Dog Fur Sold as Faux Fur
Friday, June 29, 2007
Combating Global Illegal Wildlife Trade a U.S. Priority
Carole’s note: According to a woman who works for Claudia McMurray, there has never been a person in the State Department who cared more about protecting the tiger.
Combating Global Illegal Wildlife Trade a
29 June 2007
Staggering profits generated by black market, State Department official says
“[I] t is largely conducted by the same professionals that engage in other international organized crime,” McMurray, assistant secretary of state for oceans, science and environmental affairs, said. This is one reason the
In a short time, CAWT has made some inroads fighting the trade, most notably in cooperation with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). “We were very instrumental in the formation of the world’s first regional Wildlife Enforcement Network, ASEAN-WEN,” she said, adding that the network has broken up several criminal wildlife trafficking rings.
Diligent law enforcement followed by effective prosecution is the goal of such programs. “We are working to improve countries’ capacity to enforce against and prosecute those who are engaged in this activity,” she says.
The
“[C]racking down on these criminals may shut down rings that traffic in people, drugs and weapons, McMurray said.
She said one basis for action against illegal trafficking in wildlife is the Convention on Illegal Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which has been in effect for more than 30 years. The convention sets specific restrictions on trade in animals and plants it lists. The 172 countries that have ratified CITES generally enact laws to make the trade illegal within their own borders, she said.
Some countries -- such as the
CAWT supports CITES goals to curb demand by raising public awareness and giving tourists and others the necessary information to differentiate between legal and illegal animals and products, she said.
At the recent CITES Conference of the Parties, the
“The
McMurray said CAWT partners have lobbied for strong measures against illegal wildlife trade at the highest political levels, such as the Group of Eight industrialized nations, the U.N. Forum on Forests and the U.N. Crime Commission.
“President Bush has also raised this issue with a number of world leaders, including President Lula of
“So we are making progress. But, said McMurray, “there is a lot more work to do.”
The transcript of McMurray’s webchat, along with additional information about upcoming webchats, is available on USINFO’s Webchat Station.
Further information about the Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking is available on its Web site.
More information about CITES is available on the convention’s Web site.
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs,
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2007&m=June&x=20070629112131adynned0.7754633
What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You
What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You
The 2007 discovery of a zoonotic disease in lions illustrates how little we really know about diseases that can be transferred between wild animals and people. The Norovirus described in this report, posted on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website, describes a severe hemorrhagic enteritis which can result in a vascular collapse from the intense bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract. This report documents the first case ever confirmed in lions and was only discovered when a series of cubs, born in a zoo, died from the infection. An estimated 75% of emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic and are mainly of viral origin. There has been so little research into zoonotic diseases that it is reckless to have close contact with animals who were never meant to come in close proximity to man.
Lion report: http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/13/7/1071.htm?s_cid=eid1071_e
Exotic pets spreading disease: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/13/1/6.htm
For the cats,
Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue
an Educational Sanctuary home
to more than 100 big cats
12802 Easy Street
813.493.4564 fax 885.4457
http://www.BigCatRescue.org MakeADifference@BigCatRescue.org
Sign our petition to protect tigers here:
Get 7 Free Lessons from the Teachers of "The Secret" here: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/TheSecret.htm
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Exotic animal ban one step closer in N.C.
Submitted by WWAY on 28 June 2007 - 11:18pm.
RALEIGH -- An exotic animal ban in North Carolina is one step closer to reality.
Some local private zoo and sanctuary owners were in Raleigh Thursday fighting proposed senate legislation that would prohibit them from housing exotic animals like these.
Tregembo Zoo on Carolina Beach Road would be one business affected if the bill is passed.
Owners say they would be forced to shut down the zoo... And lose a lot of money in the process.
Sherry Tregembo said, "It'd be a huge loss. We're the biggest zoo for probably a couple hundred miles. We get hundreds of school kids in the spring and summer and then get summer camps. It's a huge loss."
New Hanover County already has regulations in place that prevents private homeowners from owning exotic animals.
If this bill is passed, regulations would go into effect statewide.
http://www.wwaytv3.com/exotic_animal_ ban_one_step_closer_in_n_c/06/2007
RALEIGH -- An exotic animal ban in North Carolina is one step closer to reality.
Some local private zoo and sanctuary owners were in Raleigh Thursday fighting proposed senate legislation that would prohibit them from housing exotic animals like these.
Tregembo Zoo on Carolina Beach Road would be one business affected if the bill is passed.
Owners say they would be forced to shut down the zoo... And lose a lot of money in the process.
Sherry Tregembo said, "It'd be a huge loss. We're the biggest zoo for probably a couple hundred miles. We get hundreds of school kids in the spring and summer and then get summer camps. It's a huge loss."
New Hanover County already has regulations in place that prevents private homeowners from owning exotic animals.
If this bill is passed, regulations would go into effect statewide.
http://www.wwaytv3.com/exotic_animal_ ban_one_step_closer_in_n_c/06/2007
Florida governor signs exotic animal bill
By MICHAEL PELTIER
staff writer
June 29, 2007
TALLAHASSEE — Hoping to eliminate problems with big, exotic snakes on planes or anywhere else, Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday met with a local lawmaker after ceremoniously signing into law a measure to help state officials stop the spread of reptile pets gone wild.
Sponsored by Rep. Ralph Poppell, R-Vero Beach, the law requires owners of many exotic reptiles including Burmese pythons to show they can afford them by paying the state a $100 annual fee. The proceeds will go toward bolstering enforcement and education efforts. New rules take effect Jan. 1.
"This bill is about good governance; giving (wildlife officials) the tools they need to promote responsible ownership and a uniform standard for the possession of dangerous, exotic or invasive wildlife," Poppell said in a statement.
Florida wildlife officials have been complaining for years exotic, non-venomous reptiles are being released into the Florida wild where they have few, if any, natural predators.
As their cute little pets grow into hulking adolescents, uncomfortable owners have used the Everglades and other natural areas as forced relocation centers for reptiles that soon grow into something to be reckoned with. In one case in 2005, a 13-foot python in Everglades National Park devoured a 6-foot alligator but burst in the process.
But it's not just a South Florida problem. Vero Beach Animal Control Officer Bruce Dangerfield, for example, has rounded up more than 30 large snakes in the past eight years.
The measure also requires owners of other exotic animals such as baboons, gorillas, leopards and other species to post a deposit of at least $10,000 or carry $2 million in insurance coverage. The measure sets up a series of increasingly stiff penalties for owners, sellers and traffickers. The maximum penalty for negligent handling and selling is a third degree felony, punishable by up to five years in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Crist's signature comes more than two years after Poppell first introduced the measure. Earlier versions went into hibernation as owners of lions, tigers and bears objected to their inclusion. Poppell's bill couldn't squeeze through.
This year, Poppell and Senate sponsor Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, shed the furry exotics from most provisions of the bill, but still require owners to prove they have the financial capacity to pay claims in the event of an attack. The bill slid through with little objection.
http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/ 0,,TCP_16736_5607361,00.html
staff writer
June 29, 2007
TALLAHASSEE — Hoping to eliminate problems with big, exotic snakes on planes or anywhere else, Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday met with a local lawmaker after ceremoniously signing into law a measure to help state officials stop the spread of reptile pets gone wild.
Sponsored by Rep. Ralph Poppell, R-Vero Beach, the law requires owners of many exotic reptiles including Burmese pythons to show they can afford them by paying the state a $100 annual fee. The proceeds will go toward bolstering enforcement and education efforts. New rules take effect Jan. 1.
"This bill is about good governance; giving (wildlife officials) the tools they need to promote responsible ownership and a uniform standard for the possession of dangerous, exotic or invasive wildlife," Poppell said in a statement.
Florida wildlife officials have been complaining for years exotic, non-venomous reptiles are being released into the Florida wild where they have few, if any, natural predators.
As their cute little pets grow into hulking adolescents, uncomfortable owners have used the Everglades and other natural areas as forced relocation centers for reptiles that soon grow into something to be reckoned with. In one case in 2005, a 13-foot python in Everglades National Park devoured a 6-foot alligator but burst in the process.
But it's not just a South Florida problem. Vero Beach Animal Control Officer Bruce Dangerfield, for example, has rounded up more than 30 large snakes in the past eight years.
The measure also requires owners of other exotic animals such as baboons, gorillas, leopards and other species to post a deposit of at least $10,000 or carry $2 million in insurance coverage. The measure sets up a series of increasingly stiff penalties for owners, sellers and traffickers. The maximum penalty for negligent handling and selling is a third degree felony, punishable by up to five years in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Crist's signature comes more than two years after Poppell first introduced the measure. Earlier versions went into hibernation as owners of lions, tigers and bears objected to their inclusion. Poppell's bill couldn't squeeze through.
This year, Poppell and Senate sponsor Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, shed the furry exotics from most provisions of the bill, but still require owners to prove they have the financial capacity to pay claims in the event of an attack. The bill slid through with little objection.
http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/ 0,,TCP_16736_5607361,00.html
Large Pa. fair will feature daily big cat shows
Thursday, June 28, 2007
By Shari L. Berg
One of the biggest fairs in Western Pennsylvania is boasting some big entertainment this year. The Big Butler Fair, now in its 152nd year, features rides, animals, demolition derbies and music to please just about everyone. And don't forget the funnel cakes and corn dogs. The fair runs from tomorrow through July 7 and is held at the fairgrounds in Prospect....
Visitors will be able to see Kay Rosaire's Big Cat Encounter, featuring Clayton Rosaire, the youngest professional big-cat handler in the business. At age 19, the troupe claims Mr. Rosaire is the youngest tiger tamer in the world. Mr. Rosaire will lead Siberian and Bengal tigers through a series of complex routines. Mr. Roenigk said the show will be at the fair daily for the entire week....
A complete listing of all fair events can be found on the fair's Web site at www.bigbutlerfair.com
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07179/797531-54.stm
By Shari L. Berg
One of the biggest fairs in Western Pennsylvania is boasting some big entertainment this year. The Big Butler Fair, now in its 152nd year, features rides, animals, demolition derbies and music to please just about everyone. And don't forget the funnel cakes and corn dogs. The fair runs from tomorrow through July 7 and is held at the fairgrounds in Prospect....
Visitors will be able to see Kay Rosaire's Big Cat Encounter, featuring Clayton Rosaire, the youngest professional big-cat handler in the business. At age 19, the troupe claims Mr. Rosaire is the youngest tiger tamer in the world. Mr. Rosaire will lead Siberian and Bengal tigers through a series of complex routines. Mr. Roenigk said the show will be at the fair daily for the entire week....
A complete listing of all fair events can be found on the fair's Web site at www.bigbutlerfair.com
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07179/797531-54.stm
Cheetah cubs go on display at Ohio zoo
Article published Thursday, June 28, 2007
On a drowsy day at the Toledo Zoo’s Cheetah Valley, Shaka supervises her two new cubs, Amani and Moja, as the cubs are introduced to the public.
The cubs were born at the zoo in April and went on exhibit yesterday. Sevenyear- old Shaka was bred to a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo last fall. She came to the zoo in June of 2000 from the Hoedspruit Research and Breeding Center in South Africa.
Cheetahs are the world’s fastest mammals, able to run 65 miles an hour. Zoo hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/ 20070628/NEWS38/70628022/-1/NEWS
On a drowsy day at the Toledo Zoo’s Cheetah Valley, Shaka supervises her two new cubs, Amani and Moja, as the cubs are introduced to the public.
The cubs were born at the zoo in April and went on exhibit yesterday. Sevenyear- old Shaka was bred to a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo last fall. She came to the zoo in June of 2000 from the Hoedspruit Research and Breeding Center in South Africa.
Cheetahs are the world’s fastest mammals, able to run 65 miles an hour. Zoo hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/ 20070628/NEWS38/70628022/-1/NEWS
Mo. exotic animal park plans August re-opening
By Jeremy Elwood
Springfield Business Journal Staff
6/28/2007
Exotic Animal Paradise's new owners are planning a grand opening and ribbon-cutting in August for the attraction, which they bought in June 2006 and initially planned to close.
Tony and Lisa Ann Oddo purchased the drive-through zoo and animal park for an undisclosed amount from former owners Ron and Brenda Armitage.
Lisa Ann Oddo said original plans for the land had called for the park to be torn down to make way for a housing development and golf course.
"Luckily, we had so much land there that we were able to do the housing development and keep the park," Oddo said, noting that the park had a quiet reopening in April. The grand opening celebration and ribbon-cutting is slated for Aug. 3.
Improvements are under way at the park, including a new restaurant, dubbed Paradise Café, and a new arcade, along with renovations to the Go Kart track. The familiar petting and drive-through zoo areas remain. Oddo added that other plans include the addition of miniature golf, batting cages and a catch-and-release bass fishing area.
Paradise Lake development also is in the early stages of development. Oddo said the 25-lot development would incorporate an already-open driving range and a planned nine-hole golf course.
"Things are coming together quickly," Oddo said. "We're really excited."
The park's hours are 8:30 a.m. to one hour before dusk. Its new phone number is (417) 859-5300.
http://www.sbj.net/article.asp?aID=95543213.7261774.1012479. 5965344.51875602.107&aID2=77874
Springfield Business Journal Staff
6/28/2007
Exotic Animal Paradise's new owners are planning a grand opening and ribbon-cutting in August for the attraction, which they bought in June 2006 and initially planned to close.
Tony and Lisa Ann Oddo purchased the drive-through zoo and animal park for an undisclosed amount from former owners Ron and Brenda Armitage.
Lisa Ann Oddo said original plans for the land had called for the park to be torn down to make way for a housing development and golf course.
"Luckily, we had so much land there that we were able to do the housing development and keep the park," Oddo said, noting that the park had a quiet reopening in April. The grand opening celebration and ribbon-cutting is slated for Aug. 3.
Improvements are under way at the park, including a new restaurant, dubbed Paradise Café, and a new arcade, along with renovations to the Go Kart track. The familiar petting and drive-through zoo areas remain. Oddo added that other plans include the addition of miniature golf, batting cages and a catch-and-release bass fishing area.
Paradise Lake development also is in the early stages of development. Oddo said the 25-lot development would incorporate an already-open driving range and a planned nine-hole golf course.
"Things are coming together quickly," Oddo said. "We're really excited."
The park's hours are 8:30 a.m. to one hour before dusk. Its new phone number is (417) 859-5300.
http://www.sbj.net/article.asp?aID=95543213.7261774.1012479. 5965344.51875602.107&aID2=77874
USA Today article focuses on Bengals
By Sharon L. Peters, Special for USA TODAY
An elegant, exotic-looking feline just a few generations removed from the wild has become the public's meow.
The Bengal cat, a cross between a domestic cat and the little forest-dwelling Asian leopard cat that roams Asia and part of Russia, has become the most registered feline with the International Cat Association. And breeders, fetching anywhere from $500 to $1,000 for a well-bred pet to $2,000 and up for a show-quality kitten, can barely keep up with demand.
"It's definitely become the cat du jour," says Marilyn Krieger, a certified cat behavior consultant and coordinator of California Bengal Rescue, which finds new homes for Bengals given up by owners.
Bengals draw attention for their fresh-from-the-wild looks. They are about the same size as average pet cats, but they are decidedly sleek and athletic-looking with long, muscular bodies, round-tipped ears and longish legs. Most have spotted or marbled silky coats that give them an appearance resembling exotic zoo cats.
Their personalities and quirks are equally distinctive. Fans of Bengals say they're vocal, self-assured cats, exceptionally smart and easily trained. They're also water lovers and avid climbers, and they love a raucous game of fetch.
They aren't passive couch cats. Bengals require a lot of attention and stimulation from their owners, says Krieger. If that's missing, they often become mischief-makers.
The breed was first developed in the 1960s by California breeder Jean Mill, who crossed an Asian leopard cat she had as a pet with a domestic cat. But it wasn't until the mid-1980s, when she acquired another Asian leopard cat, that Mill started an aggressive Bengal breeding program.
There was "some opposition" from cat folks who "totally disapproved," she acknowledges, so only a handful of breeders got into Bengals for several years.
Still, Bengals eventually caught on, and a popularity surge that began about five years ago is intensifying. More than 60,000 Bengals now are registered with the International Cat Association, the nation's second-largest registry, surpassing its registration numbers for even the popular Ragdoll and Maine Coon breeds. And cat experts believe thousands more Bengal pets are not registered.
The breed is not recognized by the nation's biggest registry, the Cat Fanciers' Association.
"Our policy is that only cats with totally domestic backgrounds" can be registered, says Allene Tartaglia, the association's executive director.
While acknowledging Bengals "are beautiful," Tartaglia adds, "our concern is temperament. If it's registered with CFA, it's entitled to go to a show," and there are worries about unpredictability and possible injuries, she says.
Bengal fanciers say the cats are now sufficiently removed from their wild feline ancestors — four to eight generations in most cases — and any early temperament issues have been bred out.
Still, there remain some cat people who believe Bengals are not appropriate pets and suggest behavioral traits are prompting many disappointed owners to give them up.
Ridiculous, Krieger says. She polled rescue groups for four different breeds last year, she says, and found "Bengals are actually one of the least-often surrendered because of behavior."
Bengals, Mill adds, "want to please people. Most cats don't give a damn what you want."
That said, they're not for everyone.
Too many people buy them only for their looks, imagining they're getting a gorgeous lap cat, Krieger says. They aren't prepared for Bengals' high energy, strong personality and need for stimulation.
"People who buy them as a decorative item," she says, "would be better off with a stuffed animal."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-06-27- bengalcats_N.htm
An elegant, exotic-looking feline just a few generations removed from the wild has become the public's meow.
The Bengal cat, a cross between a domestic cat and the little forest-dwelling Asian leopard cat that roams Asia and part of Russia, has become the most registered feline with the International Cat Association. And breeders, fetching anywhere from $500 to $1,000 for a well-bred pet to $2,000 and up for a show-quality kitten, can barely keep up with demand.
"It's definitely become the cat du jour," says Marilyn Krieger, a certified cat behavior consultant and coordinator of California Bengal Rescue, which finds new homes for Bengals given up by owners.
Bengals draw attention for their fresh-from-the-wild looks. They are about the same size as average pet cats, but they are decidedly sleek and athletic-looking with long, muscular bodies, round-tipped ears and longish legs. Most have spotted or marbled silky coats that give them an appearance resembling exotic zoo cats.
Their personalities and quirks are equally distinctive. Fans of Bengals say they're vocal, self-assured cats, exceptionally smart and easily trained. They're also water lovers and avid climbers, and they love a raucous game of fetch.
They aren't passive couch cats. Bengals require a lot of attention and stimulation from their owners, says Krieger. If that's missing, they often become mischief-makers.
The breed was first developed in the 1960s by California breeder Jean Mill, who crossed an Asian leopard cat she had as a pet with a domestic cat. But it wasn't until the mid-1980s, when she acquired another Asian leopard cat, that Mill started an aggressive Bengal breeding program.
There was "some opposition" from cat folks who "totally disapproved," she acknowledges, so only a handful of breeders got into Bengals for several years.
Still, Bengals eventually caught on, and a popularity surge that began about five years ago is intensifying. More than 60,000 Bengals now are registered with the International Cat Association, the nation's second-largest registry, surpassing its registration numbers for even the popular Ragdoll and Maine Coon breeds. And cat experts believe thousands more Bengal pets are not registered.
The breed is not recognized by the nation's biggest registry, the Cat Fanciers' Association.
"Our policy is that only cats with totally domestic backgrounds" can be registered, says Allene Tartaglia, the association's executive director.
While acknowledging Bengals "are beautiful," Tartaglia adds, "our concern is temperament. If it's registered with CFA, it's entitled to go to a show," and there are worries about unpredictability and possible injuries, she says.
Bengal fanciers say the cats are now sufficiently removed from their wild feline ancestors — four to eight generations in most cases — and any early temperament issues have been bred out.
Still, there remain some cat people who believe Bengals are not appropriate pets and suggest behavioral traits are prompting many disappointed owners to give them up.
Ridiculous, Krieger says. She polled rescue groups for four different breeds last year, she says, and found "Bengals are actually one of the least-often surrendered because of behavior."
Bengals, Mill adds, "want to please people. Most cats don't give a damn what you want."
That said, they're not for everyone.
Too many people buy them only for their looks, imagining they're getting a gorgeous lap cat, Krieger says. They aren't prepared for Bengals' high energy, strong personality and need for stimulation.
"People who buy them as a decorative item," she says, "would be better off with a stuffed animal."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-06-27- bengalcats_N.htm
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Lion cub dies at Kansas zoo
Posted: 8:58 AM Jun 27, 2007
When Asante, a lion at the the Topeka Zoological Park, gave birth to a her first litter early in June, the four cubs were the first born at the Zoo's Lion's Pride facility in eighteen years. Unfortunately, two cubs did not survive the birth and Tuesday the Zoo was saddened to announce the death of one more cub.
Right now, Zoo officials say they were surprised when the 17-day old cub died; it had been reportedly active and nursing. A gross necropsy initially revealed abnormal kidneys. The zoo says it will provide more information when a complee histopathology is completed.
The lone surviving cub and its mother are still living in an off exhibit Lion's Pride holding facility and will be reintroduced at a later time.
Asante came to the Topeka Zoo from the Ft. Worth Zoo along with another female lion, Zuri, two years ago. The cub's father, Avus, joined the pride last year from Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin.
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/8203027.html
When Asante, a lion at the the Topeka Zoological Park, gave birth to a her first litter early in June, the four cubs were the first born at the Zoo's Lion's Pride facility in eighteen years. Unfortunately, two cubs did not survive the birth and Tuesday the Zoo was saddened to announce the death of one more cub.
Right now, Zoo officials say they were surprised when the 17-day old cub died; it had been reportedly active and nursing. A gross necropsy initially revealed abnormal kidneys. The zoo says it will provide more information when a complee histopathology is completed.
The lone surviving cub and its mother are still living in an off exhibit Lion's Pride holding facility and will be reintroduced at a later time.
Asante came to the Topeka Zoo from the Ft. Worth Zoo along with another female lion, Zuri, two years ago. The cub's father, Avus, joined the pride last year from Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin.
http://www.wibw.com/home/headlines/8203027.html
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Calif. zoo tiger killed by exhibit mate
(06-26) 06:45 PDT Atascadero, Calif. (AP) --
A zoo tiger was killed by his longtime exhibit mate.
Hoshi, an Indochinese tiger who joined the Charles Paddock Zoo in fall 2000, was found dead in his den Sunday.
Zoo director Alan Baker said the tiger died from asphyxiation caused by exhibit mate Sala. Laboratory tests are incomplete and details about the death weren't known.
Hoshi was born in February 2000 at the Cincinnati Zoo and joined the Atascadero zoo later that year, Baker said.
Sala will stay on display at the zoo, which was established in 1955 by San Luis Obispo County park ranger Charles Paddock, who nursed wild animals back to health.
The zoo was moved from the county animal shelter in 1963 to its current five-acre site. The city took over management of the zoo when Atascadero incorporated in 1979.
The Charles Paddock Zoo has more than 100 animals.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/n/a/2007/06/26/state/n064512D23.DTL
A zoo tiger was killed by his longtime exhibit mate.
Hoshi, an Indochinese tiger who joined the Charles Paddock Zoo in fall 2000, was found dead in his den Sunday.
Zoo director Alan Baker said the tiger died from asphyxiation caused by exhibit mate Sala. Laboratory tests are incomplete and details about the death weren't known.
Hoshi was born in February 2000 at the Cincinnati Zoo and joined the Atascadero zoo later that year, Baker said.
Sala will stay on display at the zoo, which was established in 1955 by San Luis Obispo County park ranger Charles Paddock, who nursed wild animals back to health.
The zoo was moved from the county animal shelter in 1963 to its current five-acre site. The city took over management of the zoo when Atascadero incorporated in 1979.
The Charles Paddock Zoo has more than 100 animals.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/n/a/2007/06/26/state/n064512D23.DTL
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Lions rip boy to shreds on S. African game farm
19/06/2007 08:03 - (SA)
Linda de Beer, Beeld
Vryburg - All that remained of a nine-year-old boy who was caught and eaten by lions on a farm in the Boshoek/Bray area in North West on Sunday, was a small piece of his skull.
Police spokesperson Charlize van der Linden said Tsepo Gearupi apparently put his arm through the gate of the lion enclosure, where one of the lions grabbed him and pulled him into the camp.
Van der Linden said farmworkers went to the lion enclosures on Sunday afternoon to see the animals and take photos.
The children were supposed to stay at home, but they sneaked out later to follow the adults.
"The grown-ups only realised that the children were at the lion camps when they heard screams. There were eight lions in the camp in which Tsepo was, but apparently only two attacked him."
The boy was from Morakweng, outside Ganyesa. It was not yet clear how he was connected to the farm.
Van der Linden said the owners of the farm were apparently away for the weekend.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/ 0,,2-7-1442_2132418,00.html
Linda de Beer, Beeld
Vryburg - All that remained of a nine-year-old boy who was caught and eaten by lions on a farm in the Boshoek/Bray area in North West on Sunday, was a small piece of his skull.
Police spokesperson Charlize van der Linden said Tsepo Gearupi apparently put his arm through the gate of the lion enclosure, where one of the lions grabbed him and pulled him into the camp.
Van der Linden said farmworkers went to the lion enclosures on Sunday afternoon to see the animals and take photos.
The children were supposed to stay at home, but they sneaked out later to follow the adults.
"The grown-ups only realised that the children were at the lion camps when they heard screams. There were eight lions in the camp in which Tsepo was, but apparently only two attacked him."
The boy was from Morakweng, outside Ganyesa. It was not yet clear how he was connected to the farm.
Van der Linden said the owners of the farm were apparently away for the weekend.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/ 0,,2-7-1442_2132418,00.html
S. African game farm checked after tiger attack
25/06/2007 12:10 - (SA)
Bloemfontein - All permits are in order at the Heilbron game farm in the Free State where a Bengal tiger attacked a child and her father at the weekend, environmental officials said on Monday.
"There is no problem with the camps, fences or permits," said Werner Boing, spokesperson on biodiversity compliance at the local department of environmental affairs.
Boing said officials visited the game farm on Sunday.
This came after an 18-month-old girl's face was seriously injured when a Bengal tiger grabbed at her through a fence during a visit to the farm on Saturday.
The girl's father's left hand was also injured and both were admitted to Midvaal Hospital at Drie Riviere in Vereeniging.
A hospital spokesperson said on Monday the family had asked that no information about the girl and her father be given to the media.
There were various yellow warning signs at the Moratuwa Game and Holiday farm, near Heilbron, that caution people to the dangerous predators on the farm, the Volksblad newspaper reported on Monday.
According to the report parents are reminded that children should always be with adults and to stay about two metres from the fences.
The owner of the farm was not at home when the incident happened.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/ 0,,2-7-1442_2136046,00.html
Bloemfontein - All permits are in order at the Heilbron game farm in the Free State where a Bengal tiger attacked a child and her father at the weekend, environmental officials said on Monday.
"There is no problem with the camps, fences or permits," said Werner Boing, spokesperson on biodiversity compliance at the local department of environmental affairs.
Boing said officials visited the game farm on Sunday.
This came after an 18-month-old girl's face was seriously injured when a Bengal tiger grabbed at her through a fence during a visit to the farm on Saturday.
The girl's father's left hand was also injured and both were admitted to Midvaal Hospital at Drie Riviere in Vereeniging.
A hospital spokesperson said on Monday the family had asked that no information about the girl and her father be given to the media.
There were various yellow warning signs at the Moratuwa Game and Holiday farm, near Heilbron, that caution people to the dangerous predators on the farm, the Volksblad newspaper reported on Monday.
According to the report parents are reminded that children should always be with adults and to stay about two metres from the fences.
The owner of the farm was not at home when the incident happened.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/ 0,,2-7-1442_2136046,00.html
Lions kill man in S. African game farm enclosure
14/06/2007 16:12 - (SA)
Polokwane - A Zimbabwean illegal immigrant was killed and his brother narrowly escaped death when they landed in a lion enclosure at a game farm in Limpopo, police said on Thursday.
Police spokesperson Superintendent Mohale Ramatseba confirmed that an inquest docket has been opened after lions killed a Zimbabwean man.
The SABC reported that two brothers were crossing the border to South African when two lions attacked them.
The elder brother was killed and the younger brother escaped death by climbing a tree.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/ News/0,,2-7-1442_2130135,00.html
Polokwane - A Zimbabwean illegal immigrant was killed and his brother narrowly escaped death when they landed in a lion enclosure at a game farm in Limpopo, police said on Thursday.
Police spokesperson Superintendent Mohale Ramatseba confirmed that an inquest docket has been opened after lions killed a Zimbabwean man.
The SABC reported that two brothers were crossing the border to South African when two lions attacked them.
The elder brother was killed and the younger brother escaped death by climbing a tree.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/ News/0,,2-7-1442_2130135,00.html
Monday, June 25, 2007
Doctors help a cheetah overcome arthritis
Arthritis can slow down even the fastest animals on land.
But there are ways to help them recover and they've figured out how in Rhode Island.
The summer crowd wants to see the animals: harbor seals, giraffes, and elephants. But only a sign greeted them at the cheetah pen, which said, "he's got arthritis in his wrist."
Togo, 15, has already lived much longer than he would in the wild.
Even sedated in the OR, he still has the sleek, sinister look.
A team of doctors fused Togo's wrist to immobilize it using 20 steel pins. Less movement means less pain, and it only minimally limits the animals movement.
The explanation sounds simple enough. The doctors said cheetahs do most of their movement from the elbows.
But in the wild, anything that slows a cheetah, threatens its life. Cheetahs are dependent on their speed to capture their prey.
Togo will move gingerly for a few days in a smaller pen, limiting his mobility to make sure he will not over exert his wrist.
http://www3.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO55719/
But there are ways to help them recover and they've figured out how in Rhode Island.
The summer crowd wants to see the animals: harbor seals, giraffes, and elephants. But only a sign greeted them at the cheetah pen, which said, "he's got arthritis in his wrist."
Togo, 15, has already lived much longer than he would in the wild.
Even sedated in the OR, he still has the sleek, sinister look.
A team of doctors fused Togo's wrist to immobilize it using 20 steel pins. Less movement means less pain, and it only minimally limits the animals movement.
The explanation sounds simple enough. The doctors said cheetahs do most of their movement from the elbows.
But in the wild, anything that slows a cheetah, threatens its life. Cheetahs are dependent on their speed to capture their prey.
Togo will move gingerly for a few days in a smaller pen, limiting his mobility to make sure he will not over exert his wrist.
http://www3.whdh.com/news/articles/local/BO55719/
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Tiger attacks toddler at S. African game farm
24/06/2007 22:49 - (SA)
Tom de Wet, Die Volksblad
Heilbron - A Bengal tiger has severely mauled an 18-month-old girl's face and she has been admitted to hospital with her father whose hand was injured in the attack.
Apparently, 31-year-old Casper Kruger of Markfontein farm was kneeling in front of the tiger's cage before the attack with Maygan on his lap.
After the attack early on Saturday afternoon Kruger and his daughter, who were on a day trip to the farm, were stabilised by a Heilbron doctor before the emergency service, ER24, took them to Midvaal Hospital in Twee Riviere, Vereeniging.
A spokesperson for ER24 said the child had serious facial injuries and Kruger's hand had been injured.
When Beeld visited the hospital in Vereeniging on Sunday, staff said they had been asked not to reveal any details regarding the injuries to the child.
Albert Bezuidenhout, owner of the farm where Maygan and her father were injured on Saturday, said he was quite satisfied that he had met all regulatory requirements, and could not be held responsible for Kruger and his daughter's injuries. He had received confirmation of this from legal sources.
Upset about incorrect reports
Bezuidenhout was upset about incorrect news reports on various radio stations that the little girl had died, that a leopard had eaten her and that nature conservation requirements had not been met.
He was in Durban for the weekend, but he had been assured by his workers that nothing had gone wrong on their side.
Sworn statements to this effect already had been made to police.
He said a Bengal tiger had been involved, and not a lion or a leopard, as had been reported.
Bezuidenhout said he had already been told by Nature Conservation that they would be visiting his farm for an investigation on Monday.
He said he had had wild animals on the farm for many years, and knew that they always remained dangerous.
That was exactly why he was so strict about the rules and regulations, and why there were so many notice boards on the farm.
Warning notices
A large number of yellow notice boards at Moratuwa Game and Holiday Farm near Heilbron warn visitors about the dangers of the wild animals on the farm.
Parents are warned to be with their children at all times, and to stay at least two metres away from the fences around the animal enclosures.
Since 2005, reports Danél Blaauw, the following attacks involving wild animals have made headlines in South Africa:
June 17 2007: two lions rip Tsepo Gearupi, nine, to shreds apparently after he stuck his arm into their enclosure. The attack took place on a farm in the Boshoek-Bray area in North West;
May 2007: A male cheetah attacks Ingrad Swart, a lion-rights activist from Kroonstad, when she walks into its enclosure. She was slightly injured;
April 25 2007: Luis Titus, 31, an American hunter is attacked during a hunt at the Tam Safari game hunting farm near Cradock. Titus manages to shoot and kill the lion while it is on top of him;
April 22 2007: Dirk Brink, owner of the Krugersdorp Game Farm is partly devoured by his own pride of lions at the Ngonyama Lion Lodge. Brink was found to have had a stroke and fallen from his bakkie;
February 18 2006: 7de Laan soapie star Elma Postma (Dezi) nearly loses her right middle-finger after trying to stroke a tame lion through the wire enclosure during a visit to Shingalana Game Farm near Klerksdorp; and
July 2005: a Bengal tiger sinks his teeth into the leg of 17-year-old Bianca Rosse and grabs her by the neck while she is visiting a lion park near East London.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/ News/0,,2-7-1442_2135815,00.html
Tom de Wet, Die Volksblad
Heilbron - A Bengal tiger has severely mauled an 18-month-old girl's face and she has been admitted to hospital with her father whose hand was injured in the attack.
Apparently, 31-year-old Casper Kruger of Markfontein farm was kneeling in front of the tiger's cage before the attack with Maygan on his lap.
After the attack early on Saturday afternoon Kruger and his daughter, who were on a day trip to the farm, were stabilised by a Heilbron doctor before the emergency service, ER24, took them to Midvaal Hospital in Twee Riviere, Vereeniging.
A spokesperson for ER24 said the child had serious facial injuries and Kruger's hand had been injured.
When Beeld visited the hospital in Vereeniging on Sunday, staff said they had been asked not to reveal any details regarding the injuries to the child.
Albert Bezuidenhout, owner of the farm where Maygan and her father were injured on Saturday, said he was quite satisfied that he had met all regulatory requirements, and could not be held responsible for Kruger and his daughter's injuries. He had received confirmation of this from legal sources.
Upset about incorrect reports
Bezuidenhout was upset about incorrect news reports on various radio stations that the little girl had died, that a leopard had eaten her and that nature conservation requirements had not been met.
He was in Durban for the weekend, but he had been assured by his workers that nothing had gone wrong on their side.
Sworn statements to this effect already had been made to police.
He said a Bengal tiger had been involved, and not a lion or a leopard, as had been reported.
Bezuidenhout said he had already been told by Nature Conservation that they would be visiting his farm for an investigation on Monday.
He said he had had wild animals on the farm for many years, and knew that they always remained dangerous.
That was exactly why he was so strict about the rules and regulations, and why there were so many notice boards on the farm.
Warning notices
A large number of yellow notice boards at Moratuwa Game and Holiday Farm near Heilbron warn visitors about the dangers of the wild animals on the farm.
Parents are warned to be with their children at all times, and to stay at least two metres away from the fences around the animal enclosures.
Since 2005, reports Danél Blaauw, the following attacks involving wild animals have made headlines in South Africa:
June 17 2007: two lions rip Tsepo Gearupi, nine, to shreds apparently after he stuck his arm into their enclosure. The attack took place on a farm in the Boshoek-Bray area in North West;
May 2007: A male cheetah attacks Ingrad Swart, a lion-rights activist from Kroonstad, when she walks into its enclosure. She was slightly injured;
April 25 2007: Luis Titus, 31, an American hunter is attacked during a hunt at the Tam Safari game hunting farm near Cradock. Titus manages to shoot and kill the lion while it is on top of him;
April 22 2007: Dirk Brink, owner of the Krugersdorp Game Farm is partly devoured by his own pride of lions at the Ngonyama Lion Lodge. Brink was found to have had a stroke and fallen from his bakkie;
February 18 2006: 7de Laan soapie star Elma Postma (Dezi) nearly loses her right middle-finger after trying to stroke a tame lion through the wire enclosure during a visit to Shingalana Game Farm near Klerksdorp; and
July 2005: a Bengal tiger sinks his teeth into the leg of 17-year-old Bianca Rosse and grabs her by the neck while she is visiting a lion park near East London.
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/ News/0,,2-7-1442_2135815,00.html
State agency faults S.F. Zoo for tiger attack
Friday, June 22, 2007
The San Francisco Zoo is at fault for a tiger mauling that left a keeper severely injured, according to a report by the state's workplace safety agency.
In December, a 350-pound Siberian tiger swiped at keeper Lori Komejan, 46, during a regular afternoon feeding, using its claws to pull her closer to its cage, eventually biting her right hand and leaving deep gashes in both her arms, as terrified visitors looked on.
"The flesh was torn from her right arm," said Dean Fryer, spokesman for California's Division of Occupation Safety and Health. "It was peeled off, similar to peeling off a glove."
Komejan screamed, and four people, including an emergency medical technician visiting the Lion House, came to her help. One of them hit the tiger, called Tatiana, in the face with a squeegee until the 3 1/2-year-old Siberian let go of her.
The Cal-OSHA report said zoo officials knew the Lion House posed a hazard, because the cats were known to be able to reach through the bars. It also found officials were remiss for not training workers in safety procedures, such as a buddy system or the use of specialized equipment like repellent sprays to fend off animals.
It demanded changes in the way the cages are set up — changes the zoo has already made — and an $18,000 penalty, which may be appealed. The Lion House is scheduled to reopen within a month.
Zoo officials said they are reviewing the document, which was completed Wednesday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/ 2007/06/22/state/n090315D87.DTL
The San Francisco Zoo is at fault for a tiger mauling that left a keeper severely injured, according to a report by the state's workplace safety agency.
In December, a 350-pound Siberian tiger swiped at keeper Lori Komejan, 46, during a regular afternoon feeding, using its claws to pull her closer to its cage, eventually biting her right hand and leaving deep gashes in both her arms, as terrified visitors looked on.
"The flesh was torn from her right arm," said Dean Fryer, spokesman for California's Division of Occupation Safety and Health. "It was peeled off, similar to peeling off a glove."
Komejan screamed, and four people, including an emergency medical technician visiting the Lion House, came to her help. One of them hit the tiger, called Tatiana, in the face with a squeegee until the 3 1/2-year-old Siberian let go of her.
The Cal-OSHA report said zoo officials knew the Lion House posed a hazard, because the cats were known to be able to reach through the bars. It also found officials were remiss for not training workers in safety procedures, such as a buddy system or the use of specialized equipment like repellent sprays to fend off animals.
It demanded changes in the way the cages are set up — changes the zoo has already made — and an $18,000 penalty, which may be appealed. The Lion House is scheduled to reopen within a month.
Zoo officials said they are reviewing the document, which was completed Wednesday.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/ 2007/06/22/state/n090315D87.DTL
Exotic-animal trade unleashes burden on Arizona
Traffickers seldom punished; critters crowding sanctuaries
Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 23, 2007 12:00 AM
Arizona wildlife-sanctuary operators are swamped with exotic animals because they say criminals who sell critters on the black market seldom face serious punishment.
Of the 700 alligators, lizards and other reptiles at the Phoenix Herpetological Society in Scottsdale, for example, 120 were confiscated from poachers and traffickers, and others were possessed illegally and dropped off by owners who no longer wanted them.
Russ Johnson, president of the society, said there is little deterrence in the courts for the traffickers, who can make hundreds or thousands of dollars off the sale of one snake or Gila monster. Violators frequently walk away without serving a day behind bars or paying a steep fine.
"Our court system has thought that the importation of these alligators, crocodiles and snakes is not a very serious offense," he said. "Most of these people are just given a slap on the wrist."
Convicted dealers often are released on probation with minor fines. "They consider that the cost of doing business, and they go back to what they were doing," Johnson said.
The prosecution of Raymond E. Robinson is a case in point.
Investigators used an undercover operative in 2002 to sting the California resident, who was selling three Gila monsters and two golden eyelash vipers from South America for $7,500 in Goodyear. Robinson pleaded guilty, with the felony reduced to a misdemeanor as part of the deal. He got a $200 fine with no jail time.
"That is where it's really frustrating to me," said Hans Koenig, an Arizona Game and Fish ranger who testified about the damage done by poachers. "This is theft - the worst kind of theft - because it is stealing from the people of Arizona . . . with no consequences."
'Problem is huge'
There are no state or national statistics on the trafficking of restricted animals.
But "the problem is huge," said Vernon Weir, director of the Nevada-based American Sanctuary Association. "It's the sanctuaries that get dumped on. Sanctuaries all across this country are just stuffed full of animals."
Weir said the problem is exacerbated because some states allow the ownership, breeding and sale of exotic wildlife. People adopt alligators and lions, he said, but cannot care for them as adults. Or they move to states such as Arizona, where keeping them is outlawed without a special permit.
Weir, whose association has accredited 30 sanctuaries nationwide, said he tries to find acceptable homes for seized wildlife, usually in zoos. But some large mammals and reptiles may be euthanized because there is nowhere to place them.
The Herpetological Society's compound opened in 2002 with 22 reptiles, a population that has increased more than 30-fold. "Right now, we have 45 alligators and crocodiles in our facility we're trying to find homes for," Johnson said. "You know, people say, 'I'm up to my ass in alligators?' We are the epitome, the picture of that."
In the past two years, Johnson said, his group has found homes for 20 alligators, 158 venomous snakes, 32 Gila monsters and 200 other reptiles. Still, with government seizures and private parties' dropping off unwanted critters, he has been forced to expand the crowded sanctuary.
The Herpetological Society, a non-profit run by volunteers in a $250,000 compound, receives donations of food and veterinary care but spends $25,000 each year on food and medicine. Most of its revenue comes from private donations.
Another animal sanctuary in Scottsdale has similar expenses for its big cats.
The Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Foundation cares for eight mountain lions and six bobcats that were seized or owned illegally in Arizona. Each lion requires an enclosure that costs $80,000 to construct, plus about $7,300 per year in food, vet bills and other care.
"All of them have medical issues because the people who get them don't know how to care for them," said Linda Searles, executive director of Southwest Wildlife.
Getting light sentences
Searles and Johnson reel off stories of convicted wildlife owners or dealers who got off with light sentences.
Consider Lucy and Charlie, alligators taken several years ago from a Maryvale residence. Johnson said five Game and Fish officers, eight police officers and two emergency medical technicians participated in the raid. Later, he said, the owner explained his unusual pets during a court hearing: "The guy said he raised them from when they were little and he used to swim with them. . . . The judge listened to him and thought it was funny. All he got was a $100 fine."
Another case involved Jeffrey Almond, who operated a reptile-rescue business in Cave Creek. When investigators raided his home two years ago they seized 75 animals. Johnson said 15 Gila monsters in a bathtub were so sick they had to be hand-fed for months.
In Scottsdale Justice Court, Almond could have been jailed and fined up to $750 per animal, plus restitution of $2,000 per year for each creature. Instead, Johnson said, "we got nothing, and the state got $200." Almond also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in federal court, where he received a $500 fine.
Searles said law enforcement needs to take wildlife violations more seriously and seek stiffer fines and jail time. "I think that's why this is a growing crime," she said.
Jay Cook, a law enforcement supervisor with the Department of Game and Fish, said only about a dozen animal-trafficking cases get prosecuted each year, partly because it is hard to catch the traffickers.
Cook said wildlife defenders have a legitimate gripe about leniency: "Some of that is because we probably didn't push as much as we could have. I think we're going to look at that in the future. We're probably going to pursue a little harder line."
Johnson and Daniel Marchand, curator at the Herpetological Society, said poachers and dealers deplete populations of rare creatures and introduce unwanted species to Arizona's environment. They also endanger the public with venomous snakes and potentially deadly predators.
"They often have a love for animals," Marchand added. "But they love the money more. They get the animals, and they don't treat them correctly. They see them as dollars in a cage."
Reach the reporter at (602) 444-8874.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ 0623wildlife0623.html
Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 23, 2007 12:00 AM
Arizona wildlife-sanctuary operators are swamped with exotic animals because they say criminals who sell critters on the black market seldom face serious punishment.
Of the 700 alligators, lizards and other reptiles at the Phoenix Herpetological Society in Scottsdale, for example, 120 were confiscated from poachers and traffickers, and others were possessed illegally and dropped off by owners who no longer wanted them.
Russ Johnson, president of the society, said there is little deterrence in the courts for the traffickers, who can make hundreds or thousands of dollars off the sale of one snake or Gila monster. Violators frequently walk away without serving a day behind bars or paying a steep fine.
"Our court system has thought that the importation of these alligators, crocodiles and snakes is not a very serious offense," he said. "Most of these people are just given a slap on the wrist."
Convicted dealers often are released on probation with minor fines. "They consider that the cost of doing business, and they go back to what they were doing," Johnson said.
The prosecution of Raymond E. Robinson is a case in point.
Investigators used an undercover operative in 2002 to sting the California resident, who was selling three Gila monsters and two golden eyelash vipers from South America for $7,500 in Goodyear. Robinson pleaded guilty, with the felony reduced to a misdemeanor as part of the deal. He got a $200 fine with no jail time.
"That is where it's really frustrating to me," said Hans Koenig, an Arizona Game and Fish ranger who testified about the damage done by poachers. "This is theft - the worst kind of theft - because it is stealing from the people of Arizona . . . with no consequences."
'Problem is huge'
There are no state or national statistics on the trafficking of restricted animals.
But "the problem is huge," said Vernon Weir, director of the Nevada-based American Sanctuary Association. "It's the sanctuaries that get dumped on. Sanctuaries all across this country are just stuffed full of animals."
Weir said the problem is exacerbated because some states allow the ownership, breeding and sale of exotic wildlife. People adopt alligators and lions, he said, but cannot care for them as adults. Or they move to states such as Arizona, where keeping them is outlawed without a special permit.
Weir, whose association has accredited 30 sanctuaries nationwide, said he tries to find acceptable homes for seized wildlife, usually in zoos. But some large mammals and reptiles may be euthanized because there is nowhere to place them.
The Herpetological Society's compound opened in 2002 with 22 reptiles, a population that has increased more than 30-fold. "Right now, we have 45 alligators and crocodiles in our facility we're trying to find homes for," Johnson said. "You know, people say, 'I'm up to my ass in alligators?' We are the epitome, the picture of that."
In the past two years, Johnson said, his group has found homes for 20 alligators, 158 venomous snakes, 32 Gila monsters and 200 other reptiles. Still, with government seizures and private parties' dropping off unwanted critters, he has been forced to expand the crowded sanctuary.
The Herpetological Society, a non-profit run by volunteers in a $250,000 compound, receives donations of food and veterinary care but spends $25,000 each year on food and medicine. Most of its revenue comes from private donations.
Another animal sanctuary in Scottsdale has similar expenses for its big cats.
The Southwest Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Foundation cares for eight mountain lions and six bobcats that were seized or owned illegally in Arizona. Each lion requires an enclosure that costs $80,000 to construct, plus about $7,300 per year in food, vet bills and other care.
"All of them have medical issues because the people who get them don't know how to care for them," said Linda Searles, executive director of Southwest Wildlife.
Getting light sentences
Searles and Johnson reel off stories of convicted wildlife owners or dealers who got off with light sentences.
Consider Lucy and Charlie, alligators taken several years ago from a Maryvale residence. Johnson said five Game and Fish officers, eight police officers and two emergency medical technicians participated in the raid. Later, he said, the owner explained his unusual pets during a court hearing: "The guy said he raised them from when they were little and he used to swim with them. . . . The judge listened to him and thought it was funny. All he got was a $100 fine."
Another case involved Jeffrey Almond, who operated a reptile-rescue business in Cave Creek. When investigators raided his home two years ago they seized 75 animals. Johnson said 15 Gila monsters in a bathtub were so sick they had to be hand-fed for months.
In Scottsdale Justice Court, Almond could have been jailed and fined up to $750 per animal, plus restitution of $2,000 per year for each creature. Instead, Johnson said, "we got nothing, and the state got $200." Almond also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in federal court, where he received a $500 fine.
Searles said law enforcement needs to take wildlife violations more seriously and seek stiffer fines and jail time. "I think that's why this is a growing crime," she said.
Jay Cook, a law enforcement supervisor with the Department of Game and Fish, said only about a dozen animal-trafficking cases get prosecuted each year, partly because it is hard to catch the traffickers.
Cook said wildlife defenders have a legitimate gripe about leniency: "Some of that is because we probably didn't push as much as we could have. I think we're going to look at that in the future. We're probably going to pursue a little harder line."
Johnson and Daniel Marchand, curator at the Herpetological Society, said poachers and dealers deplete populations of rare creatures and introduce unwanted species to Arizona's environment. They also endanger the public with venomous snakes and potentially deadly predators.
"They often have a love for animals," Marchand added. "But they love the money more. They get the animals, and they don't treat them correctly. They see them as dollars in a cage."
Reach the reporter at (602) 444-8874.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ 0623wildlife0623.html
Ind. city urged to cancel exotic animal exhibition
Scot Squires, 1-866-362-2167 Ext. 13869 , ssquires@heraldargus.com
MICHIGAN CITY -- The nation’s most vocal animal-rights group is upset with Marquette Mall, and is urging Michigan City officials to take action.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) wants to stop the June 27-through-July 1 performances at the mall by animals from G.W. Exotic Animal Memorial Park.
PETA wrote letters to mall management urging it to cancel the event. When that didn’t work, the group contacted Mayor Chuck Oberlie and members of the Michigan City Common Council.
PETA wants the city to pass an ordinance prohibiting any display, exhibit or event that uses exotic animals. The group says the planned animal exhibit and magic show is dangerous to the public and cruel to animals.
PETA released documents claiming G.W. Exotic Animal Memorial Park, located in Wynnewood, Okla., was cited by the USDA for violating standards of animal care.
Lisa Wathne, a spokeswoman for PETA, said the group also did its own research at the Oklahoma facility last year.
"We did an undercover investigation at the park that was prompted by problems that were revealed in the USDA inspection report," Wathne told The La Porte County Herald-Argus.
In a press release from Wathne, PETA claims "an undercover investigator witnessed that a lion was not provided with pain relief following the amputation of the stump of her leg after it was torn off by tigers, that a wounded horse suffered for days with an untreated broken leg before dying and being fed to big cats, that tigers were hit with a rifle butt, and that a goat had an untreated head wound."
Despite PETA’s objections, mall officials say the show will go on.
Laura Tubbs, general manager of Marquette Mall, issued this statement: "The G.W. Exotic Animal Show was positively received at Marquette Mall both last summer and again during the holiday season, and mall management supports the organization’s anti-drug and stay-in-school messages. Our relationship with the show’s creator, Joe Schreibvogel, has been mutually beneficial. The company, which has been in business for eight years, has assured us of its ethical and humane treatment of its animals."
Michigan City Council member Pat Boy, D-4th Ward, said she received a letter from PETA but couldn’t comment because she hasn’t had time to research the issue. Boy’s ward includes Marquette Mall.
PETA said it has notified its members in Michigan City of the scheduled events and will assist them should they choose to organize some sort of protest.
The director of the animal park was out of town and unavailable for comment, according to a woman answering phones at the park.
According to its Web site, www.gwpark.org, the animal park was "established in 1999 as a non-profit, no-kill sanctuary for abused and abandoned wildlife."
The Web site also provides its own set of inspection reports that suggest the Wynnewood, Okla., park met USDA compliance.
http://heraldargus.com/archives/ha/display.php?id=380328
MICHIGAN CITY -- The nation’s most vocal animal-rights group is upset with Marquette Mall, and is urging Michigan City officials to take action.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) wants to stop the June 27-through-July 1 performances at the mall by animals from G.W. Exotic Animal Memorial Park.
PETA wrote letters to mall management urging it to cancel the event. When that didn’t work, the group contacted Mayor Chuck Oberlie and members of the Michigan City Common Council.
PETA wants the city to pass an ordinance prohibiting any display, exhibit or event that uses exotic animals. The group says the planned animal exhibit and magic show is dangerous to the public and cruel to animals.
PETA released documents claiming G.W. Exotic Animal Memorial Park, located in Wynnewood, Okla., was cited by the USDA for violating standards of animal care.
Lisa Wathne, a spokeswoman for PETA, said the group also did its own research at the Oklahoma facility last year.
"We did an undercover investigation at the park that was prompted by problems that were revealed in the USDA inspection report," Wathne told The La Porte County Herald-Argus.
In a press release from Wathne, PETA claims "an undercover investigator witnessed that a lion was not provided with pain relief following the amputation of the stump of her leg after it was torn off by tigers, that a wounded horse suffered for days with an untreated broken leg before dying and being fed to big cats, that tigers were hit with a rifle butt, and that a goat had an untreated head wound."
Despite PETA’s objections, mall officials say the show will go on.
Laura Tubbs, general manager of Marquette Mall, issued this statement: "The G.W. Exotic Animal Show was positively received at Marquette Mall both last summer and again during the holiday season, and mall management supports the organization’s anti-drug and stay-in-school messages. Our relationship with the show’s creator, Joe Schreibvogel, has been mutually beneficial. The company, which has been in business for eight years, has assured us of its ethical and humane treatment of its animals."
Michigan City Council member Pat Boy, D-4th Ward, said she received a letter from PETA but couldn’t comment because she hasn’t had time to research the issue. Boy’s ward includes Marquette Mall.
PETA said it has notified its members in Michigan City of the scheduled events and will assist them should they choose to organize some sort of protest.
The director of the animal park was out of town and unavailable for comment, according to a woman answering phones at the park.
According to its Web site, www.gwpark.org, the animal park was "established in 1999 as a non-profit, no-kill sanctuary for abused and abandoned wildlife."
The Web site also provides its own set of inspection reports that suggest the Wynnewood, Okla., park met USDA compliance.
http://heraldargus.com/archives/ha/display.php?id=380328
Aussie zoos put money ahead of animal welfare, critics say
June 23, 2007
Critics accuse Taronga and Western Plains zoos of putting commercialism before animal welfare, writes Kelly Burke.
THE Sydney veterinarian Dr Tom Lonsdale has written to politicians and protested to zoo directors. He has badgered zoo keepers, been threatened with legal action and wrote about it in his 2001 book, Raw Meaty Bones.
But 12 years after first seeing the sponsor's sign, the cheetahs at Western Plains Zoo are still being fed Whiskas Milk Plus.
"They have assured me they draw the line at jelly-meat," he says. "But the justification that they 'like' Whiskas milk is about as absurd as saying nicotine addicts 'like' smoking."
While Uncle Ben's, according to its old sponsorship sign, said it was supplying "an essential vitamin supplement" to the cats, Lonsdale begged to differ. He still says a processed liquid food has no place in any adult wild animal's diet.
It was a clear case, he argued, of zoo management placing their sponsors' needs above the animals' wellbeing.
Uncle Ben's longstanding sponsorship of the cheetahs at Dubbo (and a since deceased white tiger at Taronga) ended in 2005. But the wild animals are still enjoying "sporadic" treats of Whiskas Milk Plus, according to the director of Taronga and Western Plains zoos, Guy Cooper.
The orang-utans at Mosman, on the other hand, have never eaten a Happy Meal, even though McDonald's funded the building of their $3.1 million enclosure in 1993.
According to a former zoo keeper and whistleblower, Rebecca McKeough, however, the sponsor's insistence on extensive rainforest landscaping for aesthetic reasons outside the animals' enclosure meant the area allocated for the orang-utans is smaller than planned.
Although a member of the zoos' governing body, the Zoological Parks Board, at the time, Cooper became the director of Taronga and Western Plains zoos after both those sponsorship deals were signed in the early 1990s. But now, halfway through an ambitious $225 million, 12-year upgrade, the zoos' competing priorities of animal welfare and commercial viability are increasingly under the microscope.
After an unfortunate series of deaths at both zoos in the past two years, the State Government has demanded an explanation.
Suggestions that the welfare of the elephants at Western Plains was compromised by cost cutting, possibly leading to the deaths of two of the four animals over the past six months, were raised by one of their keepers, Jason Kauntze-Cockburn, who resigned in protest several weeks ago. He is not the only staff member convinced that the Dubbo outpost's less-than-efficient record as a money-spinner has left it begging for staff and basic animal requirements, while its glamorous city cousin parades its new $50 million Asian elephant exhibit and pushes ahead with a $54 million marine exhibit scheduled to open in December.
"Upper management has got to change their outlook [on Western Plains] on the whole - not just the elephant piece," the head of the combined zoos' elephant department, Gary Miller, wrote in an email to Kauntze-Cockburn on April 29, one month before his resignation.
"It's not just our management but the park board as well. I'm going to continue to fight for the increased funding and support with Cameron [Kerr, general manager of sales and communications] and Guy. It feels like climbing a mountain …"
Cooper insists that Western Plains Zoo is far from understaffed and that no animal's welfare has been compromised by budget constraints.
"In the past five years we've increased life sciences staff by one third," he says. "Sure, we'd always like to have more people everywhere. But we're growing the business and can be very pleased with what we're achieving."
The combined zoos' balance sheet shows the institutions are hardly starved of funds. Although attendances were static for five years (and even declining marginally at Dubbo), annual income jumped from $62 million to almost $75 million in the past financial year, through increased government funding and revenue from the zoos' businesses. Unpublished data for this financial year puts the zoos' revenue at $85 million, but less than one-fifth of that has been generated by Western Plains.
For the $225 million upgrade, 60 per cent of the money comes from the State Government, while the zoos' fund-raising arm, the Taronga Foundation, is expected to contribute 25 per cent. The rest is being financed through loans, on which the zoo is paying only the interest. The principal will be picked up by the State Government later.
People, not animals, are the zoos' largest single cost. Yet according to the most recent annual report, fewer than half the staff have anything to do with the care of the animals, nor are they involved in conservation or education programs. In 2005-06, almost one in 10 of the staff were in the marketing and communications department.
In 2000, when the State Government committed itself to Taronga's multimillion-dollar refurbishment, the Zoological Parks Board was urged to "strengthen its finance and marketing skills" and to reduce the board's number from 13 to 10. Dropped were the places traditionally reserved for RSPCA and other animal welfare groups.
Cooper says the professional qualifications of the panel that makes up the institution's zoological and ethics committee more than compensate for the lack of animal experts on the board, which now just has one member with a professional zoological background, Dr Anthony English, a retired University of Sydney vet.
The board's chairman, Leonard Bleasel, is the retired chief executive of a gas company, while the rest of the board comprises two public servants with backgrounds in finance, two marketing professionals, the Mayor of Dubbo, another Dubbo resident and longstanding volunteer, an accountant and a former ABC newsreader-turned-wildlife-commentator.
Cooper's own background is in marketing, having served in executive positions at SC Johnson and Son (a manufacturer of household, personal care and commercial cleaning products) and Unilever before moving from the board to the director's chair in 1999.
"My background may be in marketing, but I'm a frustrated vet," Cooper confesses. "Being a vet was my life's ambition. Now I have 10 working for me."
Dr Nicki Mazur, author of After the Ark: Environmental Policy Making and the Zoo, says the recent debate hardly makes Taronga and Western Plains zoos unique.
"While zoos have come a long way down the conservation path since their origins, a range of social, institutional and political forces have introduced commercial goals that often compete - and conflict - with the public-good objectives like conservation, education and research," she says.
"The trend of economic rationalism and managerialism that has been with us since the mid-1980s set up special tensions in zoos, where zoo staff try to reconcile conflicts between the public-good objectives … and the economic mandates of commercialisation."
According to the retired Department of Education bureaucrat Graham Sims, who recently ended his long Zoo Friends membership, neither the board nor the executive team at Taronga is short on managerialism.
"But leadership - that's a very different thing," he says. "Taronga is being managed. There's very little vision there."
While writing articles for the Zoo Friends magazine, Sims inquired why management did not make public animal autopsy reports. "I was told it was bad PR," he recalls.
When Taronga's entrance was reconfigured to force patrons through the gift shop before entering the zoo proper, he felt uneasy. The unease grew when he started receiving letters "written" by individual keepers, accompanied by their photograph ("the keepers were inevitably young females"), pleading for extra donations for their particular animal.
"I'm enough of a realist to wonder whether these letters might have been written in the marketing department," he says.
But it was the controversy over the import of five Asian elephants last year that convinced him to hand in his Zoo Friends membership.
Like many of the zoo's recent critics, Sims believes the $50 million exercise placed commercialism over the elephants' needs. If animal welfare were paramount, he says, the elephants would have been housed at Dubbo and given hectares to roam in.
Cooper describes the push to move the elephants to Dubbo as a "rearguard action from a few people" miffed at losing their court attempt to stop the animals' import to Australia last year.
"The fact is, for a breeding program, [Taronga] is the best place to do it. We are doubling the size of the accommodation … and all the elephants get taken for walks around the zoo. We're very comfortable this is the best place for them."
But Cooper can't deny that Taronga needs the elephants to pull in the big spenders. Twenty-five per cent of paid admissions at Taronga are from overseas visitors, compared with just 1 per cent at Dubbo.
The opening of the gift shop next to the Wild Asia exhibit (which includes the elephant enclosure) "achieved record profit levels by increasing spend per visitor by 22 per cent", according to the annual report.
And for the first time in five years, zoo attendance figures are up, by 6 per cent. Add that to the revenue boost and, overall, it has been a successful year for both zoos, Cooper says.
"Given the fact we've gone through the most dramatic rebuilding program that any zoo has probably ever entertained, I think that's a very, very good result," he says.
"Good facilities for animals and keeping staff are the cornerstone of good welfare for animals and I make no apologies for that. There is nothing worse than a broke zoo."
Green gloss can't hide a dismal record
COLLECTIVELY, the world's zoos have enormous resources at their fingertips, says Rob Laidlaw, a captive wildlife specialist and the executive director of the Canadian zoo watchdog Zoocheck.
But when it comes to meaningful conservation programs, zoos' contributions are "pathetically minuscule in comparison to the resources they command".
"Anyone reviewing the literature produced by zoos worldwide would inevitably be led to conclude that the 'modern ark' is saving innumerable wildlife species from extinction and restoring them to their wild habitats," he writes. But contrary to popular belief, the international record on reintroductions to the wild is dismal.
"Only 16 species worldwide have established self-sustaining populations in the wild as a result of captive breeding efforts, and most of those programs were initiated by government wildlife agencies, not zoos," Laidlaw writes.
As zoos become the target of intense public scrutiny and criticism, many have tried in response to "repackage" themselves as institutions devoted to wildlife conservation, public education and animal welfare.
"[Zoos claiming] they teach visitors about wildlife conservation and habitat protection, and their contention that they motivate members of the public to become directly involved in wildlife conservation work doesn't stand up to scrutiny," Laidlaw says.
"The truth is that scant empirical evidence exists to prove that the primary vehicle for education in most zoos - the animal in the cage - actually teaches anyone anything. Also, the legions of conservationists that zoos should have produced, if their claims were true, have never materialised."
Kelly Burke
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/beastly-business-zoos- under-the-microscope/2007/06/22/1182019367532.html
Critics accuse Taronga and Western Plains zoos of putting commercialism before animal welfare, writes Kelly Burke.
THE Sydney veterinarian Dr Tom Lonsdale has written to politicians and protested to zoo directors. He has badgered zoo keepers, been threatened with legal action and wrote about it in his 2001 book, Raw Meaty Bones.
But 12 years after first seeing the sponsor's sign, the cheetahs at Western Plains Zoo are still being fed Whiskas Milk Plus.
"They have assured me they draw the line at jelly-meat," he says. "But the justification that they 'like' Whiskas milk is about as absurd as saying nicotine addicts 'like' smoking."
While Uncle Ben's, according to its old sponsorship sign, said it was supplying "an essential vitamin supplement" to the cats, Lonsdale begged to differ. He still says a processed liquid food has no place in any adult wild animal's diet.
It was a clear case, he argued, of zoo management placing their sponsors' needs above the animals' wellbeing.
Uncle Ben's longstanding sponsorship of the cheetahs at Dubbo (and a since deceased white tiger at Taronga) ended in 2005. But the wild animals are still enjoying "sporadic" treats of Whiskas Milk Plus, according to the director of Taronga and Western Plains zoos, Guy Cooper.
The orang-utans at Mosman, on the other hand, have never eaten a Happy Meal, even though McDonald's funded the building of their $3.1 million enclosure in 1993.
According to a former zoo keeper and whistleblower, Rebecca McKeough, however, the sponsor's insistence on extensive rainforest landscaping for aesthetic reasons outside the animals' enclosure meant the area allocated for the orang-utans is smaller than planned.
Although a member of the zoos' governing body, the Zoological Parks Board, at the time, Cooper became the director of Taronga and Western Plains zoos after both those sponsorship deals were signed in the early 1990s. But now, halfway through an ambitious $225 million, 12-year upgrade, the zoos' competing priorities of animal welfare and commercial viability are increasingly under the microscope.
After an unfortunate series of deaths at both zoos in the past two years, the State Government has demanded an explanation.
Suggestions that the welfare of the elephants at Western Plains was compromised by cost cutting, possibly leading to the deaths of two of the four animals over the past six months, were raised by one of their keepers, Jason Kauntze-Cockburn, who resigned in protest several weeks ago. He is not the only staff member convinced that the Dubbo outpost's less-than-efficient record as a money-spinner has left it begging for staff and basic animal requirements, while its glamorous city cousin parades its new $50 million Asian elephant exhibit and pushes ahead with a $54 million marine exhibit scheduled to open in December.
"Upper management has got to change their outlook [on Western Plains] on the whole - not just the elephant piece," the head of the combined zoos' elephant department, Gary Miller, wrote in an email to Kauntze-Cockburn on April 29, one month before his resignation.
"It's not just our management but the park board as well. I'm going to continue to fight for the increased funding and support with Cameron [Kerr, general manager of sales and communications] and Guy. It feels like climbing a mountain …"
Cooper insists that Western Plains Zoo is far from understaffed and that no animal's welfare has been compromised by budget constraints.
"In the past five years we've increased life sciences staff by one third," he says. "Sure, we'd always like to have more people everywhere. But we're growing the business and can be very pleased with what we're achieving."
The combined zoos' balance sheet shows the institutions are hardly starved of funds. Although attendances were static for five years (and even declining marginally at Dubbo), annual income jumped from $62 million to almost $75 million in the past financial year, through increased government funding and revenue from the zoos' businesses. Unpublished data for this financial year puts the zoos' revenue at $85 million, but less than one-fifth of that has been generated by Western Plains.
For the $225 million upgrade, 60 per cent of the money comes from the State Government, while the zoos' fund-raising arm, the Taronga Foundation, is expected to contribute 25 per cent. The rest is being financed through loans, on which the zoo is paying only the interest. The principal will be picked up by the State Government later.
People, not animals, are the zoos' largest single cost. Yet according to the most recent annual report, fewer than half the staff have anything to do with the care of the animals, nor are they involved in conservation or education programs. In 2005-06, almost one in 10 of the staff were in the marketing and communications department.
In 2000, when the State Government committed itself to Taronga's multimillion-dollar refurbishment, the Zoological Parks Board was urged to "strengthen its finance and marketing skills" and to reduce the board's number from 13 to 10. Dropped were the places traditionally reserved for RSPCA and other animal welfare groups.
Cooper says the professional qualifications of the panel that makes up the institution's zoological and ethics committee more than compensate for the lack of animal experts on the board, which now just has one member with a professional zoological background, Dr Anthony English, a retired University of Sydney vet.
The board's chairman, Leonard Bleasel, is the retired chief executive of a gas company, while the rest of the board comprises two public servants with backgrounds in finance, two marketing professionals, the Mayor of Dubbo, another Dubbo resident and longstanding volunteer, an accountant and a former ABC newsreader-turned-wildlife-commentator.
Cooper's own background is in marketing, having served in executive positions at SC Johnson and Son (a manufacturer of household, personal care and commercial cleaning products) and Unilever before moving from the board to the director's chair in 1999.
"My background may be in marketing, but I'm a frustrated vet," Cooper confesses. "Being a vet was my life's ambition. Now I have 10 working for me."
Dr Nicki Mazur, author of After the Ark: Environmental Policy Making and the Zoo, says the recent debate hardly makes Taronga and Western Plains zoos unique.
"While zoos have come a long way down the conservation path since their origins, a range of social, institutional and political forces have introduced commercial goals that often compete - and conflict - with the public-good objectives like conservation, education and research," she says.
"The trend of economic rationalism and managerialism that has been with us since the mid-1980s set up special tensions in zoos, where zoo staff try to reconcile conflicts between the public-good objectives … and the economic mandates of commercialisation."
According to the retired Department of Education bureaucrat Graham Sims, who recently ended his long Zoo Friends membership, neither the board nor the executive team at Taronga is short on managerialism.
"But leadership - that's a very different thing," he says. "Taronga is being managed. There's very little vision there."
While writing articles for the Zoo Friends magazine, Sims inquired why management did not make public animal autopsy reports. "I was told it was bad PR," he recalls.
When Taronga's entrance was reconfigured to force patrons through the gift shop before entering the zoo proper, he felt uneasy. The unease grew when he started receiving letters "written" by individual keepers, accompanied by their photograph ("the keepers were inevitably young females"), pleading for extra donations for their particular animal.
"I'm enough of a realist to wonder whether these letters might have been written in the marketing department," he says.
But it was the controversy over the import of five Asian elephants last year that convinced him to hand in his Zoo Friends membership.
Like many of the zoo's recent critics, Sims believes the $50 million exercise placed commercialism over the elephants' needs. If animal welfare were paramount, he says, the elephants would have been housed at Dubbo and given hectares to roam in.
Cooper describes the push to move the elephants to Dubbo as a "rearguard action from a few people" miffed at losing their court attempt to stop the animals' import to Australia last year.
"The fact is, for a breeding program, [Taronga] is the best place to do it. We are doubling the size of the accommodation … and all the elephants get taken for walks around the zoo. We're very comfortable this is the best place for them."
But Cooper can't deny that Taronga needs the elephants to pull in the big spenders. Twenty-five per cent of paid admissions at Taronga are from overseas visitors, compared with just 1 per cent at Dubbo.
The opening of the gift shop next to the Wild Asia exhibit (which includes the elephant enclosure) "achieved record profit levels by increasing spend per visitor by 22 per cent", according to the annual report.
And for the first time in five years, zoo attendance figures are up, by 6 per cent. Add that to the revenue boost and, overall, it has been a successful year for both zoos, Cooper says.
"Given the fact we've gone through the most dramatic rebuilding program that any zoo has probably ever entertained, I think that's a very, very good result," he says.
"Good facilities for animals and keeping staff are the cornerstone of good welfare for animals and I make no apologies for that. There is nothing worse than a broke zoo."
Green gloss can't hide a dismal record
COLLECTIVELY, the world's zoos have enormous resources at their fingertips, says Rob Laidlaw, a captive wildlife specialist and the executive director of the Canadian zoo watchdog Zoocheck.
But when it comes to meaningful conservation programs, zoos' contributions are "pathetically minuscule in comparison to the resources they command".
"Anyone reviewing the literature produced by zoos worldwide would inevitably be led to conclude that the 'modern ark' is saving innumerable wildlife species from extinction and restoring them to their wild habitats," he writes. But contrary to popular belief, the international record on reintroductions to the wild is dismal.
"Only 16 species worldwide have established self-sustaining populations in the wild as a result of captive breeding efforts, and most of those programs were initiated by government wildlife agencies, not zoos," Laidlaw writes.
As zoos become the target of intense public scrutiny and criticism, many have tried in response to "repackage" themselves as institutions devoted to wildlife conservation, public education and animal welfare.
"[Zoos claiming] they teach visitors about wildlife conservation and habitat protection, and their contention that they motivate members of the public to become directly involved in wildlife conservation work doesn't stand up to scrutiny," Laidlaw says.
"The truth is that scant empirical evidence exists to prove that the primary vehicle for education in most zoos - the animal in the cage - actually teaches anyone anything. Also, the legions of conservationists that zoos should have produced, if their claims were true, have never materialised."
Kelly Burke
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/beastly-business-zoos- under-the-microscope/2007/06/22/1182019367532.html
Bengals targeted by U.K. thieves, catnappers
By TOM RAWSTORNE
Dawn breaks over a town in Lancashire and the early morning silence is shattered by a ringing phone in the home of Gail Potts. The 56-year-old grabs the receiver and listens carefully. "If you want to see your cat again, then you'd better do exactly what I tell you," a voice growls.
Fast forward a couple of days and here's Mrs Potts again. A distance from her house, along a deserted road, she stands alone, clutching a bulging brown envelope in her sweating palm.
A car screeches up and within seconds the exchange has taken place - one cat for £1,000. In notes. "I know it's a lot of money," Mrs Potts said, recalling her ordeal. "But this wasn't any normal cat. This was Maximus. He's special. He's a Bengal cat."
No run-of-the-mill moggy, the Bengal. Known as "living-room leopards", these carefully bred felines are descended from wild Asian cats. Their most distinctive feature is their exotically marked coat - the sort of spots and stripes seen in the jungle. They are said to be highly intelligent, doglike in personality and to make great pets.
So it is that in these image-conscious times the Bengal cat has become the must-have pet of the 21st century. The first one arrived in Britain in 1991, but today there are more than 30,000 across the country. Costs vary according to their pedigree: the cheapest starts at £500, while the most expensive, a cat named Zeus, is said to have fetched a six-figure sum.
A lot of money for a mouse-catcher, but then the sort of people who own them are generally more interested in form than function and aren't short of a bob - think Sophie Dahl, Jonathan Ross and the Sultan of Brunei.
With such a profile, it's hardly surprising that Bengals are so highly coveted - by cat fanciers and catnappers. Such is their desirability that owners are being advised that they let them out of their sight (or, heaven forbid, outside at all) at their peril - something heiress Jemima Khan discovered recently.
Her two £900 Bengal cats, gifts from her on-off boyfriend Hugh Grant, vanished from her London home last week. Although one returned, there has been no sign of the other, prompting Miss Khan to call police to help with the hunt. She fears it may be dead.
To the surprise of many ordinary London residents (burglary victims, for example, who have waited days for a detective to visit them), the Metropolitan Police duly sent two female officers to her home. "Because of the high value of the missing property, we felt the response was perfectly normal and proportionate," a Scotland Yard spokesman later explained.
But if police were always as quick off the mark as the Met when it came to dealing with missing moggies, then human crime would never get dealt with. Nationally, it is estimated that 3,200 cats disappear every week. Of these, 1,200 are involved in road accidents. And the rest?
Sheena Seagrave works for the Missing Pets Bureau, an organisation dedicated to reuniting owners with their animals. Most, she says, will have wandered off, got locked in a shed or found an alternative bed or bowl of milk for a night or two. Most, that is, but not all. Particularly when it comes to this new generation of exotic cats.
"We are searching for 120 Bengals in the UK," says Mrs Seagrave. "It is impossible to say what has happened to all of them, but we are seeing an increase in the number of cats such as Bengals being stolen.
"We have had reports of these high-value cats being catnapped and have seen CCTV footage of them being bundled into the back of cars. We've also received reports of break-ins where the only thing taken has been the cat.
"On average, we manage to return to their owners 80per cent of animals that go missing. Yet for Bengals and other exotic cats, that figure is not so high. This suggests that once they are taken, something more sinister is going on."
So, a black market in Bengals! Perhaps it was inevitable when these beasts fetch such handsome prices, but it means that owning one has become a hazardous business. To understand the desirability of Bengals, it is first necessary to understand something of the breed.
A modern creation as a pet, they were first seen in the U.S. in the Seventies when an Asian leopard cat was crossed with a normal shorthaired cat. The leopard cat (Felis Bengalensis) is slightly larger than a normal cat and is distinguished by its beautiful markings. The aim of the breeding programme was to produce an animal that combined these leopard-like characteristics with the sociability of a domestic cat.
A first generation cross is known as an F1. An F2 is the progeny of one F1 parent and one domestic parent (generally another Bengal cat), and so on. Only by the fourth generation are the cats considered domestic and are officially a Bengal, rather than an Asian leopard cat hybrid.
However, some of the most expensive Bengals tend to be found amid those early hybrids which, if they are female, will be used to breed from and are known as queens.
Pauline Turnock and her husband Frank run a farm near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. They have been breeding Bengals for the past four years. As their record shows, if you get your genetic alchemy just right, without too much effort you can produce a walking furry fortune.
They recently raised a litter of four kittens whose value was reported as being between £60,000 and £80,000 each. The father was a pure Asian leopard cat. "They were what breeders call F1s," says Mrs Turnock, 58.
"Most pet Bengals are F4s or F5s - they have very little wild blood. Most breeders would criticise us for breeding F1s - they say they are vicious, but it's not true, in our experience.
"You have to put in a bit more work with them, handling them and getting them used to you, but anyone who's lived with these early generations will know just how wonderful they are." The importance of good breeding stock is essential, as Gail Potts from Heywood in Lancashire knows only too well.
She has two male stud cats and six queens, from whom she breeds once a year and who produce four or five kittens per litter. Her most important stud cat is Galkats Mighty Maximus, who is four years old.
"He's won every show he's entered," says Mrs Potts. "He's beautiful, like a miniature leopard. I've been offered £3,000 for him, but I refused it - he can easily produce 50 kittens a year."
So valuable are the animals that her cattery is protected by CCTV and a fearsome-looking French mastiff guard dog. It may seem over the top, but it's a case of once bitten, twice shy. Two years ago, Mrs Potts woke up to discover that Maximus was missing, presumed catnapped.
"Someone had climbed over the fence and taken him," says Mrs Potts. "I was devastated." She reported the theft to the police who, she says, were completely uninterested.
This was despite the fact that she believed the cat had been stolen by a rival breeder who would have an insider's knowledge not only of the animals in her possession, but of their true value. (According to the Missing Pets Bureau, the reluctance of the police to get involved is normal.)
"In the eyes of the law, a cat is a wild animal, not a piece of property," says Mrs Seagrave.
"A dog is different. If you report a dog stolen and you have proof, then the police will issue you with a crime reference number.
"Once you have that number, the crime becomes a statistic, so there is far more incentive for the police to sort it out."
For two months, Maximus was missing. Then, out of the blue, Mrs Potts received a phone call from someone saying they could get him back. At a price.
"I was told that if I paid £1,000, I could have him back," said Mrs Potts. "I didn't particularly like having to pay a ransom for him, but what else could I do?
"We arranged to meet, the car screeched up, I handed the cash to a woman I'd never seen before and I got my gorgeous cat back. And at the end of the day that's all I wanted - my cat, safe and sound."
Her sentiment is echoed by 36-year-old legal secretary Janine Illingworth. Her one-year-old Bengal cat, Morpheus, went missing from the family home in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, in January.
"We were very careful with him and used to let him out into our garden for only a few minutes in the morning and the evening," she says.
The mother of three recalls: "On the morning in question, he went out and never came back, and not a single soul has seen him since. I've put up posters at the vet's, in pet shops and all along the nearby streets.
"I've also posted his details on the internet, but there has been no sign of him. I'm pretty sure he has been stolen.
"He cost me £450 as a kitten and was absolutely stunning. Because Bengals are so expensive, people don't want to pay for them, so they just steal them, or they are stolen to order by someone else. It's a real problem."
Given her experience, Janine's advice to other Bengal owners is not to let out their cats at all.
"It is just too risky," she says. "Losing a Bengal is a bit like losing a child - they are not like ordinary cats."
Jemima Khan would have done well to heed such advice - and, indeed, she received a similar recommendation not so long ago from Barrie Alger-Street, a respected Bengal breeder and chairman of the Bengal Cat Club.
Miss Khan and Hugh Grant visited him on Boxing Day. They were looking for Bengal kittens to buy.
"They insisted on coming on that day which, obviously, wasn't very convenient," says Mr Alger-Smith.
"But they were in a hurry because they had to go off to North Africa to do some filming and wanted it sorted before they went.
"Generally, we are dubious about letting our cats go to celebrities as many of them lead unsuitable lifestyles for keeping pets.
"Jemima seemed very keen on the breed. She was taken by them and knew exactly what she wanted.
"But I wasn't convinced that Hugh Grant wanted a cat at all. He looked as if he was there under sufferance and I thought he was a bit miffed."
Although, in the end, the couple chose not to buy any of the kittens on offer, Mr Alger-Street took the opportunity to give them advice on looking after Bengals.
He suggested they buy a product called a Freedom Fence. A wire is placed around a lawn or property and the cat is fitted with a collar. If the animal approaches the wire, a transmitter sends a signal to a receiver in the collar which beeps.
If the animal gets closer still, it receives a small jolt, like a static electricity shock, teaching it to steer clear of the boundary.
"Research has shown that if a cat, any cat, is kept in, is restricted, then its average life expectancy will be 15 years," says Mr Alger-Street. "If it's allowed to roam, then it's just two and half."
And if that cat's a Bengal cat - not just any cat - as we have seen, the dangers it faces when out and about are that much greater still.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html? in_article_id=463791&in_page_id=1879
Dawn breaks over a town in Lancashire and the early morning silence is shattered by a ringing phone in the home of Gail Potts. The 56-year-old grabs the receiver and listens carefully. "If you want to see your cat again, then you'd better do exactly what I tell you," a voice growls.
Fast forward a couple of days and here's Mrs Potts again. A distance from her house, along a deserted road, she stands alone, clutching a bulging brown envelope in her sweating palm.
A car screeches up and within seconds the exchange has taken place - one cat for £1,000. In notes. "I know it's a lot of money," Mrs Potts said, recalling her ordeal. "But this wasn't any normal cat. This was Maximus. He's special. He's a Bengal cat."
No run-of-the-mill moggy, the Bengal. Known as "living-room leopards", these carefully bred felines are descended from wild Asian cats. Their most distinctive feature is their exotically marked coat - the sort of spots and stripes seen in the jungle. They are said to be highly intelligent, doglike in personality and to make great pets.
So it is that in these image-conscious times the Bengal cat has become the must-have pet of the 21st century. The first one arrived in Britain in 1991, but today there are more than 30,000 across the country. Costs vary according to their pedigree: the cheapest starts at £500, while the most expensive, a cat named Zeus, is said to have fetched a six-figure sum.
A lot of money for a mouse-catcher, but then the sort of people who own them are generally more interested in form than function and aren't short of a bob - think Sophie Dahl, Jonathan Ross and the Sultan of Brunei.
With such a profile, it's hardly surprising that Bengals are so highly coveted - by cat fanciers and catnappers. Such is their desirability that owners are being advised that they let them out of their sight (or, heaven forbid, outside at all) at their peril - something heiress Jemima Khan discovered recently.
Her two £900 Bengal cats, gifts from her on-off boyfriend Hugh Grant, vanished from her London home last week. Although one returned, there has been no sign of the other, prompting Miss Khan to call police to help with the hunt. She fears it may be dead.
To the surprise of many ordinary London residents (burglary victims, for example, who have waited days for a detective to visit them), the Metropolitan Police duly sent two female officers to her home. "Because of the high value of the missing property, we felt the response was perfectly normal and proportionate," a Scotland Yard spokesman later explained.
But if police were always as quick off the mark as the Met when it came to dealing with missing moggies, then human crime would never get dealt with. Nationally, it is estimated that 3,200 cats disappear every week. Of these, 1,200 are involved in road accidents. And the rest?
Sheena Seagrave works for the Missing Pets Bureau, an organisation dedicated to reuniting owners with their animals. Most, she says, will have wandered off, got locked in a shed or found an alternative bed or bowl of milk for a night or two. Most, that is, but not all. Particularly when it comes to this new generation of exotic cats.
"We are searching for 120 Bengals in the UK," says Mrs Seagrave. "It is impossible to say what has happened to all of them, but we are seeing an increase in the number of cats such as Bengals being stolen.
"We have had reports of these high-value cats being catnapped and have seen CCTV footage of them being bundled into the back of cars. We've also received reports of break-ins where the only thing taken has been the cat.
"On average, we manage to return to their owners 80per cent of animals that go missing. Yet for Bengals and other exotic cats, that figure is not so high. This suggests that once they are taken, something more sinister is going on."
So, a black market in Bengals! Perhaps it was inevitable when these beasts fetch such handsome prices, but it means that owning one has become a hazardous business. To understand the desirability of Bengals, it is first necessary to understand something of the breed.
A modern creation as a pet, they were first seen in the U.S. in the Seventies when an Asian leopard cat was crossed with a normal shorthaired cat. The leopard cat (Felis Bengalensis) is slightly larger than a normal cat and is distinguished by its beautiful markings. The aim of the breeding programme was to produce an animal that combined these leopard-like characteristics with the sociability of a domestic cat.
A first generation cross is known as an F1. An F2 is the progeny of one F1 parent and one domestic parent (generally another Bengal cat), and so on. Only by the fourth generation are the cats considered domestic and are officially a Bengal, rather than an Asian leopard cat hybrid.
However, some of the most expensive Bengals tend to be found amid those early hybrids which, if they are female, will be used to breed from and are known as queens.
Pauline Turnock and her husband Frank run a farm near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. They have been breeding Bengals for the past four years. As their record shows, if you get your genetic alchemy just right, without too much effort you can produce a walking furry fortune.
They recently raised a litter of four kittens whose value was reported as being between £60,000 and £80,000 each. The father was a pure Asian leopard cat. "They were what breeders call F1s," says Mrs Turnock, 58.
"Most pet Bengals are F4s or F5s - they have very little wild blood. Most breeders would criticise us for breeding F1s - they say they are vicious, but it's not true, in our experience.
"You have to put in a bit more work with them, handling them and getting them used to you, but anyone who's lived with these early generations will know just how wonderful they are." The importance of good breeding stock is essential, as Gail Potts from Heywood in Lancashire knows only too well.
She has two male stud cats and six queens, from whom she breeds once a year and who produce four or five kittens per litter. Her most important stud cat is Galkats Mighty Maximus, who is four years old.
"He's won every show he's entered," says Mrs Potts. "He's beautiful, like a miniature leopard. I've been offered £3,000 for him, but I refused it - he can easily produce 50 kittens a year."
So valuable are the animals that her cattery is protected by CCTV and a fearsome-looking French mastiff guard dog. It may seem over the top, but it's a case of once bitten, twice shy. Two years ago, Mrs Potts woke up to discover that Maximus was missing, presumed catnapped.
"Someone had climbed over the fence and taken him," says Mrs Potts. "I was devastated." She reported the theft to the police who, she says, were completely uninterested.
This was despite the fact that she believed the cat had been stolen by a rival breeder who would have an insider's knowledge not only of the animals in her possession, but of their true value. (According to the Missing Pets Bureau, the reluctance of the police to get involved is normal.)
"In the eyes of the law, a cat is a wild animal, not a piece of property," says Mrs Seagrave.
"A dog is different. If you report a dog stolen and you have proof, then the police will issue you with a crime reference number.
"Once you have that number, the crime becomes a statistic, so there is far more incentive for the police to sort it out."
For two months, Maximus was missing. Then, out of the blue, Mrs Potts received a phone call from someone saying they could get him back. At a price.
"I was told that if I paid £1,000, I could have him back," said Mrs Potts. "I didn't particularly like having to pay a ransom for him, but what else could I do?
"We arranged to meet, the car screeched up, I handed the cash to a woman I'd never seen before and I got my gorgeous cat back. And at the end of the day that's all I wanted - my cat, safe and sound."
Her sentiment is echoed by 36-year-old legal secretary Janine Illingworth. Her one-year-old Bengal cat, Morpheus, went missing from the family home in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, in January.
"We were very careful with him and used to let him out into our garden for only a few minutes in the morning and the evening," she says.
The mother of three recalls: "On the morning in question, he went out and never came back, and not a single soul has seen him since. I've put up posters at the vet's, in pet shops and all along the nearby streets.
"I've also posted his details on the internet, but there has been no sign of him. I'm pretty sure he has been stolen.
"He cost me £450 as a kitten and was absolutely stunning. Because Bengals are so expensive, people don't want to pay for them, so they just steal them, or they are stolen to order by someone else. It's a real problem."
Given her experience, Janine's advice to other Bengal owners is not to let out their cats at all.
"It is just too risky," she says. "Losing a Bengal is a bit like losing a child - they are not like ordinary cats."
Jemima Khan would have done well to heed such advice - and, indeed, she received a similar recommendation not so long ago from Barrie Alger-Street, a respected Bengal breeder and chairman of the Bengal Cat Club.
Miss Khan and Hugh Grant visited him on Boxing Day. They were looking for Bengal kittens to buy.
"They insisted on coming on that day which, obviously, wasn't very convenient," says Mr Alger-Smith.
"But they were in a hurry because they had to go off to North Africa to do some filming and wanted it sorted before they went.
"Generally, we are dubious about letting our cats go to celebrities as many of them lead unsuitable lifestyles for keeping pets.
"Jemima seemed very keen on the breed. She was taken by them and knew exactly what she wanted.
"But I wasn't convinced that Hugh Grant wanted a cat at all. He looked as if he was there under sufferance and I thought he was a bit miffed."
Although, in the end, the couple chose not to buy any of the kittens on offer, Mr Alger-Street took the opportunity to give them advice on looking after Bengals.
He suggested they buy a product called a Freedom Fence. A wire is placed around a lawn or property and the cat is fitted with a collar. If the animal approaches the wire, a transmitter sends a signal to a receiver in the collar which beeps.
If the animal gets closer still, it receives a small jolt, like a static electricity shock, teaching it to steer clear of the boundary.
"Research has shown that if a cat, any cat, is kept in, is restricted, then its average life expectancy will be 15 years," says Mr Alger-Street. "If it's allowed to roam, then it's just two and half."
And if that cat's a Bengal cat - not just any cat - as we have seen, the dangers it faces when out and about are that much greater still.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html? in_article_id=463791&in_page_id=1879
Tiger: India seeks clarification over China's intent
New Delhi, June 22: Expressing surprise over the reports that China was planning to lift its ban on trade in tiger parts, India has sought clarification from a UN forum in which China a few days ago had pledged to the contrary.
"We have seen the reports from Beijing, which is surprising, but any way they have not come from a very high official, so we have sought clarifications from Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)," a senior official of the National Tiger Conservation Authority told UNI.
The official had attended the recently-concluded meeting of CITES at the Hague at which India had scored a major victory by securing unanimous passage of a resolution saying that the trade ban should continue and that captive breeding of tigers be allowed only to the extent supportive of conserving tigers in the wild.
It had clearly said tigers would not be bred for trade in their parts.
Though China had initially opposed the resolution, it had to finally fall in line in view of overwhelming international opinion against lifting of the ban.
China wanted to breed tiger in captivity to undo a 14-year trade in tiger parts.
The CITES resolution had come as great victory for India which has been lobbying with other Members to ensure that China’s bid to to open trade in tiger derivatives was foiled.
China is reported to have several thousand captive-bred tigers and less than 30 in the wild.
Now, the news from Beijing has come as a surprise. A Chinese wildlife official told state media that his country may eventually lift its 14-year ban on the trade of tiger bones and body parts.
"The ban is in place. But it is open for review ... The ban won't be there forever, given the strong voices from tiger farmers, experts and society," said reports quoting Wang Wei, wildlife deputy director at the State Forestry Administration.
In China, there is an intense pressure from companies seeking to meet local demand for tiger bones and parts in traditional Chinese medicine.
According to China's stand, the authorised and captive breeding may help the cause of conservation, as it would prevent people from taking the risk of poaching.
However, India and wildlife experts say that lifting ban in trade in tiger parts will result in steep increase in demand, leading to increased paoching of wild tigers.
http://www.newkerala.com/news5.php?action=fullnews&id=41471
"We have seen the reports from Beijing, which is surprising, but any way they have not come from a very high official, so we have sought clarifications from Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)," a senior official of the National Tiger Conservation Authority told UNI.
The official had attended the recently-concluded meeting of CITES at the Hague at which India had scored a major victory by securing unanimous passage of a resolution saying that the trade ban should continue and that captive breeding of tigers be allowed only to the extent supportive of conserving tigers in the wild.
It had clearly said tigers would not be bred for trade in their parts.
Though China had initially opposed the resolution, it had to finally fall in line in view of overwhelming international opinion against lifting of the ban.
China wanted to breed tiger in captivity to undo a 14-year trade in tiger parts.
The CITES resolution had come as great victory for India which has been lobbying with other Members to ensure that China’s bid to to open trade in tiger derivatives was foiled.
China is reported to have several thousand captive-bred tigers and less than 30 in the wild.
Now, the news from Beijing has come as a surprise. A Chinese wildlife official told state media that his country may eventually lift its 14-year ban on the trade of tiger bones and body parts.
"The ban is in place. But it is open for review ... The ban won't be there forever, given the strong voices from tiger farmers, experts and society," said reports quoting Wang Wei, wildlife deputy director at the State Forestry Administration.
In China, there is an intense pressure from companies seeking to meet local demand for tiger bones and parts in traditional Chinese medicine.
According to China's stand, the authorised and captive breeding may help the cause of conservation, as it would prevent people from taking the risk of poaching.
However, India and wildlife experts say that lifting ban in trade in tiger parts will result in steep increase in demand, leading to increased paoching of wild tigers.
http://www.newkerala.com/news5.php?action=fullnews&id=41471