face financial hardships.≤
But surrender fees are another idea of the past, introduced during the Great Depression despite warnings from the American Humane Association that they might increase animal abandonment at large, rather than discouraging the casual disposal of pets≠≠ including the pets of people other than those who leave them at shelters. More than 70 years of experience have now demonstrated that the early misgivings were correct.
Sapontzis, an emiritus professor of philosophy at the California State University Hayward campus, is author of Morals, Reason & Animals (1987), and since 1984 has co-edited Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics. —Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
9. Shelter manager sold cadavers for lab use
VISALIA, Calif.—After an eight-day trial and two days of deliberation, a Tulare County Superior Court jury on September 24, 2008 convicted former Tulare County Animal Control Shelter manager William Harmon of two felony counts of accepting bribes, a felony count of embezzlement and a misdemeanor charge of accepting an unlawful gratuity.
The jury found him not guilty of falsifying public documents,≤ reported Brett Wilkison of the Visalia Times-Delta. ≥The jury found Harmon accepted and requested restaurant gift certificates from Michael Sargeant,≤ allegedly in exchange for providing Sargeant with the remains of dogs killed at the shelter. Sargeantπs business, Wholesale Biologicals of Bakersfield, sells animal carcasses to laboratories. The transactions allegedly occurred from 2002 through 2006.
Harmon faces a minimum of six years in prison and could be sentenced to serve up to 12 years, under California sentencing guidelines. Harmon also faces a separate trial in November 2008 on animal cruelty charges.
Harmon, Sergeant, and another Tulare County shelter employee, Ronn Cookson, were arrested in June 2007. The single cruelty charge filed against Cookson was later dropped.
The case came to light, recounted Sarah Jimenez of the Fresno Bee, after ≥kennel cards at Tulare County Animal Control started disappearing. Animals were killed on the day of impoundment despite a four- to-six-day holding requirement. Dogs designated for adoption were killed. It seemed the shelter was killing more animals than in previous years,≤ about 700 more cats and the same number of dogs. ≥All the while,≤ Jiminez added, ≥trucks from Wholesale Biologicals were collecting cat and dog cadavers, even though the companyπs expired contract related only to cats, according to court records.≤
Sergeant is to be tried in October 2008 for alleged bribery.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
10. Austrian activists freed after 104 days, still face charges
VIENNA—Association Against Animal Factories founder Martin Balluch, Vier Pfoten campaign director J¸rgen Faulmann, and eight other Austrian animal advocates were released from jail on September 2, 2008, 104 days after they were arrested in a series of dawn raids on May 21.
Three other activists who were arrested at the same time were released earlier.
The ten who were released on September 2 were arraigned in July for alleged involvement in a variety of ≥direct action≤ offenses between 2002 and 2007. All have pleaded innocent.
≥I was released without the keys to my home, my car, or my office being returned to me. I was also not given my computer, access to my bank account, or even my wrist watch,≤ Balluch said in a prepared statement. ≥Our office, and the offices of six other animal rights groups, are still empty. Nothing has been handed back so far: no video material or cameras, no computers, no membership data, no archives, and no bookkeeping.≤
Prosecution spokesperson Erich Habitzl told David Hill of the Austrian Times that the release of Balluch, Faulmann, et al would not interrupt the ongoing police investigation of their activities.
Balluch alleged that the intent of the arrests was to silence Austrian animal advocacy, just as his organization was preparing to introduce an initiative campaign on behalf of farm animals.
At the end of 2006,≤ Balluch charged, ≥the owners of Kleider Bauer [an Austrian furrier] and representatives of the Conservative Party as well as high ranking police officers met and spoke about how to destroy [the Association Against Animal Factories]. The minutes of those meetings are now in our hands.≤
After other tactics failed, Balluch asserted, ≥a special police unit consisting of more than 32 agents from the secret service, the murder division, and from the anti-terror police was formed with the sole purpose of framing us. This special unit started the largest operation of spying on political activists since World War 2.
For almost two years, two private houses, a pub [we used] as a meeting place and our offices were bugged. The telephone and e-mail conversations of more than 30 people were monitored. Two cars, including mine, had tracking devices put on them. Seventeen people were followed and watched 24 hours a day. Three private homes had video cameras filming their entrances. Undercover agents tried to infiltrate us. More than a dozen potential targets of animal rights activists were under permanent surveillance.
To justify this operation,≤ Balluch said, ≥the secret service drew up a list of 240 acts of criminal damage and arson from the past 13 years, and claimed there was one big international criminal organization responsible for all of them.≤
Added Balluch, ≥The Green Party and the Social Democrats criticized the police actions with increasing impatienceäThe case of whether our imprisonment was legal is still pending before the Austrian Supreme Court.≤
Green party boss Alexander Van der Bellen asked Balluch to run as an independent candidate for the party in the September 28 election,≤ wrote Hill of the Austrian Times.
In a partially parallel British case, reported Cahal Milmo and Kate Head of The Independent on September 25, the Kent police have ≥offered £40,000 in compensation to animal rights campaigners, including supporters of the Animal Liberation Front, after they were prevented from joining a protest against livestock exports.
Elaborated Milmo and Head, ≥The group of London-based protesters, representing several animal rights groups, accused Kent police of heavy-handed tactics after their coach was stopped as it entered Dover in July 2006 en route to a demonstration against the shipping of sheep and cattle to the Continent.
Said ALF Support Group donor Adrian Appley, 65, ≥The police pulled us over by claiming that our coach was not roadworthy, but it rapidly became clear that they did not want to let us reach the protest. ≥At first we were told that we could demonstrate for half an hour. But 10 minutes later we were all told to get back on the coach and anyone refusing to do so would be arrested. The police started filming everyone on board the coach and when one of our group tried to get off he was forcibly prevented from doing so.
≥We were then escorted all the way back up the motorway to London, and were told that we could not turn off the motorway at any point for water or toilet breaks, on one of the hottest days of the year. It was a ridiculous situation,≤ Appley said. ≥Most of us were middle-aged or elderly, and we had all come to exercise our democratic right to stage a peaceful protest.≤
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
11. Puerto Rico gains a new humane law; prosecution of animal control contractor fails
BAYAMON, Puerto Rico—With very little fanfare in the rest of the U.S., Puerto Rico has enacted a landmark animal protection law, based, in large part, directly on Animal Legal Defense Fundπs model laws,≤ announced ALDF director of legislative affairs Stephan Otto on September 12, 2008.
≥Included,≤ Otto said, ≥are felonies for neglect, abandonment, cruelty and animal fighting; and statutory recognition of the link between cruelty to animals and violence toward humans through increased penalties for those with prior animal abuse convictions,≤ or convictions for domestic violence, child or elder abuse, and/or committing cruelty in front of children.
The new Puerto Rican definition of animal abuse ≥includes emotional harm,≤ enables judges to grant protective orders on behalf of animals, and creates a duty to enforce anti-cruelty laws, Otto said.
≥This bill sailed through the Puerto Rican legislature,≤ Otto marveled. ≥It was introduced in May, was in the Governorπs hands in early July, and was signed into law and went into effect in August.≤
The new law was both boosted to passage and overshadowed on introduction by probably the last and almost certainly the most sensational case ever brought to trial under the old law. The case concluded on September 10, 2008 when Superior Court Judge Miguel Fabre found Animal Control Solutions owner Julio Diaz and workers Lucas Montano Rivera and Roberto Rod-riguez Ceballo not guilty of allegedly collecting about 80 dogs and cats from the city of Barceloneta, along the north central Puerto Rican coast, and hurling them over a 50-foot-high bridge to their deaths.
Fabre ruled prosecutors did not show sufficient evidence to make a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, telling the court that investigators had no witnesses linking the trio to the petsπ deaths,≤ reported Associated Press writer Carlos Martinez Rivera. ≥Diaz, Rivera, and Ceballo waived their right to a jury, saying finding impartial jurors would be impossible due to the heavy publicity surrounding the case,≤ which received saturation coverage from Associated Press and other media.
Public prosecutor Zulma Delgado told reporters she did not intend to appeal Fabreπs ruling,≤ added Carlos Martinez Rivera.
Barceloneta mayor Sol Luis Fontanez ≥said the city hired Animal Control Solution to clear three housing projects of pets after warning residents about a no-pet policy,≤ reported Associated Press writer Omar Marrero after the animals were found on October 10, 2007. ≥He said the city paid $60 for every animal recovered and another $100 for each trip to a shelter in the San Juan suburb of Carolina.≤
≥They came as if it were a drug raid,≤ animal advocate Alma Febus told Marrero. ≥They took away whatever animals they could find. Some pets were taken away in front of children.≤
Added Marrero, ≥Residents told TV reporters that they saw the animal control workers inject the animals,≤ supposedly with ≥a sedative for the drive to the shelter.≤
The animals were discovered under the bridge in Vega Baja, between Barceloneta and San Juan, two days after the aggressive pick-ups began. ≥Many were already dead when they threw them, but others were alive,≤ bridge neighbor Jose Manuel Rivera told Marrero. ≥Some of the animals managed to climb to the highway even though they were all battered, but about 50 animals remained.≤
When Jose Manuel Rivera alerted local officials, he said, they merely spread lime over the animalsπ remains. Rivera then buried the dead animals with a backhoe, said Michael Melia of Associated Press.
Diaz cofounded an apparently defunct firm called Animal Delivery in 1999, and formed Animal Control Solutions in 2002.
Recounted Associated Press writers Yaisha Vargas and Andrew O. Selsky, ≥Facing little competition, the companies had 85 contracts with municipalities and other clients worth $1.1 million in the past eight years, according to the Puerto Rican comptrollerπs office. A former employee of one of Diazπs companies told Associated Press that the firms rounded up thousands of animals over the years, brutally killed many of them, and discarded the corpses wherever it was convenient. One former employee led Associated Press to two different killing fields, and he and another former employee described a third.≤
≥Not a single animal was turned over to a shelter,≤ the former employees said anonymously.
≥Associated Press contacted all eight animal shelters and sanctuaries across Puerto Rico,≤ Vargas and Selsky continued, ≥and they confirmed that none had received animals for potential adoption from Diazπs companies.≤
The case drew international attention to the lack of effective humane services in most of Puerto Rico. Several large-scale dog and cat sterilization programs have operated in Puerto Rico during the past 15 years, and the numbers of animals at large where they have worked have reportedly decreased, but none of the programs have succeeded in extending low-cost or free sterilization services to more than a small part of the island.
In theory, Puerto Rico is compact enough that a single centrally located clinic could serve the entire island. In practice, the winding, narrow roads through the mountainous interior of the island make operating from a single central location impractical.
The North Shore Animal League funded ANIMAL PEOPLE to do an assessment of the Puerto Rican dog and cat population situation in 1998, and sent then-operations director Perry Fina to begin implementing the ANIMAL PEOPLE recommendations. When local organizations balked at cooperating with each other, North Shore transferred most of the funding that had been allocated to helping in Puerto Rico to assist the highly successful ≥no-kill, no shelter≤ McKee Project in Costa Rica.
Fina died in January 2008, disappointed that the McKee Project has yet to be copied in Puerto Rico.
—Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
12. RSPCA asks EC to publish new lab regs
LONDON, BRUSSELS—Royal SPCA of Britain chief executive Mark Watts on September 11, 2008 asked European Commission president José Manuel Barroso to expedite publication of proposed changes to the European Union rules governing animal experimentation, now long overdue.
We are repeatedly told that publication of the proposals is imminent, only to find it has been put back—and put back again, said RSPCA senior European campaign manager Peter Craske. ≥Legislation needs to be debated fully, but this debate seems to have gone on forever.≤
EU nations use about 12 million animals per year in experiments; Britain uses about three million of the total.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
13. Tigers scarce, poachers zero in on leopards, warns Indian conservationist
NEW DELHI—Poachers who cannot find tigers to kill and traffickers who have increasing difficulty moving tiger parts from India to customers in Nepal and China are turning their notice to leopards, warns Wildlife Protection Society of India program manager Tito Joseph.
Tiger parts fetch a price 20 times higher than those of leopards,≤ Joseph told The Times of India on September 7, 2008 ≥but their bones are considered on par.≤
Compounding the situation, leopards are coming into increasingly frequent and deadly conflict with humans—partly because more desperately poor people are taking the risk of moving into their habitat, partly too because more hungry leopards are coming into villages to hunt livestock.
The preferred prey of Indian leopards include hog deer and chital, but the prey species are in decline in many regions due to agricultural expansion into former forest.
A declining prey base has lured leopards to human settlements,≤ Joseph told Times News Network reporter Neha Shukla on September 28, after a leopard dragged a nine-year-old girl from her hut and killed her in Doodhnathpurwa village, in the Katarniaghat forest near Lucknow.
Leopards have recently killed eight people in the Katarniaghat forest, seven of them since December 2007, said Shukla.
Street dogs formerly kept leopards out of Indian villages, but the success of federally subsidized Animal Birth Control programs have thinned the dog population in some areas to the point that leopards can creep in and kill dogs without rousing a pack.
Joseph said that 125 Indian leopards were known to have been poached during the first nine months of 2008, after 124 were poached in all of 2007.
≥From the border outposts of north Bengal to the small towns of Uttarakhand to the remote forest-rich district of Gondia in Maharashtra, 27 leopard skins have been seized in the past 45 days,≤ wrote Avijit Ghosh of the Times News network on September 13, 2008.
Organized poachers are networking with wildlife traders in India, Nepal and China. Most of these killings took place in Uttarakhand, Himachal, Maharashtra and Karnataka,≤ Joseph said.
≥Although leopards are killed across the country, the threat is much larger in northern India,≤ added WCCB deputy director Ramesh Pandey.
According to official estimates, India had about 1,650 wild tigers and 12,000 wild leopards at the start of 2008. India has dedicated conservation programs for tigers and elephants, but leopards are only protected by the same general measures that pertain to all other wildlife.
High-volume leopard poaching has also recently come to light in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, reported Tony Carnie of The Mercury on September 5, 2008.
Police are hunting for a Jozini man linked to the slaughter of at least 120 leopards, whose distinctive spotted pelts often adorn the shoulders of the Zulu royal family and other dignitaries,≤ Currie wrote.
The man was arrested four years ago,≤ Currie recalled, ≥when police found the remains of 64 leopard skins, which were in the process of being tailored into traditional attire. Though he was eventually convicted of several serious wildlife crimes, he never went to jail. Three weeks ago police found the remnants of another 64 leopards at his home, along with skins from several civet cats, 10 suni antelope, 30 samango monkeys, a wildebeest and five grey duiker.≤
The suspect is believed to poach wildlife by using common agricultural pesticides to poison carcasses set out as bait.
Predicted Currie, ≥The case is likely to revive debate about the ceremonial display of protected animal skins by Zulu nobility and the degree to which this drives wildlife crime.≤
While the animalsπ pelts were used to make garmets, other remains are believed to have been used for muti, involved in traditional religious and medical practices.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
14. What became of the puppies after cloning client didn't pay?
The bizarre backstory to the reported first-ever commercial dog cloning, reported in the July/August 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, gained another chapter on September 24, 2008 when Joyce Bernann McKinney, 58, repeatedly called Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral at her home and then spent nearly two hours on the telephone to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
McKinney sought help in a last-minute effort to win possession of the five pit bull terrier puppies whom RNL Bio of Seoul, South Korea claimed in August 2008 to have cloned from the frozen ear of McKinneyπs deceased pet Booger.
McKinney reportedly paid $50,000 to RNL Bio to clone Booger, but never actually gave the firm any money, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE. She delayed payment, she said, pending receipt of independent laboratory confirmation that the puppies were Boogerπs offspring, and pending the sale of her house to raise the price.
The cloning team was led by Lee Byeong-chun, a former assistant to Hwang Woo-suk, whose 2004 claim to have cloned human embryos and extracted stem cells from them was exposed a year later as false. However, Hwang Woo-suk and Lee Byeong-chun had verifiably cloned a dog, and reportedly cloned more than 20 dogs before cloning Booger. At a September 4, 2008 press conference Lee Byeong-chun also claimed to have cloned a Japanese retriever who can sniff out human cancers, and two Afghan hounds who were clones of the first successfully cloned dog.
McKinney initially tried to have Booger cloned by a Texas firm, Genetic Savings & Clone, she told ANIMAL PEOPLE. Genetic Savings & Clone had reportedly cloned a cat for $50,000, but went out of business in 2006. McKinney said she spent months tracing the founders and pursuing legal action to recover Boogerπs frozen ear, before turning to RNL Bio.
McKinney said that if she failed to pay RNL Bio the $50,000 they expected by September 28, 2008, the company had threatened to use the cloned puppies in stem cell research. McKinney had little hope of obtaining the cash by the deadline, she said, and had been living on Social Security disability insurance until the Social Security Administ-ration found out about her deal to clone Booger and cut her off, saying that if she could pay $50,000 to clone a dog, she did not need financial aid.
Neither RNL Bio nor Seoul National University, Lee Byeong-chunπs employer, responded to ANIMAL PEOPLE inquiries about McKinneyπs allegation that the puppies would be used in experiments, the fate of the puppies, and what became of the two surrogate mother dogs who carried the cloned embryos to birthing.
McKinney denied some of the more colorful tabloid accounts of her history that surfaced after she appeared at a Seoul press conference with the claimed Booger clones, and confirmed others.
In particular, McKinney denied that she tied up and raped a Mormon missionary in England in 1977, for which she was criminally charged. She and an alleged accomplice jumped bail in 1978, left England, and were never tried.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
15. Courts restore federal protection to wolves in all Lower 48
WASHINGTON D.C.—Wolves are again a federally protected species throughout the U.S., after U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled in Washington D.C. on September 29, 2008 that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service improperly removed wolves in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin from the endangered species list in 2007.
Anticipating the similar verdict in a pending case in Missoula, Montana, the Fish & Wildlife Service on September 22, 2008 asked U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy to return the estimated 1,455 wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains to Endangered Species Act protection.
Both cases were filed by a coalition of environmental and animal protection organizations including Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society of the U.S.
Extirpated from the continental U.S. by 1945, wolves outside of Alaska were placed on the U.S. endangered species list in 1974. Wolves migrating from Canada recolonized parts of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the 1980s and 1990s without formal reintroduction.
≥Surveys this year turned up 2,921 wolves in Minne-sota, at least 537 in Wiscon-sin, and 520 in Michigan,≤ said Associated Press environmental writer John Fleshler.
The biggest practical effect of Friedman's ruling,≤ Fleshler assessed, ≥is to nullify newly established state policies allowing people in the Great Lakes area to kill wolves attacking livestock or pets. It also bars the states from permitting hunting or trapping of wolves, although none had done so.≤
However, recalled Lee Bergquist of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, ≥With strong support from hunting and farming organizations, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said in August 2008 that it might initiate the first public hunt of wolves in more than 50 years.≤
State plans to hunt and trap wolves were a central issue in the northern Rockies.
Sixty-six wolves were live-trapped in Canada and released into Yellowstone National Park in 1995-1996, over intensive opposition from hunters and ranchers.
At about the same time the Fish & Wildlife Service began trying to reintroduce Mexican gray wolves to Arizona and New Mexico.
The Mexican gray wolf reintroduction has been slowed to a near halt by the combination of political opposition from ranchers, removals of wolves who prey on livestock, and malicious shootings. Mexican gray wolves have remained officially endangered.
The Fish & Wildlife Service removed wolves in the northern Rockies from Endangered Species Act protection in February 2008.
Estimating that the northern Rockies wolf population had increased to 1,513, up from 1,455 six months earlier, the Fish & Wildlife Service in March 2008 returned responsibility for wolf population management in the Yellowstone region to the states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
More than 180 wolves were killed in the name of predator control by the end of the summer≠≠and all three states announced wolf hunting seasons to begin in fall 2008.
Acting on behalf of 12 animal and habitat protection groups, EarthJustice attorney Doug Honnold on July 18, 2008 won a preliminary injunction from Judge Molloy that temporarily put the Yellowstone wolves back under federal authority.
There were fall hunts scheduled that would call for perhaps as many as 500 wolves to be killed,≤ testified Honnold.
What we want to do is look at this more thoroughly,≤ Fish & Wildlife Service spokesperson Sharon Rose told Matthew Brown of Associated Press, after the service moved to withdraw the delisting.
≥I would call that victory,≤ responded Honnold. ≥What theyπre requesting is to go back to the drawing boards.≤
Not immediately clear was whether Defenders of Wildlife would resume compensating ranchers in Montana for livestock lost to wolf predation. Defenders has paid more than $1 million total compensation since 1997 to ranchers in the northern Rockies, but turned the Montana part of the program over to the state Livestock Loss Reduction and Mitigation Program when wolves were delisted as a federally protected species.
The Montana legislature contributed $30,000 in start-up funds, and Defenders donated $50,000 with a pledge to donate an additional $50,000 in early 2009,≤ Great Falls Tribune staff writer Karl Puckett recounted.
Through September 18, 2008, the state agency had paid $17,000 in new claims, but had not received any of the further funding it had anticipated from private donors, agency coordinator George Edwards told Puckett.
WildEarth Guardians on September 23, 2008 petitioned the Fish & Wildlife Service to develop a wolf recovery plan for four regions of Colorado.
We believe that the Southern Rockies needs wolves, and wolves definitely need the Southern Rockies,≤ WildEarth carnivore recovery director Rob Edward told Aspen Daily News correspondent David Fry.
Wolves from the northern Rockies are believed to have wandered into Colorado occasionally, but have not yet established breeding populations. The WildEarth petition hopes to expedite their return to Colorado with deliberate reintroduction.
WildEarth Guardians is asking the federal government to restore wolves to the Flat Tops, a vast area of rolling meadows and buttes, much of it wilderness,≤ wrote Fry. ≥It includes the largest elk herd in the country, which biologists say is too big for the habitat to sustain. Edward said wolves could help improve the ecologic balance by thinning the herd and forcing it to move, allowing vegetation to recover.
However,≤ Fry noted, ≥the region also includes many ranchers and sheepherders who have fought against wolf reintroduction.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
16. Monsoons bring floods from Himalayas to the Bengal coast
KOLKATA, VISAKHAPATAM—Increasingly violent monsoons battered India yet again in August and September 2008, afflicting millions of humans and animals in regions below the Himalayas from northern Bihar to central Arunchal Pradesh, and as far south as Srikakulum, halfway down the Bengal coast.
The Visakha SPCA in Visakhapatnam sent animal relief missions from northern Andhra Pradesh, as it did after previous monsoon floods and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
We are in touch with our people at Srikakulum,≤ founder Pradeep Kumar Nath e-mailed. ≥We are doing rescues wherever possible and shifting [animals to safety] wherever necessary.≤
The Visakha SPCA has itself been hit several times by cyclones in recent years.
The monsoon flooding added to accumulations of water left by the tail of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. Cyclone Nargis killed more than 146,000 people and 48 million animals in Myanmar, occasioning the World Society for the Protection of Animals, International Fund for Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Friends of Thailand to mount the first international animal relief expedition to Myanmar ever, under auspices of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Program.
India, across the Bay of Bengal, suffered relatively light damage from Nargis, but bridges were washed out in parts of southern coastal Orissa and northern coastal Andhra Pradesh, disrupting rail traffic for more than a month, and leaving the region unusually vulnerable to further catastrophe.
More than half of Orissa had experienced flooding by Sept-ember 23. The Orissa state director of animal husbandry told Nath that approximately 650,000 large domestic animals, 620,000 small domestic animals, and 212,000 poultry were in urgent need of help. Twenty-eight veterinarians and 46 para-veterinarians had vaccinated nearly 570,000 animals against diseases that might result from the flooding, and had treated 8,317 animals for flood-related illness and injury.
Some of the flooding was predictable. The Brahmaputra, the largest river in northeastern India, again submerged Kaziranga National Park, an almost annual occurrence. As in past years, animals including hog deer, elephants, and highly endangered Asian rhinoceroses fled Kaziranga to higher ground, requiring them to cross National Highway 37, the busiest east/west route in the region. At least six hog deer were road-killed, The Hindu reported.
Eight of the 1,855 rhinos who were believed to have lived in Kaziranga were found dead, The Hindu added on September 11, 2008, but noted that the toll was far below those of 1988 and 1998. The 1988 flooding killed 38 rhinos, 1,050 deer, 69 boar, three baby elephants, and two tigers. The 1998 toll included a record 44 rhinos.
Media commentators were almost unanimous that flooding along the Kosi River could have been predicted and prevended. The Kosi, flowing from eastern Nepal across northern Bihar to the Ganges, drains much of the central Himalayas, and is notorious for rapidly inundating dams and levees with silt≠≠or smashing them with rolling boulders. Governments in both Nepal and India have for more than 60 years campaigned to harness the Kosi with bigger dams, while ecologists are increasingly convinced that the best way to avoid flooding is to let the Kosi run free.
The debate was revived by one of the first disasters of the 2008 monsoon season, an August 18 levee break near Kusaha, Nepal, which killed at least 80 people and allowed the river to reclaim three old courses, eventually displacing as many as 2.7 million people and more than a million livestock.
All Bihar nongovernmental organizations, honorary animal welfare officers and members have been requested to participate in the animal rescue operations and apply to the Animal Welfare Board of India for financial assistance under our Natural Calamity Scheme,≤ said AWBI secretary D. Rajasekar. ≥Interested NGOs from other states are also requested to participate.≤
A relief expedition mounted by the Wildlife Trust of India and International Fund for Animal Welfare reported treating about 6,000 cattle, but noted that at least 24,000 were stranded in the same vicinity, beyond reach. The Andhra Pradesh cow protection organization Rastriya Ahimsa Manch sent a relief team to Madhepura and Saharsa, with feed and medicines, unaware that Andra Pradesh would also soon need help.
The World Society for the Protection of Animals ≥has been in the field in Bihar for almost two weeks conducting assessment and building a response platform,≤ e-mailed WSPA disaster response team leader Tim Myers on September 10. ≥During this term the team has also treated sick and injured animals at relief camps where appropriate,≤ Myers added.
The WSPA team was initially directed by WSPA veterinarian Ashish Sutar, and later by Animal Help Ahmedabad founder Rahul Sehgal, sent by the Humane Society International division of the Humane Society of the U.S.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
17. BOOKS: Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts & Minds
About Animals & Food by Gene Baur
Touchstone Books (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2008. Hardcover, 286 pages. $25.00.
Gene Baur grew up in Hollywood, California, where he worked as an extra in television, films, and commercials, including several spots for McDonald's and other fast food chains,≤ opens his brief back-page biography in Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts & Minds . Baur might have pursued a screen career. Instead, as a teenager Baur heard from his grandmother about veal calf crating and briefly became a vegatarian. Baur became a committed vegetarian in 1985 after meeting his future wife Lorri during a summer stint working for Greenpeace in Chicago.
They began their careers in animal advocacy together in Washington D.C. about six months later. Working initially for other organizations, they incorporated Farm Sanctuary in April 1986. By 1996 Farm Sanctuary operated sanctuaries in both upstate New York and northern California, and had long since become the second largest farm animal advocacy group in the world, trailing only Compassion In World Farming, of Britain.
When Gene and Lorri split, the outcome was growth by division, as she soon founded Animal Acres to do parallel work in southern California.
Farm Sanctuary has not succeeded simply because it took up the issues involving the most animals at the right time and place. Farm Animal Reform Movement, founded and still headed by Alex Hershaft, had almost a 10-year head start, and has organized conferences, beginning in 1981, which have been catalysts to the entire animal rights movement.
Baur acknowledges the influence of the late Henry Spira's Coalition for Nonviolent Food—as does virtually every other leader in activism on behalf of farm animals.
The Humane Farming Association, two years older than Farm Sanctuary, has over the years demonstrated superior investigative skill and political analysis.
United Poultry Concerns and Compassion Over Killing have led breaking-edge efforts on behalf of chickens.
But Farm Sanctuary, years before the Best Friends Animal Society took a similar approach to campaigning for ≥No More Homeless Pets,≤ learned to attract and educate visitors by the tens of thousands, by giving them a good time with well-treated animals in the sort of bucolic environment that most people imagine ≥family farms≤ once were.
In truth, the neat, clean family farm where all the animals were happy until slaughter was chiefly a creation of early mail order catalogs, published to sell products to hard-scrabbling farm families on the premise that they could become as comfortable as the folks in the illustrations. The food industry later appropriated the catalog images, and still hides behind them. Now Farm Sanctuary turns those images against factory farming.
Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts & Minds deftly breaks up the bad news about how animals suffer in agribusiness with feel-good stories about animals that the organization has rescued.
It is not the definitive history of Farm Sanctuary. Indeed, it omits any discussion in depth of Baur's long record of political blunders. Two full-page ads placed by the Humane Farming Association in the July/August 2008 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE detailed how Farm Sanctuary earlier this year misrepresented as a ≥victory≤ a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling which was in truth a significant setback. Thirteen years earlier Farm Sanctuary declared ≥victory≤ over the passage of a supposed ≥anti-downer≤ bill in California that the Humane Farming Association accurately predicted would not be enforced. In between, Farm Sanctuary was fined $50,000 for egregious violations of federal election law in Florida.
A good book now, Farm Sanctuary might have been a great book if Baur had forthrightly reviewed his mistakes. Much strategic wisdom could be gained thereby, if Baur recognized the blunders for what they were. —Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
18. Social Creatures:
A Human and Animal Studies Reader /
Edited by Clifton P. Flynn
Lantern Books (128 Second Place, Garden Suite, Brooklyn,
NY 11231), 2008. Paperback, 458 pages. $50.00.
A cynic might conclude from Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader, assembled as a sociology text, that animal advocacy has either died of old age or is terminally moribund, that no one involved has had an original insight or useful idea since approximately 1998, and that the cause of death was Latinate writing, also implicated in the decline and fall of the Roman empire.
Editor Clifton P. Flynn and probably most of the contributors may regard this anthology as evidence that animal advocacy has arrived as a respectable topic of academic study, since it now has an ossified canon authored by Ph.D.-holding professors, some of whom long since became emeritus.
Unfortunately, very little of this material will strike the students upon whom it will be inflicted as any more immediate, urgent, or emotionally and intellectually compelling than anything else gleaned from little-read journals and stuffed between covers to be recycled as required reading.
This is not to say that the contents are worthless; only that they are mostly now period pieces, offering studies of the attitudes of university students, for example, whose generation is now reaching middle age.
Among the canon included in Social Creatures are several selections that were clearly influential in their time, and still echo in public as well as academic discourse. The oldest chapter is an excerpt from Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer (1974), often credited with providing the intellectual framework for the animal rights movement. Tom Reganπs 1985 essay The Case For Animal Rights, disputing Singer from a pro-animal perspective, has also had enduring influence.
Carol Adams' excerpt from The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990) may be the essay most relevant to the issues presently before many university students, even if Adams wrote it before some of them were born.
The fatal flaw in Social Creatures≠≠ apart from the frequently deadly dull academic writing≠≠is that popular culture has already raced far ahead of academia. Several essays exploring the relationship of animal abuse and crimes against humans, for example, merely quantify themes that are today explored in routine police beat reporting.
A second obvious example is ≥Loving them to death,≤ a 1999 study of ≥Blame-displacing strategies of animal shelter workers and surrenderers,≤ by Stephanie S. Frommer and Arnold Arluke.
≥Frommer and Arluke argue that blame management strategies make it possible for the cycle of surrendering and killing to be perpetuated,≤ writes Flynn in introduction.
Indeed. But even in 1999 this was no news. Ed Duvin and Patrice Greanville had made all the same major points 13 years earlier. The central ideas in their critiques became tenets of the ≥no kill movement,≤ advanced by national conferences beginning in 1995. By 1999 much of the curriculum of the no-kill conferences had already crossed over into mainstream shelter conferences.
In original context, much of the content of Social Creatures presented a challenge to conventional ideas about animals and the animal/human relationship. Today much of it summarizes conventional thinking.
Breaking edge writing about animal issues has advanced from sociology into political science. Campus activists today campaign to enact into law the advances in public perception that have been won since the ideas in Social Creatures might have been new to most undergraduates. Much of the most precedent-setting lawmaking is accomplished through the passage of ballot initiatives≠≠which require broad societal agreement about the goals in order to succeed. The movement, in short, has moved on. —Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
19. Pet Food Politics by Marion Nestle
University of California Press (2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704), 2008. 219 pages, hardcover. $18.95.
The China Health Ministry at this writing has just announced that the number of infants and young children known to have been poisoned by melamine mixed into powdered milk or baby formula has increased tenfold in 48 hours, to more than 54,000.
Four children have died, 13,000 are hospitalized, and 40,000 children plus two orangutans and a lion cub at the Hangzhou Safari Park near Shanghai have required outpatient medical treatment for kidney stones caused by ingesting melamine, a coal derivative of no nutritional value.
Most observers expect the toll to rise far higher. Eighteen alleged perpetrators face the death penalty.
Most of this was foreseen by Marion Nestle in Pet Food Politics, detailing the melamine pet food contamination crisis of early 2007. Nestle subtitled Pet Food Politics ≥The Chihuahua in the coal mine≤ to emphasize that what happened to dogs and cats can happen to humans, too.
Chiefly used to make plastics, melamine can also be added to foods to make them appear to have higher protein content than they really do, when tested using conventional methods. Accordingly, stirring melamine into ≥milk≤ powder that has already been diluted with cheaper substances such as chalk dust turns out to have been a cover tactic for unscrupulous distributors of Chinese dairy products, just as it was for unscrupulous Chinese sellers of pet food ingredients.
As well as injuring many thousands of children in a nation of mandatory one-child families, the milk adulterators sold their tainted products to Bangladesh, Burundi, Gabon, Myanmar, Taiwan, and Yemen, where they almost certainly harmed many more children, mostly in nations of limited capacity to detect and respond effectively to the damage.
Those nations' lack of ability to intercept poisoned milk powder parallels the lack of effective inspection and oversight of pet food production.
The Swiss-based Nestle food manufacturing empire is resisting a request from the Hong Kong Center for Food Safety that Nestle Dairy Farm Pure Milk in one-litre packs sold to caterers be recalled, after melamine was reportedly found in one of 65 samples.
Pet Food Politics author Marion Nestle has spent much of her career explaining that she has nothing to do with the Nestle food conglomerate. Her previous books include Food Politics: How the Food Industry influences Nutrition and Health, and Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism.
Pet Food Politics would appear to be a departure from Nestleπs usual range, except that she also happens to be nutrition co-editor of The Bark magazine. Nestle knows dogs, as well as nutritional issues and the food industry.
In particular, Nestle understands the most basic issue in manufacturing pet food.
As one dog food maker explained to me,≤ Nestle writes, ≥the products have to be nasty enough so a dog will eat them but look and smell good enough for pet owners to want to buy them.≤
A similar consideration applies to making cat food, with the difference that cats are top predators who want their food to smell and taste like a fresh kill. Dogs prefer theirs to have been dead for three days.
The manufacture of wet pet foods presents additional challenges,≤ continues Nestle. ≥For most pet food companies, it is easier and less expensive to give up control of production and contract out the making of wet pet foods to åco-packersπ such as Menu Foods,≤ which used 1,300 recipes, and for several months in 2006-2007 unknowingly included in many of them wheat, rice, and soy glutens which were imported from China and spiked with melamine.
Such recipes may differ in proportions of ingredients,≤ Nestle explains, ≥but the basic ingredients are much the same. So the recall produced this revelation: the contents of pet foods are much alike, and the most important difference between one brand and another is not nutrition; it is price.≤
Melamine in pet foods killed from 1,950 to 2,334 cats and 4,150 to 4,583 dogs, causing illness in 14,228 to 17,000, according to data collected by the Pet Connection web site and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.
The Chinese government,≤ already embarrassed by several previous food and drug adulteration episodes since 2004, ≥promptly announced that it intended to strengthen safety standards, increase inspections, require safety certifications, and tackle corruption in the food system and its oversight. And they would be testing for toxins in cooking oil, flour, beverages, and baby food,≤ reports Nestle.
≥In short order, China sent more than 33,000 inspectors into the field, conducted 10 million inspections, and shut down nearly 200 food manufacturers. Over the next few months,≤ Nestle recounts, ≥officials uncovered hundreds of thousands of food safety violations and closed down more than 150,000 unlicensed food businesses. The government said it would establish systems for food recalls, export inspections, and food safety standards, and would create a cabinet-level panel to oversee food safety and quality.≤
Former Chinese food and drug safety administration chief Zheng Xiaoyu, convicted of taking bribes to approve drugs, was executed on July 10, 2007. Concludes Nestle, ≥If we want our global food system to provide safe food for everyone, ensuring the safety of pets is as good a place as any to start.≤
Yet ensuring the safey of pets, to whatever extent it was achieved, proved insufficient to prevent a similar scandal from afflicting children in China and other nations, barely more than a year later.
Responding to the pet food crisis was delayed, as Nestle details, because U.S. and Canadian laboratories initially had no idea what kind of contamination to look for. By now the effects of melamine ingestion are relatively easily recognized. Yet the agencies that could have moved promptly to reduce the risk to children were as sluggish in response to melamine in milk as they were when the problem was an unknown pollutant in pet food.
The New Zealand dairy firm Fonterra purchased 43% of Sanlu, the largest Chinese dairy company, in late 2005. Sanlu milk suppliers were apparently already spiking their products with melamine. Sanlu received complaints about babies falling ill after consuming the contaminated products in December 2007, according to China Central Television, but did not discover that melamine was the cause of the illnesses until June 2008.
Fonterra learned about the mela-mine contamination on August 2. Pressured by Fonterra to recall any products containing melamine, Sanlu the same day alerted the city government of Shijiazhuang, in Hebei province, where the company is based. But Shijiazhuang officials did not take the matter to their Hebei counterparts until September 9. By then Fonterra had already notified New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark about the melamine problem≠≠but Clark did not move to warn China for three more days.
Once China was officially notified, the response gathered speed. Chinese media disclosed the investigation on September 10. A day later, Hebei province deputy governor Yang Chongyong reported that as many as 373 milk suppliers to Sanlu had been found to have been adding melamine to powdered milk since as far back as April 2005.
Thus children may have been made ill by melamine for nearly three years before the pet food contamination furor erupted—and the adulteration continued even after the perpetrators should have known that they might be killing babies.
Lest anyone believe this depravity is uniquely Chinese, let it be remembered that U.S. milk sellers in the early 20th century often spiked milk with formaldehyde to delay spoilage. Overdoses occasionally killed small children. Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 to address the problem, but ≥blue milk≤ scandals, so-called because the chemical methylene blue is used to detect formaldehyde in milk, remained frequent for another decade, until the advent of refrigeration ended the incentive for the adulteration.
People who gave their cats milk were mostly safe all along. Though humans cannot smell formaldehyde in small doses, cats can, and if milk was tainted, cats wouldn't touch it. —Merritt Clifton
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
20. Human Obituaries
Thomas Doerflein, 44, renowned for raising the Berlin Zoo polar bear Knut in 2006-2007 after the cub was abandoned by his mother, was found dead in his apartment of a heart attack on September 22, 2008. A 25-year Berlin Zoo employee, ≥Doerflein with his burly build and ponytail was a distinctive figure at the side of the growing bear,≤ recalled Associated Press writer Patrick McGroarty. ≥He nursed young Knut in his arms behind closed doors and wrestled with him after the bear grew old enough to play. When Knut made his public debut in March 2007, Doerflein was at his side. They started a daily performance for the thousands of visitors who flocked to see the bear at his outdoor enclosure. But the Knut show ended in July of that year when the zoo's director ruled that the bear had grown too large for Doerflein to frolic with in safety.≤ The ≥Cute Knut≤ phenomenon reportedly boosted Berlin Zoo attendance by 27% in 2007, and increased revenues by $10 million.
Heidi Jean Krupp, 49, a co-founder of the St. Francis Animal Sanctuary in Tylertown, Mississippi, died of cancer on August 22, 2008. Modeled after the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, the St. Francis Animal Sanctuary had barely opened when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Krupp's home, in September 2005. Overnight the sanctuary accommodated the Humane Society of Louisiana, whose New Orleans shelter was destroyed, and the Best Friends relief operations. The Humane Society of Louisiana is still working from the sanctuary. Best Friends again collaborated with the sanctuary in response to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in September 2008.
Joyce Smith, 79, founder of the Second Chance Wildlife Sanctuary in Pickering, Ontario, died on August 19, 2008. The sanctuary at her death reportedly housed as many as 500 cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, ducks and other animals on 25 acres made available by the Cherry Downs Golf & Country Club. The future of the sanctuary since her death is reportedly unclear, with the board of directors trying to rehome as many of the animals as possible.
Ben Cunneen, 33, of Brisbane, Australia, on August 21, 2008 became the third known human death attributed to hendra virus, a disease carried by fruit bats which produces symptoms similar to rabies but is not always fatal. ≥Cunneen contracted the disease after treating horses at the Redlands Veterinary Clinic,≤ reported Christine Kellett of the Brisbane Times. ≥Five horses infected with the disease at the Redlands clinic have either died or been put down. Hospitalized five weeks ago, Cunneen was placed in a medically-induced coma after his condition deteriorated. The virus is believed to have killed horse trainer Vic Rail, 49, following a similar outbreak in 1994.≤ Fourteen horses died from the 1994 outbreak. The second human victim, a 35-year-old horse breeder, apparently developed the disease 13 months after his exposure to two infected horses. A female veterinary nurse who worked with Cunneen was also hospitalized, but reportedly was released and recovering, under ongoing medical surveillance. A Department of Primary Industries veterinarian who accidentally jabbed himself with a needle while euthanizing a racehorse was tested to see if he had become infected, Kellett said. The horse was infected, but had recovered. ≥The horseπs owner is considering legal action,≤ Kellett noted.
Thomas Weller, 93, died on August 23, 2008 in Needham, Massachusetts. Weller and Harvard Medical School collaborators John F. Enders and Frederick C. Robins shared the 1954 Nobel Prize for Medicine for developing an in vitro method of growing the polio virus, a critical step toward enabling Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin to produce the first effective polio vaccines. ≥Before the 1949 breakthrough, which showed how to cultivate the virus in test tubes,≤ the Washington Post explained, ≥scientists believed it could be grown only in the nerve tissue of live monkeys. So impractical was this technique that specialists despaired of finding a way to shield populations against the infectious menace that struck without warning, had crippled President Franklin D. Roosevelt and left others unable to walk, or even breathe, unaidedä Enders was credited with introducing Weller to virus research and cultivation in test tubes rather than using monkeys.
Jacklyn Sue Thunder Sellers, 58, executive director of the Sumter Humane Society in Americus, Georgia, since 2000, was killed on August 19, 2008 when her riding lawn mower flipped over on top of her. There were no witnesses. Originally from Battle Creek, Michigan, Sellers joined the Sumter Humane Society staff two years before her promotion to the top job.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
21. Animal Obits
Claudio, a three-month-old gorilla, died on August 16, 2008 at the Munster Zoo in Germany. ≥Munster zookeepers said Claudio's death was almost certainly the result of [his mother] Gana neglecting and mistreating the infant,≤ wrote Tony Patterson, Berlin correspondent for The Independent. Gana, 11, last year gave birth to her first baby, a female named Mary Zwo,≤ Patterson added. ≥Gana rejected Mary Zwo for six weeks. Staff at the zoo finally intervened and rescued the baby,≤ who ≥has lived at a zoo in Stuttgart with four other gorillas ever since.≤ Said Munster Zoo director Jorg Adler, ≥There was no point in intervening again. We cannot keep on taking away children from a mother.
Genuine Risk, 31, winner of the 1980 Kentucky Derby, the only filly to win in her lifetime, died on August 18, 2008 in her paddock at Newstead Farm in Upperville, Virginia. ≥After her Derby win, Genuine Risk finished second to Codex in a controversial Preakness and second to Temperence Hill in the Belmont Stakes—the only time a filly has finished in the money in all three Triple Crown races,≤ recalled Associated Press sportswriter Hank Kurz Jr. ≥She won 10 of 15 career races, and never finished worse than third for Hall of Fame trainer Leroy Jolley.≤ First bred to 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat, in the first-ever mating of two Kentucky Derby winners, Genuine Rick produced a stillborn foal, and birthed only two offspring successfully in 17 attempted breedings. She was retired to pasture in 2000.
Indra, an Asian elephant exhibited by the Mexican traveling circus Circo Union, escaped from his enclosure just before dawn on September 23, 2008, wandered through two neighborhoods of the northern Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec, and was killed when he stepped in front of a bus driven by Tomas Lopez, 49, who also died in the collision. Four passengers were hospitalized. The Mexican environmental protection agency seized two other Asian elephants and 10 Siberian tigers from the circus the following day, after reportedly finding that all of them were potentially capable of escaping.
Misha, 27, an African elephant who was transferred to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California, in 2005, was euthanized on September 9, 2008 due to mysteriously deteriorating health. Results of a necropsy to determine the cause of death were not expected to be available for weeks, zoo spokesperson Holly Braithwaite told Lynn Arave of the Deseret News.
Mama Cuddles, 46, a Nile hippopotamus who was born at the Philadelphia Zoo in 1962, transferred to the San Francisco Zoo a year later, was euthanized on August 13, 2008 after becoming unable to stand due to arthritis and other conditions of age.
Dorothy, a chimpanzee believed to be between 35 and 50 years old, died on September 22, 2008. Dorothy spent at least 25 lonely years, and probably closer to 40 years, chained by her neck before a daily parade of people at an amusement park,≤ recalled In Defense of Animals. ≥After the first ever armed confiscation of primates in Cameroon in May 2000, Dorothy enjoyed eight years and four months at the Sanaga-Yong Center,≤ sponsored by IDA, ≥surrounded by people and chimpanzees who cherished her.≤
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
22. ANIMAL PEOPLE seeks young artists
ANIMAL PEOPLE since 1996 has featured animal drawings by Wolf Clifton, produced as he moved from kindergarten through high school. Wolf will soon be going away to university, but we would like to continue the tradition of including small drawings in the open spaces in our ≥Letters≤ section and elsewhere, by opening the opportunity to draw for ANIMAL PEOPLE to children participating in humane education programs worldwide.
We would like to spotlight and recognize a different humane education program in each edition, with a mention of the participating teacher, school and/or humane society, and the names of the children whose drawings we include. We need from 12 to 24 original line drawings of animals, by either one or several artists, per edition. Small drawings done in black ballpoint pen reproduce best. Yes, we can use multiple drawings done on a single page. Drawings may be submitted as jpegs, to <anmlpepl@whidbey.com>, via fax to 360-579-2575, or by regular mail to ANIMAL PEOPLE, POB 960, Clinton, WA 98236. (Please send photocopies, as originals cannot be returned.)
[All rights beyond use in the ANIMAL PEOPLE print and web editions will remain with the artists.]
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2008:
23. Please help ANIMAL PEOPLE to keep the humane cause alive
What if the U.S. humane community had not made the catastrophic mistakes that it did in response to the Great Depression and the recessions that followed each of the major mid-20th century wars?
What if a strong independent voice had helped humane leadership to cope with financial crunches with a combination of practical help and reminders of the importance of remaining focused on mission?
What if humane work had continued to emphasize outreach, advocacy, prosecuting cruelty, and education, at a time when humane education was forthrightly presented as moral education, when state wildlife agencies were not yet dependent upon funding from the sale of hunting licenses, and when Americans consumed less than half as much meat per capita as today?
We cannot know what might have happened, but we can certainly contemplate the possibilities.
There was a monthly periodical in that era, The National Humane Review, published by the American Humane Association, which did much during those hard times to assist and encourage humane work, especially abroad.
Impressive humane societies were established in China, the Philippines, the Caribbean region, and in parts of Africa. Most of these bold starts were swept away by World War II. Their momentum was lost.
Unfortunately, because The National Humane Review was linked to the positions and policies of what was then the only U.S. national animal advocacy organization, it rarely hosted debate over contentious issues, and had no corrective influence when mainstream humane societies turned in the wrong direction.
Often The National Humane Review led in the wrong direction, as when it repeatedly denounced dog and cat sterilization as ≥vivisection,≤ even though the AHA did not oppose animal use in experiments.
Eventually, in 1954, frustrated National Humane Review editor Fred Myer broke with the AHA to form the Humane Society of the United States.
Myer introduced an epoch of growth through division. The 240 U.S. humane societies then active became 700 by 1970, 3,500 by 1990, and more than 6,500 today.
Yet the humane community still had no independent voice, taking new ideas into every shelter, monitoring the accountability of the richest organizations, encouraging the smallest to become more successful, introducing the leaders in the various sub-sectors of animal advocacy and rescue to each other, and re-extending outreach worldwide.
There was still no periodical not beholden to any particular group or funder to stand up, like Henry Bergh in his top hat, and point beyond the closest horizons toward the consequences of wrong turns and the possibilities of going a different way. Many attempts were made to try to start such a periodical, but none survived and succeeded≠≠until ANIMAL PEOPLE emerged in 1992.
Our very first editions challenged the old dogma of ≥Why we must euthanize≤ with the case for neuter/return, presenting the data from our own successful 320-cat test of the method. But even as ANIMAL PEOPLE urged the conventional humane community to move away from old excuses for high-volume killing, we also urged no-kill shelters to become more realistic and effective in demonstrating high-quality animal care and developing fundraising and volunteer programs adequate to do the work they took on.
We challenged animal rights advocates to more effectively connect with mainstream citizens, and encouraged mainstream animal care organizations to remember the moral imperative of advocating for animals.
We put the importance of preparing for disaster on page one of our first edition≠≠and emphasized the value of disaster response as an opportunity to educate the public about how humane workers respond to the equivalent of a major disaster every day, even at the best of times.
The need for ANIMAL PEOPLE has only increased with the recent global growth of the humane community. There are now close to 10,000 humane organizations on our mailing list, worldwide. We ask those that can afford to pay for a subscription to do so; but we try to avoid ever putting an animal rescuer in the position of having to choose between subscribing and saving an animal. With the help of our far-sighted and generous donors, who understand the importance of our role in keeping the humane cause informed and focused, we send complimentary subscriptions to every humane society everywhere, as often as we can afford to do so.
ANIMAL PEOPLE is the first and widest-reaching defense the humane community has against repeating the mistakes of the past. But we lost nothing in the recent money market collapses because we had nothing in reserve to lose. Everything we have ever received has gone right back out in fulfilling our mission.
Lately we have not been able to mail all of the complimentary foreign subscriptions. A 35% increase in postage and printing costs hit us just before the economic downturn brought plummeting donations. As many readers as ever have donated, but have donated smaller amounts.
We understand why. We sympathize. But we plead for ANIMAL PEOPLE to be made a higher priority in the coming months. There are still animal charities that would build marble edifices instead of extending outreach, and those who compromise ethical principle to raise a few more dollars, like the humane society that was promoting a rodeo fundraiser a few weeks ago, until ANIMAL PEOPLE asked the people responsible if they wanted to read all about it right here.
Please help ANIMAL PEOPLE to help keep the cause on message. Our role is never more needed than when times are toughest.
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