ANIMAL PEOPLE

ALTOONA, Pa.––Tammy SneathGrimes, founder of the national anti-chainingorganization Dogs Deserve Better, wasreleased from police custody in East Freedom,Pennsylvania, at 2 a.m. on September 12,2006, about 12 hours after she removed a seri-ously debilitated chained dog she called Doogiefrom the yard of East Freedom residents Steveand Lori Arnold.

“I’m out,” on unsecured $50,000bail, Grimes e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE,for whom she is a part-time assistant web sitedeveloper. Charged with theft, receiving stolenproperty, criminal mischief, and criminal tres-pass, Grimes remained convinced she had donethe right thing.

“I will not take this lying down,”Grimes pledged.

The criminal trespass and criminalmischief counts were dismissed at a September21 preliminary hearing, as about 75 Grimessupporters demonstrated outside. Grimes is tostand trial on the charges of theft and receivingstolen property on November 27.

The Arnolds call the elderly German

shepherd/Labrador mix Jake. They claim he is19 years old, an extraordinary age for eitherbreed. The Arnolds told news media that thedog was in the condition he was in because he isarthritic and they had hesitated to have himeuthanized. They said they had given himaspirin for pain relief.

The first veterinarian to examine thedog after Grimes took him, Nour Hassane ofthe Veterinary Hospital of Altoona, “didn’thesitate when asked, based on his experienceand to a reasonable degree of veterinary certain-ty, if Jake was neglected or abused,” wrote

Are the surging numbers of danger-ous dogs entering animal shelters retardingprogress toward abolishing gas chambers?

Warren Cox began to wonder in May2004 when he arrived for a stint as interimexecutive director at the Montgomery CountyAnimal Shelter in Dayton, Ohio, and found acarbon monoxide chamber that only a few daysbefore was still in sporadic use.

Having managed more than twodozen shelters since 1952, Cox knew he waslooking at an anachronism. The Dayton cham-ber had supposedly been decommissionedyears earlier. The Dayton Daily News p u b-lished exposés of gassing in nearby FayetteCounty and Darke County in 1995 and 1997without apparent awareness that animals werestill gassed right there in Dayton.

Continued gassing at the Mont-gomery County Animal Shelter came to lightas result of a September 2003 complaint tocounty officials by veterinarian Sue Rancurelloand shelter volunteer Jodi Gretchen, and wasdiscontinued after a shelter evaluation byAmerican Humane affirmed the obsolescenceof gassing.

“Two top administrators at theMontgomery County Animal Shelter wereremoved,” the Dayton Daily News reported, inpart for “using carbon monoxide instead oflethal injection to euthanize more than the rec-ommended number of animals.”

Cox had the carbon monoxide cham-ber removed. But Cox also took note of whoused it, and why. Throughout the first half ofCox’s long career in shelter work, carbon

monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, anddecompression chambers were used to kill ani-mals in high volume. The Dayton gas chamberwas used to kill specific animals whom someof the staff considered too dangerous to han-dle. Cox mentioned to ANIMAL PEOPLEhis concern that the influx of bigger, moredangerous dogs might bring gassing back––notbecause it is safer than sodium pentobarbitalinjection, but because it is perceived as saferby poorly trained personnel. Ameri-canHumane had specifically noted poor training atthe Montgomery County Animal Shelter.

“Ohio is definitely the last bastion ofthe carbon monoxide box. When I think car-bon monoxide, I think Ohio,” shelter manage-ment consultant and euthanasia trainer DougFakkema told ANIMAL PEOPLE

But Cox was not the first to mentionto ANIMAL PEOPLE a suspicion thatgassing might be returning to common use, ifnot public acceptance, and the shelter person-nel who have mentioned it, though mostlyfrom the Midwest and South, have hardly allbeen from Ohio.

Concern that gassing may regainacceptance tends to take note of rapidly risinginsurance costs at shelters that receive largenumbers of potentially dangerous dogs, lead-ing to economic pressure to use “no contact”handling methods, such as prevail in Japan.

Recent shelter surveys have foundthat pit bull terriers alone make up 20-25% ofthe dogs entering U.S. shelters, and 40-50% ofthe dogs who are killed: 10 times more pit bull

Could carbon monoxide gaschambers make a comeback?

B A N G K O K––The September20, 2006 Thai military coup postponed forsix days the already long delayed return of41 smuggled orangutans from Thailand toIndonesia. Still, Wildlife Friends Found-ation Thailand founder Edwin Wiek toldmembers of the Asian Animal ProtectionNetwork, “We believe that under the newrule the conservation of wildlife willimprove.”

The repatriation flight, orginally

set for September 23, was rescheduled forSeptember 29.

Another seven orangutans aresuffering from hepatitis, the Jakarta Postreported on September 16. Indonesia hasrefused to accept them, at least until afterthey recover.

“The Borneo Orangutan SurvivalFoundation and Wildlife Friends, whowere to facilitate the repatriation for the

Above: Goats grab a bite in flooded Orissa.Below: Street cow swims through Surat.

(Photos by Sherry Grant & PfA/Mumbai.)

[SEE “HARSH MONSOONS TEST RESCUERS,” PAGE 11.]

N A S H V I L L E––Between allegedly“sored” horses and sore losers, walking horsecompetition burst into national view as neverbefore in late August 2006. But the attentionwas almost all embarrassing to breeders andexhibitors in a business whose excesses, ageneration ago, prompted passage of the fed-eral Horse Protection Act a year before thepassage of the Animal Welfare Act.

The Tennessee Walking HorseNational Celebration championship competi-tion in Shelbyville was cancelled on August26 after USDA inspectors disqualified sevenof the 10 finalists for alleged soring violationsof the Horse Protection Act. For the first timein the 67-year history of the event, it namedno grand champion.

The National Celebration reportedlybrings as much as $38.5 million a year intoShelbyville.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader BillFrist (R-Tennessee) on September 7 askedUSDA undersecretary Bruce Knight to “clari-fy” the USDA definition of soring to enableinspectors to enforce the Horse Protection Act

“in a more consistent manner.”Soring, explained Pat Raia of T h e

Horse, “is a practice whereby horses are sub-jected to deliberate skin lacerations aroundtheir hooves or the application of causticchemicals such as diesel fuel, kerosene, orlighter fluid to irritate their forelegs, therebyachieving higher stepping animation,” exag-gerating the “big lick” gait for which walkinghorses are known.

“Horses can also be sored by havingnails driven into the ‘frog’ on the bottoms oftheir hooves, “ added Nashville Tennesseanstaff writer Brad Schrade, “or by being madeto wear overly heavy horseshoes that can pullthe hoof off the leg. In an effort to make thepain stop, the horses step high in a reaction tothe soring agents, federal officials say.”

In practical terms, the Frist recom-mendation would mean that the looser inter-pretations of the less experienced inspectorswho supervise local and regional walkinghorse shows would prevail over the judgementof the experts who govern the top events.

(continued on page 6)



News For People Who Care

October 2006Volume XVI, #8

About Animals

Tammy Grimes & Doogie. (Dogs Deserve Better)

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ANIMAL PEOPLE

Walking horse industry quick-stepsafter failed USDA soring inspections

The Haile Selassie Zoo in Ethiopia is overdue for upgrade. See page 6. (Einat Danieli)

Thai coup may hit wildlife traffic

Anti-chainingactivist is busted for

saving a dog


2 - ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006

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On midterm election day, November 2, 2006, depending on the will of the U.S.electorate, both the House of Representatives and the Senate may shift from Republican toDemocratic control. President George W. Bush, a Republican, will remain in the WhiteHouse until 2008, but history suggests that if either the House or the Senate goes to theDemocrats––or both––the outcome for the next two years will probably be much better for ani-mals than if either party controlled all three elected branches of the federal government.

That possibility alone should be sufficient incentive to get pro-animal voters out tothe polls in the many closely contested districts, even where neither candidate has a record onanimal issues that especially inspires either support or opposition. Pro-animal voters will obvi-ously want to support strongly pro-animal candidates of either party, and oppose those withanti-animal records, as indicated by the legislative scorecards published by such organizationsas Humane USA PAC and the Humane Society Legislative Fund, but this year there is a fur-ther consideration. Almost all of the major pro-animal federal legislation, including theAnimal Welfare Act, Endangered Species Act, and Marine Mammal Protection Act, wasoriginally passed and has been most positively amended by divided Congresses. Precedentthus indicates that this year the outcome of every seriously contested House and Senate racematters to people who care about animals.

So-called “Congressional gridlock,” when neither party has clear dominance, isgood for animals because neither major U.S. political party is closely aligned with pro-animalpositions. Neither party ever has been: animal issues have rarely been election issues.Political support for animal advocacy has always cut diagonally across the U.S. political spec-trum, and still does.

The same could be said for support of the animal use industries––but with a differ-ence. Historically, when politically dominant, both parties have strongly supported animalagriculture, hunting, trapping, fishing, the fur trade, and animal experimentation. Bothcould be expected to do so now. The difference is that that the animal use industries tend touse campaign contributions to buy friends among whichever party is dominant. If neitherparty is dominant, they have to spend twice as much money to buy the same influence––andthen both parties are watching to expose politicians whose votes are blatantly for sale.

Politicians with strong pro-animal beliefs are much less likely to take their positionswith campaign funds in mind, in part because the animal use industries have far more moneythan pro-animal Political Action Committees. While pro-animal PACS have increasinglyoften demonstrated some ability to help swing close races, especially at the state and locallevel, the U.S. political scene is still far from including pro-animal PACs capable of matchingthe national funding clout of the major animal use lobbies. Demographic patterns indicate thatthis could change soon, and building strong pro-animal PACS now is accordingly an essentialpart of laying the political foundation for longterm future success, but achieving near-termpolitical success for animals requires tactical astuteness as well as muscle-flexing.

Both the Republicans and Democrats presently include many strong elected voicesfor animals, in Congress and at other levels of government, whose opportunity for advancinglegislation tends to be best when neither party is able to push through a strictly partisan agen-da. When one party or the other has unquestioned political dominance, working on bipartisanmeasures tends to take a low priority, and is even seen as suspect by the idealogues of thedominant party. Conversely, in a “gridlock” situation, the most effective politicians are thosewho can work with their political opponents. Pro-animal legislation tends to be among theprojects used to build bipartisan coalitions in divided legislatures, advancing most successful-ly when the animal use industries are most stretched, and most at risk of alienating key politi-cians if they give too much to members of either party.

ANIMAL PEOPLE, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is not allowed toendorse specific candidates or political parties, or promote specific legislation, but there arenow many pro-animal organizations established and structured specifically to do politicalanalysis and make recommendations. Among the best-known are the League of HumaneVoters, in New York City; PAW-PAC in California; HEAL-PAC in Michigan; and HumaneHeart in Louisiana. Some states have several such organizations––and they do not alwaysagree. Humane USA PAC also has state affiliates that make candidate recommendations.Most of these organizations post their endorsements on a web site. An informed pro-animalvoter will find out who they support, and why, before going to the polls.

An informed and effective pro-animal voter will also be aware that people who careabout animals need not vote as a block to develop clout. Rather, people who care about ani-mals will develop clout if they reliably turn out in force on election day, year after year, tovote as their consciences and understanding of the issues suggests––and make candidatesaware of the issues that move them, both before and after each election.

Who a person votes for is less important than explaining to the candidate why he/shegot the vote. If animal advocates vote for someone but the someone isn’t aware of having thesupport, the vote has much less influence.

Informing losing candidates why they lost votes is also worthwhile, especiallybefore elections so that they have a chance to amend their positions, but also afterward. Theactual candidate may never run for office again––or may come back with a different platform.The person most likely to be influenced, however, is the campaign manager. Campaign man-agers often are hired professionals, who represent many candidates over the years, and oftenthey learn their jobs by representing losing candidates. Influencing a young campaign manag-er who made a good showing on the losing side may at times be more valuable, eventually,than influencing a winning candidate whose term is brief.

Be aware that officeholders belonging to minority political parties tend to be lessbeseiged by favor-seekers and are therefore often more accessible than members of the majori-ty party, and may gain influence later as their parties rise. Establishing positive relations withan officeholder of relatively little clout now may become a ticket to great influence within afew years, especially if your encouragement helps the officeholder to advance to higher office.

Animal advocates need to be especially aware and involved at the state and local lev-els, as National Institute for Animal Advocacy founder Julie Lewin emphasizes at everyopportunity, because the structure of government in the U.S.––and in most nations––delegatesalmost all authority over animal control, regulation of animal care, and enforcement ofhumane laws to state and local governments. Even in nations such as India, with relativelystrong federal legislation governing animal issues, enforcement is largely left to local imple-mentation, with considerable leeway for how laws are interpreted and applied. In the U.S.,with 50 different state laws and more than 20,000 different local animal care-and-control ordi-nances, animal advocates must develop a strong local voice in order to influence the mostbasic humane issues.

Developing a strong local voice is self-amplifying. Local elections are the minorleagues for political advancement, where rising politicians typically get their start, and localissues tend to be echoed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Thus if one community is especiallysuccessful in responding to an animal-related issue, others will tend to follow, and politiciansrising from that community will tend to raise the profile of the solutions they found. Further,they will recognize in animal issues an opportunity to demonstrate effective leadership.

The careers of longtime California state assembly member Loni Hancock andCongressional Representative Ronald Dellums afford cases in point. More than 35 years agothe Editor of ANIMAL PEOPLE covered their election to the Berkeley City Council.Neither was elected on a pro-animal platform; neither was known as an animal advocate.Both were deeplly frustrated in pursuing their first political goals, but in 1972 they enjoyed arare success in abolishing the use of decompression to kill animals at the Berkeley city shelter.Decompression was then the most common means of animal control killing. By 1985 it wasno longer done anywhere in the U.S.––and Hancock and Dellums, throughout the remainderof their 30-odd-year political careers, avidly promoted pro-animal legislation and public hear-ings on animal issues.

Independent thinkingPeople who care about animals and vote tend to be moved by a wide spectrum of

issues, unlike gun owners, for instance, who are notorious single-issue voters. Thinkingabout a variety of issues and voting based on a complex analysis of multiple factors is worth-while, especially in a closely contested election, because this is practically the definition of a“swing” voter, whom either candidate can attract. Usually candidates assess far in advancewhich way most of the single-issue voters will go, and try to keep them happy while reachingout to as many swing voters as possible. Thus, while single-issue voters weigh heavily in thedecisions of entrenched incumbents, swing voters may possess greater leverage in tightraces––if they use it. This, again, requires informing candidates and campaign managers ofone’s thoughts, including of dissenting perspectives on nominally “pro-animal” positions.

Thinking independently––and visibly––about “pro-animal” positions and endorse-ments is worthwhile, not least because animal advocacy group perspectives can at times beself-defeating.

A recent example may have been the passage of a California bill to criminalize leav-ing pets unattended in vehicles in weather that puts the animals’ health at risk. Specificexemptions for “horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry, or other agricultural animals” may haveresulted in a net loss for animals, as Animal Switchboard president Virginia Handley unsuc-cessfully pointed out, in her capacity as the senior humane lobbyist in California.

Across the U.S., attempts to ban or overturn breed-specific dog laws are supportedby many humane organizations, but––as ANIMAL PEOPLE editorially pointed out inJanuary/February 2004 and December 2005––may be completely against the best interest ofdogs, especially pit bull terriers, the breed most often targeted. Pit bulls now make up morethan a fourth of all dogs in U.S. shelters and have a 90%-plus euthanasia rate, because theymore than any other dog are bred and sold as disposable commodities. Stopping the killing,and the dogfighting industry that thrives on cheap, abundant pit bulls, requires cutting off thesupply of the only breed type ever widely used in dogfighting. Laws that restrict or prohibitcommerce in pit bulls need not result in the deaths of any dogs who are already born, or causeanyone to give up a pet; such laws merely take the money out of breeding more of them.

Initiatives seeking to increase tax funding of wildlife agencies also require a secondlook. Such initiatives tend to be pro-animal only if the net effect is to transfer influence overwildlife policy away from hunters and other “blood sports” enthusiasts.

Candidate by candidate, bill by bill, voting effectively to help animals requiresmaking judgement calls. Pro-animal people may come down on either side of a decision,depending on their personal assessments––but either way, they have more clout if candidatesand news media know that the animal issues were involved and decisive in bringing a voter tothe polls.

ANIMAL PEOPLENews for People Who Care About Animals

Publisher: Kim Bartlett – anpeople@wh i dbey .comEditor: Merritt Clifton – a n m lpep l@wh idbey.comWeb producer: Patrice GreanvilleAssociate web producer: Tammy Sneath GrimesNewswire monitor: Cathy Young CzaplaP.O. Box 960Clinton, WA 98236-0960ISSN 1071-0035. Federal I.D: 14-175 2216Telephone: 360-579-2505. Fax: 360-579-2575.Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

Copyright © 2006 for the authors, artists, and photographers.Reprint inquiries are welcome.

ANIMAL PEOPLE: News for People Who Care About Animals is published10 times annually by Animal People, Inc., a nonprofit, charitable corporation dedicated toexposing the existence of cruelty to animals and to informing and educating the public ofthe need to prevent and eliminate such cruelty.

Subscriptions are $24.00 per year; $38.00/two years; $50/three years. Executive subscriptions, mailed 1st class, are $40.00 per year or $70/two years.The ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on Animal Protection Charities,

updated annually, is $25. The current edition reviews 121 leading organizations. ANIMAL PEOPLE is mailed under Bulk Rate Permit #2 from Clinton,

Washington, and Bulk Rate Permit #408, from Everett, Washington.The base rate for display advertising is $9.50 per square inch of page space.

Please inquire about our substantial multiple insertion discounts. The editors prefer to receive queries in advance of article submissions; unsolicit-

ed manuscripts will be considered for use, but will not be returned unless accompanied by

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ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2006 - 3

SEARCHABLE ARCHIVES: www.animalpeoplenews.orgKey articles available en Español et en Français!

Editorial Voting to help animals

––Wolf Clifton

I have just read yourSeptember 2006 review of The GoodP i g by Sy Montgomery. It was anexcellent book review and promptedme to get the book. I, too had a veryspecial farm pig friend named BigEarl, whom I recently lost.

However, the glut ofminiature pigs of all breeds has nota b a t e d . My wife and I operatedMini-Pigs, Inc., a 17-acre pig sanc-tuary in Virginia, for a dozen years.We have recently merged our sanc-tuary with Shepherd’s GreenSanctuary in Cookeville, Tennessee.We are now establishing a 100-acrepreserve in Jamestown, Tennesseeto handle the huge numbers ofabused, abandoned and neglectedminiature pigs and rescued farm pigswe are inundated with. The Preservewill partner with Shepherd’s Green

to provide a natural environment foraround 400 healthy and active res-cued pigs, while the sanctuary caresfor the older, infirm, or otherwisecompromised pigs who would not dowell in the preserve environment.

This is an attempt on ourpart to try to deal with the hugenumbers of pigs needing rescue andlifetime care in a better, less expen-sive and less labor intensive manner.

You mentioned that theIronwood Pig Sanctuary still houses“dozens of aging pigs.” In fact, lasttime I checked with my friends atIronwood, they were housingaround 400 or more rescuedpigs...most of whom are not aged.

The vast majority of pigsanctuaries I deal with on a dailybasis are full or overcrowded and arestill turning away dozens of pigs

each month due to a lack of spaceand/or funds.

To add to our difficulties,we are finding an increased numberof rescued farm pigs needing sanctu-ary space. As the public becomesmore attuned to the plight of the fac-tory farmed pigs, many more arebeing rescued by animal rightsgroups and private citizens. So now,in addition to rescuing and caring forthe thousands of “dumped” minia-ture pigs, we are asked to take in asteadily increasing number of full-sized farm pigs, while ourresources, thanks to disasters suchas Hurricane Katrina, are much moreseverely stretched.

––Richard and Laura HoyleThe Pig Preserve

Jamestown, Tennessee<[email protected]>


This little one will never face laboratory

research or isolation orthe beatings and stressof training to perform as “entertainment.” She has found safehaven at PrimarilyPrimates, among nearly 600 other

rescued primates and400 birds. We give

them sanctuary for therest of their lives. Please help usto help them!

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

––Wolf Clifton

We invite readers to submit letters and original unpublished commentary––please, nothing already posted to a web site––via e-mail to <[email protected]> or via postal mail to:

ANIMAL PEOPLE , P.O. Box 960, Clinton, WA 98236 USA.

I often wonder why there have been no amend-ments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in Indiasince its inception way back in 1960, to find a way of get-ting some sort of a pension for retired working animals.

I do not think any horse cart puller or dairy farmowner, or for that matter anyone who has abandoned hisworking animal who became unfit for use, has beenbooked under this act, or is serving a jail sentence.

The recent willingness of the West BengalPolice department to pursue a pension arrangement fortheir horses with the Compassionate Crusaders of Kolkatacomes as a great achievement in the history of animal wel-fare in India for retired animals.

Either we should do away with using animalsfor human interests, or we should pay them a pension, aswe do for humans after retirement.

––Azam Siddiqui107-C, Railway ColonyNew Guwahati 781021

Assam, IndiaPhone: 91-84350-48481

<[email protected]>

Editor’s note:The idea that dairy cattle, draft animals, and

others who serve humans should enjoy a comfortableretirement was incorporated into Jain, Buddhist, andHindu teachings as long as 2,300 years ago. This led tothe often abused custom of temples keeping animals, thepractice of animal abandonment at temples, and the insti -tution of gaushalas and pinjarapoles, originally to lookafter retired cattle but often operated by corrupt manage -ment as commercial dairies and sources of leather.

Among the oldest animal care projects of U.S.and European humane societies has been looking after

retired police horses and war horses. Prominent earlyrepresentatives of that custom include the Ryers Infirmaryfor Dumb Animals (1888) in Pennsylvania and theLondon-based Brooke Hospital for Animals (1934),founded by Dorothy Brooke to look after retired cavalryhorses in overseas outposts of the British empire.

More recently, public pressure has obliged theU.S. government to fund the retirement of hundreds ofchimpanzees and other nonhuman primates who were for -merly used by NASA and projects of the NationalInstitutes of Health.

That animals who have served humans deservea decent retirement has also long been expressed in prin -ciple by zoos, the horse and dog racing industries, andmilitary dog units, though reality remains that most zooanimals remain on exhibit until they die, only the mostsuccessful racing animals are “retired” to breed (andoften eventually are sold to slaughter or sold to laborato -ries anyway), and many ex-military dogs are killed on“retirement,” nominally because they might be danger -ous, but cost-cutting is clearly also a consideration.

The weakness in animal retirement schemes isthat none of them to date are funded by a pay-in systemsimilar to the human pension plans of most developednations, in which money is set aside as earned in dedicat -ed funds.

As most developed nations already license atleast some working animals, either governmentally orthrough private registries, and as tracking systemsalready govern the distribution of zoo animals, there isno inherent logistic obstacle to adding pay-in systems foranimal retirement to the existng procedures––except thatanimal users would not like having to pay the small tax onanimal services that would be needed to fund the animals’retirement.

ReTails Pretty New Storeis the very first animal welfare chari-ty shop in Bangkok. It took aboutsix weeks from deciding to try acommercial venture to raise funds tothe actual opening. After lots ofstops and starts and disappointments,we now have a posh shop in a smartlocation near Sukhumvit.Downstairs is designer and smartersecond hand goods, and upstairs is areal bargain loft, which the Thaisseem to love.

Our display shelves are oldplanks from a demolished Thaihouse, painted and supported on ter-racotta and plastic flower pots. Wepicked up bricks, stones and roughwood to display jewellery. Wickerbaskets hold most of our displays.

The idea is to raise themoney that we need each month torun our spay center, but we have noidea yet whether this is achievable.

We have partnered withCrown Relocations, an internationalremoval company, to run a consign-ment service for large furnitureitems: 60% retained by the seller,40% to Soi Dog Rescue, and Crownwill pick up and store the items untilsold. We’ll put a photo of the furni-ture in the shop. We are hoping tofill the niche for expats who arriveand leave, with nowhere to buy orsell their unwanted large items.Currently everyone has to resort toads in supermarkets or club noticeboards. We hope large furnitureconsignments will provide the bulkof our income, but Thais frequentthe shop, often to buy cheap itemsto resell in the markets. Foreigngoods seem to be much prized.

We will also sell coffeeand homemade cakes donated byvolunteers.

I’m having sleeplessnights, wondering whether we canpull this off, the problems being afairly high rent and only volunteersto run the shop, stock it, and beg formerchandise. On opening day wetook in twice our daily cost of run-ning the spay center; today less thana third. I suppose these ups anddowns will continue.

––Sherry ConisbeePresident & cofounder

Soi Dog Rescue Bangkok2240/3-4 Chankaow Road

Chongnontri, YannawaBangkok, Thailand 10120

Phone: 66-02-336-0849<[email protected]>

<www.soidogrescue.org>

Humane thrift shop in Thailand

Live animal transport legislation

Sanctuarians cross no-man’s-land to save asses

Farm pigs add to waiting list of pigs needing sanctuaries

Thanks for an extremelyinformative September 2006 edi-tion of ANIMAL PEOPLE ,including the thoughtful article onthe exemption in the CaliforniaAnimal Transport Bill, w h i c hd e l i b e r a t e l y e x c l u d e s l i v e s t o c kfrom much-needed protection.

As Virginia Handleyw i s e l y pointed out, our currentanimal cruelty laws allow prosecu-tion of those who leave pets in hotcars as a felony. This bill reducedthe offense to a misdemeanor.This is shortsighted “feel good”legislation that sadly movedCalifornia backward b y i g n o r i n gstatistics and consequences.

Also, thanks for present-ing the comments of Karen Davisof United Poultry Concerns regard-ing mailing baby chicks. Postale m p l o y e e s estimate that up to70% of mailed day-old poultrydoes not reach the destinationalive and/or healthy. One mid-w e s t e r n hatchery alone b o a s t s

on its website that it mails overfour milion of these helpless crea-tures annually, and the PostalService allows up to 72 hours with-out food and water for delivery.

Your article did not men-tion that the Humane Society of theU . S . launched a major campaignthis year against this horrific prac-tice. HSUS animal cruelty cam-paign director Ann Chynoweth hasgained some major media coveragenationwide to enlist public supportto defeat Senate Bill 2395, whichwould force airlines to carry birdsat temperatures between zero and100 degrees Fahrenheit. Inform-ation about the campaign is on theHSUS website.

––Phyllis M. Daugherty, DirectorAnimal Issues Movement

420 N. Bonnie Brae StreetLos Angeles, CA 90026

Phone: 213/413-6428Fax: 213/413-SPAY

<[email protected]>

Thoughts about working animal retirement

I hope that you will let me update your readerson the work of the British charity Safe Haven forDonkeys in the Holy Land, dedicated to caring forworking and abandoned donkeys in Israel and thePalestinian Territories.

Safe Haven was founded in 2000 by formerBritish Airways flight attendant and Jerusalem SPCAvolunteer Lucy Fensom, who saw first-hand the crueltyand neglect inflicted on many of the thousands of don-keys still used as beasts of burden in the region.

Today, at the Safe Haven sanctuary near theIsraeli town of Netanya, 100 donkeys live free from painand overwork, and have the chance to form herds androam freely on the 4-acre site.

Safe Haven’s work does not stop at the sanctu-ary gates. Aware that the donkeys living there are just atiny percentage of those desperately needing help, Lucyhas initiated free veterinary clinics in the PalestinianTerritories. Each week Lucy and her team make thesometimes risky border crossing with Safe Haven’s well-

equipped mobile clinic to visit a different village andprovide veterinary care, farriery and tooth rasping forthe animals, and of course advice and support for theowners. Sometimes more than 100 donkeys, mules andhorses are waiting for the team when they arrive.

Please visit our web site to find out more aboutSafe Haven. We now have a U.S. auxiliary, AmericanFriends of Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land.

––Wendy AhlSafe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land

The Old DairySpringfield Farm

Lewes Road, Scaynes HillHaywards Heath,

West Sussex RH17 7NGUnited Kingdom

Phone: 011-44-1444 -31177 Fax: 011 44 1444 831172

<[email protected]><www.safehaven4donkeys.org>

Editor’s note:Unfortunately, the Zulu bullfighting

practices are not unique. Similar torture isroutinely inflicted on bulls and sometimesother animals around the world, includingIndia, where more than 90% of the populationprofesses to share a belief that cattle aresacred, and where bullfighting has been ille -gal since 1960. ANIMAL PEOPLE in May2006 reported on the often frustrated efforts ofthe Blue Cross of India and the Visakha SPCAto try to get local police to enforce the law.

Zulu bullfighting and Indian bull -fighting, called Jallikattu, differ mainly inthat the Indian bullfights are held in publicplaces, and all comers may participate. Also,the bulls sometimes “win,” briefly. InJanuary 2006, reported The Hindu, “Twopersons were gored to death and 84 othersinjured in the Jallikattu organized in connec -tion with a temple festival at Pallavarayanpattiin Theni district.” In July, The Hindu notedthe death of “a mentally unsound man” whotormented a bull in Bangalore.

Animal advocates have been cam -paigning to abolish farra do bois, the quitecomparable Brazilian form of bullfighting, formore than a century. In farra do bois, thebulls often have fireworks tied to their horns.

Andean condor-and-bull fights havenot been reported in several years, but onSeptember 6, 2006, the same day that ANI-MAL PEOPLE received Andries Pretorius’letter, the New York Times published anextensive expose of coleo, the Venzuelan formof bullfighting. Explained New York Timescorrespondent Simon Romero, “Four men onhorseback chase a bull within a corridor aboutthe length of a football field for about five min -utes, competing to see who can tip the animalover the most times by pulling his tail. Ofcourse, after the first fall, the coleador mustget the bull back up and running. That is oftenaccomplished by twisting his tail. Some exas -perated riders bite the tail. On some occa -sions, attendants use an electric rod to shockthe bull back to his feet. Some bulls break a

leg when they fall. After the coleo, many of thebulls, bruised and worn out, are hauled to theslaughterhouse.”

Both farra do bois and coleo evolvedout of similar events held at Spanish villagefestivals, in which bulls and bull calves arechased, tortured, and usually killed by mobs––as at a much-protested festival in Algemesi,Velencia, Spain, on September 25-27, 2006.The annual bull-running event in Pamplona,in which the bulls chase the humans to the bullring at which the bulls will be dispatched byprofessional toreadors, may have originatedas a way for the men of Pamplona to showthemselves to be braver than residents of othercities by giving the bulls a somewhat betterchance to harm their tormentors.

As in India, most U.S. states havelaws against such activities. Most states pro -hibit Spanish-style bullfighting, in which thebulls are killed in the ring. Some also prohibitor restrict horse-tripping, a staple of so-calledMexican-style rodeo. However, as SHARKfounder Steve Hindi and colleagues have docu -mented time and again, the bulls and calvesused in U.S.-style rodeo quite commonly suffertail-twisting, electroshock, kicking, punch -ing, body-slamming, and jerking down withropes, all with virtual impunity. Though mostof these offenses are prohibited not only by lawbut also by the Professional Rodeo CowboysAssociation rules, the rules are rarelyenforced, even when SHARK captures the vio -lations on videotape.

Though the rituals of rodeo and mostforms of bullfighting differ, the major differ -

ence to the animal is that instead of beingkilled on the spot, brutalized rodeo animalsare hauled to slaughter afterward––as inPortuguese-style “bloodless” bullfighting.

In Spain, the nation most widelyassociated with bullfighting, “Marketing sur -veys show the number of Spaniards who saythey have no interest in bullfighting has risento more than 70%, from about 40% in 1970,”Tom Hundley of the Chicago Tribune recentlyreported. “Among young people, the lack ofinterest is even more pronounced.” Televisioncoverage and attendance are in freefall, whilethe average age of Spanish attendees has risento 40-plus.

The U.S. rodeo audience appears tobe similarly collapsing, with declining crowdsand television viewer share. But both bull -fighting and rodeo promoters are mounting avigorous defense of themselves in the name ofpreserving national cultures, including inJapan, where bulls are made to fight eachother, rather than fighting human foes. TheJapanese newspape Yomiuri Shimbun, o nSeptember 19, 2006 headlined “Bullfightmarks slow return to normalcy for Niigatacommunity” above an article describing how“Bullfighting returned to a community inNiigata Prefecture, for the first time since amassive earthquake struck the area in October2004.” Representatives of nine villages par -ticipated in a bullfighting tournament, before3,500 spectators, which Yomiuri Shinbunnoted as “about three times more than usual.”

The Japanese government calls thelocal form of bullfighting “an intangible cul -tural folk asset,” apparently putting it in thesame category as whaling and the Taiji dol -phin slaughter, as relics to be preservedregardless of the indifference or even opposi -tion of most of the public.

Anti-bullfighting citiesANIMAL, in cooperation with the

League Against Cruel Sports, has launchedthe first campaign ever in Portugal to establishAnti-Bullfighting Cities.

Spain already has 32 cities whichhave declared themselves to be Anti-Bull-fighting Cities. France has at least one.Portugal does not yet have any.

ANIMAL is now targeting 10 citiesin the Algarve region (Portimão, Lagos,Lagoa, Aljezur, Silves, Albufeira, Loulé,Olhão, Tavira and Faro) and one city nearLisbon (Sintra) with this campaign. The pointof the campaign is to get tourists who visit theAlgarve to write to the presidents of the targetmunicipalities, urging them to commit to notallowing bullfights and to openly condemningthese cruel spectacles. Tourists are asked tostate that they are boycotting bullfightingcities, and that they would like to visit anti-bullfighting cities instead.

Our effort is coordinatied with theLeague Against Cruel Sports´ campaign toteach tourists to use their economic influence.

In Portugal, seeking local bans ismuch more realistic than seeking a nationwideban for now, although the entire campaignwill obviously make it easier for a national banto eventually occur. ––Miguel Moutinho

Executive DirectorANIMAL

Apartado 20288501-902 Portimão

PortugalPhone: 00-351-282-491-216

<[email protected]>

First Fruits FestivalSince 1992, every year in Decem-

ber, at the First Fruits Festival near Nongomain Zululand, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, alarge black bull is released into the RoyalKraal of King Goodwill Zwelithini. Thirtyyoung Zulu warriors kill the bull with theirbare hands in order to “prove their manhood.”

A running battle takes place. Sand isrepeatedly thrown in the bull’s eyes.Eventually he becomes tired and is pulled tothe ground. Sand is stuffed down his throat.His tongue is pulled out, his eyes are gougedout, his tail is broken, his penis is tied in aknot, his testicles are ripped off, he is kickedand jumped upon, and his neck is broken.

Killing the bull takes about 45 min-utes. It is a display of extreme cruelty andbrutality, and is against the Animal ProtectionAct of 1962, which states that it is an offensein South Africa to treat any animal in a mannerwhich causes unnecessary suffering.

Yet in this instance the AnimalProtection Act is powerless, because we havea constitution that protects people’s culturaland traditional rights, even if cruelty to ani-mals is involved.

This “cultural” cruelty treats “man-hood” as an act only achieved by committingviolence against animals. It encourages a cul-ture and custom of violence among men. It isout of place in a nation that is fighting an epi-demic of violence in all forms, e.g. four SouthAfrican women a day are killed by theirlovers. Kwazulu-Natal has the highest numberof murders in South Africa every year.

“Someone who is cruel and violentto animals will also be so to people,” saysProfessor Sean Kaliski, head of forensic psy-chiatry at Valkenberg Hospital in Cape Town.

Member of the National ParliamentGareth Morgan has several times over the pasttwo years attempted to arrange a meetingbetween King Goodwill Zelithini and theNational Council of SPCAs, without success.

This ritual should be replaced bysports and games, that do not use animals.

Living bulls are torn apart at otherpublic events, and sometimes on “unofficial”occasions, but the main event each year is atthe First Fruits Festival.

––Andries Pretoriusc/o Suite 293

Private Bag x1005Claremont 7735

South Africa


BULLFIGHTING

If you know someone else who mightlike to read ANIMAL PEOPLE,

please ask us to send a free sample.

admissions and killing than 10-20 years ago, depending on thesurvey location.

Rottweilers, German shepherds, and chows are alsoamong the six breeds most often entering shelters. Pit bullshave accounted for roughly half of all the dog attack deaths andmaimings in the U.S. and Canada since 1982, Rottweilers forabout 25%, and German shepherds and chows are a distantfourth and sixth, according to the attack log kept since 1982 bythe editor of ANIMAL PEOPLE. (Wolf hybrids are third;Akitas are fifth.)

Other studies indicate that German shepherds are firstamong large breeds in bite frequency.

Fear of dogs & drug crimesAll of these breeds tend to enter shelters because they

have bitten someone––or, in the case of pit bulls, because theyhave been seized from suspected dogfighters.

Add to the dogs of known high actuarial risk (insur-ance payouts divided by attacks) the increasingly often seencrosses of pit bulls with mastiffs and other very large dogs:Presa Canarios, Fila Brasieros, Dogo Argentinos.

Add to that the frequency of dangerous dogs beingkept by drug-savvy dangerous people, who sometimes feedtheir dogs home-brewed methadrine or other chemicals to stim-ulate them to fight. There is shelter floor-level suspicion thatsome of the tough customers who come to look at impoundedpit bulls and meanwhile “case” the shelters for possible bur-glary are increasingly likely to perceive shelters as a source ofboth dogs and drugs of potential street value.

Sodium pentobarbital, the lethal injectible recom-mended by the American Veterinary Medical Association,Humane Society of the U.S., American SPCA, and NationalAnimal Control Association, is a federally controlled barbitu-ate. Animal sedatives and ketamine, commonly used in steril-ization surgery, also have street value.

With shelter break-ins to steal dogs and drugs havingapproximately tripled in 10 years, shelter staff are often work-ing scared, especially on night shifts in bad neighborhoods andremote locations. Without strong leadership to demonstrateotherwise, many may imagine that the best way to protectthemselves is to kill potential fighting dogs immediately, andavoid having drugs on the premises.

“Animal control agency reluctance to use sodiumpentobarbital, from my discussions with them, stems from notwanting staff to be handling the animals,” Humane Society ofthe U.S. director of companion animal issues John Snyder told

ANIMAL PEOPLE. “They are concerned about the potentialfor injuries and the stress on staff––but hundreds of humanesocieties use sodium pentobarbital and do not have those prob-lems,” at least “not solely related to euthanasia. I used a car-bon monoxide chamber for 14 years,” Snyder continued. “Iknow how they work. Putting vicious animals in the chambercan be quite dangerous, if they are put in the chamber humane-ly and correctly isolated, or if are they pushed in on the end ofa control pole and the door slammed shut. Placing the animalin a segregated cage within the chamber is not without risk.

“If you are handling a dangerous dog or feral cat,”Snyder recommends, “simply give the animal a sedative beforesodium pentobarbital, to minimize stress on the animal andinjury to the employee. With dangerous dogs, a breath pow-ered blowgun can deliver the syringe with sedative. You sim-ply wait for that to kick in, and then give the animal the lethalsodium pentabarbital injection, removing the potential forinjury to the employee.

“A jab syringe pole or piece of PVC pipe with plasticsyringe dart powered by breath does not require a chemical cap-ture course,” Snyder added. “Any competent veterinarian canusually teach all that is needed to do euthanasia sedation.

“ R e g a r d i n g diversion of controlled substances,”Snyder continued, “this will happen from time to time. Thishas happened at veterinary offices forever, and at a much high-er incidence than at animal shelters. Drug and criminal back-ground checks have become more common in governmentagencies, to screen out potentially risky employees. Cases [ofdiversion of drugs] are few and far between, consideringturnover and other issues” involved in animal control work,including a longtime high rate of alcohol and recreational drugabuse among staff who become demoralized by killing animals.

“This is the same rationale that veterinary associa-tions in many states use to keep shelters from obtaining sodiumpentobarbital,” Snyder said, “and from getting direct purchaselegislation passed,” allowing shelters to buy sodium pentobar-bital without going through a veterinarian.

“There is no mystery about maintaining shelter secu-rity of controlled substances,” Synder maintained. “Whenshelters store controlled substances according to state and fed-eral regulations, then they’re not going to be easily accessibleto thieves. Xylazine (Rompun) added to ketamine d e n a t u r e sthe ketamine. It is no longer abusable or usable as a date rapedrug. Shelters should not keep un-denatured bottles of keta-mine on the premises.

“Animal control work in major cities is more danger-

ous now for sure,” Snyder acknowledged, “but I believe youwill find that in the majority of major cities both animal controland humane societies already use sodium pentobarbital. Streetlevel reality here in Washington D.C. is that the WashingtonHumane Society has the animal control contract and uses sodi-um pentobarbital, handling large numbers of bully breeds inone of the most dangerous cities in the U.S., in my opinion, todo animal control.

“In my opinion,” Snyder finished, “shelter directorswho play the security card as the principal reason for usingcarbon monoxide are just throwing out a convenient excuse fornot doing the right thing.”

Affirmed Fakkema, “Using euthanasia by injectionon dangerous dogs, mandated in many states with high popula-tions of dangerous dogs, is a training and equipment issue.This comes up in many of the classes I teach. With the righttraining, equipment, and pre-euthanasia anesthetics, any dogcan be safely euthanized by injection. It is entirely specious tosuggest that a chamber is needed for dangerous dogs. This is abelief espoused by the poorly trained or by those who havenever used or seen euthanasia by injection.

“In order to put a dangerous d o g in a chamber,”Fakkema contended, “he or she must first be put on a rabiespole. I can euthanize a dangerous dog in his/her kennel byfeeding sodium pentobarbital––no handling necessary. Or,once on the pole, I can put the dog behind a restraint gate andadminister ketamine/xylazine compound intra-muscularly toanesthetize the dog for completely safe euthanasia by injection.


Could dangerous dog surge bring back carbon monoxide chambers? (from page 1)

Help at last for the Addis Ababa zoo(continued on page 7)

ADDIS ABABA––That little wasdone for more than 30 years to improve theHaile Selassie Zoo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,might be no surprise, in view of the usuallydilapidated state of African zoos––but the zooholds a well-documented population of therarest of all lion subspecies, believed to be theoldest captive lion colony in existence.

The black-maned Atlas lion,Barbary lion, or Lion of Judah, hauled toImperial Rome by the thousands for use andslaughter in Colossium spectacles, was extir-pated from Libya by 1700, from Egypt by1800, from Tunisia in 1891, from Algeria in1912, and from Morocco in 1921. This was ayear after the lion was deleted from the WorldEncyclopedia of Animals as already extinct.

Unknown to science, those in theEthiopian palace menagerie lived on.After Selassie was overthrown in 1974, themenagerie was opened to the pubic, but israrely visited by non-Ethiopians. Some lionswere sold from time to time. A few descen-dants, hybridized with common lions, reachedthe U.S. and Europe through circuses.

The 11 Atlas lions then remaining inAddis Ababa were recognized in 1976 bySouth African veterinarian Hym Ebedes.

“Over the past 35 years I have seenhundreds of wild lions,” Ebedes told media,“but I have never seen anything so majesticand magnificent. The sight of a black-manedlion pacing around his cage had an indescrib-able spine-chilling effect on me.”

Despite the attention that the redis-

covered Lions of Judah received at the time,there was no apparent follow-through on theirbehalf, Israeli consular employee EinatDanieli found in August 2006, making herfirst zoo visit just six weeks before she wastransferred from Addis Ababa to Toronto.

“The zoo is very small and nowincludes only four Atlas lions,” Danieli toldANIMAL PEOPLE. “There are three cagesof primates: three Chellada baboons and threeColubus monkeys. The animals are fed andtheir cages are cleaned from time to time, butthe lions are in a very small area with one caveto hide in and no stimulation. The area wasmade even smaller by the collapse of anothercave that killed a lioness and one of her cubs.The primate cages are concrete and netting,without shelter from rain or sun. Their food isscattered on the floor, without any stimulationavailable. The female baboon is sick, and weare afraid she won’t last the rainy season.”

Danieli unsuccessfully sought helpfor the Addis Ababa Zoo animals from zooorganizations and wildlife protection societiesin the U.S. and Europe. Meanwhile, Danielireported on September 20, “We managed tocollect funding from our friends to fix the pri-mates’ cages and equip them with proper shel-ters and climbing facilities, branches, andfeeding toys,” from which extricating food is amental challenge.

Danieli also wants to improve thelion habitat “by giving training to the zoo staffand by connecting the zoo with an organizationthat could give them proper funding and guid-ance about how to preserve these lions in thebest conditions possible.”

In addition, Danieli hopes to rescue“a common lion who was captured young andhas been held ever since” by a local exhibitor“in a small cage, restrained by chains, in thesouthern region of Ethiopia near the Somaliborder.” Suffering from an ingrown collar, thelion “can only walk 2 steps because of thechains and is hardly fed,” Danieli told A N I-MAL PEOPLE , sending photos “Thewildlife department is willing to allow the lionto leave Ethiopia, but will only take him ifthere is a place that will agree to adopt him.”

Despite her move to Canada, Danielipledged to follow through on her initiatives forthe captive wildlife of Ethiopia. She welcomeshelp c/o <[email protected]>.

ACCRA, Ghana––The AccraZoo, serving about 120,000 visitors per year,is to be relocated and rebuilt over the nextfive years, Ghanian minister of lands,forestry, and mines Dominic Fobihannounced on August 1, 2006. The animalsare to be moved to the Kumasi Zoo, about200 miles inland, by the end of September2006 to make room for a new presidentialcomplex. The new zoo is to be built with thehelp of the London Zoological Society,Fobih said. Founded as first Ghanian presi-dent Kwame Nkrumah's private menagerie inthe early 1960s, the Accra Zoo opened to thepublic after his overthrow in 1966.

Accra zoo to be rebuilt

“In my experience euthanizing ani-mals, only about 10% of dogs need to beanesthetized prior to euthanasia,” Fakkemaadded. “It is not necessary to anesthetize allanimals prior to euthanasia.”

Among the selling points for sodiumpentobarbital is that using it avoids the risk ofaccidental gassing, an occasional occurrenceat shelters with the walk-in “lethal rooms” thatwere part of standard shelter architecture asrecently as 20 years ago.

The most recent human fatality dueto accidental gassing at an animal shelter wasVernon W. Dove Jr., 39, who inadvertentlyentered the “lethal room” at the HumaneEducation Society of Chattanooga on March28, 2000. The Humane Education Society ofChattanooga was fined $22,800 for relatedcode violations by the Tennessee OccupationalSafety and Health Administration.

As recently as May 2006, the NorthCarolina Department of Labor told WXIINews in Lexington that it was investigating apotential human safety hazard from gassing atthe Davidson County Animal Shelter.

“The labor department said a workercomplained about having to hold his breathafter turning on the gas to kill animals,”reported WXII. “The Davidson County sher-iff’s office said there was a gas leak, butSheriff David Grice didn’t comment further.”

“Staff injury is again a trainingissue,” Fakkema emphasized. “Staff areinjured when the organization fails to provideproper training, equipment, and pre-euthana-sia drugs. Good training and safety always gohand in hand.”

Last stand for gasIf a shelter still has a gas chamber,

Cox believes, it will be used.“That’s why we got rid of it in

Dayton,” Cox explained. “Perhaps the equip-ment could have been recycled for somethingelse, but if it exists on the premises, the temp-tation will always be there to try to solve aproblem by whatever somebody thinks mightbe the easy way.”

Political momentum wherever

gassing has become a public issue favors sodi-um pentobarbital injection––as it has for morethan 20 years.

Almost the only public defender ofgassing in recent years has been Sheriff EddieCathey, of Union County, North Carolina.

Union County purchased a carbonmonoxide chamber in August 2006, afterheated public debate. The purchase followedsimilar controversies after Union County ani-mal control allegedly killed a lost pet cat inFebruary 2005, and was sued in September2005 over the pneumonia death of a pet dogwho was impounded for biting.

Wrote Cathey to carbon monoxidecritics, “This is obviously a very emotionaltopic in which there are strong arguments onboth sides. The obvious best solution is todecrease the unwanted birth of animalsthrough an aggressive spay/neuter program,which is an integral part of our new shelter.But for right now, we simply have too manyunwanted animals in the county and are forcedto euthanise many dogs and cats. Since I amnot a veterinarian and therefore, definitely notan expert on animal euthanasia, I read the2000 Report of the American VeterinaryMedical Association Panel on Euthanasia, ”which conditionally approved of the use ofcarbon monoxide if for some reason sodiumpentobarbital injection could not be done.

“This is all about the installation of achamber,” Cathey continued. “What do youwant me to do with dangerous dogs, animalswith rabies, and animals with [other] dis-eases? The shelter needs to have the option ofthe chamber,” Cathey insisted. “Officers donot need to be needlessly exposed. We useboth the chamber and shots. We try to applycommon sense,” Cathey said.

But Detroit Animal Control, amongthe shelters handling the most dangerous dogsin the U.S., quit gassing animals in 2002. SanAntonio quit in October 2005. Quitting earli-er in 2005 were East Providence, RhodeIsland; Isle of Wight, Virginia; and JohnstonCounty, North Carolina. The Long IslandHumane & Dog Protective Association, onLong Island, quit gassing animals in January

2006. It may have been the last non-govern-ment shelter in the greater New York Citymetropolitan region to use gas.

“I don’t think there is a resurgence[of carbon monoxide use], not nationally any-way, and that’s my beat,” said Fakkema.

“In my experience traveling all overthe U.S.,” Fakkema added, “I’d say that wellover half or better of animal care and controls h e l t e r s are using euthanasia by injection.There are at least 14 states which mandateeuthanasia by injection. A few others prohibitthe likely alternative, carbon monoxide, thuseffectively mandating euthanasia by injection.In terms of the actual number of animals killedin U.S. shelters, I guess that close to 70% orbetter are put to death using injection. Mostof the f a c i l i t i e s still using carbon monoxideare small rural dog pounds,” as in NorthCarolina, Fakkema believes.

“On the West Coast,” Fakkema toldANIMAL PEOPLE, “animals are killedprobably almost entirely by injection. This isby law in California and Oregon. TheNortheast has the least amount of euthanasiaof anywhere in the U.S., with little if any useof methods other than injection. The Mid-Atlantic states mostly do euthanasia by injec-tion, I think. In the South and Southeast.there is a higher percentage of carbon monox-ide use, I’d guess, except in Florida, Arkan-sas, and Georgia, which mandate euthanasiaby injection. In the Midwest, Ohio andIndiana have a higher percentage of carbonmonoxide use. Many small rural pounds stillhave a cinder block gas chamber outsidebehind the shelter. In the West, since themajor gas chamber manufacturer is in SaltLake City, probably more facilities use carbonmonoxide. Larger cities are more likely to useeuthanasia by injection than small cities.”

Fakkema’s view is affirmed bymany of the electronic alerts distributed bybreed rescuers and adoption transporters, whooften headline their appeals on behalf of par-ticular pound animals with a mention that thepound in question uses gas. Most such mes-sages pertain to animals taken out of ruralSouthern or Midwestern shelters, especially in

North Carolina, and Louisiana., and Georgia,where the mandate for sodium pentobarbitalallowed shelters to continue using carbonmonoxide chambers if they had them in 1990.

Public perception“A major factor in the trend toward

euthanasia by injection is public involvement,”said Fakkema. “From the pickets carryingsigns outside the Chicago Anti-Cruelty Societyback in the 1970s to the horrendous pressgiven to San Antonio earlier this year, thepublic is clearly making a difference.”

Public attention toward methods ofshelter killing tends to focus on the perceptionthat sodium pentobarbital injection is quickerand causes less suffering to the animal thanany other method.

There is also a perception that sodi-um pentobarbital effects death more certainly.

Miracle Dog (2005) by Stray Rescuefounder Randy Grim sparked renewed anti-gassing activism throughout the U.S. by tellingthe story of a dog whom Grim named Quentin,after the well-known gas chamber at SanQuentin Prison in California. The dog sur-vived the St. Louis Animal Regulation gaschamber in August 2003.

In July 2006 a similar story emergedfrom Liberty County, Georgia, in July 2006,where a dog now named Amazing Grace sur-vived half an hour in a gas chamber.

Gassing had already been a hot issuein Georgia since 1998, when Augusta animalcontrol director Jim Larmer took early retire-ment after a television exposé caused mayorLarry Sconyers to order an end to gassing.

But sodium pentobarbital injectionscan also be problematic. At least half a dozencases of animals not dying or not dyingpromptly after sodium pentobarbital injectionoccurred in early 2000, including some ani-mals who were injected by experts duringtraining sessions. These cases, never conclu-sively explained, appeared to involve a badbatch of the solution. Isolated cases have beentraced to corrupt shelter workers “cutting” thesolution with other substances, in order to



Could dangerous dog surge bring back gassing? (from page 6)

PORTLAND, Oregon– – A m o n gthe last actions of the Doris Day AnimalLeague before it was absorbed on August 31,2006 by the Humane Society of the U.S. (page17) was funding a grant issued on July 26 bythe Alliance for Contraception for Cats andDogs to help underwrite tests of a chemosteri-lant for female animals called ChemSpay,now underway on the Navajo Nation.

Headquartered in Windowrock,Arizona, near the junction of Arizona,Nevada, Colorado, and Utah, the NavajoNation presently has the highest rate of animalcontrol killing of any incorporated entity in theU.S., at 135 dogs and cats killed per 1,000

humans per year, nearly 10 times the U.S.average of 14.5.

“An estimated 160,000 free-roamingdogs reproduce uncontrollably, attack and killlivestock, and contribute to 6,000 human bitereports each year,” said Alliance presidentJoyce Briggs. “Packs of 20 to 30 dogs are stilla common sight throughout the reservation,”Briggs added. “Working with the humanesocieties on the reservation, SenesTech,” theChemSpay developer, “is injecting adoptedfemale dogs with the sterilant and then follow-ing up to monitor whether or not the dogs arebecoming sterile as a result,” Briggs said.

ChemSpay is a byproduct of researchon human menopause.

“Ovaries contain a finite number offollicles that do not generally regenerate oncethey are depleted,” Briggs explained. “Byaccelerating the depletion of follicles, calledovarian atresia, with an injection, an animalcan soon be made sterile without the need forsurgery.”

“We hope to develop a non-surgical,non-invasive product that could develop intoan alternative to the surgical spaying of femaleanimals,” affirmed SenesTech presidentLoretta P. Mayer.

“Studies in cats are underway aswell,” said Briggs.

Further particulars of the ChemSpaytrials are expected to be released at the ThirdInternational Symposium of the Alliance forContraception in Cats & Dogs, to be heldNovember 9-12 in Alexandria, Virginia.Details are available from <[email protected]>,or at <www.acc-d.org/>.

steal some to distill the barbituate content. Between the Quentin and Amazing

Grace cases, a feral cat later named TomBrooklyn in July 2004 survived sodium pento-barbital injection and being placed in a freezerat Brooklyn Animal Control in Brooklyn,Ohio. The attention given to that case mayhave further retarded the introduction of sodi-um pentobarbital injection in Ohio.

The most common problem associat-ed with sodium pentobarbital, however, isthat workers who have never learned how toproperly administer an injection may resort tothe so-called “heart jab,” in which the animalis painfully speared with the needle.

Heart-jabbing was banned by law inIllinois in 2001; in California was banned inJanuary 2002 by the legal opinions of attorneygeneral Bill Lockyer and deputy attorney gen-

eral Gregory L. Gonot, issued at request ofCalifornia senate president pro tempore JohnBurton; and was banned in New Mexico inDecember 2003 by a legal opinion issued bystate attorney general Patricia Madrid, at urg-ing of activist Marcy Britton.

“I think the best check and balance isto allow only compassionate animal care andcontrol workers to euthanize,” opinesFakkema. “When killing is done by poorlytrained, unmotivated workers, or workerswithout compassion, t h e n any method canand will be inhumane. I see this over and over.The chamber is removed and the sameuntrained worker who was shoving the animalsinto the chamber is given a syringe and told togo forth and do good work. The animal advo-cate walks away thinking all is now in harmo-ny at the animal shelter.” ––Merritt Clifton


How gassing came & wentGassing pound animals with carbon

monoxide gained acceptance across the U.S.after the American SPCA took over the NewYork City animal control contract in 1895 andintroduced carbide gassing in lieu of drowningmass-caged strays in the Hudson River.

Carbon monoxide gassing prevailedover many attempts to introduce other killingmethods partly because it was inexpensive andeasily done, but perhaps mostly because it wasperceived as painless.

The most successful challenge tocarbon monoxide came from the introductionof decompression chambers to kill animals,after World War II, when the San FranciscoSPCA developed a side business in purchasingand adapting to shelter use Navy surplusdecompression chambers originally used tohelp divers who developed “the bends.”

The SF/SPCA in 1954 and 1955,respectively, formed the Northern CaliforniaSPCA and the Western Humane EducationSociety to help promote decompression. TheSF/SPCA and the subsidiaries argued thatdecompression produced a quicker, cleanerdeath than gas, but shelter workers and thepublic became skeptical.

Across San Francisco Bay, the cityof Berkeley abolished decompression in 1972.The SF/SPCA itself abandoned decompressionin 1976, when newly appointed executivedirector Richard Avanzino (now president ofMaddie’s Fund) scrapped the decompressionchamber on his second day. Portland,Oregon, banned decompression in 1977,other cities followed, and by 1985 decompres-sion was no longer used to kill animals any-where in the U.S.

Some shelters merely converteddecompression chambers into gas chambers, arelatively simple retrofit, but the argumentsagainst decompression had caused the humanecommunity to rethink the whole idea of killinganimals in any sort of chamber.

A landmark study of attitudes andoccupational stress among slaughterhouseworkers published in 1988 by Colorado StateUniversity psychologist and livestock manage-ment expert Temple Grandin had an impact.Grandin found that slaughterhouse personnelresponded to killing in three distinctly differentways: some detached themselves, somebecame sadistic, and some ritualized killing,convincing themselves that what they did was

for the greater good.While shelter workers typically

resented being compared to employees ofslaughterhouses, follow-up studies determinedthat they responded in the same ways, just indifferent proportions, with ritualizing predom-inant among those who killed animals by lethalinjection, and distancing more commonamong those who used gas.

As to whether any killing methodhas ever been easier on shelter workers asmeasured by either psychological studies orjob turnover rates, “There is not much evi-dence either way that I have seen,” HumaneSociety of the U.S. companion animal issuesdirector John Snyder told A N I M A LPEOPLE. “However, I have heard a numberof shelter workers say even though it may be alittle more work, they feel that sodium pento-barbital is more humane for the animal, andthey feel better using sodium pentobarbital toend the animal’s life.”

“Electrocution, hypoxic gasses suchas carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogena n d argon, and decompression became thepredominant methods of animal shelter killingby 1970,” recalls shelter consultanent andeuthanasia instructor Doug Fakkema. “All ofthe distance killing methods were an attempt toimprove the method of death as well asremove the operator from the actual killing.

“This is an absurd notion to be sure,”Fakkema told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “as any-one who has pushed the button on a chamberfull of animals knows full well that killing isgoing on. A similar movement in humanexecutions has been taking place since the 19thcentury, with the invention of the guillotine toreplace hanging or clubbing, then electrocu-tion, gassing, and finally lethal injection,” bya series of methods that are still evolving andoften challenged in court.

“In animal shelters,” Fakkema con-tinued, “carbon monoxide by gasoline enginewas replaced by decompression,” as the pur-ported best method, if not the method mostwidely used. “Then decompression wasreplaced by nitrogen gassing, then [back to]carbon monoxide using compressed, bottledgas,” which has the advantages of being rela-tively quietly administered and not burninganimals’ nasal passages and lungs, as exhaustfumes do if not properly cooled before intro-duction into the lethal chamber.

Many different approaches to lethalinjection were tried before sodium pentobarbi-tal became the standard killing drug.Magnesium sulphate gained brief acceptance,and is still commonly used in India and easternEurope, but was rejected in the U.S. because itvisibly causes animals to suffer. A paralyticinjectible drug called T-61 was commonlyused to kill mink on fur farms, and crossedover into shelter use, but also caused evidentsuffering, and was federally banned in 1986.

Sodium pentobarbital caught onslowly because it is a federally regulated barbi-tuate. “Euthanasia by [sodium pentobarbital]injection became legally difficult,” Fakkemaremembers, “when Congress passed the 1970Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention &Control Act, which permitted only mid-levelpractitioners such as physicians and veterinari-ans to have access to sodium pentobarbital. In1972 the Commonwealth of Virginal passedthe first of the direct registration laws to per-mit animal shelters to directly purchase sodiumpentobarbital, now a C-II controlled sub-stance. The Drug Enforcement Agency nowallows between 27 and 31 states to purchaseand administer sodium pentobarbital withoutusing a veterinarian’s DEA license. T h enumber varies depending on how one definesdirect registration.

“The trend is toward euthanasia byinjection,” Fakkema believes, calling ‘euthan-asia by injection’ “the preferred terminology,as ‘lethal injection’ evokes human e x e c u t i o nand does not involve the same drugs we use.”

But critics of high-volume shelterkilling, including Nathan Winograd of No KillSolutions, argue that the term “euthanasia”itself is inappropriately used to describe killinghealthy animals, and that people should take itas seriously as executing human convicts.

Street dog n Costa Rica. (Kim Bartlett)

(Karen Mediucus)

Will gassing come back? (from page 7)

After claims that gassing is safer foremployees, the most persistent argument forkilling animals by carbon monoxide instead ofsodium pentobarbital is that carbon monoxideis less expensive––if only because most of thegas chambers now in use were installed andpaid for decades ago.

“Switching to lethal injectionwould mean investing in drugs and trainingstaff,” reported Raleigh News & Observerstaff writer Marti Maguire in February 2006.“That could strap counties that now spend aslittle as $20 per animal. The Orange Countyshelter spends $150 per animal,” using lethalinjection, Maguire wrote.

Also in February 2006, AmericanSPCA Northeast Region shelter outreachmanager Sandra Monterose told Alicyn Leighof the Long Island Press that carbon monox-ide, as used in Freeport, was less expensivethan “injection of sodium pentobarbital withthe use of pre-euthanasia anesthetics by atrained professional.”

Friends of the Columbus CountyAnimal Shelter volunteer veterinarian JohnStih, of Whiteville, North Carolina, told

Deuce Niven of the Fayetteville Observer i nMay 2006 that gassing is more cost-effectivethan injection, at $10-$12 per injection.

Columbus County animal controldirector Rossie Hayes told Niven that theshelter pays about $130 per month for bottledcarbon monoxide.

Doug Fakkema does not buy theclaims. “As an 18-plus year shelter director,including serving as shelter supervisor atMultnomah County Animal Control inPortland,” among the larger shelters in theU.S., “and as a 17-year animal care and con-t r o l consultant,” Fakkema told A N I M A LP E O P L E, “I am familiar with costing outprograms. I can say without any hesitationthat the estimate of $150 per dog to euthanizeby injection is ridiculous.

“Fatal Plus [the top brand of sodiumpentobarbital] costs $0.18 per milliliter. Asyringe and needle costs $0.13, PreMix (keta-m i n e / x y l a z i n e) $0.40 per milliliter. Withdoses calculated, the cost for euthanizing an80-pound methadrine-fed pit bull would be$1.92 for 4.8 milliliters of PreMix, $0.13 forthe syringe and needle, and $1.44 for eight

milliliters of Fatal Plus, for a total of $3.49. “To suggest that training i n c r e a s e s

the cost by $146-plus per animal is absurd,”Fakkema said. “Dare I say the person draw-ing those numbers must be drawing them outof a hat? If a shelter does euthanasia by injec-tion on a thousand dogs per year, t h e naccording to that figure, it must spend$150,000 for euthanasia. You could hire twofull-time vets for that money and equip am i g h t y fancy euthanasia room! And youwouldn’t have to spend any training money.

“Yes, it costs money to train staffto perform euthanasia by injection,” Fakkemaacknowledged. “But this is a one-time costwhich is spread out over the number of ani-mals euthanized. The amount of wages paiddoesn’t make a whole lot of difference. Mycost model shows that wage differencesimpact the cost per animal only a little.

“The shelter here in Charleston,”Fakkema concluded, “euthanized by injec-tion 10,000 animals in 2002, at a cost of$15,300. The cost would have been $1.5 mil-lion dollars according to the $150 per animalestimate. That’s almost their entire budget.”

Comparing costs of carbon monoxide v.s. sodium pentobarbital

Injectible femalechemosterilant

goes to field trials

LONDON, TRENTON– – F i v ealleged instigators of property damage andthreats directed at facilities, business part-ners, and employees of Huntingdon LifeSciences in mid-September 2006 drewprison terms ranging from three to six years.

Northampton Crown Court JudgeIan Alexander on September 20 sentencedmolecular biologist Joseph Harris, 26, tothree years as the first person convictedunder a new British law against economicsabotage.

“Harris, of Bursledon, Hampshire,broke into premises in Nottingham, Bicesterand Northampton,” summarized NicolaWoolcock of the London Times, “where heslashed tires, flooded offices, and pouredglue into locks. He caused more than£25,000 in damage.” Harris apparentlybegan the attacks in a futile bid to keep agirlfriend who left him, the court was told,because of animal experiments he did inconnection with pancreatic cancer research.

In Trenton, New Jersey, formerStop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA pres-ident Kevin Kjonaas, 28, drew six years;former SHAC campaign coordinator LaurenGazzola, 25, drew 52 months; formerSHAC web site manager Jacob Conroy, 30,drew 48 months; former SHAC west coastcoordinator Joshua Harper and formerSHAC New York coordinator AndrewStepanian each drew 36 months; and formerSHAC researcher Darius Fullmer received ayear and a day. All were also ordered tohelp pay $1 million in restitution to the peo-ple and companies they were convicted inMarch 2006 of harassing.

Kjonaas and SHAC spokespersonAndrea Lindsay told reporters that the sen-tences would be appealed. Lindsay addedthat the restitution would not be paidbecause SHAC as an organization is defunctand has no assets.

Operating animal testing labs inboth Britain and the U.S., Huntingdon hasbeen a sporadic focus of antivivisectionprotest since 1972, and virtually besiegedsince the July 1997 television airing of anundercover video made at the British facili-ties, which led to the firing and convictionsfor cruelty of two technicians who wereshown allegedly punching a beagle.

SHAC leaders sentencedin Britain & New Jersey

Frist’s office subsequently refused torelease a copy of his specific regulatory pro-posals to news media, but Schrade andT e n n e s s e a n colleague Sarah B. Gilliamobtained a copy anyway.

The Frist request, co-signed bySenator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia),“would decriminalize certain behavior that iscurrently illegal, thereby protecting ownersand trainers and not horses,” Friends of SoundHorses executive director Keith Danes toldSchrade.

The Frist proposals were endorsedby attorney Tom Blankenship, who represent-ed the National Horse Protection Society in aposting to the Walking Horse Report web site.Blankenship earlier argued for relaxing thesoring rule as representative of the WalkingHorse Trainers Association.

Summarized Schrade and Gilliam,“The [proposed] new language, in part, morenarrowly defines soring as evidence of injuryor irritation, with current ‘pain, swelling,redness, heat or loss of function.’”

In effect, it limits the definiton ofsoring to current inflammation, without regardto past suffering inflicted on a horse. “It com-pletely eliminates the existing regulationreferred to as the scar rule,” Horse ProtectionCommission administrative director DonnaBenefield told Schrade and Gilliam.

Both Danes and Benefield are them-selves veteran walking horse inspectors.

USDA stands firm“Where compliance fails, the USDA

will enforce the Horse Protection Act,”responded USDA deputy administrator of ani-mal care Chester Gipson, DVM, at a Sept-ember 11 “listening session” in Chattanooga.

“We’re truly at the crossroads,”Gipson continued, “and the industry needs tomake some determinations, some decisionsabout which way they are going. We are notgoing backward. So from our standpoint,we’re going forward. You,” Gipson told theassembled trainers and owners, “have todecide which direction you’re going.”

Listening session participants disput-ed whether the Horse Protection Act had trulysucceeded in eliminating “90%” of the abusesseen 30 years ago, as trainer Mack Motes con-tended, displaying old photos of abused hors-es, or whether trainers had simply becomebetter at concealing the evidence, as 35-yearhorse enthusiast Lucille Davis argued.

“There is an obvious problem whenhorses pass inspection on the scar rule onenight, then fail inspections two nights later,”Motes claimed. “There were three times moredisagreements between the National HorseShow Commission inspectors and the USDAinspectors at the 2006 Celebration, comparedto 2005.”

But alleged abuses observed at the2005 Celebration produced the 2006 crack-down. “At the 2005 Celebration,” explainedSchrade, “the USDA used a device that testshorses for prohibitive substances, such asnumbing agents and irritants, that may suggestsoring. More than half of 92 samples (54.3%)tested positive. The same device used at the2005 Kentucky Celebration found 100% of the25 horses sampled” had been treated with “oneor more prohibited substances.”

“Weeks before the 2006 Celeb-ration,” Schrade continued, USDA chiefhorse protection regulator Todd Behre “told anowner he was ‘stunned at the condition ofhorses’ that industry-hired regulators hadallowed in Walking Horse competitionsthroughout Middle Tennessee the previousweekend, according to an e-mail exchangebetween the two.

“Exhibitors and trainers were attimes bolting from shows when regulatorsshowed up,” Schrade continued. “The USDAinspection teams last year started attendingmore than one show event in a weekend, apractice that continued this year, Behre said.That means it is less predictable where federalregulators will be.”

“Hearing trainers say ‘we don’tknow what to do about the scar rule’ has

grown a little old,” Behre said in an e-mailposted to The Walking Horse Report web page.

“Friction over interpretations ofUSDA scarring rules have plagued walkinghorse events all season,” summarized Pat Raiaof The Horse, “but came to a head at theTennessee Walking Horse NationalCelebration, when USDA inspectors issued225 notices of violation and disqualifications.”

The Horse Protection Act bannedsoring in 1970, but since the walking horseindustry itself trains and pays the “designatedqualified professionals” who inspect for sor-ing, humane observers have often doubted thevigor of enforcement.

That changed abruptly on August 25,2006. Then, wrote Raia, “Event organizerstemporarily halted competition and postponedpreliminary classes, at the request of trainerswho complained that ‘inspections were gettingout of hand,’ according to Celebration publicand media relations director Chip Walters.”

Elaborated Schrade, “USDA inspec-tors disqualified six out of approximately 10horses they inspected, spurring near bedlamthat eventually led event organizers to cancelthat night’s performance, as well as the nextmorning’s. The dispute turned so intense thatthe Tennessee Highway Patrol called in stateand local reinforcements to create a wall oflaw officers to keep an angry crowd of walkinghorse enthusiasts separated from the regula-tors, before the federal staffers could leave.The flap erupted further when the GrandChampionship contest was cancelled.”

Celebration CEO Ron Thomas toldreporters at the time that said they understoodthat the trainers and owners of the three cham-pionship round horses who passed inspectionshad refused to compete without the others.

Rebutted Allen McAbee, whosehorse passed, “We were not contacted orasked by anybody if we wanted to show. Wedon’t know who shut the show down. Weweren’t given an option; they didn’t ask me.”

Thomas told Schrade that the showofficials could not talk directly tto the ownersand trainers of the three qualified horsesbecause, “You can’t get through an angry mobof 150 people.”

A Celebration news release said thatTennessee Highway Patrol officers “were con-fident they could protect the safety of the peo-ple working in the inspection area, but did nothave the manpower to assure the health andsafety of the 26,000 spectators, exhibitors andhorses,” Schrade summarized.

About 3,400 horses took part in theNational Celebration.

Officers with the Bedford CountySheriff’s Department, the Shelbyville PoliceDepartment, and the Celebration’s own secu-rity guards joined about 30 highway patrolofficers in trying to secure the scene,Department of Safety spokesperson JulieOakes told the Tennessean.

“The crowd was a consideration, butnot the reason for the shutdown,” Oakes said.

“How can the highway patrol stop ahorse show? We didn’t start it and we can’tstop it,” added Tennessee Highway PatrolLieutenant Johnny Hunter, to Sarah B.Gilliam of the Tennessean. “Everybody’s justpassing the buck.”

Money talksAmid the heavily publicized furor,

the Kentucky Walking Horse Association can-celled the Kentucky Walking HorseCelebration that was to have been held inLiberty, Kentucky, September 21-23.

“It’s not a protest,” KentuckyWalking Horse Association president EarlRogers Jr. told Raia. “It’s that we felt wecouldn’t make any money. Many of the com-petitors could not come because they wereeither suspended or banned from shows.”

The Tennessee Walking HorseBreeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association toldAssociated Press writer Kristin M. Hall onSeptember 21, 2006 that it will hold a newnational championship in Murfreesboro,Tennessee, on November 24-25.

Offering $150,000 in prize money,divided among 50 different classes, with$15,000 for the grand champion, “The Mur-freesboro contest will be open to horse ownerMike Walden, who has been banned from theCelebration for two years after accusations thathe offered $10,000 to trainers of competinghorses if they dropped out of the championshipearlier this month,” reported Schrade.

“Walden’s horse, Private Charter,was a favorite to win the grand championshipat the National Celebration,” continued

Schrade, “but was among the horses in thetitle round that were disqualified by federalinspectors looking for signs of possible soring.Whether Walden and Private Charter will com-pete [in Murfreesboro] is unclear.”

Walden’s version of the incident wasthat he was “led to believe” that the owners ofthe horses who passed inspection “did notwant to show as a sign of unity. The guyswere riding for the money, and I said ownersshould get together and pay for the reimburse-ment for what the winnings would be, andunite and not show. It was not my intentionthat I was paying them not to show,” he toldGilliam and Schrade.

The owners and trainers of the hors-es who passed all told the Tennessean that theyhad intended to compete, until the show wascancelled.

The Walden case was “not the firsttime that allegations of money and influencethreatened the Celebration’s image,” Schradeand Gilliam recalled. “Allegations arose inconnection with the 1997 Celebration that ahorse trainer tried to bribe a judge. The trainerwas later fined $25,000 and the judge $20,000in a 1999 settlement that contained no admis-sion or denial of the charges.”

Rabies, tooCapping the Shelbyville fiasco, the

Tennessee Department of Health on September10 warned about 4,200 National Celebrationattendees from 34 states that an exhibitedhorse from Missouri had turned out to berabid. Apparently bitten by a rabid bat whilestill in Missouri, the three-year-old geldingfell ill on August 23, the first day of theNational Celebration, and was euthanizedafter rabies was diagnosed on August 28.

“I keep preaching to rabies-vaccinatehorses and cows,” Texas A&M UniversityCollege of Veterinary Medicine professorTam Garland commented to ANIMAL PEO-PLE. “Maybe some day people will not thinkI am crazy for doing it. I hand-feed my cows,the big pets, and I always vaccinate them.

“Many people hand feed their horsesa treat or handful of feed. That alone,” whichexposes the person to potentially infected sali-

va, “should make us vaccinate every horse.Having our hands in an animal’s mouth canexpose us to the rabies virus earlier than theanimal may demonstrate clinical signs. Thecheapest insurance for protecting oneself andthe animals they love is vaccination.”

Drugging allegationSoring horses to produce high-step-

ping is a practice unique to walking horsetrainers, but abusive practices also afflict otherbranches of horse exhibition. Also in earlySeptember, for example, the British ShowJumping Association asked the Jersey Police toinvestigate an allegation that Kim Baudains,36, fed a sedative to rivals’ ponies in anattempt to help her 11-year-old son Josh winthe under-16 Young Showjumper of the Yearfinal against Timmy Clark, 13.

“The event was cancelled over safetyconcerns after a tablet suspected of being theveterinary sedative acetylpromazine was foundon the ground. Some owners complained thattheir ponies were drowsy,” reported RichardSavill of the Daily Telegraph. “The worstaffected pony, Flying Sunbeam, which wasnot the subject of the complaint, was reported-ly unsteady on its feet.”

Flying Sunbeam is Clark’s pony,Savill wrote.

According to Savill, “Josh Baudainshas been riding since he was two and won hisfirst championship at five. He has won twotrophies on the junior novice British circuit inthe past 12 months. Mrs. Baudains rode herfirst point-to-point winner at the age of 16.”

Lucy Bannerman of the LondonT i m e s reported that Kim Baudains was “con-fined to bed,” according to her mother,“receiving medication as a result of stress fromthe allegations.”

“As long as there is competition,there will be cruelty,” equine care and trans-port expert Sharon Cregier commented toANIMAL PEOPLE. Working from PrinceEdward Island, Canada, Cregier consultsabout horse protection issues throughout theworld. “Kudos,” Cregier extended, “to theinspectors who saw those horses out of thechampionships.”

++


Walking horse industry quick-steps after failed soring inspections (from page 1)

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“Lawrence of the hyenas” talks Lord’s Resistance Army into sparing rhinos

Oct. 6-8: The Strengthof Many c o n f e r e n c e ,Los Angeles. Info:Animals & Soc. Inst.,<www.animalsandsoci-ety.org>.Oct. 8: Win for Animalsparties for Humane Soc.Leg. Fund. Info:<[email protected]>; <www.fund.org>.Oct. 8-11: Intl. FelineRetrovirus ResearchS y m p o s i u m , W a s h .D.C. Info:<ifrrs8.ncifrf.gov>.Oct. 9-13: Animal artretreat, Best Friends,Kanab, Utah. Info:435-644-2001, x166;< d o r e e n @ -bestfriends.org>.Oct. 13-15: Animal LawConf., Lewis & Clark LawSchool, Portland, Ore-gon. Info: 503-768-6795; <jsaldf@-l c l a r k . e d u > ;< w w w . l c l a r k . e d u / -org/saldf/conference.html>.Oct. 14: Ruffin’ It, c o -presentation by AngelHalls & United AgainstPuppy Mills, Lancaster,Pa. Info: 703-424-7238; <angelhal l -dogs@yahoo . com> ;<www.angelhalls.org>.Oct. 14: D o g t o b e r f e s tdog walk for First CoastNo More Homeless Pets,Jacksonville, Fla. Info:904-674-7387; <[email protected]>.Oct. 14: Phuket AnimalWelfare Society fundrais-er, Phuket, Thailand.Info: 081-597-9416;6 6 - 8 1 - 5 9 7 - 9 4 1 6 ;<athena@phuket-ani-mal-welfare-com>.October 14-15: How toStart, Operate & DevelopFarmed Animal Sanctu-a r i e s , Animal Acres,Acton, Calif. Info: 661-269-5404; <www.ani-malacres.org>.Oct. 16-18: Intl. Cong-ress on Concepts in

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“Lawrence Anthony, founder of theSouth African environmental group The EarthOrganisation, has persuaded the Lord’sResistance Army to join with scientists to pro-tect the northern white rhino, of which onlyfour are thought to remain in the wild,”London G u a r d i a n environment correspondentDavid Adam reported on September 13, 2006.

“As part of an ongoing peaceprocess,” Adam continued, “the rebels havepledged not to harm the animals and to tellwildlife experts if they see one.”

The LRA in 2005 invaded Garambanational park, “a sprawling and denselyforested reserve close to the Ugandan border inthe far northeast of the Democratic Republic ofCongo,” Adam explained. “The LRA is noto-rious for use of child soldiers and has beenaccused of atrocities including rapes, mutila-tions and the mass murder of civilians.Conservation seemed far from its priorities,

particularly after members shot dead 12 gamerangers and eight Guatemalan UN soldiers sentto the region to keep order.”

However, Anthony told Adam,“We heard that the political wing of the LRAand the Ugandan government were havingpeace talks in Sudan. We got word that someof the LRA leaders had come out of theGaramba jungle to join the talks and decidedto try to talk to them. The LRA chair for thetalks, Martin Ojul, was pointed out to me.During a break in the talks, I simply walkedup to him, introduced myself, and explainedthe reason for my visit. His initial responsewas distrust, covert hostility and no interest,”but the next day Anthony was invited to talk tothe rebels about the rhinos in their ownencampment.

Ignoring warnings that he might beheld for ransom, Adam wrote, Anthonylearned from the rebels that the rhino is the

totem of the largest tribe in the region. “I was surprised that despite the

LRA’s fearsome reputation some of the dele-gates were well-educated, articulate andfriendly,” Anthony said. “When I explainedthere were only four rhinos left in the wildthey were genuinely shocked. They thoughtthere were still hundreds of them. They saidthey did not eat rhino and did not use the hornfor medicinal purposes. They said they allgrew up in the bush and had strong culturalties to all wildlife.”

Concluded Adam, “When the LRAofficials signed a ceasefire with the DRC gov-ernment, it included pledges to protect theendangered rhino and to allow the park rangersto resume their work unmolested.”

Anthony, legendary among Africanwildlife researchers as “Lawrence of the hye-nas,” became known to the world when inApril 2003 he made his way to Baghdad from

Kuwait, soon after the U.S. invasion of Iraq,to begin rescue efforts at the Baghdad Zoo.

The LRA cooperation with Anthonyfollowed the surrender of “at least 1,181poachers in the six districts surroundingMurchison Falls National Park to the UgandaWildlife Authority in the last one and a halfyears,” including 600 who surrendered tosenior park game warden Stonewall Kato onSeptember 1, reported Carolyn Ayugi andColumbus Ono of the Kampala Monitor.

In Rwanda, meanwhile, “Barelytwo months after announcing the extinction ofrhinos in Rwanda, a black rhino has been seenin Akagera National Park,” reported RobertMukombozi of the Kigali New Times.

The Rwandan government immedi-ately allocated $600,000 toward reintroducingadditional rhinos, to be imported from Kenyaand South Africa for phased releases eachspring until 2015.

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Animal Welfare, Rio deJ a n e i r o . Info: <wspabr-z l @ - i i s . c o m . b r > ;<www.wspabr.org>. Oct. 25-27: I n t e r n a t i o n a lCompanion Animal Wel-fare Conference, L j u b -lijana, Slovenia. Info: 44-0 2 0 - 7 8 3 7 - 0 0 0 6 ;< t i n a . b a r k e r @ d o g s -t r u s t . o r g . u k > ;<www.icawc.org.uk>.

(continued on page 13)Oct. 26-27: Animal Wel-fare Conference 2006,Michigan Partnership forAnimal Welfare, Acme,Michigan. Info: MonicaCelizic, 248-799-7487;<[email protected]>; <www.michi-ganhumane.org>.Oct. 27-29: World Go Veg-an Days. Info:< w w w . W o r l d -GoVeganDays.com>.Oct. 28: Walk/Run for ani -mals & Expo, Atlanta. Info:770-455-7077; <info@-a t l a n t a -w a l k 4 a n i m a l s . c o m > ;<www.at lantawalk4ani -mals.com>.Oct. 28: Beyond Draculadrama fund-raiser for Rom-ania Animal Rescue, SanFrancisco. Info: <romania-dogs@sbcgloba l .net>;<www.romaniaanimalres-cue.com>.Oct. 30-Nov. 2: I n t l .Colloquium on WorkingEquines in Ethiopia, AddisAbaba. Info: The DonkeySanctuary, Sidmouth,Devon, EX10 0NU; 44-1395-578222; <[email protected]>; <www.the-donkeysanctuary.org.uk>.Nov. 2: Johns HopkinsCenter for Alternatives toAnimal Testing sympo -s i u m, Balt imore. Info:

More events(from page 10)

Harsh monsoons test rescuersMore than 60 organizations demonstrated outside Japanese embassies and

consulates in 32 cities against “traditional” coastal whaling on September 20, 2006,the second annual Japan Dolphin Day declared and coordinated by Ric O’Barry ofOne Voice. Most notoriously practiced at Taiji, the coastal whaling method con-sists of driving dolphins into shallow bays from which they cannot escape and thenhacking them to death en massé, after some are selected for live capture and sale toswim-with-dolphins attractions and exhibition parks.

The so-called “drive fisheries” have been protested for more than 30years by marine mammal advocates including Sakei Hemmi of the Elsa NatureConservancy/Japan, film maker Hardin Jones, Sea Shepherd Conservation Societyfounder Paul Watson, and Steve Sipman, who invented the name “AnimalLiberation Front” in connection with releasing two dolphins from a Hawaiian labo-ratory in 1976. The Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks & Aquariums and theAmerican Zoo & Aquarium Association finally issued statements of objection tothe “drive fisheries” in March 2004, as did the World Association of Zoos &Aquariums in June 2006.

“The Japanese dolphin drive hunts are an abominable violation of anystandard of animal welfare,” said New York Aquarium marine mammal researchdirector Diana Reiss in a September 21, 2006 media statement, announcing “anew campaign to end the drive hunts.” A supporting statement came from EmoryUniversity neuroscientist Lori Marino.

Responded O’Barry, after thanking activist groups for their support, “Iam very happy that the captivity industry is getting involved. If the industry start-ed policing itself, that would be helpful. It could change the economics of the dol-phin drive. A dead dolphin is worth $600; a live show dolphin is worth $ 100,000.

“These corporations make hundreds of millions of dollars displayingwildlife, including dolphins,” O’Barry fumed. “The Wildlife ConservationSociety,” which operates the New York Aquarium and the four major New YorkCity zoos, “has enough money and clout to stop the dolphin slaughter, and therelated dolphin captures, any time they want to,” O’Barry contended in a series ofe-mails to ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Marine mammal exhibitors join protestagainst Japanese coastal dolphin killing

V I S A K H A P A T N A M––At least 49 peo-ple were reported dead in Bangladesh and 46 inIndia on September 22, 2006, following the ninthcyclone to hit the western coast of the Bay of Bengalin as many weeks. The animal toll was not immedi-ately available.

“We are hoping to get some help to add toour efforts,” e-mailed Visakha SPCA presidentPradeep Kumar Nath. “Help is needed urgently forfeed.”

The Visakha SPCA continued assistinganimals elsewhere along the stricken Bengal coastwhile rebuilding its own facilities, destroyed by acyclone and landslides on August 3, just 11 monthsafter a typhoon destroyed the previous facilities inSeptember 2005.

“We send our deepest gratitude from theanimals and villagers for the flood relief help wehave received from the World Society for theProtection of Animals and individual donors,” Nathsaid before the ninth cyclone hit. “So far we havebeen able to help more than 27,000 animals withover 66 ton of food, vaccinations, wound treatmentand deworming.”

The rising Vamsadhara River isolatedsome villages for as long as 10 days, Nath reported,“with broken roads, bridges, and in some areas amile of chest-high water. The villagers have to walkup to nine kilometers to receive help. “

The Visakha SPCA had two mobile veteri-nary teams working in the Vamsadhara andSrikakulam regions. An unpleasant discovery amid

the difficult conditions was an outbreak of bluetongue, a cattle disease best known in Africa, previ-ously believed to have been eradicated almost every-where else but also now occurring in theNetherlands, Belgium, France, and Germany.Rescuers and residents were also menaced by thepreviously rare debilitating mosquito-borne diseaseChikungunya fever.

Trying to reach 15 marooned villages on adamaged road, “Our lorry fell into the river betweenVizianagaram and Srikakaulam,” Nath said. “Thestaff of four miraculously escaped while the lorrywas precariously perched on one side. We sum-moned a crane to lift it out of the river. All weresafe, although shaken, and continued their vacci-nation work. Then our men, including the vet,went through the standing waters walking over 3miles to reach one village. Despite the difficulties,they completed their mission.”

A similar report came from Mahesh Agar-wal, general secretary of Bharatiya Prani MitraSangh, who worked in nearby Andhra Pradesh.

“Nearly 160 villages lost dry grass andanimal fodder,” Mahesh Agarwal wrote.“Officially 100 animals were declared dead, with800 missing, but unofficially the figure runs into thethousands. Nearly one month after the disaster thedead bodies of animals were still seen in the riverand thousands of animals were temporarily shelteredon hillocks and bridges. After 25 days of floodingwe were the first to enter a few villages to distribute


fodder and medical aid to the animals.”Violent stampedes broke out several

times as fodder was passed out, MaheshAgarwal recounted.

Assessments from farther inlandcame from Humane Society International rep-resentative Sherry Grant and Rahul Sehgal,founder of Animal Help in Emergencies AndDisasters. AHEAD is the first Indian organi-zation to specialize in animal disaster relief.

Grant earlier founded the Bali StreetDog Project in Indonesia, while Seghal found-ed Animal Help Ahmedabad.

“All of the fodder land in [the afflict-ed part of] Orissa is gone. Most mud sheltersfor cattle are destroyed. Standing crops aregone, which impacts the fodder supply postharvest for late 2006 and early 2007,” Grantand Sehgal wrote. “Animals have been beenbirthing, and the lack of grazing and fodderavailability affects milk production, hencecompromises the health of the offspring,” aswell as impacting the human food supply.”

A government report estimated that235,000 cattle, more than 9,000 buffalo,53,000 “small animals,” and 66,000 “others”were affected.

“Animals washed downstream areclaimed by the villages they washed up into.This is creating problems as these animals arenot branded,” Grant and Sehgal observed.

They saw “no other internationalcharities on the scene. Indiahas turned away humanitari-an charities guilty of comingin, taking pictures, and thenleaving,” Grant and Sehgalsaid. “Only two local ani-mal charities with minimalresources are respondingwith fodder. The govern-ment delivered fodder tosome areas we visited, butothers have received none.Government vets have notbeen to inspect the health ofthe animals in any of theaffected areas, according toall of the villages weassessed.”

“We are not talk-ing of the coastal areas,”Grant and Sehgal empha-sized, “which are regularlyhit by floods and cyclones;we are talking about theinland areas which usuallyget normal monsoon rainsthat they depend on andmanage as the water source

for their crops and cattle. These are very poorrural villages self-sustained by dairy and woolproduction, and rice fields. This is not aregion that produces handicrafts. These vil-lages do not use cars, and few motorbikeswere seen, but lots of bicycles and bullockcarts. Many buildings have never had tele-phone lines or electricity. Those who had thisinfrastructure no longer have it, as it has beenruined. This is a difficult area to use cellphones in, as there is generally no signal.

“Fodder originally distributed on thehighway was taken by refugees and used tomake roofs on temporary shelters for them-selves,” Grant and Sehgal continued. “PeopleFor Animals is providing some villages withbags of husk fodder that is mixed with waterand vegetable cuttings, such as peels and tops.We assessed the fodder distribution to animalswho had not had food in the four days sincethe last PFA visit. The animals ate the food ina mater of minutes. They were very hungry.Cows were neck-deep in water looking forfodder and eating water hyacinth and anythingelse green.

“The animals are not showing signsof sickness associated with flooding and beingwet for such a long time,” Grant and Sehgalwrote, contrasting the situation withRajasthan, on the opposite side of India, nor-mally a desert but hit hard by flooding inAugust 2006.

“Rajasthan still needs herds treated,”Grant told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “They arevery sick whereas in Orissa the animals are fitbut have no place to graze.”

Grant and Sehgal recommended thatexperts should “Evaluate potential disease orillnesses that may affect the animals in the nearfuture and provide preventative care,” and“Research for future understanding why these

animals are not showing typical signs of stressand illness from flood situations.”

Ironically, Grant and Sehgal noted,“Villagers claim sick animals and want vac-cines. But this is not part of the emergency,and they don’t normally vaccinate.”

Grant and Sehgal also recommend-ed, “Community capacity-building to managedry fodder stores for future floods.”

++


Harsh monsoons test rescuers (from page 1)

Struggling to evacuate cattle from flooded Orissa village. (Sherry Grant)

In honor of the ProphetIsaiah, St. Martin De

Porres and Cesar Chavez.––Brien Comerford

–––––––––––––––––––––

TRIBUTES

More events(from page 11)

410-223-1614; <[email protected]>.Nov. 9-12: Alliance forContraception in Cats &Dogs 3rd Intl.S y m p o s i u m, A l e x a n d r i a ,Va. Info: <[email protected]>; <www.acc-d.org/>.November 9-12: Art ofthe Animal, Golf Coast,Australia. Info: 61-3735-7338; <[email protected]>.Nov. 11: Awareness Day,Asociacion des Animalesde Sosua, Sosúa, PuertoPlata, Dominican Rep.I n f o :<www.aaasosua.com>.Nov. 18: Trail ride benefitfor Meadow Haven HorseRescue, Bandera, Texas.

BEIRUT, HAIFA––More than a month afterHezbollah militia members quit rocketing northern Israel andIsrael quit bombing southern Lebanon to try to stop them, ani-mal rescuers continued efforts begun under fire to help themany nonhuman victims.

Best Friends Animal Society rapid response managerRichard Crook, a Chilean veterinarian, and a vet tech flew toLebanon on September 7, 2006 with 175 pounds of kitten food,along with veterinary supplies, en route to help arrange theevacuation of about 300 dogs and cats to the U.S.

Calling the evacuation “Paws for Peace,” BestFriends reportedly raised $182,000 of the estimated $300,000cost of that project and other rescue work in Lebanon and Israelbefore Crook’s departure.

“Maggie from Beirut for the Ethical Treatment ofAnimals (cofounder Marguerite Shaarawai), called us with anemergency,” e-mailed Best Friends president MichaelMountain. “No kitten food. And nothing available from othercountries in the region. We tried Turkey, Cyprus, Greece.Nothing! And while there are tons, literally, just across theborder in Israel, it’s impossible to bring it in from there. We’reaiming to set up a supply from western Europe, but that willtake time. And the kittens can’t wait.”

The continuing disruption on the Israeli side was less,but only in mid-September did many of the front-line rescuersfind time to tell their stories.

“Our former shelter manager, Sharon Lewinger, andhis two friends Moti Sherman and Liat Gettagno, heard aboutthe plight of abandoned animals in the northern communities,where many families fled the continuous rocket attacks,”Rehovot SPCA international relations coordinator V. Santartold ANIMAL PEOPLE. “The three of them collected fundsto buy plenty of food for the animals, and traveled north to dis-tribute the food. They took the city map of Kiryat Shmone, thetown most continuously bombed and shelled, divided everystreet among themselves, and left food for the stray dogs, andvisited every shelter for the same purpose. When they learnedthat the children in the air raid shelter also lacked food, they

traveled south to the safer places and bought basic food to giveto the hungry ones. They also visited invalids and old people.One was a blind old man with three dogs and a parrot. Theyleft him a week’s supply to last until their next visit. They vis-ited Kiryat Shmone twice, always under heavy shelling,bombs falling around them.

“The Rehovat SPCA rescue van, donated by theRoyal SPCA International, was on heavy duty,” Santar added,bringing two lots of seven dogs each on 10-hour round trips tothe north and back after the fighting ended.

“Unfortunately,” Santar said, “most of the dogsarrived without a tag or microchip, so we do not know whotheir people are.” Santar noted that one dog was reunited withhis person on August 28.

“It was an honor to serve the people of the north byhelping to find temporary solutions for their dogs, cats, andother pets,” recounted Let The Animals Live cofounder EliAltman. “Some 600 people asked us to find temporary domi-ciles for pets who sadly could not join them in central andsouthern Israel. Some 1,500 good people called us or emailed,offering their services,” fostering the displaced animals.

“Many people volunteered to help drive dogs and catsfrom the north southward,” Altman continued. “In some casespeople drove to the bombarded north just to save a small rabbitor a blind cat.”

Among the rescues that Altman recalled most vividlywas one that “occurred in the first week of the war. A man inthe army reserve told us about parents and three children, whotied their dog to a post, got up on a train and went south. Thedog managed to free himself from the rope and ran after thetrain as fast as he could. The man ran after the dog for a fewkilometers, until he managed to catch it. The dog is now ingood hands. I am worried about the children of the family. Ithink about how they might have cried on the train, about thetrauma their parents forced on them, about the ugly examplethese parents gave to their children, and about how these chil-dren will never know what happened to their beloved dog.”

Altman reported one frustrating incident when,

“Seeking ways to ease the difficult situation in the city ofTiberias, Let The Animals Live staff member Anat Refua con-tacted city veterinarian Amnon Or and proposed to help findinghomes for 24 abandoned dogs at the pound, who were likely tobe put down.”

Or refused the offer, causing Let The Animals Liveto seek his removal from office.

Scarce wildlife habitat in both Lebanon and Israeltook a big hit from the July and August 2006 fighting.

“Huge swaths of forests and fields across northernIsrael were scorched by Hezbollah rocket strikes,” reportedAssociated Press writer Aron Heller. “Charred branches stickout of the ground like grave markers at the Mount NaftaliForest overlooking Kiryat Shemona. In all, rocket firedestroyed 16,500 acres of forests and grazing fields, said


++

Lebanon war animal victims still need help

Eli Altman of Let The Animals Live.

Jewish National Fund forestsupervisor Michael Weinberg-er, the top administrator ofIsrael’s forests. About a mil-lion trees were destroyed.

“The Mount NaftaliForest,” planted by Israeli set-tlers in 1948, “was hit by rock-ets earlier,” Heller continued.“Afternoon gusts carried theflames, wiping out 750 acresand trapping gazelles, jackals,rabbits and snakes.”

Less than an hour’sdrive north in peacetime,Lebanese environment ministerYacoub Sarraf could only help-lessly watch fuel oil from thebombed Jiyyeh power stationspread along the coast. The sta-tion was hit by Israeli jets onJuly 13 and 15.

“”We cannot getequipment, companies, labouror know-how to handle theproblem,” Sarraff told BBCscience and nature reporterMark Kinver on August 8.“Intervention can help mostwithin the first 48 to 72 hoursafter a spill. We are already 20days too late.”

The oil-exportingconsortium OPEC committed$200,000 to clean-up efforts inearly August, but the spill con-tinued spreading, unchecked,into September, coating seaturtle nesting habitat and accu-mulating to a depth of fourinches on the sea bed, accord-ing to divers who did a late-August inspection. Poisonedfish reportedly washed ashorealong the length of Lebanon.

War hurts wildlife

Please make the most generous gift youcan to help ANIMALPEOPLE shine the

bright light on cru-elty and greed! Yourgenerous gift of

$25, $50, $100, $500or more helps to

build a world wherecaring counts.Please send your

check to:

ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960Clinton, WA

98236

SAN ANTONIO––Bexar County Civil District CourtJudge Andy Mireles on September 8, 2006 ruled that formerOhio State University chimp caretakers Klaree Boose andStephany Harris, along with California veterinarian MelRichardson, lacked standing to pursue a PETA-backed lawsuitagainst the Primarily Primates sanctuary.

Named as co-plaintiffs and also denied standing wereseven surviving chimpanzees and two capuchin monkeys fromthe research colony formerly kept by OSU psychology profes-sor Sally Boysen. OSU retired the colony to Primarily Primatesin February 2006, with an endowment of $324,000 for theirquarters and upkeep, over the objections of Boysen and PETA.

Judge Mireles also dismissed the recommendation ofattorney Charles Jackson III, whom Mireles earlier appointedto oversee the care of the OSU animals, that the chimpanzeesshould be transferred to Chimp Haven, of Shreveport,Louisiana. PETA attorney Leana Stormont told ElizabethWhite of Associated Press that PETA had offered pay $20,000toward the cost of the relocation and aftercare.

One adult male chimp died on arrival at PrimarilyPrimates and another died two months later, both from pre-

existing heart ailments. One of the monkeys escaped and hasnot been recaptured.

“We will be filing an appeal; this is far from over,”PETA-hired attorney Mickey Gayler told Mike Lafferty of theColumbus Dispatch.

Mireles ruled five days after Primarily Primates inter-im executive director Stephen Tello told Mireles that thePrimarily Primates seven-member board of trustees had unani-mously rejected a proposed out-of-court settlement that wouldhave sent the OSU chimps to Chimp Haven, while leaving themonkeys at Primarily Primates.

Wally Swett, president and executive director ofPrimarily Primates since 1978, when he relocated a muchsmaller sanctuary from Massachusetts to San Antonio, “is stillon the board, but has resigned as president and executive direc-tor,” American Sanctuary Association executive directorVernon Weir told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “He will be given apresident emeritus contract, which will enumerate his futureduties in an advisory capacity––animal histories, health careand behavior issues, socialization issues, fundraising assis-tance, and the like. That’s still being worked out,” Weir said.

“Because the PETA complaints seem to focus onWally’s behavior, it was his decision to step down, in the bestinterest of the sanctuary,” Weir continued. “Stephen Tello,”Swett’s assistant for more than 10 years, “has returned and isworking there every day, full time. We have Stephen, andother candidates, who are applying for the permanent job. “

Weir, who has often acted as a spokesperson forPrimarily Primates, said the choice of a permanent successor“will be decided at the October 6 board meeting.”

As well as Tello, the Primarily Primates boardincludes Lou Griffin, the founding director of the nearby SouthTexas Primate Observatory, which after 20 years of indepen-dent operation became the Animal Protection Institute PrimateSanctuary in January 2000. Conflicting with then-API execu-tive director Alan Berger, Griffin was fired in March 2002.Berger left API in April 2003.

Friends of Animals and Primarily Primates have dis-cussed a merger, Weir and FoA president Priscilla Feralacknowledged. “Serious discussion will take place on October6,” Weir said. “Both sides have questions that need to beanswered.”

HACKENSACK, N.J.––Exiting NewJersey Office of Consumer Affairs director KimberlyRicketts on August 2, 2006, her last day with theagency, appealed for public help to locate andimpound an estimated 1,400 to 1,500 coin collectioncanisters believed to have been placed by an entitycalling itself Lovers of Animals.

The Office of Consumer Affairs has filedsuit, reported Newark Star-Ledger staff writer BrianT. Murray, alleging improper accounting for about$7,500 raised and spent in 2005.

The case followed the state shutdown ofcoin can fundraiser Patrick Jemas in June 2006.Jemas did business as the National Animal WelfareFoundation.

“Lovers of Animals was incorporated whenRussell Frontera, 49, of Beachwood was furloughedfrom state prison in late 2004 after serving two years

of a seven-year sentence for loan sharking,” wroteMurray. “His name appears on documents filed withthe Internal Revenue Service and the state that year,when he also opened a post office box for the charity.

“Frontera was banned from charity work forfive years under a consent agreement with the state in1993,” Murray added. “The state had sued his AIDSResearch Foundation in Toms River, accusing himand his wife of soliciting funds to help people withAIDS, but spending only a tiny fraction on supposedbeneficiaries. A court found him in violation of the1993 order a year later, when Frontera and his wifebegan operating a pet rescue operation involving 150canisters placed in businesses around Toms River.”

Frontera told Murray that his name waswrongly put on the Lovers of Animals paperwork byan accountant hired by his sister, Lovers of Animalspresident Josephine Thornton.

WASHINGTON D.C.––The Humane Society of the U.S. on August31, 2006 announced that it has absorbed the Doris Day Animal League by merg-er, affirming nearly three months of speculation.

Founded in 1987 by actress Doris Day’s son Terry Melcher, who diedof cancer in November 2004, DDAL in 20 years never spent less than half of itsrevenues on fundraising and administration, cumulatively spent more than two-thirds of all the money it ever raised on direct mail, and in the most recent fiscalyear reported on IRS Form 990 operated at a loss of more than $400,000, withrevenues of just over $2.5 million, raised from approximately 180,000 donors.

HSUS claims 9.5 million donors, with a 2006 budget of $103 millionand 2005 revenues of $145 million.

But Sportsmen’s & Animal Owners Voting Alliance head Bob Kanetook the HSUS acquisition of DDAL seriously as a threat. “This latest HSUSmerger not only makes it the 1,000-pound gorilla in the field of U.S. animalrights lobbying. It gains some very experienced DDAL professionals,” Kanetold SAOVA members on September 2.

HSUS publicist Rachel Querry credited DDAL with helping to win“passage of bills to end the sale of videos that depict animal cruelty such as fetishanimal ‘crush’ videos, and to require the use of alternatives to animal tests.”

DDAL “has strongly backed efforts,” Querry said, “to end the slaugh-ter of horses for human consumption, and to pass state laws to regulate the saleof puppies, require counseling for animal abusers, and add bittering agents toanti-freeze to protect children and animals.”

DDAL executive director Holly Hazard and HSUS president WaynePacelle have often worked together on projects, beginning in the 1980s.

“Hazard will become chief innovation officer at The HSUS, where shewill focus on new initiatives for HSUS’ Wild Neighbors and Pets for Life pro-grams and develop new business ventures,” Querry continued. “DDAL legisla-tive director Sara Amundson will become executive director of the HumaneSociety Legislative Fund,” whose president, Mike Markarian, was president ofthe Fund for Animals before the Fund merged into HSUS in January 2005.

TheWatchdog

The Watchdog monitorsfundraising, spending, andpolitical activity in the nameof animal and habitat protec -tion—both pro and con. Hisempty bowl stands for all thebowls left empty when sometake more than they need.

1 4 - ANIMAL P EOPLE, October 2006

January 10 - 12Hotel GRT Grand Days Convention Center, Pondy Bazaar, Chennai 600 017, India.

• Disaster Rel ief & Recovery • ZooCheck Work in Asia • Stray AnimalManagement

• Rescue Centre Operations • Farm Animal W elfare • The Rol e of Governm ent • Tackl ing the Wildli fe Trade • Medi a & Communication Str ategies for NGOsAside from the mai n session presentations, a series of related, hands-on,

expert-facil itated workshops will discuss methods, strategies and solutions foran imal advocacy/conservation workers in Asia in a more intimate environment.

Registration for these wor kshops is on the first day of the conference.

CHENNAI, INDIA JANUARY 10-12, 2007

N.J. Consumer Affairs prosecutes another coin-can fundraiser

KEENESBURG, Colorado––The RockyMountain Wildlife Conservation Center “has receiveddonations and pledges that will help to keep it operat-ing for now,” the sanctuary management announcedin a September 2, 2006 web posting, but closed topublic visits “for an undetermined period of time,”the web page said, “ s o t h a t the board of directorswill have time to evaluate the entire situation.

“The animals are in no danger,” the postingadded. “It is the desire of the board that the animalsremain at their current location...If no solution tokeeping the sanctuary operating is found, the boardwill proceed with closure and the placement of asmany animals as possible.”

Rocky Mountain Wildlfe founder Pat Craigand director of public affairs Toni Scalera announcedon August 15, 2006 that the 140-acre facility wouldclose in two weeks due to lack of funding. Of the 150resident animals, including 75 tigers and 30 bears,Craig said, “As long as I can afford to feed them, I’ll

try to find homes for them.”“Craig was almost $200,000 in debt and

faced the same crisis in December 2005,” wrote DanEngland of the Greeley Tribune, “Donations gavehim enough breathing room to organize a plan to stayopen. But that plan was contingent on at least one$250,000 gift promised to him. Craig recently foundout that the gift wasn’t going to come through.”

The Rocky Mountain Wildlife shutdown,announced three days after the sudden death of BigCats of Serenity Springs cofounder Karen Sculac, 47,threw into uncertainty the fate of about 250 animalsaltogether. A third Colorado sanctuary, PrairieWind, was reportedly already relocating animals dueto financial trouble. The American SanctuaryAssociation and Association of Sanctuaries have oftenplaced animals from failing sanctuaries, but neverbefore on such a large scale.

Craig started Rocky Mountain Wildlife in1980. The sanctuary moved three times as it grew.

Rocky Mountain Wildlife sanctuary struggles on––for now HSUS absorbs Doris Day Animal League

Case against Primarily Primates tossed out, but president Wally Swett resigns under fire


++ YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK???By now you probably know that rodeos horribly abuse, maim, injure and kill animals. You may NOT know how much of the abuse is done with your tax dollars––millions of dollars from the recruiting budgets of the U.S. Army, the Army National Guard, and the Marines. Some rodeos include air shows, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force!Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich spent hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to bring rodeos to Illinois, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richards is spending MILLIONS of dollars to promote rodeos.

To donate to SHARK and help our work: SHARK • www.sharkonline.org • PO Box 28 Geneva, IL 60134Join our E-mail Update and Newsletter lists at [email protected].

SHARK wants to get rodeos off the government dole.

The rodeo industry knows we can do it. That’s why rodeo promoters have complained to the FBI that our meticulously law-abiding undercover videography of unprosecuted rodeo mayhem constitutes a terroristic threat. As FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover put it, “One is honored by one’s friends, and distinguished by one’s enemies. We are very distinguished.”Please help us! Thank you, Steve Hindi, founder

Mark Lebenfinger of the Altoona Mirror.“Oh, yes. Yes. Definitely yes,”

Hussane told Lebenfinger. “It was like some-body doesn’t care about this dog or was verybusy and didn’t keep up with the dog. Youcan see the skin, but you can’t feel the mus-cles. He couldn’t stand on his four feet. I triedto help him stand on his back legs, but hewould fall back down,” said Hassane.

“It was really bad,” Hassaneaffirmed to Pete Bosak of the State CollegeCentre Daily Times. “He was in very bad con-dition. He was miserable, likely suffering.”

Kim Eicher of East Freedom, aneighbor of the Arnolds, called Grimesrepeatedly about the dog on the morning ofSeptember 11, “crying because Doogie hadn’tgotten up since Saturday,” Grimes said. “Shehad been calling the Central PennsylvaniaHumane Society since Saturday to no avail.We told her we aren’t law officers, and sheneeded to call the humane officer. Then wegot another call about the same dog, fromanother person who passes him every day.”

Unknown to Eicher and Grimes, theCentral Pennsylvania Humane Society hadassigned an officer to the case, but he had notyet made contact with either of them. Havingno awareness that anyone else was responding,Grimes drove to the scene and “took photosand video of Doogie,” she e-mailed to the150-member Dogs Deserve Better network.

“We initially thought he was dead, “Grimes wrote, “as he was not moving and hisback was to us. We found out that the Arnoldswere not home to talk to about him, so I madethe decision that he could not lie there on thecold wet ground for one moment longer, and Iwould accept all consequences of my decision.

Hassane “documented his generallyneglected condition, low weight, sores, andmissing fur, and took X-rays of his back andhips,” Grimes said. Hassane “determined thathe has very bad back spurs that are causinghim a lot of pain, and are most likely responsi-ble for his inability to walk. He also saw anundetermined mass near his hip on the X-ray.”Hassane “gave him a shot for pain plus some B

vitamins for energy, so that perhaps he couldhave even one good day or a few good hours,”Grimes continued. “He wrote a letter statingthe dog’s condition in case we needed it.”

“Shortly after we got Doogie to myhome, situated, bathed, and fed andwatered,” Grimes added, “an officer calledfrom the Freedom Township PoliceDepartment. He wanted me to return Doogie,which I refused to do,” leading to Grimes’subsequent arrest.

The case drew a variety of responsesfrom humane organizations. In Defense ofAnimals and grassroots groups as far away asthe Animal Rights Action Network inLimerick, Ireland, posted web pages and dis-tributed e-mails in Grimes’ support. Theonline network Care2 circulated an interna-tional petition on her behalf.

Organizations with law enforcementpowers and courtroom experience with warrantrequirements were markedly more cautious.

Best FriendsThe Best Friends Animal Society, of

Kanab, Utah, sought to negotiate a settlementof the case acceptable to both Grimes and theArnolds, without success as of September 26.

“If it would help resolve this matter,Best Friends offers to care for this dog. Thisincludes free veterinary treatment, a place tolive at our sanctuary, and if it is in the bestinterests of the dog, a permanent foster that isunrelated to the case,” Best Friends generalcounsel Russ Mead wrote to Blair CountyDistrict Attorney Richard Consiglio andMagisterial District Judge Craig Ormsby.

Consiglio did not return Lebenfing-er’s call seeking comment, Lebenfinger wrote,and a member of Ormsby’s office staff saidOrmsby did not read the letter before theSeptember 21 hearing.

Grimes has not disclosed the presentwhereabouts of the dog.

“In a posting on its Web site, BestFriends said Grimes plans to file a privatecriminal complaint against the Arnolds,”Lebenfinger added. “Grimes referred the

question to her Altoona attorneys, Thomas M.Dickey and Lesley Childers.

“Our position is that Tammy Grimeshas standing to file charges,” Dickey toldLebenfinger. “We think this animal was notonly abandoned, but may have been tortured,which would make any charges a misde-meanor of the first degree.”

Grimes, according to Dickey, did“nothing wrong at all,” and was “justified incommitting one offense to prevent a greaterwrong.”

As the Pennsylvania Rules ofCriminal Procedure require district attorneyapproval for filing private criminal complaints,Dickey said he would consult Consiglio aboutwhether he would authorize filing crueltycharges. “My client is not really interested infiling charges,” Dickey added. “Her maingoal is the protection of the dog.”

Pennsylvania SPCA“Unfortunately,” commented Erik

Hendrick, the soon-to-retire 27-year executivedirector of the Pennsylvania SPCA,“Tammy’s actions tainted the evidence. Thedog cannot be held [as evidence] because hewas removed illegally,” Hendrick opined.

“If Tammy had merely videotapedthe dog on the property and turned that tapeover to the agent from the Central Pennsyl-vania Humane Society, the agent would havebeen able to use that as a basis for a searchwarrant,” which could have been used tomake a legal seizure, Hendrick explained.

“While what she did was the properthing to do from the dog’s point of view,”Hendrick told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “we allhave to play by the rules of society. V i g i l -

antes may be popular heroes, but if everyonedecided what was right and wrong based ontheir individual feelings society would bechaotic. So, the police have done what theymust do under the circumstances: file charges.

“My advice to Tammy,” Hendrickadded, as a veteran of fighting cases in whichthe Pennsylvania SPCA itself has beenaccused of improperly seizing animals, “is togive back the dog immediately, since it isinevitable that she will be ordered to do so bythe presiding judge. Not doing so will onlymake her look like she is thumbing her nose,something that infuriates any judge. R e t u r n -ing the dog, as distasteful as that may be toTammy, will probably get her off with a lec-ture from the judge and a probationary periodof one year, after which the record will beexpunged if she doesn’t violate the probation.”

“I told Tammy that while she is suf-fering from her personal legal problems now,this story will bring attention to the issue ofpeople neglecting to care for their dogs,whether it be withholding veterinary care,shelter, or food and water,” Hendrick said.“In the long run, the dog will be better off forTammy’s involvement, and Tammy and herorganization will be strengthened.”

Grimes’ video of the dog drew13,000 hits in the first two days after she post-ed it to the Dogs Deserve Better web site. Thecase was later featured on the TV news pro-gram Inside Edition. The case also appearedto boost Grimes’ support as one of the 10finalists for the 2006 Animal Planet Hero ofthe Year Award. The winner is to be selectedby visits to the Animal Planet web site. Otherfinalists included Elephant Sanctuary founder

www.GREY2KUSA.org


Anti-chaining activist busted

Carol Buckley and Pet-Abuse.comfounder Alison Gianotto, who hasposted online the details of severalthousand cruelty cases gleaned frommore than 20 years’ worth of A N I-MAL PEOPLE paper files as wellas online sources. Animal Planetwill present $10,000 to the winner.

“Theft” v.s. rescueWarrantless seizures by

humane organizations became a hotissue in Pennsylvania in 1993, aftera joint raid on dairy farmer JohnTabaj, of Dunbar, by six uniformedhumane officers, four of themarmed, who represented the FayetteCounty SPCA and Tri-CountyHumane Protection. Allegedlyinvestigating the purported theft of adog and cruelty to a heifer reportedby Tabaj’s former son-in-law duringa messy divorce case, the humaneorganizations charged Tabaj withfive counts of cruelty, but thecharges were later dropped. Theincident caused the Pennsylvanialegislature to mandate in December1994 that humane officers must beappointed by a judge. A Fayette

County jury in January 1992 ordereda $96,000 penalty against theFayette County SPCA, upheld bythe Pennsylvania Supreme Court inNovember 2003, and ordered Tri-County Humane Protection, nowdefunct, to pay Tabaj $105,000.

The ANIMAL PEOPLElog of verified pet theft cases showsthat during the past 10 years theftsby individuals acting in the name ofrescue have ranked a distant third infrequency behind thefts in connec-tion with dogfighting and thefts forother abusive purposes.

Approximately 225 suchcases have come before the courts,rarely resulting in acquittals butoften bringing minimal penalties ifthe rescuers showed that the animalsurgently needed care.

Many more theft-in-the-

name-of-rescue cases are pending,mostly as result of adoptions afterHurricane Katrinia by people whorefused to return the animals theytook in to those whose pets the ani-mals formerly were.

Brochure case“At least one other mem-

ber of Grimes' group, Dogs DeserveBetter, has been charged criminallyfor trying to help a chained dog,”the Best Friends Network web sitenoted. “Kathleen Slagle, a DogsDeserve Better representative whoauthored the anti-chaining bill, HB1911, now pending before thePennsylvania state assembly judicia-ry committee, sent a couple of anti-chaining brochures to Charles andDawn Soliday,” of ClearfieldCounty, Pennsylvania, who alleg-

edly keep their beagle chained. “Slagle has been charged

with harassment for these actions,”the Best Friends Network stated,adding that “the dog warden inClearfield County has said she willsupport the Solidays. The dog war-den encouraged filing the charge.”

Continued the BestFriends Network web site, “Inresponse to these abuses, BestFriends Animal Society has pro-posed a citizen's good Samaritanlaw. Under such a law, citizenswould be able to enter the propertyof another for the limited purpose oftaking an animal to a veterinarian, ifneeded, or otherwise providingemergency care for an animal. Ofcourse, efforts must first be made,as they were in Grimes' case, to noti-fy the owners and animal control.”

NEW DELHI, ISTANBUL,BUCHAREST, BELGRADE––The historicprogress of compassionate teachings aboutanimals from east to west appeared evident yetagain in September 2006 rabies and street dogpopulation control developments.

India in September 2006 reaffirmedneuter/return and vaccination as the officialnational anti-rabies strategy.

Turkey was embarrassed by exposésof inadequate supervision of a similar policy,brought into effect by law in June 2005.

Several Romanian local govern-ments, including in the capital city ofBucharest, appeared to be either ignoring ortrying to roll back animal control holdingrequirements, to expedite killing.

In Belgrade, the Serbian capital,municipal agencies allegedly actively discour-aged nonprofit animal welfare efforts, whileescalating killing dogs and cats.

“Rabies is prevalent throughoutIndia except on the islands of Lakshadweepand Andaman and Nicobar, but has a low pub-lic health priority,” the Indian Ministry ofEnvironment & Forests acknowledged in aSeptember 20, 2006 statement of support forthe Animal Birth Control strategy that hasbeen national policy since December 1997.“Though exact statistical data is not available,it is estimated that in India approximately20,000 people die of rabies every year,”which also “causes a large number of deaths indomestic and wild animals.

“Moreover,” the Ministry ofEnvironment & Forests continued, “there is ahuge expenditure incurred on post-exposurevaccination. Therefore, there is an urgentneed eradicate this dreaded disease, as hasbeen achieved by Malaysia and Singapore.

“The main vector of rabies in Indiais the dog. The twin strategies to control and

eradicate rabies in India will be to achieve atleast 80% prophylactic immunization of dogpopulation and to push forward the existingABC/Anti-Rabies program for stray and com-munity dogs.

“More than 70,000 stray or commu-nity dogs are [already] being sterilized everyyear and given anti-rabies vaccine,” theMinistry of Environment & Forests summa-rized. “These dogs are returned to their origi-nal habitat after sterilization. This program,”carried out by local charities with AnimalWelfare Board of India support, “has signifi-cantly reduced the incidence of rabies in Delhi,Jaipur, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad,Banglore, Kalimpong, and Kolkata.”

The Ministry of Environment &Forests admitted the difficulty of achieving“mass immunization of stray or communitydogs who are not accessible for injectablerabies vaccination,” but explained that “theproblem can now be addressed,” referringsomewhat obscurely to the introduction of oralrabies vaccines for street dogs.

“The entire success of this project,”the Ministry of Environment & Forests con-cluded, trying to rally cooperation, “rests onlocal municipal bodies, rural administrations,and state government veterinary services,”which in some parts of India have been slow toencourage the ABC approach.

Killing street dogs, the Ministryemphasized, “is inhumane and does not gowell with our cultural ethos of love and com-passion for animals.”

Elaborated Blue Cross of India chiefexecutive Chinny Krishna, who first demon-strated the ABC approach in 1964, “There isan oral rabies vaccine for street dogs, claimedto be most effective, now available fromVirbac of France. With 26% import duty, itsells in India for 120 rupees ($2.75 U.S.) per

dose. Intervet is on the verge of releasing anoral rabies vaccine for street dogs, and com-petition may bring the cost down.”

The Virbac vaccine, Krishna said,“can be stored at four degrees Centigradeindefinitely and used at temperatures up to 40degrees Centigrade and can even be kept at 40degrees Centigrade for several days. It is sup-posed to be quite palatable, though it smellsterrible. Even if a dog receives up to 10 timesthe normal dose, it is supposed to be okay.

“It is a live vaccine,” Krishna noted,“so it must be given to the animals by some-one who will be responsible for picking upuneaten baits before moving on.

“Dogs who eat the oral vaccine canbe vaccinated by the injectable even immedi-ately thereafter, so if an orally vaccinated dogis later spayed and vaccinated conventionally,there would be no adverse reaction.”

TurkeyIn Turkey, explained Linda Taal of

the Dutch organization Stichting ActieZwerf-honden, which works closely with severalTurkish organizations, “The June 2004 lawstipulating that neuter and release is the onlypermitted method of solving the stray dogissue took effect in July 2005.

“For part of Istanbul the work wascontracted out to a pesticide company. Thesituation is abominable,” Taal continued.“People from the Homeless Animals &Environmental Protection Society (EHDKD)and Society for the Protection of Animals(SHKD) on September 15, 2006 pho-tographed the evidence at the Sariyer Kocatasshelter,” an Istanbul municipal facility nowoperated by a private contractor.

Taal and others soon distributed theshocking photo portfolio worldwide.

“This year, Istanbul Metropolitan

Municipality opened a tender for neutering andreleasing 5,500 stray dogs,” retired economistand longtime Sariyer Kocatas shelter volunteerDr. Bilge Okay of EHDKD explained to ANI-MAL PEOPLE. “No animal protection orga-nization could enter the tender,” because of arequirement that entrants should already havecompleted a project with the municipalityworth at least $267,000.

“The contract was given to the low-est bidder, Biosav A.S., which is an insecti-cide producing firm,” and subcontracted afirm called Anadolu Ilac Gida Ltd. Sti. to dothe work.

“SHKD and EHDKD, as two organ-isations experienced in neuter/release, offeredour help free of charge,” Okay said. “Weoffered to train their vets in endoscopic neu-tering techniques, at which our vets are expe-rienced. We gave them two vets, whosesalaries are paid by the animal organisationFHDD (Friends of Fethiye Animals) to dooperations and to train their vets. These twovets worked for the project for two months.We recommended to them another vet whowas experienced in neutering. They fired himafter a short time because he objected to howthings were handled. We offered our experi-enced team to train their dog catchers. Theydidn’t accept our offers.

“The dogs are carried in vans with-out ventilation,” Okay alleged. “Dogs whoare picked up in the morning arrive dead. Sickdogs are taken to operation without any med-ical treatment. And we have had many callsfrom animal lovers saying that they are releas-ing dogs in places where the dogs don’tbelong. We talked to AIG several times,telling them about our concerns,” Okay said,before taking the complaints public.

“Our aim in publishing our pic-


++

India reaffirms support of Animal Birth Control program

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Anti-chaining activist is busted for saving a dog (from page 16)

tures,” Okay emphasized, “is not to destroyneuter/release. On the contrary, we want theneuter/release project to be applied properlyand humanely, and to be successful. We havestruggled for many years for neuter/release tobe accepted as the only rational and humaneway to solve the stray dog problem. Now thatthe implementation has begun, it is our onlywish for it to be successful, because we areaware that the alternative will be poisoning, asfor hundreds of years.”

ANIMAL PEOPLE on September17 asked Biosav to explain the EHDKD andSHKD photos, but received no response.

There have been other difficulties inintroducing the Turkish ABC program.

“The regulations state that everymunicipality in Turkey is now responsible fortheir own neutering program, and they have tobuild temporary shelters and operating clinics.They also have to engage a veterinarian tocarry out the neutering operations,” explainedFriends of Fethiye Animals founder PerihanAgnelli, who led the effort to makeneuter/return the Turkish national policy.

“Some municipalities are employingyoung, newly qualified vets to do this work,but they do not have experience in performingspaying and castration,” continued Agnelli.“This has resulted in municipalities asking usfor help in training their new vets. Some ofthe vets come to our centre in Fethiye, wherewe accommodate them.

“Whilst many municipalities are set-ting up their own programs, which they willmanage with their own personnel, some of thelarger cities like Istanbul, Ankara, and Sivashave hired private organizationa,” Agnelliacknowledged. “I haven’t heard anything neg-ative from either Ankara or Sivas, but I haveheard that the company that won the bid inIstanbul is making a mess of things.”

British clothier Robert Smith, whohas sponsored several sheltering and neuter/return pilot projects in Istanbul, “offered toundertake catching, neutering, and releasingdogs on their behalf,” Agnelli added. “Thecompany agreed, but the municipality refusedthe help.”

RomaniaSmith, also involved for about

seven years in Romania, on September 15unveiled “a proposal and budget for aneuter/return project in the whole province ofBihor, Romania, which we intend to imple-ment over the next three years,” he said.

But Smith pre-empted his ownInternet discussion of the project after becom-ing aware of a Romanian Senate proposalwhich, as translated by Romanian animaladvocates, would limit the holding time forimpounded dogs to just five days.

As ANIMAL PEOPLE went topress, Smith and others were still trying toestablish whether that was the legislativeintent, or whether the intent was to set a mini-mum holding time of five days, as required bythe U.S. Laboratory Animal Welfare Act in1966 and reiterated in the Animal Welfare Actof 1971. Originally applied only to animalswho were sold to labs, the five-day standardbecame the default minimum for all impound-ed animals in most states.

Sara Turetta of the AssociazioneSave the Dogs and Fundatia Daisy Hopefounder Aura Maratas meanwhile reportedaggressive municipal dog collection andkilling in downtown Bucharest.

“The action was run by night withthe support of the police,” Turetta e-mailed.

“The ‘cleaning’ of the area,” in the neighbor-hood where a loose pit bull terrier killed aJapanese visitor in February 2006, “wasdone,” Turetta alleged, “in order to give awestern look to the capital during the meetingof the International Francophone Organiz-ation,” held on September 28-29.

The most recent and apparently themost limited of many Bucharest dog-purgesduring the past 10 years occurred while Turettawas providing emergency help to the impound-ed dogs of Calarasi, which she described as “avery poor town 60 kilometres from Cernavoda,on the frontier with Bulgaria.”

In 2003 Turetta “visited the kennelrun by the Sufletel association,” she recalled,“which was starting activity concurrent withthe town killing stray dogs. Save the Dogs hasa video clip, shot in 2003, showing the vio-lence of the dog catchers. Many dogs werechoked to death on the street with metal noos-es,” Turetta alleged. “The dogs who survivedcapture were killed by an injection of air ortoxic agents in the peritoneum. After protestby local animal lovers, they shifted to shoot-ing, which they are still doing. According tothe local press and Sufletel, dogs are still bru-tally caught, brought to the edge of town, andshot by huntsmen.

“When we visited the kennel in2003, we gave one single piece of advice tothe chair of Sufletel: stop!” Turetta recalled.“They did not have the economic resources northe medical knowledge to ensure decent livingconditions to the dogs hosted there.

“Back in 2003 and today still wecannot manage a second facility, and at thattime we could not give them any economicaid. Calarasi was one of many emergency sit-uations in Romania, and we had to step back-ward despite our willingness to help.

“Unfortunately, the association didnot follow our advice,” Turetta said. “Thisyear, Sufletel asked us for the help of ourmobile clinic. On August 8 we went toCalarasi to arrange for neutering the 230 dogsat the kennel. About 150-170 of them wereseverely ill. Almost all the dogs were baldfrom mange. Many were close to death.

“Near the kennel,” Turetta contin-ued, “there were four or five tons of bones,the basic food for the dogs, mixed withcorpses, left to rot under the sun because theauthorities cannot and do not want to organizea waste collection service.”

Turetta published photographs of thescene on Save The Dogs web site.

Starting on August 9, Turetta said,“Four vets from Unisvet, three volunteersfrom Save the Dogs, and a worker from theCernavoda kennel spent three 10-hour days atthe Calarasi kennel. Unfortunately, somedogs were in such poor health that they had tobe euthanized. The rest received worming andflea treatment. About 100 dogs were treatedfor mange. About 40 male dogs wereneutered.” Construction was started on newperimeter barriers and kennels.

“The bones and corpses wereremoved by a bulldozer and disposed of,”Turetta added. “Unfortunately, despite a pic-ture of our team published on the first page ofa local newspaper, dog catchers were workingthe next day in the city center,” capturingmore dogs to be killed and increasing the incli-nation of local animal lovers to take strays tothe overcrowded shelter.

Turetta in September led a follow-upvisit to Calarasi, with a mobile clinic donatedby the Dutchypuppy Foundation and additionalsupport raised from Italy, the Netherlands,

Sweden and the U.S. This time they sterilized 50 dogs,

focusing on pregnant females; treated 150dogs for mange; introduced microchipping;followed up on making physical improvementsto the shelter; and began making staff changesto bring in more caring and dedicated people.

“We will keep you updated,”Turetta pledged.

SerbiaThe Serbian situation reached inter-

national notice through appeals for internation-al political support e-mailed during the lastweeks of September by Slavica Mazak Beslicof EPAR (Friends of Animals Society), whooperates a shelter in Subotica.

“Local authorities sent a buildinginspector, who commanded us to destroy a l lof our dog houses and destroy our dog shelterwith 450 dogs,” Beslic said, lamenting thateven before the demolition order came, “Weneed more boxes for 43 dominant dogs whoare still on chains because they cannot betogether with other dogs.

“When we as a nonprofit nongovern-mental organisation asked for help from therepublic and local authorities, and offered col-laboration, they refused,” Beslic said.

Part of Beslic’s complaint concernedher contention that the government should paythe cost of vaccinating the shelter dogs againstrabies. The inspection and demolition orderappeared to follow a dispute over vaccination.

Beslic illustrated her arguments––and the need for improvement in Serbian ani-mal control practices––with photos of about 30dead dogs in plastic bags at a garbage dump.The photos, Beslic said, were taken onSeptember 20, 2006, in the town of Smeder-evo. The dogs were impounded without foodor water, according to Beslic, and then poi-soned or clubbed.

“We try to explain to the authoritiesof Serbia that a more useful, economical, andmore humane approach, including sterilizationand adoption, is the best solution for stray dogcontrol, but nothing changes,” Beslic alleged.“They now do mass killing and s t e r i l i z a t i o ntogether, and we can see that last week somedogs were sterilized and after this the samedogs were killed.”

Investigating Beslic’s allegations,

Belgrade activist and journalist Jelena toldANIMAL PEOPLE that, “Belgrade ownsone killing pound, in the OVCA district, andsponsors several private killing pounds aroundSerbia,” some of which appeared to be impli-cated. The OVCA pound practices apparentlyrepresent the norms.

Taking statements from six witness-es to OVCA pound procedures, Zaric conclud-ed that it “does not work to law, does not pos-sess appropriate management, and the workersdo not possess the skills needed to work withanimals.

“Captured animals are kept withoutwater, food, and proper medical care,” Zaricsummarized from the witnesses’ statements.“Sterilization is performed on animals who arein very bad health, and are held further with-out proper post-operative care.

“Killing methods,” that Zaric wastold about, “include injecting various toxicdetergents, injecting the concentrated insecti-cide Nuvan, various kind of oral poisoning,suffocation by plastic bags or ropes, hanging,clubbing, smashing animals’ heads with heavydoors, smashing restrained animals on thefloor, and injections of T-61,” a paralyticlethal agent used mainly to kill mink on furfarms, used by some U.S. animal controlagencies until banned in 1986.

“The OVCA facility is closed to thepublic,” Zaric added. “The procedure for dogadoption is very hard, and it takes more than 5hours to obtain needed documents to getinside. Even with the needed papers, no onewith our investigation could get inside the areawhere the dogs are held. It is very hard to getinside the killing area. All of our witnesseswere citizens who under pressure from work-ers gave money or gifts before entering thearea where dogs were held in cages.

“By statements from all sidesinvolved, every year, from October throughApril, Belgrade kills more than 6,000 dogs,”Zaric said, “but there are no precise statistics.

“Sterilization plans have failed manytimes,” Zaric continued. “Pet sterilization isnot popular in Serbia. We do all we can,without the help of city officials.

“Caretakers spend their money tosterilize street animals,” Zaric reported, “andthen the dog catchers kill them.”

––Merritt Clifton


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India reaffirms support of ABC.Some still don’t get it. (from page 16)

The Kutahya shelter in Turkey, above, “was built for 200 dogs. Whilst it is a munic -ipal shelter, responsibility for running it was given to a local animal welfare society 16 yearsago,” wrote Perihan Agnelli. “The members have refused to allow any vet to euthanize sickanimals, and will not allow healthy animals to be released. Presently more than 800 dogs and200 cats live there in cramped and diseased conditions.” Similar substandard “no kill shelters”exist around the world at the periphery of cities where animal control consists chiefly of catch-and-kill or poisoning. Replacing high-volume killing with neuter/return helps to eliminate thepretext for operating shelters as concentration camps, by reducing fear that animals will bekilled if not incarcerated. “The Mayor of Kutahya told me he is building a new shelter andclinic away from this one,” said Agnelli, whose organization, Fethiye Friends of Animals,recently trained veterinarian Yalcin Budak to head the new facility.

Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force chair JohnnyRodrigues and Presidential Elephant Conservation Project ele-phant fertility researcher Sharon Pincott contend that the stressassociated with gunfire has actually suppressed elephant fecun-dity––a finding which, if verified, would contradict other stud-ies showing that wildlife populations tend to increase theirfecundity under hunting pressure.

Both coyotes and deer, for example, notoriouslyraise more young successfully when hunting has thinned theirpopulations, making more food available to the survivors.

But different mechanisms are at work. While coyotes are hunted year-round, intensive hunt-

ing pressure on coyotes tends to be limited to the springbirthing season for cattle and sheep, and the fall deer huntingseason, when deer hunters often shoot coyotes as well.

Deer hunting occurs almost entirely within a rifle sea-son typically lasting only 10 to 14 days. Far fewer hunters par-ticipate in the bow hunting and other “special” seasons that pre-cede and follow the rifle season, when gunfire is most frequent.

Intensive shooting in the Zimbabwean elephant studyarea continued for several years.

Pincott, an Australian, has studied the PresidentialElephants “for more than five years,” Rodrigues e-mailed toANIMAL PEOPLE. The Presidential Elephants are “a clanof more than 400 free-roaming elephants, individually known

in more than 20 family groups, so named when PresidentRobert Mugabe decreed them ‘protected’ in 1990, to be a sym-bol, it was then said, of Zimbabwe’s commitment to responsi-ble wildlife management.

“These habituated elephants can be found on theunfenced Hwange Estate,” Rodrigues said, “borderingHwange National Park.

“The home range of the Presidential Elephants wasunderhandedly taken over by hunters, a situation now thankful-ly rectified,” Pincott told Rodrigues. “The elephants did, how-ever, endure more than two years of unethical hunting.”

Said Rodrigues, “Elephant conception rates duringthis period were negatively affected, with elephants coming intoestrus up to four times before they eventually conceived.”

Elaborated Pincott, “Female elephants only comeinto estrus once every three months. Some elephants tookanother six and even nine months to conceive after the first timeI witnessed them in estrus. Some elephants whom I witnessedin estrus and being mated during late 2003 have only recentlyhad their babies, some 31 months later. They endured foursessions with the bulls before becoming pregnant. This differsmarkedly from elephants whom I witnessed in estrus during2001 and 2002, before gunfire increased substantially, whohad their babies the usual 22 months later.

“Occasionally, at that time, elephants were sightedback in estrus three months after an unsuccessful estrus, butthis was not the norm. Certainly there are no previous recordsof the fertile elephants in this population taking up to ninemonths to conceive.”

Added Rodrigues, “Data collection continues nowthat the gunfire is better under control, to confirm that concep-tion rates have improved.

“Elephant numbers in Zimbabwe have often beencited as having a negative impact on the numbers of smallerspecies,” Rodrigues noted, “which are said to be declining,despite scientific studies in neighboring Botswana confirmingthat the numbers of smaller species there continue to increase,despite their even larger elephant population.

Concluded Rodrigues, “Gunfire continues, legally,inside of Zimbabwe’s National Parks. Although supposedlylimited, this ‘ration hunting’ gunfire has at times been reportedto be out of control. Some conservationists are now asking, ‘Isgunfire negatively impacting conception of all wildlife?”

“It is difficult for me to believe that only elephantswould be negatively affected,” said Pincott.

The Pincott findings come amid continued debate inSouth Africa over what to do about alleged elephant overpopu-lation in Kruger National Park. Some park officials would liketo cull the elephants, as was done from 1967 to 1994, and seekConvention on International Trade in Endangered Species per-mission to sell the elephants’ tusk ivory.

Southern Africa Association for the Advancement ofScience president Ian Raper recommends dart-administerednon-hormonal contraception. “There are 5,326 female ele-phants in Kruger,” Raper estimated for Agence France-Pressein 2005, “and it would cost only 1.4 million rand, $208,303 or178,459 euros annually, to administer the contraceptive, whichwould work for two years.”

“When people talk about threats to bio-diversity,”Raper added, “it would be well to remember that old bull ele-phants topple trees, not the females and calves who would be

the targets of culling.”Relatively little has been done to research ways to

control bull elephant reproductive behavior, but Walt Disney’sWild Animal Kingdom and the San Diego Wild Animal Park in2005 funded Colorado State University veterinary surgery pro-fessor Dean Henderickson to experimentally vasectomize sev-eral South African wild bull elephants in mid-2005.

“Except on smaller reserves,” Henderickson toldDenver Post staff writer Katy Human, “the elephant herds areso big that going in and vasectomizing some will not makeenough of a difference fast enough. We’re hoping that once thepopulation has been brought down to a reasonable number, wecan help them prevent having to cull again.”

Vasectomizing an elephant is no simple task,Henderickson added. “The approach into the abdomen is verydifficult because it’s so hard to find landmarks. If you want toknow what it’s like to find a rib in an elephant,” he said, “walkup to a textured wall and try to find a stud by looking.”

Sweet Nothing, right, kept by Cindy Wasney& Dick Jackson of Victoria, British Columbia, is anemissary for Premarin foals, Big Julie’s Rescue Ranchin Fort McLeod, Alberta, and horses who learn to livewith prosthetic legs.

“I bought her at a feed lot auction,” BigJulie’s Rescue Ranch founder Roger Brinker told ANI-MAL PEOPLE. “She was a $200 horse,” going forlittle more than the minimum bid.

Conventional belief is that horses who suffersevere leg injuries must be euthanized, but some espe-cially valuable stud horses have been saved with pros-thetic limbs, typically costing $6,000 to $8,000.

After Sweet Nothing convinced Brinker’s vet-erinarian that she had the right personality to accept aprosthetic limb, Ron Handkamer of Colman Prostheticsin Calgary improvised one to fit her, Brinker said––andrefused any payment.

Premarin, an estrogen supplement derivedfrom pregnant mares’ urine, was the top-selling pre-scription drug worldwide as recently as 2001, withannual sales of $732 million. Producing Premarinrequires keeping mares pregnant, breeding a constantsurplus of foals, many of whom are sold to slaughter.

Premarin sales have plummeted since theWomen’s Health Initiative study funded by the U.S.National Institutes of Health in July 2002 notified16,000 participants who took Prempro, a drug combin-ing Premarin with progestin, that the supplements areassociated with increased risk from heart attacks,strokes, and blood clots forming in the lungs.

However, Wyeth-Ayerst, the Prempro andPremarin manufacturer, on September 15, 2006 wonthe first of about 4,500 pending lawsuits from formerestrogen supplement uses.

“A federal jury ruled against Linda Reeves,67,” reported Andrew DeMillo of Associated Press.“During the four-week trial, Reeves acknowledged notreading information supplied with the drug and said sheleft it up to her doctor to decide whether it was appro-

priate to treat symptoms of menopause.“Reeves, diagnosed in 2000 with a cancerous

tumor in her right breast, initially took Premarin, aform of estrogen, and her doctor soon added progestinto her daily regimen. She switched to Prempro in 1996,which for the first time combined Premarin and prog-estin in one pill. After her cancer diagnosis, Reeves hada mastectomy and chemotherapy. She has been cancer-free since,” DeMillo summarized.

The verdict went the opposite way for formerUniversity of Vermont professor Eric Poehlman, 50,of Montreal, who between 1992 and 2002 producedseveral of the most influential studies promoting anddefending the use of Premarin.. Poehlman on June 28,2006 became the first academic researcher in the U.S.to receive prison time ––a year and a day––for fabricat-ing scientific data.

“In spring 2005 Poehlman pleaded guilty toone count of making false statements in a successful1999 application to the National Institutes of Health fora $542,000 grant. He also admitted faking results innumerous studies and proposals for a decade beginningin 1992,” reported Adam Silverman of the Burlington(Vermont) Free Press.


Gunfire no aprodisiac for African elephants

One-legged Sweet Nothingstays ahead of killer buyers

No more polar bears at Singapore ZooS I N G A P O R E– – S i n g a p o r e

Zoo director Fanny Lai told Reuterson September 7, 2006 that the zoowill no longer exhibit Arctic andAntarctic animals after the eventualdeath of Sheba, 29, the elder of thetwo polar bears on exhibit at the zoo.

Singapore is located justnorth of the equator.

Lai told Reuters that shehas asked the Rostock Zoo inGermany, manager of the global cap-tive polar bear survival plan, to finda more suitable home for Inuka, 16,who is to be moved after Sheba dies.

Lai denied that the decisionwas prompted by the September 6release of the findings of a four-month undercover investigation bythe Animal Concerns Research andEducation Society.

“From September untilDecember 2005,” said ACRES presi-dent Louis Ng, “both bears exhibitedsigns of severe heat stress. The bearswere both seen panting for long peri-ods (Inuka: 36.0% of the time;Sheba: 38.7% of the time). Both

bears engaged in abnormal stereotyp-ic behaviour (Inuka: 64.5% of theactive periods; Sheba: 56.8% of theactive periods). Both polar bearsdisplayed inactivity (Inuka: 42.5% ofthe time; Sheba: 64.6% of the time).

“The bears cannot simply‘adapt’ to life in hot climates,” Ngargued. “Wherever they are in cap-tivity, they will still possess physio-logical adaptations to life in theArctic.”

ANIMAL PEOPLE s p o t-lighted the bears’ plight in aJuly/August 2005 cover feature,based on a site visit, entitled “Whitetigers, green polar bears, & main-taining a world-class zoo.”

Both of the Singapore Zoopolar bears, a mother and son, aregreen from algae growing in theirtranslucent hair shafts

Opened in June 1973, theSingapore Zoo and adjacent NightSafari were the hugely successful evi-dent models for the Chiang Mai Zooand the recently opened Chiang MaiNight Safari Zoo in Thailand.

Sweet Nothing. (Cindy Wasney)

About a dozen female elephants among the 30 ele-phants used for patrol work by the West Bengal ForestDepartment are soon to receive birth control implants, seniordepartment official P.T. Bhutiya told news media in mid-September 2006.

“Our department is suffering a budget cut, so wehave been asked to only maintain those elephants who areuseful, and introduce birth control amongst the whole popu-lation,” Bhutiya said. The forestry department herd formerlyproduced three or four offspring per year.

Of the estimated 400 elephants left in West Bengal,about 65-80 are captive work or exhibiton animals.

“Some who belong to the camps get impregnatedwhen they go out to the forests to graze. The growing popula-tion has become a matter of concern for the authorities whofind it difficult to provide the requisite fodder,” West Bengalchief conservator of forests Ujjal Bhattacharjee explained toMarcus Dam of The Hindu in March 2006, when the agencyfirst applied to the federal environment ministry for permis-sion to use the contraceptive implants.

“This is just a killing exercise,” objected Friends ofWetlands & Wildlife coordinator Mukuta Mukherjee. “If thegovernment cannot feed the elephants, they should look forsponsors, but not do anything to cut down their population.”

“We should be encouraging births among the wildpopulation,” countered Born Free Foundation consultant IanRedmond to Kate Thomas of The Independent, “but ele-phants are complex social animals, and condemning new-born calves to a lifetime in captivity, in the absence of fundsand a structured program that allows them to be reintroducedinto the wild, would be questionable.”

C A N B E R R A––The Australian Capital Territorygovernment and Newcastle University on August 23, 2006announced plans to jointly develop a species-specific oralcontraceptive for eastern grey kangaroos.

The contraceptive should be ready for field trials intwo to five years, senior Environment ACT ecologist DonFletcher told news media.

“In the coming weeks a research population will beset up in the empty former kangaroo display area atTidbinbilla,” said municipal services John Hargreaves, refer-ring to the scene of “rocket science” of a very different sort.The Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, on the fringe of NamadgiNational Park, is best known for housing the radio telescopesoperated by the Canberra Deep Space CommunicationComplex, part of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

“It is hoped that eventually the kangaroos will beadministered with the fertility control agent through theirfood,” Hargreaves said.

“Realistically, to deal with wild animals, it has tobe oral,” Fletcher explained, noting special problemsinvolved in distributing an oral contraceptive that will beexposed to ultraviolet radiation from intense sunlight and incoping with kangaroos’ strong stomach acids.

“The ACT government, which administersCanberra and is funding the research, is reluctant to useshooters to thin the kangaroo population because of the riskposed to humans in built-up areas and the cruelty objectionsraised by animal welfare groups,” said Associated Press.

Simone Gray of ACT Animal Liberation praisedthe initiative.

“Australia is the largest wildlife killer in the world.We’re killing more wildlife than anyone,” Gray said.“Fertility control is a sensible alternative for stopping theslaughter.”

The ACT/Newcastle University project contrastswith the effort of a scientific team in Victoria to develop aspecific-specific poison to kill feral cats.

“We’re at the forefront of coming up with the firsttechnique to control feral cats over broad areas,” researcherMichael Johnston told the Australian BroadcastingCorporation in August 2005. “Currently we’re limited tousing techniques such as shooting or trapping.”

Kangaroo contraceptives

Elephant birth controlintroduced in India

Indonesian government, were told that theIndonesian Navy plane that was to pick up theapes could not land in Thailand until furthernotice,” Wiek said earlier.

The plane, a C-130 Hercules, wasdesigned to fly tanks into trouble spots. Themission might therefore have been dangerous-ly confused with military activity.

The orangutans were central to twoof the many prominent corruption cases thatThai Army chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglincited as his reasons for leading the bloodlesscoup that deposed Prime Minister ThaksinShinawatra.

Safari WorldThe orangutans became a cause cele-

bré in November 2003, when Thai forestryofficials impounded 115 orangutans altogetherat the Safari World zoo in Bangkok.Investigating alleged cruelty in connectionwith kick boxing matches held between orang-utans to amuse visitors, the forestry depart-ment found that many of the orangutans werekept in cramped and unhealthy conditions,and were not properly registered.

“Safari World claimed that the manyyoung orangutans were produced by a success-ful breeding program, but DNA testing paidfor by the Orangutan Foundation found in2004 that at least 72 of the orangutans wereillegally smuggled into Thailand,” summa-rized Karmele Llano of the Dutch organizationStichting ProAnimalia International, in aSeptember 2005 letter to ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Llano, Wiek, and others formed acoalition called Send Them Back Home to tryto return the orangutans to Indonesia. Many ofthe impounded orangutans meanwhile van-ished, mostly before they were physicallyremoved from Safari World in August 2004.

“At least 15 of them reportedly died,in strange circumstances, without adequatemedical documentation,” wrote Llano.

Twenty-two orangutans were some-how smuggled to Cambodia, where they werefound performing kick-boxing exhibitions at acasino. Five were loaned to the Chiang MaiNight Safari Zoo.

Night Safari“Night Safari has veterinarians and

everything to take care of them, so we lentthem temporarily,” National Parks directorDamrong Phidej told Associated Press.

Opened in late 2005, the $30 mil-lion Chiang Mai Night Safari Zoo was politelydescribed by Associated Press as “a projectinitiated by Thaksin in his home town.”

“The project was not brought beforeParliament for deliberation and suspiciouslyfavored a group of people with vested interestsin hotels and tourism,” summarized ChaiphanPraphasawat of the We Love Chiang Maicoalition, to The Nation, of Bangkok.

The We Love Chiang Mai coalitionincluded local zoo opponents, environmental-ists, and animal advocates who became con-cerned about the deaths of animals who wereobtained and held in temporary quarters whilethe Night Safari was built. They soon foundmuch more to worry about, including alleged-

ly obsolete and substandard habitat designsand questionable transactions arranged toobtain animals.

Wildlife Fund Thailand presidentPisit Na Phatthalung noted in November 2005that then-Natural Resources and EnvironmentMinistry vice-minister Plodprasop Suraswadiwas paid more than $5,250 a month to doubleas chief executive officer of the Chiang MaiNight Safari Zoo.

“We also found that most of the topexecutives were close to Plodprasop and theyreceived ludicrous salaries,” Pisit NaPhatthalung told The Nation.

Both Thaksin and Plodprasop weresued on June 7, 2006 by the We Love ChiangMai Coalition, for allegedly improperly creat-ing the Night Safari Zoo in a national park.

At request of the We Love ChiangMai Coalition, the Thai National HumanRights Commission in July 2006 began inves-tigating land deals made to add an elephantpark to the Night Safari Zoo.

Plodprasop, who previously servedas fisheries minister, lost that post and eventu-ally lost the Natural Resources and Environ-ment Ministry amid allegations of facilitatingwildlife trafficking. His most notorious dealwas authorizing the 2002 export of 100 tigersto a privately owned zoo or tiger farm,depending on definitions, in Hainan, China.

While Thaksin has often posed as ananimal lover, including in public denuncia-tions of wildlife trafficking, he defended Thaicockfighters against pressure to end cockfight-ing that has intensified since 2004 due to out-breaks of the avian influenza H5N1, whichhave killed more than 130 people worldwide.Many Thai cases have been linked to the trans-port, exhibition, and sale of gamecocks.

Kenya dealPlodprasop embarrassed the Thaksin

government in November 2005 by disclosinghis intent to open a restaurant at the NightSafari Zoo that would serve dog meat and themeat of lions, tigers, elephants, and giraffes.Plodprasop spoke only days after Thaksin andKenyan President Mwai Kbaki signed the mostnotorious of the Chiang Mai Night Safari Zooanimal acquisition agreements.

As the transaction was originallystructured, Kenya was to send the Chiang MaiNight Safari Zoo as many as 300 animals ofapproximately 30 species, including lions,elephants, hippos, and rhinos.

The deal was scaled back underopposition led by Youth for Conservation andAfrica Network for Animal Welfare founderJosphat Ngonyo to include only about 100 ani-mals, chiefly zebras, giraffes, andgazelles––but opposition from Ngonyo andcurrent YfC president Steve Itela continues.

Nairobi High Court Justice JosephNyamu on July 4, 2006 delayed untilSeptember 25 hearing arguments on the legali-ty of exporting Kenyan animals to the NightSafari Zoo. Nyamu in December 2005 issueda temporary injunction blocking the exports,and has repeatedly extended it.

The coup “has effectively killed theproposal,” reported Bogonko Bosire of

Agence France-Press. “The deal is as good as dead,”

affirmed a source whom Bosire identified onlyas “a senior official in Kenya's tourismmin-istry. Ironically, it's a bit of a relief,” thesource said, “since the government has comeunder intense pressure to stop it.”

Thaksin denied having personal eco-nomic interests in Kenya, but KenyanTourism and Wildlife Minister Morris Dzorocontradicted Thaksin’s claims at a June 2006press conference in Nairobi.

“Thaksin has asked us about puttingup a hotel here in Kenya and we are consider-ing his application just like any otherinvestor,” Dzoro said.

The Thai coup proceeded with theapparent endorsement of King BhumibolAdulyadej. Ceremonially reigning for 59years, the 78-year-old king and his wife,Queen Sirikit, are outspoken animal advo-cates. In 2002 King Bhumibol published an84-page biography of Khun Tongdaeng, astreet dog he adopted in 1998, and in his birth-day speech called for better treatment of streetdogs and elephants.

At the king’s request, the Thainational police added eight former street dogsto their elite airport security dog team.

A year later, at the queen’s request,Prime Minister Thaksin denounced animaltrafficking as immoral, “especially if the ani-mals are to be killed for meat,” and initiatedcrackdowns on both wildlife trafficking andthe sale of dogs for human consumption. Dog-eating by ethnic Chinese immigrants who fledto Thailand from Vietnam during conflictbetween Vietnam and China in the 1970s hasoften become a flashpoint in cultural conflictsin the Thai northeast, Thaksin’s politicalstronghold.

Wildlife trafficking arrests andseizures have continued. So has the com-merce. The biggest recent bust came on July18, 2006.

“After receiving a tip from the newAssociation of Southeast Asian NationsWildlife Enforcement Network,” the B a n k o kP o s t reported, officials from three Thai gov-ernment agencies “detained four dealers forquestioning and confiscated over 250 purport-ed shahtoosh shawls [made from the fur ofpoached Himalayan antelope called chiru],“which can cost as much as $12,000 apiece.”

Wiek case“When you read this,” Edwin Wiek

posted to the Asian Animal ProtectionNetwork, “you almost believe the Thaiauthorities are actually really doing somethingto stop the illegal wildlife trade. Please don’tbe fooled. The traders will not go to jail, theywill not get a fine and they might even gettheir goods back,” Wiek predicted. “There isno law that forbids keeping foreign wild ani-mals or parts of wild animals. Traffickers canonly get in trouble when they are caught red-handed smuggling the goods into the country.In this case they were not.”

But Wiek got into trouble in early2005 for keeping 11 macaques who wereturned over to the Thai Animal Guardians

Association by their former owners, and relo-cated to better housing at Wildlife Friendsafter the Thai forestry department declined totake them. Wiek was in August 2006 fined$525 and given a suspended eight-month jailsentence for possessing the macaques withoutholding a permit to do so.

“Wiek, a Dutch national, who hasspent the past five years setting up one of thecountry’s top animal centers, is the firstactivist to receive such a sentence,” reportedPennapa Hongthong and Jim Pollard of T h eN a t i o n. “Wiek claimed the charges werepushed by a senior official who was upset byhis efforts to force the government to returnthe smuggled orangutans found at SafariWorld to Indonesia.”

“No one will want to provide shelterto unwanted wildlife through fear that one daythey might be arrested and charged with thesame offence as Wiek,” said AnimalGuardians Association chair Roger Lohanon.

Responded Thai wildlife departmentdeputy director Schawan Tunhikorn, “I didn’tabuse my power. I just did my job in protect-ing wildlife.”

“To the animal welfare community,Edwin Wiek is someone who works to helpThai wild animals in distress,” e-mailedIndian animal advocate and journalist AzamSiddiqui, mentioning Wiek’s “contributions tothe animals of India as well.”

Elaborated Siddiqui, “Last year, oncoming to know of a zoo exchange betweenthe Thai zoological authorities and the AssamState Zoo here in India, Wiek warned me thatthe orangutans involved could be those whowere smuggled into Thailand. Wiek brought anine-member Thai TV crew to Assam inNovember 2005. He met with the ForestMinister of Assam and the zoo divisional for-est officer in charge, and exchanged a fewthoughts with the zoo vets about treating aninjured tiger. Everyone was impressed with thetrouble that he took to come all the way fromThailand to Assam.”

“Edwin Wiek has the support of allanimal welfare people, not only in Asia butaround the world,” added Blue Cross of Indiachief executive Chinny Krishna. “In much ofAsia and in many other parts of the world,money speaks. Wiek is a soft target becausehe lacks the monetary power of Safari World.”

The new government of Thailand,with King Bhumibol as titular head, is expect-ed to erase many suspected unjust convictionsof opponents of the Thaksin regime, leavinghope that Wiek’s conviction might be setaside. ––Merritt Clifton

Baboon rescuerfights for her life


Thai military coup may hit wildlife traffic (from page one)

Orangutan. (Kim Bartlett)

CAPE TOWN––Baboonrescuer Jenni Trethowan, 45,was hospitalized in Contantia-berg under heavy sedation inearly September, sufferingfrom central nervous systemdamage including “violentspasms, balance problemswhile walking, and a slurringof speech,” reported John Yeldof the Cape Town Argus o nSeptember 9.

“Trethowan is believed tohave been affected by dield-rin,” an insecticide bannedmore than 25 years ago, Yeldwrote, “after handling threeyoung baboons from theSlangkop troop who all diedafter being poisoned with thesame deadly substance––proba-bly deliberately,” in mid-August.

“Her husband Ian said shewas hooked to an EEG mach-ine, linked to a video camera,and was being constantly moni-tored,” Yeld added.

In absence of animalissues specialists on the staffs ofmost news media, environmentalbeat reporters produce about half ofall mainstream news coverage per-taining to animals, with the rest

scattered among beats includingfarm-and-business, general assign-ment, local news, lifestyles, andeven sports. Conversely, about halfof all environmental beat reportinginvolves animal issues, albeit most-ly pertaining to wildlife habitat andendangered species.

Exactly half of W r i t i n gGreen examines how Ocean Aware-ness Project founder David Helvarg,Tom Meersman of the St. PaulPioneer Press, and Paul Rogers ofthe San Jose Mercury News p r o-

duced award-winning exposes ofoceanic oil drilling, the impacts ofinvasive species in the Great Lakes,and federal grazing subsidies,including extermination of predatorsby USDA Wildlife Services.

Helvarg, Meersman, andRogers are all longtime A N I M A LP E O P L E readers and occasionalsources, as are several other WritingG r e e n contributors. Humane con-cerns were not among the topics oftheir award-winning work, but I amaware through direct acquaintance

that most of the Writing Green con-tributors take humane concerns intoconsideration, among many othervalues and pressures, when theywrite about animals. They often donot reach the same conclusions thatanimal advocates would. Yet under-standing how they evaluate theirmaterial could be quite valuable toanimal advocates who are seriouslytrying to be more influential to theworld beyond the already persuaded.

Helvarg, for example, asauthor of The War Against TheG r e e n s (1994), is especially astuteabout detecting corporate and gov-ernmental spin. Rogers is known forhis skepticism of advocacy groupspin. Meersman likes to see hard

statistics––and will check the math.Writing Green a u t h o r / e d i-

tor Debra Schwartz produced W r i t -ing Green as a journalism textbook.Apprentice House published it as alearning exercise for book publish-ing students. Teaching animal advo-cates how to make their case tomainstream news media was not anexpected purpose of Writing Green,and if explored directly and in depthcould be subject of another book.But until such a book is written,Writing Green is a good startingpoint. ––Merritt Clifton

(Another good startingpoint is the ANIMAL PEOPLE tipsheet “Media relations for humanesocieties,” free via e-mail.]

Stealing Love: Confessions of aD o g n a p p e r is the autobiography of investiga-tive reporter Mary A. Fischer, a poignantstory of a sad and lonely life. Rescuing abuseddogs is both incidental to, and symbolic of,her own family history.

Fischer was the second daughter of adysfunctional family. When she was fouryears old, her mother had a breakdown fol-lowing the death of her own mother, and wascommitted to a mental institution by her father,a selfish, inconsiderate rake.

Fischer paints a harrowing picture oflife in an American asylum when psychiatrywas still relatively new: “No experimentaltherapy was seen as too bizarre.” Shock ther-apy was the norm, “with electrode pads in ametal headband on her temples, a nurse flips aswitch and 140 volts of electricity cracklethrough her temporal lobes like a thunderboltof lightning.”

Because her father could not handlethe care of his two young daughters, he sentthem to a Catholic convent boarding school.Fischer spent seven miserable years of alienat-ed existence at this austere, loveless institu-tion. Fischer emerged from this tragic back-ground with a fiercely independent spirit,

contempt for authority, and deep compassionfor underdogs, evident in both her reportingcareer and in dognapping to rescue dogs fromabusive homes.

Her rescues/thefts have not been ran-dom. “I and many of the other rescuers I’vemet are not, well, rabid in how we fulfil ourmission,” Fischer contends, describing themas “solid people, a vet who will go un-named,a marketing and branding executive, an NBCpublicist, and a former lawyer.”

Vigilante dog rescuers are not wel-comed by much of the animal welfare commu-nity. As ANIMAL PEOPLE editor MerrittClifton explains, “I began logging pet theftcases circa 1980. Theft for laboratory use wasthen the most common motive. Since the fed-eral Pet Theft Act took effect in 1993, howev-er, pet thefts in the name of rescue far out-number pet thefts for lab use, and indeed allother categories of pet theft except thefts inconnection with dogfighting. Many ‘rescue’thefts are undertaken with little or no effort topursue legal remedies, and are based on grossmisunderstanding, as comes out in courtcases, e.g. old dogs who are in late stages ofcancer, but are enjoying their last days in thes u n s h i n e , who are snatched away by people

who believe they are being starved.“Hundreds of animals were stolen

after Hurricane Katrina in the name of rescue,some of whom had just been taken back toNew Orleans by people returning to the city totry to rebuild their lives. Courts all over theU.S. are now handling cases of New Orleansrefugees trying to reclaim pets who were takenby ‘rescuers’ who now refuse to return them.

“For more than 50 years animaladvocates moved mountains to get strong fed-eral penalties and supporting state laws inplace to crack down on pet theft. Now the ani-mal advocacy community is suddenly beingasked to defend ‘rescuers’ who violate theanti-theft laws. If animal advocates get suck-ered into weakening the laws with––for exam-ple––provisions exempting interstate petthieves who have non-profit status, thieveswith motives other than rescue will be quick toexploit the loopholes. Quite a few dogfightersalready pose as rescuers, and some lab suppli-ers have operated as medical charities.”

Yet reading the individual accountsof why Fischer has rescued neglected dogs,we the reviewers can say that we quite agreewith her actions and have, operating our ownwildlife rehabilitation center, done similar.

Authorities are not always keen to intervene,and making a report would often provoke per-sonal retaliation from the animal abuser.

Fischer saw animals suffering in diresituations where she could not practicablyinvoke authorities: “Dogs tethered to six-footropes and chains, their necks permanentlyscarred,” and “malnourished dogs withexposed rib bones, others with cigarette burns,beer bottles broken over their heads, or theirears chewed away by mites or other insects.”

Fischer did not simply assume star-vation, which can be difficult to distinguishfrom other conditions in single-dog cases; shehad this verified by a veterinarian, and onlyacted after months of observation

––Chris Mercer & Beverley Pervan<www.cannedlion.co.za>, SouthAfrica


Freeing Keiko: The Journey of a Killer Whale from Free Willy to the Wildby Kenneth Brower

Penguin Group (375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014), 2006. 288 pages, hardcover. $26.00.Freeing Keiko is a biography of the captive orca

whale who rose to stardom as “Willy” in the Hollywood movieFree Willy! and sequels. Author Kenneth Brower, son of thelate Earth Island Institute founder David Brower, had uniquelyprivileged access to effort to rehabilitate Keiko for release,from the 1993 beginning of Earth Island Institute negotiationsto obtain Keiko from the Mexico City aquarium El ReinoAventura until the Humane Society of the U.S. took over theproject shortly before Keiko finally broke from human feedingand supervision in September 2002 and swam to the coast ofNorway to spend the last 15 months of his life.

Captured off Iceland in 1979, Keiko spent two yearsat Marineland of Niagara Falls, Ontario. Sold to El ReinoAventura in Mexico City, he remained there until 1996, whenthe Free Willy/Keiko Foundation formed by Earth IslandInstitute moved him to a newly built super-sized tank at theOregon Coast Aquarium. More than 2.5 million visitors cameto see him before he was airlifted to a sea pen in the WestmannIslands of Iceland in September 1998, to learn again how to bea wild whale.

Knowledgeable and painstaking, Brower summarizesas much as can be known from accessible documents aboutKeiko’s capture and early years.

A variety of individuals and organizations on eitherside of the marine mammal captivity debate and of varied credi-bility besieged El Reino Aventura with offers for Keiko afterthe success of the first Free Willy! film. Brower keeps thefocus of that part of the story on the successful Earth IslandInstitute bid, backed by HSUS. He acknowledges some of theothers, but largely steers clear of the many plots, counter-plots, and overt scams that complicated the negotiations.

More than half of Freeing Keiko concerns the moveto Iceland and aftermath, including much original observation

of the later years of the project, when few reporters other thanBrower ventured to the scene.

By far the most credit for Keiko’s release must go tothe eccentric cell phone billionaire Craig McCaw, who put $20million into the project. Brower also has especially warmwords for Earth Island Institute executive director David Philipsand negotiator Katherine Hanly, who was instrumental inarranging for Keiko to go to Iceland.

Brower’s description of the Earth Island Institute suc-cess into turning public hostility toward Keiko into enthusiasmfor his arrival is poignant in view of the subsequent revival ofthe Icelandic whaling industry and the September 2006announcement of the Icelandic government that it will resumeexporting whale meat.

Renewed Icelandic political support for whaling,despite the growth of the Icelandic whale-watching industry,may reflect the disappointment Brower notes that Keiko’s pres-ence did not bring much lasting economic benefit to the impov-erished Westmanns, if any.

Brower sums up, “Keiko’s saga had been a tale ofenormous absurdity. He was a whale who lived in a $ 7.5 mil-lion palace, attended by dozens of retainers, masseurs,lawyers, public relations people, security guards and personalphysicians.... As a model for repatriation of captive whales, hewas hopeless. We do not have enough whale loving billion-aires....And yet as a symbol and icon he was potent....But theclimax of Keiko’s saga would come when he swam out of hisown story. Just beyond the range of movie cameras, and tele-vision, and journalists and editorial writers and billionaires,and environmentalists, he would swim clear of absurdity. Hewould escape the magical thinking of his channelers, the over-protectiveness of his trainers and the righteous indignation ofhis advocates in the animal rights movement. He would course

onward into bracing cold subpolar waters where everything istrue. He would swim into anonymity.”

The ending was, as most of us know, not quite sopoetically satisfying.

As a biography of an orca, this book is superb. As astudy of the sociology of animal rescue, it is incomparable.

––Chris Mercer & Merritt Clifton

We have rescued many dogs andcats, including this mother and her

kittens. Your donation to our sanctuary fund will help us save many

more from the terrible cruelty of theKorean dog and cat meat markets. We have bought the land to build Korea's first world-class animal

shelter and hospital. A donor paidfor the foundation with a promise to put on the roof if we can raise the

money to build the middle. true!

Mark your donation for KAPS Shelter Fund, and send to:International Ai d for Ko rean Animals / Ko re a

An i mal Pr otection Society POB 20600, Oakland, CA 94620

Stealing Love: Confessions of a Dognapper by Mary A. FischerHarmony Books (231 Broad St., Nevada City, CA 95959), 2006. 288 pages, hardcover. $23.00.

Writing Green: Advocacy & Investigative Reporting About the Environment in the Early 21st Centuryby Debra Schwartz, Ph.D. Apprentice House (www.apprenticehouse.com), 2006. 179 pages, paperback. $18.95.

Keiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in 1997. (Kim Bartlett)

Chained German shepherd. (Tammy Grimes)

A pictorial account of the trade in Asian endangeredspecies, Ben Davies’ book Black Market is shocking, sicken-ing and depressing, yet also challenging, inspiring, well-researched, authentic, and thought-provoking.

More than a harrowing litany of ghastly animal abuse,Black Market offers some hope for the future by examining pos-sible responses, including the work done by dedicated conser-vationists and animal advocates.

Not only the number of bears saved by Jill Robinson’sAnimals Asia Foundation, for example, measures the value ofher work. Of greater importance is the impact of her efforts ineroding the culture of killing and consuming wildlife, includingby helping to empower local people who care about animals toundertake projects of their own.

Eight years after opening the first sanctuary for bearsrescued from bile farms in China, now providing humane edu-cation to thousands of young people each year, the AnimalsAsia Foundation in mid-September 2006 signed an agreementwith the Forest Protection Department of Vietnam to build asimilar bile farm bear rescue center in Tam Dao National Park,outside Hanoi, to open in January 2007.

The rescue center will be able to handle only 200 of

the 4,000 bears now kept on Vietnamese bile farms, Robinsonacknowledged to Hanoi-based freeland journalist MattSteinglass, but she counts on publicity about her work helpingto bring about a faster end to a practice which has in fact beenillegal in Vietnam since 1992.

Davies quotes James Compton of the World WildlifeFund trade monitoring arm TRAFFIC, who describes newlyaffluent China as “a giant vacuum cleaner emptying the wholeregion of wildlife resources” to satisfy bizarre cravings for wildmeat and body parts.

But acquisitive greed knows no national boundaries.Davies cites Superintendent Andy Fisher, head of the Metro-politan Police Wildlife Crime Unit at Scotland Yard, about theextent of the tiger bone trade in London. He also mentions that“By the early 1990s Taiwan had become the world’s centre forrhino-horn smuggling. It had a stockpile estimated to total ninetons––equivalent to 3,700 dead rhinos––with a street value of$50 million. And the horns were openly on sale.”

Despite the heroic efforts of Jill Robinson, SuwannaGauntlett of WildAid, and others, whose compassion shineslike flakes of gold, it is hard to avoid being overwhelmed bythe scale of the cruel destruction. ––Chris Mercer

Originally published in German, printed in China,newly reissued in English, The Ocean At Home is a surpris-ingly fascinating in-depth study of a seemingly esoteric topicwhose evolution in the 19th and early 20th centuries paral-leled the rise of the humane movement, anti-vivisectionism,and human awareness of ecology.

Even before Charles Darwin produced On TheOrigin of Species, the 19th century brought an explosion ofinterest in nature study, especially among the fast-growingmiddle classes of Europe after the Industrial Revolutionremoved large numbers of people from routine daily immer-sion in raising plants and animals.

Author Bernd Brunner does not delve deeply intothe greater cultural context of home aquarium development,but is aware of it, and explores the sociology of human inter-est in aquariums to the extent that his sources permit.

Along the way, Brunner explains how the adventof home aquariums changed perceptions of the ocean, asaquarium builders became increasingly aware of the need tokeep a balance at all times among plant and animal species,in order to keep any of them alive. ––Merritt Clifton

First Light is a collection of short stories about dogsand an African elephant named Sonny, who was orphaned byherd-culling in Zimbabwe circa 1980, was sold to a zoo inNew Mexico, was eventually deemed incorrigible, and wassent to the Popcorn Park Zoo, a rescue facility run by theAssociated Humane Societies of New Jersey, in 1989. He diedin early 2001.

The stories are told largely through the mouths of theanimals themselves, including Zippy, a little terrier who res-cues birds and finds time to teach inter-species communication,and Angus, a blind shelter dog whose caring guardian was ableto give him the gift of sight. Angus lives with author ArdethDeVries and joins DeVries at benefits for animal charities neartheir home in Coupevlle, Wasington.

There is adventure, pain, laughter, and tears onevery page. But there is substance to this book. It is not a merelitany of animal rescues. The animals display marked under-standing and wisdom. Portraying the dogs as enlightened high-lights the sad truth that most of their human friends are not.

Soft and sentimental, unashamedly anthropomorphic,there is almost a Disney character about the stories, in thatalthough the adventures are inspired by actual events, much ofthe book consists of conversations with and between animals.The tales are imbued with an atmosphere of respect for animalsthat makes them ideal bedtime reading for children to whomone wishes to impart an ethic of compassion.

DeVries’s stories reveal a deep knowledge of animalbehavior and care. At one point, she describes giving CPR to asmall bird that had been stunned. Breathing into a small bird’sbeak after it has flown into a window is something we our-selves have to do from time to time––and it works. Similarly,DeVries relates how she sang to one shelter dog in order toreassure her. This too is a device that we have used with suc-cess in rehabbing wild animals. Hearing a human voice goingon and on seems to have a calming effect on even wild animals,and there are many jackals and caracals now roaming theKalahari who are well versed in the poetry of Longfellow.

This is a charming little book, which could well beused in humane education.

The title refers to a spiritual awakening that a practi-tioner of Zen might call satori, namely a realization that allbeings are connected and that all are part of a greater whole.DeVries believes that if we are sensitive enough, contact andcommunication with animals can help us to find this form ofenlightenment. Although the message is deeply spiritual, thestories themselves are simple, well-written, and delightful.

All proceeds earned by Ardeth DeVries from sales ofFirst Light will be donated to animal welfare organizations,including the Whidbey Animal Improvement Foundation,Associated Humane Societies, and Broken Arrow, a founda-tion DeVries operates to help the pets of impoverished humansin the Puget Sound region.

––Chris Mercer<www.cannedlion.co.za>

South Africa

Cecily Allmon, Alpha Canine Sanctuary, Carol Anderson, Animal Radio Network, Rachel Arvizu, Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth Bates, Syd Baumel, Risa Beckham, Leonard Berger, Louis Bertrand, Dr. LeClair Bissell, Laura Black,Sharon Blair, Joel & Mary Bonham, Marjorie Boyster, Neil Brandt, Herman Brooks, Maryanne Bumbera, Diann Butler,

Gail Campbell, Sally Cannavo, Grover Chapman, Shirley Ann Coffey, Gale Cohen-Demarco, Ralph Colin Jr., Darline Coon,Margaret Corr, Alfred Coursen, Dr. Christian Creteur, Prema Ranawaka Das, Amelia Dassinger, Phyllis Daugherty,

John David, Marcia Davis, Harakh Dedhia, Martha Despeaux, Arlene Devlin, Jean DeYoung, Ursula Dicks, Anthony Di Piazza, Theresa Downer, Patricia Ducey, Robin Einbund, Johanna Elias, Ron Elterman, Judith Embry,

Dorothy Finger, Jeanette Fitzgerald, Ruth Fitzgerald, Claire Flohr, Anna Fritz, Debra Giambattista, Florrie Goldman, Dr. Barbara Good, Elinore Gordon, H.P. & Mary Gormley, Ronald Graham, Richard Gray, John Green, Joyce Grossman,

Judy Grunger, Clifford Hallock, Barbara Hardin, William Thomas Hardison Jr., Dot Hayes, Joyce & Richard Hillard,Virginia Hillger, Helene Hoffman, Beverly Hoover-Dean, Lydia Horton, Marjean Ingalls, Karen Jobe, Garland Jones,

Stanley Jones-Umberger, Jerome Kahn, Paul Kearney, Elizabeth Kirkpatrick, Lange Foundation, Carmen Lasar, John Leverenzzi, Patti Lewis, Irving Lillien, Vida Lohnes, Mary Long, James Ludwig, Lois Maloney, Celia Mangels,

Tim & Jackie Martin, Maryland Animal Advocates, Steven Mason, John Massaro, Richard McCrea, Patricia McGuire,Helen McKenna, Susan McKenzie, Judy Meincke, Lola Merritt, Marilee Meyer, Harlan Miller, Christine Million,

Gwenne Moore, Robert Morey, Andrea Mowrer, North Shore Animal League International, Deborah Nuzzo, Steven Pagani,Susan Parry/Concetta Viggiano Parry Foundation, Carleen Paule, Damon Phillips, J.A. Piccola, Mary Pipkin, Jane Poss,John and Maureen Pyner, John & Jocelyn Raquepau, Mr. & Mrs. William Reis, J.V. Romano, Yvonne Rosenblatt, Dick &Mary Rugo, Laine Ruut, Dr. Isis Sanchez, G.F. Sandt, David Schechterman, Robert & Nancy Schlosser, Gene Schmidt,

Jill & Bill Sedam, Terry Segarra, Ratilal Shah/Maharani, John Shea, Kathleen Shopa, Magda Simopoulos, Cheryl Simpson,Elisabeth Smith, Ruth Smith, Sandra Smith, Deb Smoot, Maria Sommer, Laurel Speer, June Spencer, Pat Spinosa,

Laura Staples, Darren Star & Dennis Erdman Animal Welfare Fund, George Stassinopoulos, Mary Stebbins, Philip Sullivan,Glenice Sund, Joseph Swierkosz, Harry Syer, Kenneth Tenny, Dee Tharpe, Norman Thornton, Alice Timothy,

Mrs. C. Valente, Anthoney Turney, Mrs. C. Valente, Ann Van Nes, Edith von Fraunhofer-Brodin, Diana Von Holdt,Kristin Von Kreisler, Ellen Waggoner, Eileen Weintraub & Mark Johnson, Marianna Wells, Joel Westfahl, Dee Westlund,

Marie-Christine Whitman, John Wilkalis, Mary Wilkinson, June & Elbert Wilson, Vicky Windsor, Ronald Winkler,Eleanora Worth, Audrey Wright/Coalition for Animal Protection, Louise Wunsch, Edith Yelland, Donna Youngblood,

Audrey Yuse, Patricia Zajec, Carla Zimmer


Paix pour les DauphinsOneVoiceDolphinProject.com

Peace for the Dolphins

Black Market: Inside the EndangeredSpecies Trade in Asia by Ben Davies

EarthAware Editions (17 Paul Drive, San Rafael, CA 94903),2005. 173 pages, paperback. $29.95.

Coyotes and Javelinasby Lauray Yule

Look West Series (Rio Nuevo Publishers, 451 N. Bonita Ave., Tucson, AZ 85745), 2004.

64 pages, hardcover, illustrated. $12.95.

First Light:Animal Voices in Concert

by Ardeth DeVriesPublishing Works (c/o Revolution Booksellers,

60 Winter St., Exeter, NH 03833), October 2006186 pages, paperback. $15.00.

Cousin John: The Story of a Boy & a Small Smart Pig by Walter PaineBunker Hill Publishing (285 River Road, Piermont,

NH 03779), 2006. 95 pages, paperback. $17.95.

Raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, Walter Painefound the outdoors and nature an endless source of interest. Hewas far happier roaming the open acres he called “my magickingdom‚” because of the many fascinating creatures he foundthere, than he was playing with school friends. He had diffi-culty relating to other boys his age because he was far moreinterested in picking up bugs and inspecting anything thatcrawled or flew than in playing conventional games.

Paine did once try hunting, shooting a squirrel out ofa tree with a BB gun. “As it lay twitching pathetically at myfeet, I felt a sudden surge of shame and sorrow for taking aninnocent creature’s life,” he writes.

On his tenth birthday Paine’s parents gave him a runtpiglet, who became the center of his life. Paine named his littlepink pig Cousin John. Walter spent every moment he couldwith his new friend, teaching him to walk on a harness, takinghim to visit neighbors and even winning a “special mention”ribbon at a local fair, where he entertained the public by walk-ing Cousin John around the pony ring. No one had ever seen apig walk on a harness before.

Paine feels that caring for Cousin John gave him aninvaluable lesson in responsibility. He hopes that his youngreaders of this story will each have the same opportunity to carefor a special creature, and experience the trust and companion-ship that he did.

––Beverley Pervan<www.cannedlion.co.za>

South Africa

Not reviewing these now time-tested and still in printtitles promptly on publication two years ago was a goof occa-sioned by whatever cat knocked the unopened envelope con-taining them down into the false bottom of a filing cabinet.

Written for a classroom audience, C o y o t e s a n dJavelinas present a positive view of two of the most resourcefuland unjustly maligned animals in the west. Former Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum staffer Lauray Yule came to know andappreciate coyotes and javelinas from first-hand observationand experience. While Coyotes and Javelinas are not first-handnarratives, neither are they mere simplified natural historytexts. In addition to biological information, Yule describes thecultural roles of her animal subjects.

Few observers of javelinas are aware, as Yule pointsout, that they are not closely related to the Old World pigs theyresemble, and that their likenesses exemplify convergent evo-lution. Conversely, coyotes are the New World variant of theOld World jackal, whom they closely resemble, but Yulemisses that relationship.

Yule might also be faulted for omitting discussion ofthe federally funded purges of coyotes conducted for the past75 years––but if she delved deeply into that, rancher influencemight keep Coyotes out of school libraries. ––Merritt Clifton

The Ocean At Home:An Illustrated History of the Aquariumby Bernd Brunner

Princeton Architectural Press (37 E. 7th Ave., New York, NY 10003), 2005.

144 pages, hardcover. $24.95.

ANIMAL PEOPLE

thanks you for your generous supportHonoring the parable of the widow's mite––in which a poor woman gives but one coin to charity,

yet that is all she possesses––we do not list our donors by how much they give, but we greatly appreciate large gifts that help us do more for animals.

Norman, 15, the pet pig for whomthe White Pig Bed & Breakfast vegan retreat inSchuyler, Virginia, was named, died onSeptember 18, 2006.

Sher Khan, 22, the oldest hybridAfrican/Asiatic lion in India, died onSeptember 24 at the Tata Steel Zoological Parkin Jamshedpur. The Central Zoo Authority inDecember 2004 ordered that all of the 300hybrid lions in Indian zoos should be steril-ized, to keep the captive Asiatic lion popula-tion genetically distinct. The Chatbir Zoo inPunjab had bred nearly 100 hybrid lions.

Murphy, 4, the North Carolina Zoogroundhog “weather forecaster,” brought tothe zoo wildlife rehabilitation center in May2002, died on September 17, 2006.

R u p e r t, a 15-to-18-year-old Aust-ralian black swan “known for chasing life-guards and boaters” at Newport Beach,California, “whose love affair with a youngermate captivated the beach community,”according to Associated Press writer ChristinaAlmeida, was killed on September 13, 2006when hit by an Orange County Harbor Patrolboat that was rushing to recover floatinghuman remains. His mate Pearl was killed byan oil slick in 2002.

J u l i e t, a carriage horse at CentralPark in New York City since 1989, collapsedand died on September 15, 2006. Anti-car-riage horse industry demonstrators memorial-ized her on September 21.

E n s h a l a, 14, a Sumatran tiger,escaped from her quarters at the Lowry ParkZoo in Tampa, Florida, at closing time onAugust 22, 2006. Zoo president Lex Salis-bury shot her after a tranquilizer dart failed todrop her, putting zoo vet David Murphy inpotential jeopardy. Enshala had begun climb-ing a seven-foot wall, approaching a publicarea, when Salisbury fired.

Bonnie, a sacred white buffalo wholived at the Love Animal House in Thailand,fell into an old well on August 25, 2006, anddied from a broken neck. Her remains werereportedly stolen, butchered, and eaten thatnight in a nearby village.

L u c y, 46, a elephant captured inAfrica, sold to the Milwaukee County Zoo in1962, was euthanized on September 1.

Steve Irwin, 44, was killed whenstabbed in the heart by a stingray onSeptember 4, 2006, while videotaping a seriescalled “Ocean’s Deadliest” at Batt Reef, northof Cairns. Irwin starred in the C r o c o c i l eH u n t e r television series, aired in Australiasince 1992, later carried globally by theDiscovery Channel. An outspoken opponentof recreational hunting, Irwin led a successfulcampaign against a government proposal toopen trophy hunting for saltwater crocodiles inthe Australian Northern Territory. Irwin’s par-ents, Bob and Lyn Irwin, founded theAustralia Zoo, north of Brisbane, in 1970.“In 1991, Irwin took over the zoo when hisparents retired, and began building a reputa-tion as a showman during daily crocodile feed-ing shows. He met and married Terri Raines,of Eugene, Oregon, who came to the park as atourist,” in 1992, recalled Brian Cassey ofAssociated Press. “They invited a televisioncrew to join them on their camping honey-moon on Australia's far northern tip. Theresulting show became the first episode of TheCrocodile Hunter. Raines and Irwin founded apro-animal charity together, Wildlife WarriorsWorldwide, in 2002, but “Irwin's image wasdented in 2004,” Cassey added “when he heldhis month-old son Bob in one arm while feed-ing large crocodiles inside a zoo pen. Heargued there was no danger. Later that year,he was accused of getting too close to pen-guins and humpback whales in Antarcticawhile making a documentary. An officialinvestigation recommended that no action betaken against him.” Irwin died only weeksbefore the scheduled groundbreaking on awildlife rehabilitation center he intended to bethe biggest in the world, named in honor of hismother, who was killed in a car crash in 2000.

Margaret Sacre , 83, died inHoboken, New Jersey, on September 2,2006. Born in England, where she was notallowed to have pets as a child, Sacre emigrat-ed to first Canada and then the U.S. afterWorld War II military service. “When shemoved to New York in the late 1950s shebecame aware of the stray animal problem andbegan her rescue work,” recalled her friendSheila Dines. “In 1979 she moved back toEngland with 28 cats,” a dog she had rescued,and “a horse she had saved from slaughter,”but she returned to the U.S. only five yearslater with a cat she had rescued in Britain.

Boyd Nathaniel Lyon, 37, aUniversity of Central Florida graduate student,was pulled underwater and drowned nearMelbourne Beach on August 10, 2006, whiletrying to tag a sea turtle. A lifelong turtleenthusiast, Lyon was also noted as a soccerplayer for Keystone State in Pennsylvania andfor the San Diego State University Aztecs. Helater coached for the Rancho Santa Fe AttackSoccer Club, ran summer soccer camps, andplayed guitar for several California bands. TheOcean Foundation started a fund to support seaturtle student research projects in his memory.

Don Deichman, 57, died on August29, 2006, from a heart attack suffered whiledriving in rural Maryland. Deichman, anunsuccessful Democratic Congressional candi-date in 2002, was among the eight co-authorsof the Humane Consumer & Producer Guide,published in 1993 by the Humane Society ofthe U.S., billed as “the first national listing offarmers and ranchers identified for theirhumane treatment of animals and sustainablefarming practices.”

William Russell, 81, died on July27, 2006. As a research fellow at OxfordUnivesity, Russell was recruited in 1954 todevelop humane experimental methods for theUniversities Federation for Animal Welfare.UFAW hired his research assistant, RexBurch, several weeks later. Russell and Burchin their 1959 book The Principles of HumaneExperimental Technique set forth the “ThreeRs” concepts of replacing the use of sentientanimals whenever possible, reducing the num-bers used to the minimum necessary to achievethe scientific goal, and refining methods tominimize harm to animal welfare.

L.E.L. "Bets" Rasmussen, 6 7 ,died September 17 in Seattle from the bonemarrow disorder myelodysplastic syndrome.“A research professor with the OGI School ofScience and Engineering at Oregon Health &Science University,” recalled Richard L. Hillof The Oregonian, “Rasmussen gained inter-national attention when she reported in thejournal N a t u r e her discovery of the sexpheromone that female elephants secrete intheir urine to let bulls know they're ready tomate.” This “led to other discoveries aboutelephant communication. She found that bullelephants communicate with each other byusing two fragrances in secretions from thetemporal glands on their heads during theiryearly musth, a period of heightened sexualactivity and aggression. She determined thatolder bulls use a foul-smelling substance thatdeters younger males, while young bulls emita sweet, honey-scented secretion to avoid con-flict with the older guys. Another study dis-covered how female elephants can detectchemical cues in the urine of other females todetermine the phase of their reproductivecycle. Rasmussen also studied whales, dol-phins and manatees to determine from theirbreaths whether they were unhealthy and whatmight be ailing them.”

Anna Marie McDonald, 24, anemployee of the San Martin Animal shelter,was killed in her home in Santa Clara,California, on September 8, 2006 by her for-mer housemate James Patrick Krauth, 25.Krauth fled the scene when police arrived. Hewas shot by police after allegedly trying to runover an officer the next day in CalaverasCounty.

Margaret Ann "Peg" HazlettTaggart, 101, died on August 24, 2006, inIndianapolis. Taggart in 1972 cofunded theHome for Friendless Animals in Noblesville,Indiana, now located in Waynesboro, servingas board member and executive director.

In loving memory of my lab, Cindy Lou Finger.––Dorothy Finger

_______________________________________________

In memory of Charlotte, whose tail neverstopped wagging. She is much missed.

––Annie Van Nes_______________________________________________

In memory of Karen Sculac, who died too soon and will be greatly missed

by family, friends, and the animals.––Helen Kett

_______________________________________________

In memory of Karen Sculac,who devoted her life to the

Big Cats of Serenity Springs.––Marcia Davis

_______________________________________________

In memory of Molly, my 11-year-old cat, offspring of a feral mother.

––Judy Meincke_______________________________________________

In memory of Samuel Joseph Pussycat,a pound cat who for 10 years was beloved

pet of Robert L. & Dorothy Harrison._______________________________________________

In memory of Purr Box (12/3/87), Prometheus (3/21/81), Friendl (10/30/87),

Lizzie (5/8/84), Boy Cat (12/26/85), Miss Penrose (11/18/98), Duke (11/1/98),Purr Box, Jr. (5/1/04), Mylady (8/1/06),

Blackie (9/9/96), and Honey Boy (11/1/05).


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ST. FRANCIS DOG MEDALS are here!Wonderful Fundraiser

www.blueribbonspetcare.com1-800-552-BLUE

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SPECIES LINK: MAGAZINE DEDI-CATED TO INTERSPECIES COMMU-NICATION since 1990. Editor: PenelopeSmith, founding animal communicator,author of Animal Talk. $25/year or $20/yearfor two or more years through PayPal onw w w . a n i m a l t a l k . n e t or checks made toAnima Mundi Inc., 1415 Libby LoopRoad, Prescott, AZ 86303; 928-776-9709.________________________________________________

CAT PROBLEMS?Read Cat Be Good by Annie Bruce,

www.goodcatswearblack.com________________________________________________

Register your pro-animal organization atwww.worldanimal.net

WWW.ROMANIAANIMALRESCUE.COM_______________________________________________

WHO WORKS IN BUENOS AIRES? www.adda.org.ar

_______________________________________________

PLEASE HELP THE WORKING DONKEYS OF INDIA!

We sponsor free veterinary camps twice ayear for over 2,000 working donkeys in cen-tral India, plus free vet care on Sundays.Dharma Donkey Sanctuary/Ahimsa ofTexas, 1720 E. Jeter Road, Bartonville, TX76226; <[email protected]>.

www.dharmadonkeysanctuary.org________________________________________________

Want Art that Reflects Your Values? W W W . L I T T L E G I R L L O O K I N G . C O Msells unique Art for Animal/EnvironmentalAdvocates. Dogs Deserve Better or yourfavorite Animal Charity receives 15-50% ofthe profits.

SUBSCRIBE NOW TO VEGAN VOICE,Australia's celebrated and singular quarterlymagazine! www.veganic.net________________________________________________

FREE SPAY/NEUTER for stray and feralcats in Arad, Romania. Please help us witha donation: www.animed.ro

INTERESTED IN VOLUNTEERING INKENYA AND HELPING ANIMALS IN

AFRICA? Visit our volunteer page onwww.anaw.org or email [email protected]

________________________________________________

Take time to smell the flowers and to visit:http://humanelink.org

There is no better way to rememberanimals or animal people than with an

ANIMAL PEOPLE memorial. Send donations (any amount),

with address for acknowledgement, if desired, to

P.O. Box 960Clinton, WA 98236-0960

Your love for animals can go on forever.

The last thing we want is to lose our friends, but you can help continue our vital educational mission

with a bequest to ANIMAL PEOPLE(a 501(c)(3) charitable corporation, federal ID# 14-1752216)

Animal People, Inc., PO Box 960, Clinton WA 98236Ask for our free brochure Estate Planning for Animal People

OBITUARIES

CLASSIFIEDS––50¢ a word! POB 960, Clinton, WA 98236 • 360-579-2505 • fax 360-

––Wolf Clifton

Turner, 12, a beluga whale who had lived at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquariumin Tacoma, Washington, since 1998, on loan from Sea World, died on September 7, possibly from a chronic kidney condition that predated his arrival in Tacoma. (Kim Bartlett)

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