From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2000:

Letters

JoJo

I have just received a letter from Club Med informing me that they
have decided to "assume a leadership role and eliminate water-skiing at
Club Med Turkoise at the end of the current season (October 31, 2000).
This is a true victory for JoJo, the friendly dolphin in the Turks and
Caicos islands, who has been hurt at least 40 times by water skiers since
1992, as I described in my March 1992 letter to ANIMAL PEOPLE seeking help
for him.
I want to thank each and every one of you who took an interest in
this situation. The volume of letters you sent to Club Med and the
Governor regarding JoJo was a great factor in determining the outcome of
this campaign.
Our persistence with Club Med brought an assessment of JoJo and his
environment by four highly qualified marine scientists. They suggested
that the Government of the Turks and Caicos should ban water skiing from
all of the coastal areas that JoJo frequents.
A special thanks to Ric O'Barry of The Dolphin Project for his
assistance and support, Donald Butler of the Ottawa Citizen, Merritt
Clifton of ANIMAL PEOPLE, Donna Hertel and Steve Hindi of SHARK, Ben
White of the Animal Welfare Institute, the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society, Celia Ackerman, Donna Breen and countless others. I would also
like to thank those who posted this story on their web sites throughout the
world. Peter Jennings of ABC World News Tonight, who recently aired JoJo's
story, helped give this campaign the high profile it needed to get Club
Med's attention.
I will be happy to e-mail the scientists' report, along with the
press release from Club Med, to whomever wants it.
--Gwen McKenna
Bradford, Ontario
<gmckenna@interhop.net>


Ducks

Thank you so much for the great article you wrote about Viva!'s
duck campaign. I was really excited by the spread and the adorable photo
of the ducks.
Some of the information in our packet might have been a bit
confusing and there were a couple of errors in the article:
In the UK, Viva! got all of the grocery stores to pull duck meat
from ducks who had been de-billed. We are still working to get all stores
to pull non-debilled duck meat.
Also in the U.S. there are 99 slaughterhouses (not farms) that were
registered to slaughter ducks in 1999. Because there is no list of duck
farms, we are not sure how many there are. They appear to be concentrated
in California, Indiana, and on Long Island in New York.
We are having another Week of Action for the Ducks, December 2 -
10. Our focus will be on Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Wal-Mart
SuperCenters.
Thanks again for getting the word out about our newly formed group
and the campaign for the ducks!
--Lauren Ornelas
U.S. Campaigns Director
Viva!
P.O. Box 49023
Atlanta, GA 30359
Phone: 404-315-8881
Fax 404-315-8685
<info@vivausa.org>
<www.vivausa.org>



Hoarders

For almost two years we tried everything we could think of to help
more than 100 animals living in appalling, sickening conditions in the
"care" of a hoarder in our community. We failed miserably. If anything,
we actually made things worse for the animals, and for ourselves also.
If any of your readers are challenging a hoarder in their own
community, I cannot tell them what to do to succeed, but I am willing to
share ideas on what definitely did not work for us.
Perhaps knowledge of our mistakes can help someone else to be
better prepared. At the very least, it could help them avoid wasting
valuable resources.
--Helen Gaswint
Director
Southwest Montana Humane Assn.
P.O. Box 1364
Dillon, MT 59725
Telephone: 406-683-6414



Shelter statistics

I am writing to thank you for publishing the shelter statistics
that appeared in your September edition. I distributed them to animal
control agencies and rescue groups down here in the Inland empire. I hope
you will continue to run comparative statistics on shelter killing.
I have been working with the Riverside Humane Society on a proposal
to Maddie's Fund to take Riverside, California, to no-kill. I am also
working on a proposal to take Redlands to no-kill, and Bear Mountain Dog
Rescue has agreed to submit a proposal for the Big Bear Valley, where I
live. I am still looking for lead agencies for Corona, Lake Elsinore,
and Palm Springs, and hope to do proposals for those areas.
--Dave Wheeler
P.O. Box 448
Fawnskin, CA 9233
Telephone: 909-866-4718



Turkey

We are writing you to express our appreciation to you for kindly
sending us the two latest issues of Animal People. We plan to translate
some of the articles into Turkish so that a larger public can have access
to the news.
To give you a brief idea about us, we are a small publishing
collective based here in Istanbul . Our magazine Ates Hirsizi focuses on
various social, enviromental and animal questions. We also publish books
with a similar perspective.
As a society in transition from agricultural to industrial way of
living, Turkey is still quite far from having an ideal consciousness
toward animals. Nevertheless, numerious voices have risen in the past few
years, thanks to which at least a discussion has started.
Last year we published one of Leo Tolstoy's books against hunting,
for example, and since then the hunting issue has been discussed among
different circles.
We would like to receive Animal People on a regular basis. Any
material about animal protection will be appreciated, as we have almost
nothing here.
--Cemal Atila
Ates Hirsizi
Dostlukyurdu Sok. Selimbey
Apt. #8, Cemberlitas
Istanbul TR 34000, Turkey
Phone: 90-212-5182-562
<mexpe@hotmail.com>


Dogs & hens

I finally got around to opening the September issue of Animal People. I
appreciated your comments about sled dogs and also Chicken Run.
I am a musher myself. I ran the Iditarod in 1974, and I have
enjoyed a relationship with these animals for more than 30 years, a blink
in the long history of cooperation between wolf/dogs and humans. Too bad
that some people and organizations who claim to be dedicated to animal care
don't understand what a resource we could be to encourage proper dog care.
Sled dogs do their work voluntarily as often as kids go to school
or clean their rooms voluntarily--more often, in fact, because for the
dogs it is fun better than 99% of the time. Sled dogs and mushers are
admired by many children and adults who could learn that being kind to dogs
is not overfeeding them or letting them run loose. Being kind and
considerate of dogs is what we do all the time, giving them as much
opportunity for social interaction and exercise as possible, and feeding
them the best diet we can.
The subject of diet brings me to my rescued "spent" hens and
roosters. I got them to butcher for dog food. As an experiment I added 10%
flax to their normal laying mash, to enrich their eggs and meat with omega
3 fatty acid, typical of the natural or "evolutionary" diet of wild
animals and people. They have continued to lay well despite moulting, and
I have been feeding most of the eggs to my dogs. I eat a few myself. So
the chickens are still alive, safe from foxes and weasels in their own
yard.
By the way, dog deaths in the Iditarod have averaged under 0.5%
for quite a while. A typical year sees over 800 dogs at the start and zero
to a maximum of 4 deaths per race in the last five or six years. Compared
to a similar sized population of dogs anywhere in the world, that is very
good, I would guess.
--Tim White
Grand Marais, Minnesota
<twhite@boreal.org>


Indonesia

Thank you very much for sending us ANIMAL PEOPLE. As you know,
animal conservation in Indonesia is very weak. Moreover, there is no
animal welfare regulation in Indonesia. Many wild animals are slaughtered,
such as the sea turtles of Bali island. An investigation by our
organization found that 27,000 sea turtles were killed in Bali during 1999
for their meat and shells.
We are campaigning to stop the turtle trade in Bali, but the
traders several days ago held a demonstration against us at the Forestry
Department Office in Bali.
We believe that international pressure will be effective to stop
the sea turtle slaughter. Please support us!
--Rosek Nursahid
Director
Animal Conservation For Life
Jl. Raya Candi 179
Klaseman, Karangbesuki
Malang 65146
Jawa Timur, Indonesia
Phone: 0341-570033
Fax: 0341-569506
Email: ksbk@mlg.mega.net.id
<www.ksbk.or.id>


Old MacDonald

Thanks for your comments in your review of Losing Paradise, by
Paul Irwin, in which you exposed the myth of the kind Old MacDonald
farmer. As I explained in my book An Unnatural Order, it is the farmers'
worldview and culture that supports most of the cruelty, abuse, and
neglect in the world-- and has for thousands of years. Farmers gave us the
myth of human supremacy, which des-troyed the older sense of kinship with
the living world. Farmers want total control over nature for the benefit
of humans alone. There's a saying around here about the farmer's regard
for animals: "If you can't eat it, f--- it, or make a buck from it,
then kill it." That's the real farmer MacDonald.
--Jim Mason
Mount Vernon, Missouri
<jbmason@mntvernon.net>


RU-486 and pets

Thank you for your November cover article on RU-486 and what it
means for animals. I had been wondering about the implications for
homeless pets of the federal approval of RU-486. Your research and
perspective were both interesting and illuminating.
PETsMART Charities mission is to eliminate pet population control
killing. We are very interested in advancements that could bring a
nonsurgical alternative to the market to help provide a more convenient,
safe, affordable, and permanent solution to pet sterilization.
I am sending a copy of your article to my Board of Directors and
others interested in alternatives to surgical sterilization.
-Joyce R. Briggs
Executive Director
PETsMART Charities
19601 North 27th Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85027
Phone: 623-587-2876
Fax: 623-580-6561
jbriggs@ssg.petsmart.com


HSUS vs. California's Hayden Law

Perhaps you can explain why the Humane Society of the U.S. keeps
attacking California's Hayden Law with their party-line articles in their
magazine Animal Sheltering. Shouldn't HSUS be working to get laws to save
animals' lives up and running? Am I being naive here?
--Kel Pickens
Stillwater, Oklahoma
<infinity@brightok.net>

The Editor replies:

The HSUS position is descended from the founders' view that killing
homeless dogs and cats quickly at shelters was kinder than allowing them to
be killed slowly and painfully in laboratories.
Back then, in 1954, labs were believed to be taking more dogs and
cats from shelters than were adopted into good homes. High-volume
adoption, low-cost neutering, early-age neutering, no-kill sheltering,
and neuter/return feral cat control were all still virtually unknown
techniques.
The first HSUS director for companion animals was the late Phyllis
Wright, who fought for decades to abolish the then-standard use of
decompression chambers to kill animals at shelters. Wright advocated that
decompression should be replaced by lethal injection, which she
distinguished from decompression by introducing the term "euthanasia" as
euphemism for population control killing.
Wright's approach, articulated in her much reprinted 1967 essay
"Why we must euthanize," gave shelter workers an emotionally acceptable
pretext for killing animals: they were now "putting animals to sleep,"
albeit permanently, sparing them the evident pain of either decompression
or lab use.
Central arguments in "Why we must euthanize" are that most people
are unfit to adopt animals, because they will let them breed or run free,
contributing again to shelter intake; no-kill sheltering is merely
warehousing animals, if strict adoption standards are kept; and animals
are better off dead than alive on the street.
Teaching needle killing and the rationale for it came to be the
heart of the HSUS shelter outreach program.
Thus HSUS, by Wright's death in 1992, had painted itself into a
corner. It couldn't favor no-kill sheltering, neuter/return, or
high-volume adoption without seeming to repudiate itself.
PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk, incidentally, was Wright's star
pupil in her previous role as a Washington D.C.-area animal control
officer. That's why PETA is also adamantly anti- no-kill sheltering,
anti- neuter/return, and anti- high-volume adoption, and continues to
maintain hit squads who eradicate feral cat colonies.
Wright didn't live to see the life-saving efficacy of the
alternatives to killing dogs and cats in shelters and the near end of lab
use of random-source animals.
One cannot make the same excuse for her successors.


DARG days

We are the only "no kill" domestic pet rescue, rehabilitation and
rehoming shelter in Cape Town, South Africa, apart from a small new group
begun by a former employee of ours which covers another area. The only
animals we put down are those our veterinarians deem to be incurably
suffering. We maintain 54 kennels for homeless dogs, 14 boarding
kennels, about 10 "Care for life" sanctuary kennels, 12 cows, a small
cattery for about 30 cats, and a shelter for rabbits rescued from research
laboratories.
We rescue dogs every week from three municipal dog pounds, where
they would otherwise be killed. Since October 1994, when DARG was formed,
we have rescued and rehomed more than 5,000 animals, and have never left a
single dog behind at the pounds.
A benefactor recently bought the six-acre property which we were
renting, and has designated it to be used as a "no kill animal sanctuary
in perpetuity."
However, we must cover our own running costs--a huge problem
despite our efforts to increase revenue. We are situated across the road
from a squatter camp where the animals have no veterinary care at all.
People stream down our driveway with seriously ill and dying animals,
pleading for treatment and sterilization.
We are converting a house on the property into a clinic, but each
vaccination and deworming costs us about $11 U.S., each sterilization
costs about $25, and cumulatively the expense is prohibitive.
We are encouraging the people in the squatter camp to make
pet-related products for us to sell, such as leads, collars, kennels,
sleeping baskets, blankets, and water and food bowls.
We welcome help from anywhere.
--Cicely Blumberg
Domestic Animal Rescue Group
P.O. Box 32074, Camps Bay
Cape Town 8040, South Africa
Fax/phone: 27-021-790-2050
<darg@mweb.co.za>