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Secrets of Marion Island: what NatGeo didn’t tell you

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Seabird recovery project haunted by ghosts of cats, in the form of voracious mice

            CAPE TOWN––National Geographic writer Leslie Nemo omitted two of the most ecologically significant facts about the Marion Island Special Nature Reserve from her December 14,  2018 online feature “Saving a remote island’s birds—by getting rid of its mice.” 

            Lauding a scheme to saturate Marion Island,  1,340 miles south of South Africa,  with poisoned bait to kill mice,  Nemo concluded with an appeal for readers to donate to the killing.  Nemo failed to mention,  however,  that for 43 years the Detroit-sized island hosted feral cats,  whose ancestors effectively controlled the introduced mouse population for decades.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Native mouse predators

            Nemo also neglected to mention that among the 42 bird species observed at Marion Island,  of whom 29 are considered resident,  are at least five known or suspected mouse predators,  including brown skuas,  kelp gulls, Kergulen terns,  and both Arctic and Antarctic terms.

            All five are nest predators of other birds,  potentially contributing to population declines in other species.  Yet at the same time they are now the first line of defense against mice for every bird species nesting at Marion Island, and will especially be vulnerable from secondary poisoning,  through eating poisoned mice.

Mice in a Marion Island field hut.
(Ivan Dalglish photo)

But no nocturnal mouse predators

            The threat mice pose to young and nesting birds on Marion Island is thus not so much an absence of predators as it is an absence of nocturnal predators,  who hunt mice while they are most active,  during the long Antarctic winter nights,  coinciding with the summer months in the northern hemisphere.

Penguins on Marion Island.
(Mouse Free Marion photo)

             When exactly mice reached Marion Island is uncertain,  but at least 103 vessels visited,  mostly on sealing and whaling expeditions,  between 1799 and 1913.  Seven of those vessels were wrecked nearby.  Though few humans survived those wrecks,  some mice might have floated to land with debris.

            Survivors of the 1908 wreck of the Norwegian vessel Solglimt,  which occurred close enough to shore for recreational divers to sometimes visit,  salvaged enough materials and supplies to live on the island for several months before they were rescued.  They perhaps inadvertently brought mice ashore too.

Three of the first cats to arrive at Marion Island.  (August 1948)

Mice “colonized every corner”

            Regardless of exactly how and when mice reached Marion Island,  they long since “colonized almost every corner of the island,  which was declared a Special Nature Reserve in 1995,”  reported Tony Carnie of the KwaZulu-Natal Mercury in 2015.

(Sgt. William John Deysel, 1954.)

            Annexing Marion Island in 1947,  South Africa established a research station on the northeast shore in 1948.  Plagued by mice,  the resident staff had five cats delivered from the mainland in 1949.  Some of the cats and their descendants were kept as pets until 1982.  Others went feral.

            “By 1977,”  summarizes Wikipedia,  “there were approximately 3,400 cats on the island, feeding on burrowing petrels in addition to mice,  and taking an estimated 455,000 petrels a year.  Some species of petrels soon disappeared from Marion Island.”

Marion Island cat,  believed to have been a pet rather than feral,  captures a petrel.  (Christo Wolfaardt photo, circa 1964-1965)

Killing the cats

            Recounted Vox Felina blogger Peter Wolf on May 14,  2015,  “It took 19 years to exterminate approximately 2,200 cats,” by methods including “poisoning,  hunting and trapping,  dogs, and introducing feline distemper.”

Marion Island cat. 
(Johann P. Bothma, taken at some point between 1954 and 1957.)

            Killing so many  cats also suppressed breeding in the harsh Antarctic climate.   

            “In 1991,”  Wolf finished,   “eradication of cats from Marion Island was complete.  It remains the largest island from which cats have been successfully eradicated.”

            That took the brakes off the mouse population.

(See also What if an island has no cats? and When the cats are away, the mice will play––and the rats & rabbits.)

Albatross & chick.
(Mouse Free Marion photo)

Mice learn to “scalp” albatross chicks

            Reported University of Cape Town ornithologist Ben Dilley in the journal Antarctic Science,  “The first mouse-injured wandering albatross chick was found in 2003.  In 2009,  the first ‘scalpings’ were detected:  sooty albatross fledglings were found with raw wounds on the nape.  In 2015,  mice attacked large chicks of all three albatross species that fledge in autumn:  grey-headed,  sooty,  and light-mantled.  Filming at night confirmed that mice were responsible for the wounds.”

Kergulen petrel.
(Wikipedia photo)

            Also afflicted were grey and white-chinned petrels, respectively considered “near-threatened” and “vulnerable” by BirdLife South Africa.

Global warming

            “Right now, only a small percentage of the island’s albatross population is dying from the attacks,”  wrote Nemo for National Geographic.  “But ornithologists anticipate the problem will get worse,”  Nemo said,  because “climate change is creating warmer winters that kill off fewer mice.  As a result, the island’s population has outgrown its supplies of the mice’s normal food sources,  including weevils,  moths, and seeds,  explains Otto Whitehead,  an ornithologist who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Cape Town by working on the island.

Albatrosses.  (Mouse Free Marion photo)

            “Albatross nests,  perpetually warmed by the birds’ body heat,  entice mice to burrow into the insulated ground below them,”  Whitehead told Nemo.  “Petrels’ underground homes are even  better;  mice simply move in while the birds are still there.”

            Mouse predation “accounted for about 10% of albatross chick deaths in 2015,”  Nemo reported.  “Having never dealt with these attacks in the past,  the birds have no defenses.”

(Mouse Free Marion photo)

Under cover of darkness

            Critical to realize is that while all of the Marion Island nesting bird species hatch during the months of long daylight,  albatross fledglings are much slower to mature than the fledglings of the other Marion Island birds. 

(Mouse Free Marion photo)

            The immature albatross chicks are still in their nests during the months of long nights,  receiving only occasional brief feeding visits from their parents.  Those coldest,  darkest months appear to be when the mice are hungriest and most aggressive.

            Though some mouse predation on albatross and petrel chicks may have occurred for decades,  it has intensified to easy visibility and apparent population significance since the cat eradication.

Plan to poison every square meter

            Therefore,  Nemo explained,  “In 2020,  BirdLife South Africa,  a nonprofit conservation organization, and the South African government will team up to drop poisoned bait via helicopter over every square meter of the island.  Missing bait in even one 20-meter-by-20-meter patch could allow a few mice to survive and reproduce,  which would ruin the entire mission.”

            BirdLife South Africa ornithologist Ross Wanless told Nemo that poison remaining after killing mice “will degrade and wash into the ocean at undetectable levels.”

            But what else will the poison kill meanwhile?

(Beth Clifton collage)

Rounding up thousands of sheathbill

            “Albatross are fish-eaters and so are unlikely to pick at the bait or the poisoned mice,”  Nemo said.  “But scavenger species like the lesser sheathbill,  which will be overwintering on the island during the drop,  just might.  To protect them,  another team of researchers will put the birds into temporary captivity.  The sheathbills will be held and fed until the conservationists are sure the island is clear of fatal temptations.”

Lesser sheathbill.
(Beth Clifton collage
)

            Bear in mind that the overwintering Marion Island lesser sheathbill population is believed to be in the thousands,  far more than might easily be captured in rugged habitat,  much of it swampy,  amid daily snow,  sleet,  wind,  and freezing rain.

            How much harm may come to sheathbills in capture,  holding, and through habituation? 

(Beth Clifton collage)

            The short answer is,  nobody knows.

High risk for pilots,  too

            “If that doesn’t sound difficult enough,”  Nemo offered,  “Marion Island sits in a stretch of ocean notorious for its brutal winds. Even with extra days to accommodate impossible flying conditions,  the pilots will have to be incredibly skilled to pull off this mission.”

Map of New Zealand. While Compound 1080 has been sprayed only in the teal blue areas, brush possums (inset) are persecuted everywhere.

            Nemo wrote less than two months after New Zealand Department of Conservation biodiversity ranger Scott Theobald,  59,  fellow ranger Paul Hondelink,  63,  and pilot Nick Wallis,  38,  were killed when Wallis’ Hughes 500 helicopter crashed near Wanaka Airport soon after takeoff on a mission to cull Himalayan tahr.

            New Zealand Department of Conservation director general Lou Sanson credited Hondelink with developing the Compound 1080 gels that the agency uses to kill brush possums,  and said Hondelink had “invented” the use of “Judas goats” to lead hunters to feral goats.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Neuter/return might have done the job

            Rather than risk losing pilots and rare and threatened species,  there was an easier path for conservationists at Marion Island,  Alley Cat Rescue founder Louise Holton pointed out when the mouse poisoning campaign was proposed in 2015.

            “Remote islands are complicated,”  Holton acknowledged,  but “Even though taking veterinarians to such a remote region would have been challenging,”  she added,  neuter/return “may have been a better use of money,  as the cats would have kept the mice under control.  And even though they may still have caught some birds,  the overall damage to birds would have been minimized.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Who will fund the poisoning?

            Unclear is whether the funding that the proposed mouse extermination project will require can actually be raised. 

Beth & Merritt Clifton

            As of December 16,  2018,  according to the Mouse Free Marion website,  143 individuals had donated only 1.3% of the anticipated project cost,  with no corporate sponsors committed yet.

Please donate to support our work:

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Frustrated fishers push to kill West Coast sea lions & seals

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Newly formed Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society gives voice to anger

            VANCOUVER,  B.C.;  PORTLAND,  Oregon––Removing a longtime irritant to the British Columbia wild salmon fishing industry––and a major economic competitor––the British Columbia government and First Nations have agreed to phase out 17 commercial salmon farms operated since 1987 by a company called Marine Harvest off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island.

            The deal is billed as a step toward restoring wild salmon runs,  but might also fuel a rising hue-and-cry from frustrated fishers that they should be allowed to massacre California sea lions and harbor seals. 

(Beth Clifton collage)

Sea lions & seals up,  salmon down

            Protected by law,  after having become endangered in the 20th century,  both California sea lions and harbor seals have markedly increased in numbers even as commercial fishing catches have declined and have been more stringently limited to try to help fish stocks recover.

(Beth Clifton collage)

            Salmon fishers have long alleged that diseases and pollution spreading from the salmon farms have contributed to the decline of wild salmon,  especially chinook. 

            With the salmon farms gone,  sea lions and seals will be the most visible targets of blame for fish losses other than overfishing by fishers themselves,  amid political reluctance to recognize that predation has little or nothing to do with why salmon are no longer abundant.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Global warming

            A fundamental law of wildlife ecology is that the volume of accessible prey regulates the numbers of predators,  not the other way around.  When prey is scarce,  predators starve,  fail to breed successfully,  and die out long before the prey species disappear––which enables the prey species to recover to whatever extent the habitat permits.

            Far greater but less easily seen habitat factors suppressing salmon recovery include the failures of dammed and polluted spawning streams to produce as many millions of salmon smolts as they once did,  and the effects of global warming,  which have markedly changed the distribution of marine species and composition of the wild food web throughout the Puget Sound and northern Pacific Coast regions.

Orcas. (David Ellifrit, NOAA)

Hypocrisy in black & white

            Fishing industry ire in recent years is often expressed as concern for the survival of the highly endangered Puget Sound resident orca whales.  Feeding almost entirely on chinook salmon,  the three resident Puget Sound orca pods have fallen to just 74 members among them, with no surviving young born since 2015.

The orca Ethelbert was shot repeatedly after swimming up the Columbia River in 1930, dying about two weeks after the first bullets hit him.

            But orcas were also blamed––and lethally targeted––for competing with fishers until under 60 years ago.  Orcas before the mid-1960s were killed by fishers not only with impunity but with government encouragement,  and at times active participation,  both in B.C. and U.S. waters.

Orca. (NOAA photo)

The soon-to-be-closed fish farms “are located in the Broughton Archipelago at the entrance to Johnstone Strait, a major migration route for coastal and Fraser River salmon,”  explained Seattle Post-Intelligencer environment reporter Joel Connelly.  “They are not far from Robson Bight,  a major gathering point for the northern resident orca whale population.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Responding to the great escape

            Political pressure to close the British Columbia salmon farms intensified in August 2017,  after as many as 162,000 captive-bred Atlantic salmon escaped from a sea pen belonging to Cooke Aquaculture,  off Cypress Island in U.S. waters,  between the city of Everett and the San Juan Islands. 

Where Atlantic salmon have been caught since the August 2017 “Great Salmon Escape.”
(Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife)

            Some of the salmon turned up as far north as the Harrison River in British Columbia,  as far east as the upper reaches of the Skagit River in Washington,  and as far south as the Pacific shores of the Olympic Peninsula. 

                Washington Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz eventually terminated Cooke Aquaculture leases not only for the Cypress Island facility,  but also for a second aging sea pen complex at Ediz Hook,  near Port Angeles.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society

            Meanwhile an organization of frustrated fishers called the Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society formed in July 2018.

            Formally incorporated in British Columbia on October 27, the Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society now boasts more than 3,000 members,  scattered along the Pacific coast from Alaska to California but concentrated in B.C.,  who clamor to kill sea lions and seals under the leadership of Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation commercial fisher Tom Sewid and Haida Gwaii elder Roy Jones.

Stellar sea lions. (Wikipedia photo)

Sea lion poachers recast as heroes

            Heroes to at least some Pacific Balance Pinniped Society include Alaskan fishing boat captain Jon Nichols,  31,  and crew member Teddy Turgeon,  21,  who in June 2018 pleaded guilty to killing 15 Stellar sea lions in the Copper River Fishing District just before the 2015 salmon season opened.

           Nichols in November 2018 was sentenced to serve five years on probation,  three months of home incarceration,  400 hours of community service,  and a $20,000 fine for multiple violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. 

Harbor seal pup.  (Beth Clifton photo)

            Turgeon received four years on probation,  one month of home incarceration,  and a $5,000 fine,  and is to perform 40 hours of community service.

            Similar offenses have also occurred recently in Puget Sound,  where the Seal Sitters Marine Mammal Stranding Network has logged the discovery of 13 California sea lions believed to have been killed by humans since September 2018––six of them shot, seven dead from other “acute trauma suspected from human interactions.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Remembered “balance” never existed

            The very name of the Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society evokes the obsolescent concept of restoring a “balance of nature” that has never existed. 

(U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

            Driving the growth of the Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society is the fervent but misguided belief of the founders that the transient abundance of salmon they remember from their distant youths and/or heard about from tribal elders represented conditions that could be restored,  if only the numbers of sea lions and seals could be slaughtered down to the scarcity of those times.

            Indeed,  salmon were much more easily caught in great numbers then,  and salmon predators including seals and sea lions had not yet even begun to recover from the intensive sealing of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

(Beth Clifton collage)

More fishers now than residents then

            But the human population of British Columbia circa 60 years ago was only about 1.5 million,  a third of what it is today,  with proportionately less shoreline and estuarial development, logging along salmon streams,  pollution of waterways,  and recreational fishing.

Salmon fry.  (Beth Clifton photo)

            The vast numbers of salmon remembered in First Nations mythology from pre-European settlement times were there in part not only because the salmon habitat remained relatively undisturbed,  but also because the entire human population of British Columbia before the 20th century probably never exceeded 200,000––whereas,  British Columbia today has more than 300,000 licensed recreational fishers. 

            At that,  the Native American population of British Columbia was so severely depleted by smallpox outbreaks in 1810 and 1862,  brought by some of the first European visitors,  that settlers arriving afterward found few survivors among largely abandoned villages.

(Sonia Leclerc photo)

Using First Nations rights to kill sea lions

            Farther south, salmon had already been fished to depletion along the Columbia River and tributaries by 1900,  leading to cannery closures and the first regional salmon conservation laws––and that was when sea lions and seals had already been hunted to commercial extinction. 

(Beth Clifton photo)

            Some sea lions and seals survived,  but not enough to support a continued pinniped hunting industry.

            “In early November,”  Greg Rasmussen of CBC News reported on December 1,  2018,   “the Pacific Balance Pinnipeds Society started using First Nations hunting rights as part of a plan to harvest 30 seals.  The society plans to test the meat and blubber to see if it’s fit for human consumption and other uses.”

Harp seal.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Hopes to revive sealing industry

            Enthused Pacific Balance Pinniped Society cofounder Tom Sewid,  disregarding the collapse of the Atlantic Canada seal hunt,  “We can look at starting a new industry.”  

            Like many Newfoundland fishers and sealers,  Sewid believes the market for Atlantic Canadian sealing products will recover,  but there is little hint of demand.

Grey seal.  (Beth Clifton collage)

            Total sales of Canadian seal products worldwide fell from $18 million in 2006 to less than $1 million in 2017. 

            India in 2018 became the 35th nation to ban imports of commercially hunted seal products, following the 28 European Union nations,  the U.S.,  Switzerland,  Russia,  Belarus,  Kazakhstan and Mexico. 

            China has not banned imports of seal products,  but has not bought any in recent years,  either. 

Harbor seal.  (Beth Clifton photo)

80,000 harbor seals

            Continued Rasmussen of CBC,  “According to one study, the harbor seal population in the Salish Sea [Puget Sound plus the Georgia Straits of British Columbia] is estimated at 80,000 today,  up from 8,600 in 1975.  The study also says seals and sea lions now eat six times as many chinook salmon as are caught in the region’s commercial and sports fisheries combined.”

Orcas (top inset), the largest dolphin species, killed this Dall’s porpoise (bottom inset) in October 2017 in Puget Sound. 
(Beth Clifton photo)

            That infuriates the Pacific Balance Pinniped Society,  but as Coastal Ocean Research Institute,  Ocean Wise,  and Vancouver Aquarium scientist Peter Ross responded,  “I don’t know if there’s any good predator control study that’s ever demonstrated that killing off a predator has led to more prey.” 

           Ross also pointed out that the pinniped-eating transient orca population,  recovering in recent years,  might be jeopardized if the numbers of sea lions and seals were reduced.

(aharmer1/Flickr photo)

West Coast groundfish “recovered”

            The irrelevance of pinniped numbers to fish numbers was illustrated in mid-December 2018 when the National Oceanic & Atmospheric administration authorized markedly higher catch limits for West Coast groundfish species,  with the California sea lion and harbor seal populations almost as large as they have ever been since the Marine Mammal Protection Act cleared Congress in 1972.

Boccacio.  (Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife photo)

            Groundfish,  including rockfish,  sole,  flounder,  sablefish,  Pacific perch,  and boccacio,  “were once so depleted by overfishing that commercial harvests were virtually halted 20 years ago,”  recalled Steve Gorman of Reuters. Their “surprisingly swift recovery,”  Gorman wrote, citing NOAA spokespersons, “is testament to the success of drastic fishing restrictions imposed in 2000.”

(Rebecca Gimenez photo)

U.S. sea lion culling regs weakened

            More attentive to the volatile politics of the matter,  however,  than to the science,  the last session of the 115th Congress amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act to expedite the process through which the Washington,  Idaho,  and Oregon wildlife agencies and tribes belonging to the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission are allowed to capture and kill California sea lions.

(Gov. UK photo)

            Jaime Pinkham,  executive director of the Columbia RiverInter-Tribal Fish Commission,   told media that as many as 190 sea lions killed more than 9,500 adult spring chinook within sight of Bonneville Dam in 2016,  a 5.8 percent loss of the 2016 spring chinook spawning run.

            Earlier,  federal officials projected that sea lions might have eaten 45% of the 2014 spring chinook run in the 145 river miles between the Columbia River estuary and Bonneville Dam,  the first of a series of major hydroelectric dams that obstruct spawning salmon on the Columbia and tributaries.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Cormorants also blamed

            But double-crested cormorants are also blamed for essentially the same estimated losses,  and have also been aggressively culled,  at politically mobilized fisher demand,  to no evident effect in boosting salmon numbers.

Cormorant catching a fish.
(Beth Clifton photo)

            “East Sand Island,”  at the mouth of the Columbia River,  “was once home to the world’s largest colony of double-crested cormorants,  representing more than 40% of the entire population in the western United States,”  recounted Portland Audubon Society director of conservation Bob Salinger in April 2018.

            “However,  over the past four years the Army Corps of Engineers,  acting under permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has waged a relentless war on this colony in a misguided and inhumane effort to protect endangered salmon and steelhead,”  Salinger fumed.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Cormorant colony “on brink of collapse”

“Federal agents have shot more than 5,000 cormorants out of the sky and destroyed more than 6,000 active cormorant nests.  The relentless killing has put the colony on the brink of collapse. In 2016,”  Salinger reminded,  “more than 16,000 cormorants abandoned their active nests in a single day.  In 2017,  only a few hundred cormorants returned to East Sand Island.

USDA Wildlife Services team member scoops dead cormorant from the water. (Taken from Oregon Public Broadcasting video)

            “By causing thousands of the birds to move farther up the Columbia River,”  Salinger added,  “the agencies increased the risk to endangered fish,  as federal agency models show displaced cormorants would eat far more salmon than if they have been left at East Sand Island.”

            About 6,500 cormorants nested at East Sand Island in 2018.  Those who remained within a 1.3-acre fenced area designated by USDA Wildlife Services were left undisturbed,  but others were hazed off of their nests and their eggs were destroyed.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

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Pseudo-science & the Alex Pacheco “Spay & Neuter” Cookie

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(Beth Clifton collage)

No product,  no scientists,  nothing else that makes sense

            POMPANO BEACH,  Florida––The pseudo-science in a “Spay and Neuter Cookie Science Update and Overview” fundraising appeal emailed by “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” founder Alex Pacheco to potential donors on December 19,  2018 began in the first sentence beneath the headline.

            Pacheco has raised more than $1.3 million since 2009,  according to IRS Form 990 filings,  on the unfulfilled promise to be “developing safe,  non-profit,  permanent lasting one-dose birth control food for stray dogs and cats.”  He has as yet no tangible product to show for the use of the money.

Cookies for Santa?  (Beth Clifton collage)

Game developer

            Further,  Pacheco has had no scientists in relevant fields verifiably working for or with him since the Arizona rodent control product developer SenesTech severed relations with him,  after just four months,  in April 2011. 

           On December 22,  2018,  about 24 hours after ANIMALS 24-7 first posted “Pseudo-science & the Alex Pacheco “Spay & Neuter” Cookie,”  Pacheco in an emailed appeal following up on his “Spay and Neuter Cookie Science Update and Overview” included a brief introduction to “one of our scientists:  Dr. Rajay Kumar,”  who holds “degrees from MIT and the University of Southern California,”  and is said to be an “ethical research scientist specializing in nanotechnology,”  a field wholly unrelated to contraceptive development.  

(Beth Clifton collage)

           According to Kumar’s LinkedIn page,  he heads Riot Shield Games,  a one-person online game development company. 

           His degrees are in electrical engineering and technology commercialization,  with no evident background in any aspect of biology or biochemistry.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Mixed methods

            Neither has Pacheco ever postulated any credible scientific approach to his proposition that there is a way to develop a “permanent lasting one-dose birth control food for stray dogs and cats” in the form of a “Spay and Neuter Cookie,”  which will not harm the animals and could win regulatory approval. 

            Pacheco’s December 19,  2018 “Science Update” opened by asserting that he is “modifying known ingredients such as calcium chloride,   zinc,  vinylcyclohexene and others so that they (in a single dose) will safely sterilize a stray,  without surgery.”

“600 Million” founder Alex Pacheco posed with Donald Trump. See “600 Million” reasons to toss Alex Pacheco’s alleged spay/neuter cookies.
(Photo from AlexPacheco.org)

Gastrointestinal tract doesn’t lead to gonads

            The pseudo-science in the claim begins with the reality that calcium chloride and zinc are the chief ingredients in several chemosterilants developed by various others over the past 30 years for injection into the testicles of male animals to block the release of sperm. 

            Neither calcium chloride nor zinc could be put into a “Spay and Neuter Cookie” to any useful effect because an ingestible product,  passing through the gastro-intestinal tract of an animal,  could not deliver either calcium chloride,  zinc,  or any other mineral into the animal’s sperm ducts.  The plumbing simply does not run in that direction.

            Vinylcyclohexene is a carcinogenic chemical with known damaging effects on the human reproductive system,  used experimentally to model human menopause in laboratory mice. 

Cookie seller Alexa Pacheco.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Developer ended relationship

            SenesTech in 2006 tested a product based on vinylcyclohexene,  called ChemSpay,  in dogs,  funded by the Alliance for Contraception of Cats & Dogs,  but the experiment was unsuccessful.

            In December 2010 SenesTech announced that it would be working with Pacheco and “600 Million Stray Dogs need you,”  but in April 2011 advised Alliance for Contraception of Cats & Dogs executive director Joyce Briggs that “neither ‘600 Million’ nor Mr. Pacheco have any  claim,  right,  title,  license or interest in our ChemSpay product or any other [SenesTech] product.”

            Because vinylcyclohexene is a carcinogen,  meaning that exposure could potentially cause cancer in humans,  ChemSpay would in any event have been extremely difficult to register for use in dogs and cats.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Incomplete” cookies

            Continued Pacheco in his December 19,  2018 appeal,  reasserting previous claims,  “The first birth control food we are developing are the Spay and Neuter Cookies.  They are being designed to be species and gender specific,  and we expect the first Cookie that will be completed will be for female dogs.”

            But while Pacheco thereby acknowledged not having any “Spay and Neuter Cookies” that are “completed,”  whatever he might mean by that,  he also claimed to be feeding “incomplete” versions of “Spay and Neuter Cookies” to male dogs.

            “When we rescue a stray,”  Pacheco said,  “we also feed her or him a single trial Cookie.”

Plastic cookies?

            Claimed Pacheco,  “Each trial Cookie contains a combination of key ingredients and trial formulations — often as many as 15 or more variables go into a single Cookie (such as the varying temperatures at which they are prepared and the length of time they are heated),  all of which we are evaluating.”

            Heating the first two of the substances Pacheco mentioned to cookie-baking temperatures––calcium chloride and zinc––would not likely have any effect on their contraceptive properties,  even if those properties could be imparted to a dog or cat in cookie form. 

Heating vinylcyclohexene is part of the process of manufacturing some plastic products.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Pacheco,  PETA,  & missing ballots

            But Pacheco in his December 19,  2018 appeal is addressing donors,  not chemists––and probably mostly donors who remember when he was for a time one of the media stars of the animal rights movement,  after joining Ingrid Newkirk in cofounding People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1981. 

            Less well-remembered is that Pacheco,  while still with PETA,  was also associated from 1988 to 1996 with the New England Anti-Vivisection Society,  but was ousted by legal action after claiming to have been elected president by a membership vote in which ballots believed to have favored an opponent mysteriously disappeared.

            Pacheco parted company with PETA soon after litigation resulting from the NEAVS leadership dispute was settled.

ANIMALS 24-7 editor Merritt Clifton & SHARK founder Steve Hindi discuss spay/neuter cookies.  See Steve Hindi & SHARK up the ante & call Alex Pacheco’s bluff
(Beth Clifton photo)

“Made by hand”

            Continued Pacheco in his December 19,  2018 appeal,  “At this stage of development,  each trial formulation (trial Cookie) must be made by one or more scientists and made by hand one at a time.” 

            Pacheco did not suggest any reason why this might be.  ANIMALS 24-7,  however,  in a quick web search found two commercial cookie baking companies who advertise also that their products are “made by hand.”

            Actual scientific chemical and pharmaceutical product development and testing usually involves making the substance under study in batches,  to be tried with multiple test subjects in controlled comparative evaluations.  

            “The work is labor-intensive and each trial formulation is unique and can cost thousands of dollars and take months to prepare — and many formulations need to be evaluated,”   Pacheco added.  “Once the final formulation is completed, our goal is to be able to produce it in bulk for under $5 per Cookie.”

(Beth Clifton photo collage)

Cloned rhetoric

            Readers familiar with developments in producing cell-cultured meat might at this point have recognized some apparently borrowed rhetoric. 

            Indeed,  cell-cultured meat and leather have so far been produced only in very small quantities,  but for a self-evident reason:  producing cell-cultured meat is largely a process of scaling up techniques already commonly practiced in petri dishes at the cellular level. 

            Growing enough cloned cells to have viable product samples does take time.  Most of the work underway to bring cell-cultured meat and leather to market involves perfecting and expediting the scaling-up process. 

            Calcium chloride,  zinc,  vinylcyclohexene,  and dog cookie ingredients,  by contrast,  are readily available in industrial quantity.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Eating trial cookies

            Pacheco in his December 19,  2018 appeal went on to mention that “a for-profit drug company would not typically follow our one tiny step at a time approach.” 

            This is true,  but either a for-profit or nonprofit drug developer would actually be working toward making a viable product accessible within a reasonable time frame. 

            “Some of us humans at 600 have eaten trial Cookies ourselves, myself included,”  Pacheco claimed,  as he often has. 

            “Thus far there have been no negative side effects for animals or people.  We suspect,”  Pacheco said,  “a key reason for the lack of negative side effects is that the Cookie is designed as a rare ‘only one dose over a lifetime’ product, unlike traditional birth control products that are ingested daily.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Off the shelf

            But assuming Pacheco has actually made and eaten some “Spay and Neuter Cookies,”   another reason for “no negative side effects” might be simply that the cookies don’t contain any ingredient with properties that might not be found in cookies off a store shelf. 

Calcium chloride,  for instance,  is among the most common ingredients in commercially manufactured baked goods.  Zinc mineral supplements are sold at any drug store.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Making cookies with nuts

            “Approximately one month after eating the trial Cookie,”  Pacheco said,  each animal goes through a conventional spay/neuter surgery,  after which the excised gonadal tissue is kept “for microscopic examination.” 

            All of this,  however,  is just the standard procedure used in researching any contraceptive product,  as described in hundreds of publications by dozens of scientists. 

            The December 19,  2018 “Spay and Neuter Cookie Science Update and Overview” segued at that point into an 11-sentence summary of a testing protocol for a product that would interfere with the development of ovarian follicles. 

            The description resembled SenesTech descriptions of ChemSpay and the SenesTech rodent control product ContraPest. 

(Beth Clifton collage)

$3 million a year for three years

            After that came the pitch for money.

            “A team of scientists formulated projections for the time and cost that would be required to complete the work,”  Pacheco said,  without naming the scientists,  “including the studies needed to submit the data to the FDA and initiate the FDA approval process so that the product can be used in the U.S.

            “They reached the following conclusion:  With a budget of $3 million per year for 3 years, the Cookie could be developed within those 3 years,  including the studies needed to initiate the FDA approval process.  These funds would go toward hiring scientists, allowing them to devote themselves full-time to the project.”

            No doubt Pacheco would like to be taking in $3 million a year from hopeful donors.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Your name could be right there with NylaBone!

            But Pacheco is “not waiting for the $3 million per year funding to arrive,”  he admitted,  and does not plan to be “applying for FDA approval.”

            Instead,  Pacheco claimed,  “our work is being performed at a grassroots level:  Scientists are retained individually and paid on a limited hourly basis,  and much is done outside of the U.S.,”  meaning that it is beyond verification through U.S. accountability requirements.

            However,  Pacheco hopefully concluded,  “If someone were to win the lottery and provide the tax-deductible $3 million per year funding themselves,  the Cookie could also be named after them!”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Echoing false hopes of decades past

            Of note,  much of Pacheco’s pitch to donors over the years,  including in the appeal of December 19,  2018,   has resembled the rhetoric that the Upjohn and Carnation companies used from 1975 to 1985 in repeatedly announcing that they hoped to soon market a contraceptive dog food using a hormonal drug called mibolerone. 

            Many older donors may remember the false hopes those announcements raised,  especially through “golly gee” summaries ballyhooed by supermarket tabloid newspapers,  that something like a “spay/neuter cookie” might soon become available. 

            Some older donors may also be susceptible to conspiracy theories about why this never happened.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Why mibolerone never became a cookie

            But there was no conspiracy.  Mibolerone products were kept off the market for 15 years by regulatory concern that mibolerone chemically resembles RU-486,  the active ingredient of the so-called “abortion pill.”  

            The U.S. Food & Drug Administration finally authorized the manufacture and marketing of RU-486 in September 2000.  Mibolerone products in liquid form are now available by prescription,  as they long have been in northern Europe,  and are used to some extent to suppress estrus in racing greyhounds,  sled dogs,  some show dogs,  and zoo animals.

            But mibolerone requires frequent dosing and has only short-term contraceptive effects,  meaning it is used effectively only with captive animals,  not with free-roaming dogs and cats,  nor even with pets who may escape outdoors.

            That mibolerone could ever have been used in any form resembling “Spay and Neuter Cookies” was never more than a tabloid supposition.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Contradictory claims in IRS Form 990

            The most recent “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” filing of IRS Form 990,  for 2016,  was filed in February 2018.  It shows on page one that “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” had total contributions and grants in 2016 of $319,476,  against total expenses of $272,637.

            But the attached Schedule G,  “Supplemental Information Regarding Fundraising or Gaming Activities,  stated that “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” had gross revenue from gaming activities of $646,600,  less $216,444 in prize money and non-cash prizes distributed.  Presumably this should have produced a net of $430,156. 

            Instead,  “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” claimed “Other direct expenses” of $749,640,  not otherwise described.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Who got the money?

            The IRS Form 990 on page 2 claimed $256,735 in non-itemized program expenses,  one of which was for $123,004,  but claimed only $222.010 in program expense on page 10 in the “Statement of Functional Expenses.”

            Included in the “Statement of Functional Expenses” was a line item mention of $123,004 in “R&D program support,”  with no indication of what this consisted of or who got the money.

            Even if the $123,004 is presumed to have been spent in some manner to develop a “Spay and Neuter Cookie,”  however,  for example in an unregistered lab in a garage somewhere,  evading Animal Welfare Act reporting requirements by using dogs from a friendly local rescue instead of from a Class B dealer,  the expenditure would only be about a third of the total declared expenses of the organization.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Related board members paid,  but have “no business relationship”?

            The “Statement of Compensation of Officers,  Directors,  Trustees,  Key Employees,  Highest Compensated Employees,  and Independent Contractors” shows that Pacheco was paid $32,500.  A Mary Pacheco,  his mother’s name,  was paid $6,510. 

            Schedule O says,  “2 members of board of directors are related;  Mary Pacheco and Alex Pacheco;  no business relationship.”

Beth & Merritt Clifton

           The “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” filing of IRS Form 990 is,  in short,  very difficult to make sense of by comparing line items. 

In this it resembles all previous available “600 Million Stray Dogs Need You” IRS Form 990 filings.

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Arun Rangsi, 39, “heart gibbon” of IPPL founder Shirley McGreal

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Arun Rangsi.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Arun Rangsi was living link to IPPL origins

            SUMMERVILLE,  South Carolina––“The International Primate Protection League is devastated to report the loss of our first lab gibbon, Arun Rangsi,  who was also my ‘heart gibbon,’”  IPPL founder Shirley McGreal posted to social media.

Arun Rangsi was a living link to IPPL cofounder Ardith Eudey,  Ph.D.,  a renowned primatologist who died in December 2015.

            (See Ardith Eudey, 80, exposed Malaysian monkey massacres & lab traffic.)

Ardith Eudey.  (IPPL photo)

University of California bought smuggled gibbons

Eudey “was studying the behavior of free-living stumptail macaques in the Huay Kha Khaeng Sanctuary when I met her in 1972 at a nature club meeting in Bangkok,”  McGreal remembered at her death.  “Ardith was also very interested in gibbons,  and learned that the University of California,  where she was studying for her doctorate,  had been importing smuggled white-handed gibbons via Canada to perform viral cancer experiments that caused them great suffering and death.

Ardith Eudey & Shirley McGreal in 1987.

“We reported the lab to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and requested that it be prosecuted,”  McGreal continued.  “Ardith did an affidavit attesting to her convincing findings,”  but no criminal case ensued.

Nearly euthanized

In 1981,  however,  the University of California gibbon laboratory “lost its National Cancer Institute funding,”  McGreal recalled.  “Fifty five gibbons needed homes.  Ardith got a tipoff that HL-98,”  as Arun Rangsi was then called,  “might be killed,  as he was said to be ‘metabolically abnormal’ and ‘mentally retarded.’”

(Artist unknown)

McGreal was skeptical.

“This baby gibbon was born at the lab,”  McGreal explained,  “and his mother rejected him. At six days old he was tattooed with the number HL-98 and raised with a swinging chicken wire and carpet scraps surrogate mother with a bottle sticking out,”  from which he was to nurse.

“He survived”

“Taken from his mother at six days old––that’s guaranteed to drive a gibbon mad,”  McGreal said.  “Poor little guy!  He had many illnesses during his first two years of life, including two bouts of pneumonia and two episodes of dysentery.  He was underweight,  sickly,  and anti-social.

“But he survived.  IPPL stepped in.  Our Thai friend Katie Buri asked the monks at the Wat Arun temple in Bangkok to select a name for him and they chose ‘Arun Rangsi,’  which means ‘The Rising Sun of Dawn.’  Katie sent funds for his care.  We notified the lab director of this offer and got a reply saying,  ‘Rather than spend the money on this ridiculous adoption,  I’ll spend it on his one-way ticket to you!’

Arun Rangsi

An assist from the Animal Protection Institute

“We jumped for joy at the offer and started making plans,”  McGreal said.  “Our friends at the Animal Protection Institute kindly went to the lab to collect him.  The next morning they put him on a flight to Atlanta,”  the city with the nearest major airport to the IPPL headquarters in Summerville,  South Carolina.

Belton Mouras circa 1990.

The Animal Protection Institute team included founder Belton Mouras,  who later founded United Animal Nations,  and longtime API staff member Vernon Weir.  The Animal Protection Institute later became Born Free USA,  while United Animal Nations became Red Rover.

(See Animal rights movement pioneer Belton Mouras, 90.)

“My friend Kit Woodcock offered to accompany me,”  McGreal remembered.  “We drove through driving rain 300 miles from Summerville to Atlanta.  The plane had just landed when we reached the cargo area.  I asked a staffer to call the pilot to ask if there was a gibbon on board and were told,  ‘No,  but we have a chimpanzee.’”

Arun Rangsi.  (IPPL photo)

Head-banging

Despite that momentary setback,  McGreal continued,  “Soon we were on the road home.  Kit sat in the back seat feeding the little gibbon grapes.”

Unfortunately,  “When we got to Summerville,”  McGreal recounted,  “we found out that the poor little guy banged his head constantly.”

Asked for help,  a local psychiatrist told McGreal that the head-banging reminded him of the behavior of autistic children.

“If you can get into his little world,  maybe you can get him out of it,”  the psychiatrist told her.

Shirley McGreal & Arun Rangsi.
(IPPL photo)

Shrink suggested McGreal should bang her head,  too

“He suggested I bang my head along with him,”  McGreal said.  “What was so surprising is how Arun Rangsi came out of it.”

“He banged his head neurotically against anything hard and shiny:   the oven glass,  the window,  the refrigerator door,”  picked up Bo Petersen of the Charleston Post & Courier in August 2011,  commemorating the 30th anniversary of Arun Rangsi’s arrival.

But when McGreal began banging her head right along with Arun Rangsi,  “The banging slowed and then stopped,”  wrote Petersen.

“Today,  when McGreal approaches the wire mesh,  the gibbon’s peering eyes seem to soften.  He moves over and hangs next to her as she scratches his fur,”  Petersen testified.

Arun Rangsi & Shanti.  (IPPL photo)

Shanti

“He has a mate, Shanti,”  Petersen added,  “and they have produced offspring — a stunner for isolation-raised apes,  who most often don’t.  There was some concern at first that the lab-bred gibbon might kill a baby. That’s not what happened.”

“He put his nose to the first baby’s face,”  named Ahimsa after the Buddhist,  Hindu,  and Jain principle of doing no harm to other living things,  “and loved him to death,”  McGreal told Petersen.  “He has helped rear his offspring,  carrying them along with him as few other sire apes would.”

Ahimsa (IPPL photo)

LEMSIP

McGreal had not intended to allow the gibbons in her care to breed.  Arun Rangsi was vasectomized,  but as often happens among nonhuman primates,  the first vasectomy failed and had to be repeated.

Shanti came from the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP),  a New York University facility formerly located in Sterling Forest,  New York.

Founded in 1965 by former Polish resistance fighter Jan-Moor Jankowski (1924-2005), LEMSIP “used mainly chimpanzees and macaques,  but also had a small group of gibbons,”  McGreal recalled.

Igor, the last of the LEMSIP gibbons to arrive at IPPL, with IPPL founder Shirley McGreal in 1988. (IPPL photo)

Yin/Yang pair

In 1982 the entire LEMSIP gibbon colony was retired to the IPPL sanctuary,  the only U.S. sanctuary specializing in gibbons.  As many as 34 gibbons at a time have lived at IPPL;   the sanctuary currently cares for 30.

Observed Petersen,  “Rooie ,”  as Arun Rangsi was called for short,  “is hyper;  Shanti is laid back.  But they have formed one of those yin-yang pairs.  Unlike a lot of apes,  they quietly share food rather than knock it from each other.  When Shanti gives an unsettled call,  Rooie comes over and puts his arm around her.  His head-banging twitch returns from time to time when he gets stressed,  but it’s a shadow movement of what it was.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Landmark verdicts

Accepting the LEMSIP gibbons was a prelude to a landmark legal case that originated the next year,  when Moor-Jankowski as founding editor of the International Journal of Primatology published a letter-to-the-editor from McGreal criticizing the Austrian pharmaceutical firm Immuno AG for planning to capture wild chimpanzees.

Immuno AG responded by suing both McGreal and Moor-Jankowski for libel.

McGreal’s home insurer settled the case against her out of court,  against her opposition,  but Moor-Jankowski spent $2 million of his own money to win rulings from the New York State Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court which together won greater protection for authors and publishers of letters to the editors of publications.

(See James Mahoney, DVM, “the Oskar Schindler of laboratory primates,” dies at 77.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Old friend

Arun Rangsi picked up other nicknames:  McGreal sometimes called him “Ru-in,”  while IPPL sanctuary worker Donetta Pacitti called him “Bug.”

Arun Rangsi was briefly reunited with an old friend,  Rosie,  in 2010.

“Our relationship with Rosie began with a fan on IPPL’s Facebook page,”  McGreal remembered.  “This fan was a zoo-keeper who had learned about an elderly,  solitary female gibbon being held off-exhibit at the Turtle Back Zoo in New Jersey.”

A year earlier,  McGreal narrated,  “The zoo tried to pair her with a younger male,  but the introduction did not work out,  and some of the tips of her fingers were bitten off in the process.  In addition,  Rosie had recently been diagnosed with fluid in the abdomen,  which could indicate liver and kidney problems.  She seemed ready to move on.”

Rosie (IPPL photo)

One brief month

The Turtle Back Zoo agreed to retire Rosie to IPPL.

“Two of her keepers drove her down to South Carolina,”  McGreal said,  “and stayed a couple of days to help her settle in.  They brought her favorite blanket,  toys,  and a mirror.  As soon as we let her into her new night quarters,  she started singing.  A good sign!

Shirley McGreal & Arun Rangsi.
(IPPL photo)

“Of course we were interested in learning as much about Rosie’s history as possible,”  McGreal continued.  “We checked with Jay Petersen,  the Gibbon Species Survival Plan coordinator,  and he told us that she could actually be traced back to the Comparative Oncology Laboratory at the University of California at Davis in the 1970s,”  the same facility from which Arun Rangsi came.

“We enjoyed the company of Rosie for one brief month,”  McGreal remembered,  “while she stayed with us for end-of-life care.  We were sad to say good-bye,  but at least her last days were filled with peace and comfort.”

Arun Rangsi.  (IPPL photo)

“We will miss this sweet little ape”

Wrote McGreal in her remembrance of Arun Rangsi,  “Two weeks ago,  Arun Rangsi suddenly fell ill and refused to eat or drink.  We did a ton of tests,  including an ultrasound,  but nothing helped.  We believe it was a pancreas problem.  We put him to sleep on the afternoon of December 19,  2018.  He was 39 years old.

“We will miss this sweet little ape and so will Shanti.  Will she bond with another gibbon? That remains to be seen.  They lived happily together for over three decades,”  McGreal recalled.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

“We have really high observation towers for the gibbons,”  McGreal said,  “and he loved to sit at the highest point and look out.  He could see the deer in the woods.  He was just a joy all these years.”

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Japan hands whales a Christmas gift camouflaged as coal

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Withdrawal from IWC covers for decision to halt Antarctic whaling

TOKYO––Handing whales a Christmas Day gift camouflaged as coal,  Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga on December 25,  2018 confirmed months of speculation and decades of threats that Japan would withdraw from membership in the International Whaling Commission,  which has maintained a global moratorium on commercial whaling since 1986.

Withdrawing from the IWC would allow Japanese whalers to resume commercial whaling.

Paul Watson & Ric O’Barry on Christmas morning.  (Beth Clifton collage)

O’Barry & Watson look inside the sooty sock

But the announcement,  in practical terms,  means exactly the opposite of what most pundits and commentators took it to mean,  with the exceptions of the two most prominent longtime campaigners against Japanese whaling,  Ric O’Barry of Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project and Paul Watson,  founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

O’Barry and Watson each have more than 40 years’ experience in reading Japanese whaling strategy.  Each heralded the Japanese decision as a victory,  in effect a political judo move that allows the ruling nationalist coalition,  headed by prime minister Shinzo Abe,  to posture in defiance of global public opinion against whaling,  while saving the expense of annually sending a heavily subsidized “research whaling” fleet to Antarctic waters.

Yoshihide Suga.
(Beth Clifton collage)

“Will observe international law”

“From July 2019,”  announced Suga,  “after the withdrawal comes into effect on June 30,  2019,  Japan will conduct commercial whaling within Japan’s territorial sea and its exclusive economic zone,  and will cease the take of whales in the Antarctic Ocean/the Southern Hemisphere.

“The whaling will be conducted in accordance with international law,”  added Suga,  “and within the catch limits calculated in accordance with the method adopted by the IWC to avoid negative impact on cetacean resources.”

Suga,  the longest-serving chief cabinet secretary in the modern history of Japan,  said Japan would officially inform the International Whaling Commission that it had withdrawn from membership before the end of 2018.

(NOAA photo)

North Pacific sei whales

Suga’s pledge that resumed commercial whaling would remain “in accordance with international law” appeared to refer to the October 2018 verdict of the standing committee of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) that Japan has been selling the meat from sei whales killed by “research whalers” in the Northern Pacific in violation of CITES.

Explained Mari Yamaguchi of Associated Press,  “CITES bans commercial trade of endangered species,  including sei whales — one of the largest whales,  who grow to about 50 feet)in length and weigh about 20 tons.”

Japanese whalers have killed up to 100 sei whales per year since 2000.

Sei whale.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Sei what?!

“Under Japan’s Northern Pacific research whaling program for 2017-2028, allowed by the International Whaling Commission,”  Yamaguchi said,  the self-assigned quota was raised to 134 sai whales per year.

While a Japanese Fisheries Agency spokesperson told Yamaguchi that the CITES decision was not binding,  the official added that Japan would produce a revised Northern Pacific whaling plan and submit it to CITIES for approval by February 1,  2018.

“A revision could mean a major change to Japan’s research whaling in the Northern Pacific,”  Yamaguchi predicted,  “including a possible halt to commercial sales of sei whale meat.”

Ric O’Barry & Angel, a Taiji captive dolphin.
(Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project photo)

O’Barry:  “They realize they are playing a losing game”

Japan ate about 200,000 tons of whale meat per year at the peak of consumption,  circa 1960,  but now eats only 4,000 to 5,000 tons,  or about an ounce per person annually,  according to data gathered by the Animal Welfare Institute,  a U.S.-based nonprofit,  and the Environmental Investigation Agency,  based in the United Kingdom.

“The new deal allows the Japanese government to thumb its nose at the IWC whaling moratorium and eventually phase out financial support of the whaling industry,  allowing it to die a natural death,”  O’Barry told ANIMALS 24-7.  “They realize they are playing a losing game and hope this new move is their way out of a never ending negative cash flow.

Ric O’Barry

“Taiji is also whaling!”

“Now if they would only throw in the towel in Taiji,”  O’Barry added,  referring to the dolphin slaughters and captures documented in the 2009 documentary film The Cove,  directed by Louie Psihoyos,  “we could bring our Cove Monitors home.

“We are the only group still showing up in Taiji to livestream and document these crimes against nature,”  O’Barry said,  admitting that  “Japan’s war on dolphins is wearing us quite thin.  We desperately need the animal welfare industry to show up and help us.  Keeping boots on the ground for the entire six months” of the dolphin-hunting season “is extremely difficult for a small grassroots group.

“What happens in Taiji is also whaling!” O’Barry concluded.  “Size doesn’t matter!”

Images of the Taiji Whale Museum from Ric O’Barry’s Dolphin Project and Cove Guardians.

Taiji killing driven by captures for show

The annual Taiji dolphin massacres are among the last vestiges of a coastal whaling industry that claims annual quotas of about 20,000 small cetaceans [whales and dolphins] per year,  but currently kills circa 2,000 per year,  employing only a few dozen people.

Hunting the small species killed at Taiji is not regulated by the International Whaling Commission,  and those species are not listed as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.  Most of the dolphins herded into the infamous cove are killed there,  but only after exhibition buyers pick those they want to be landed alive.

Ric O’Barry at The Cove.
(Earth Island Institute photo)

Follow the money

“While dolphin meat for human consumption generates only modest profits,”  reported Justin Curry of The Guardian in December 2017,  “Taiji fishermen can reportedly sell a live specimen to brokers for about $8,000.  A fully trained dolphin can then fetch more than $40,000 U.S. if sold overseas, and about half that in Japan.”

Both O’Barry and Watson have pointed out for nearly 30 years that dolphin captures for sale to exhibition venues are the major source of profits for the Taiji hunters.

Watson in a December 2017 response to Curry’s Guardian article argued that the current prices paid for live dolphins in Taiji are far higher than Curry reported.

Paul Watson

Watson:  “A very positive development”

Said Watson of the Japanese decision to leave the International Whaling Commission,  “After 16 years of intervening against Japan in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,”  declared by the IWC in 1994 but never defended on the high seas by any treaty organizations or governmental agencies,  “I see this as a very positive development.  It means that the whale war in the Southern Ocean is over and we and the whales have won.

“Japan leaving the International Whaling Commission will allow the IWC to vote and pass the establishment of the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary,”  Watson predicted.

“This means that the entire Southern Hemisphere will be free of whalers for the first time in history,”  Watson exulted.

“Japan has never stopped commercial whaling”

“Japan will no longer be able to hide their illegal commercial whaling behind the mask of ‘scientific whaling,’  Watson continued.  “They have never stopped commercial whaling.  Japan now joins Norway,  Iceland and Denmark as the last whaling nations on the planet,  and commercial whaling remains illegal.

“Japan has been killing whales in their own waters for decades,”  Watson pointed out. “Nothing has changed.  They are not resuming the hunting of whales because they never actually stopped hunting whales in the Northwest Pacific,”  Watson said,  but “The Japanese like the Norwegians, Danes and Icelanders have been driven back to their own shores.  The whalers of the world are in retreat.

Paul Watson
(Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)

“Without pelagic whaling,”  Watson added,   “Japan will not build a new expensive factory ship.  There has been great political pressure in Japan to not build this ship,  and with this decision they will not have to pursue this financial money trap.

“Preventing Sea Shepherd intervention became very expensive”

“Japan has decided to do what Iceland and Norway have done since 1987 and that is to restrict the killing of whales to their own national waters,”  Watson said.  “Half of this planet will be safe from the harpoons. All the traditional Southern Hemisphere whaling nations have already ended their whaling activities,  including Australia,  Peru,  Chile and South Africa,”  and none appear likely to resume.

(Sea Shepherd Conservation Society photo)

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society first ventured into the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to try to protect whales from the Japanese fleet in 2002,  “followed by continuous campaigns from 2005 until 2017,”  Watson recalled.

“In 2017,  the Japanese government began to invest millions of dollars in security efforts to prevent Sea Shepherd from engaging their fleets. These security measures included military grade real time surveillance.  Although this prevented Sea Shepherd from returning to the Southern Ocean in 2018,  it also placed Japan in a position of expending huge resources on continuous security,”  as well as in directly subsidizing the whaling industry.

“In other words,”  Watson assessed,  “preventing Sea Shepherd intervention became very expensive.”

(Greenpeace Japan photo)

Greenpeace Japan:  “Most whales have not recovered”

Altogether,  “Sea Shepherd sent down over a thousand volunteers on numerous ships and saved over 6,000 whales from the harpoons,”  Watson said.

Greenpeace sent vessels to observe the Japanese whaling operations within the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary at least five times,  but unlike the Sea Shepherds,  did not actually try to run interference to prevent the Japanese fleet from killing whales.

Objected Greenpeace Japan executive director Sam Annesley,  “Most whale populations have not yet recovered,  including larger whales such as blue whales,  fin whales and sei whales.”

Japan has hunted both fin whales and sei whales in the name of research.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Japanese fleet is already in Antarctic waters for 2018-2019

Australian Marine Conservation Society chief executive Darren Kindleysides largely agreed with O’Barry and Watson in a media statement,  but asked the Australian government to demand that the Japanese fleet currently hunting whales near Antarctica withdraw immediately,  instead of after filling a self-assigned quota of 333 minke whales,  which is expected to come in February or March 2019.

This is a third of the quota that the Japanese fleet sought each year from 1987 to 2014,  when the International Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that “research whaling” as it was then conducted was not really done “for purposes of scientific research.”

After a one-year hiatus,  Japan resumed “research whaling” with the lower quota––but the higher quotas had not always been reached or even approached during the years of Sea Shepherd intervention.

Japan reported killing 152 male minke whales in Antarctic waters in 2017-2018,  including 61 juveniles,  and 181 female minke whales,  of whom 122 were pregnant while 53 were juveniles.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Return to IWC as a matter of priority”

Said Kindleysides,  bridging the perspectives of O’Barry and Watson with those of most other commenters,   “Australians have been fighting for decades to get the whalers out of the Antarctic.  However, it would be a bittersweet victory if it comes with unchecked commercial whaling by Japan in their own waters,  and their leaving could damage the future of the IWC itself.”

Pointed out Australian foreign minister Marise Payne and environment minister Melissa Price,  in a joint media statement,  “The International Whaling Commission is the pre-eminent global body responsible for the conservation and management of whales,”  and as well as regulating whaling,  also “leads international efforts to tackle the growing range of threats to whales globally, including by-catch,  ship strikes,  entanglement,  and noise.”

Payne and Price urged Japan “to return to the International Whaling Convention and Commission as a matter of priority.”

Fin whale.  (Wikipedia photo)

Predictable statements

Most other responses were fairly predictable.

British environment minister Michael Gove said in a Tweet that he was “Extremely disappointed,”  and affirmed that “The U.K. is strongly opposed to commercial whaling and will continue to fight for the protection and welfare of these majestic mammals.”

Whale & Dolphin Conservation program director Astrid Fuchs told BBC News,  “We are very worried that other countries might follow Japan’s lead and leave the commission,  especially South Korea where there is an interest in consuming whale meat,”  or more precisely,  where the fishing industry is allowed to sell the meat of cetaceans netted by accident.  There is longstanding suspicion that some of the cetacean catches are not accidental,  though the market for whale meat in South Korea is not strong.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Norwegian says “It’s dangerous when nations set their own rules”

“The oversight that the IWC was having over Japan’s whaling will now be lost,”  Fuchs objected further.  “We won’t know how many whales they are catching.  We won’t know how they will report it.  It might spell doom for some populations.  There is an endangered population of minke whales off Japan,”  Fuchs alleged,  “which is already under threat.”

In truth the International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists the common minke whale species found near Japan a species of least concern.  The scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission believes there are upward of 500,000 of the Antarctic minke whale subspecies,  who will no longer be hunted.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Tweeted former Norwegian diplomat Erik Solheim,  who headed United Nations Environment Program from 2016 to early 2018,  “Let’s ask Japan to reconsider! It’s dangerous when nations break out of global agreements and start setting their own rules,”  an ironic statement in view that Norway unilaterally resumed coastal whaling in 1994.

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Last acts for animal circuses in Russia, India, New Jersey, & Hawaii

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Russian law protects Moscow State Circus monopoly

            MOSCOW,  NEW DELHI––New legislation in Russia,  whose circuses have for almost a century been the most attended worldwide,  and in India,  where the circus tradition started,  appear to be among the final acts in several thousand years of traveling exhibitions of performing animals.

The new Russian “Law on Responsible Treatment of Animals,”  signed into effect on December 26,  2018 by Russian president Vladimir Putin,  “bans petting zoos from being opened at malls, which is a common thing across Russia,  as well as hosting animals at bars and restaurants,”  explained the state-funded RT television network,  formerly known as Russia Today.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Makes life harder for semi-legal circuses”

Further,  said RT,  “The law makes life harder for numerous semi-legal circuses across Russia,  which often use dangerous wild animals in their shows.”

RT recalled that in April 2014,  “two bears escaped from a café and caused major havoc in Yaroslavl.  One of the animals was captured,  but the other went into town and was shot dead.”

“In October,” RT continued,  “Russia was shocked after a lioness attacked a four-year-old girl during a traveling circus performance in Krasnodar.  The child survived but suffered facial lacerations and other injuries.”

The new Russian “Law on Responsible Treatment of Animals” also forbids keeping exotic pets “without a proper license,”  a clause which appears to exempt trainers for the government-owned Moscow State Circus,  who have historically acquired performing animals early in the animals’ lives,  and have raised and trained them in their family homes until the animals become large enough to require separate quarters.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Most Moscow State circus companies have phased out animals

Most of the many touring companies that are part of the Moscow State Circus,  operating under a variety of names,  have already phased animal use out of shows that feature human gymnasts,  aerialists,  jugglers,  dancers,  and clowns.

The Moscow-based Circus Nikulin,  however,  performing almost exclusively within the older and smaller of two Moscow circus venues,  still features bears,  tigers,  a leopard,  monkeys,  a kangaroo,  a raccoon,   and an iguana,  according to mid-2018 British tabloid media accounts.

In addition,  a Great Moscow Circus troupe that performed in Australia and Indonesia in 2015-2017 featured “four camels,  three llamas,  two water buffalo,  six welsh mountain ponies and two macaws,”  news coverage agreed,  but the company went bankrupt in March 2017,  leaving 13 human performers stranded in Ballarat,  Victoria state,  Australia.

The incident was at least the fourth since 1990 in which a Moscow State Circus affiliate ran out of money,  leaving human performers stranded,  and sometimes animals as well.

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) made circuses the Russian national pastime.  (Merritt Clifton collage)

One big tent since 1919

Bringing Russian circuses together under one big administrative tent in 1919,  the former Soviet government sponsored the Moscow State Circus as both a major source of domestic entertainment and a highly successful mechanism for promoting Soviet ideals abroad.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union and years of economic stability,  the Moscow State Circus was slated for privatization in 2007,  but under Putin has been reabsorbed as a government institution.

Putin has,  however,  encouraged the direction away from animal use.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“When we think of circuses”

“When we think of circuses,”  recently wrote Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations executive director Varda Mehrotra,   “we think of huge tents,  clowns,  and trapeze performances,”  but none of those things were in existence yet when traveling animal shows originated––at least so far as the historical record shows––in India during the Golden Age,  between 400 and 600 CE.

During the next thousand years the Kalendar tribal people of India,  in particular,  took dancing bear acts as far as Europe.  Others ventured to both Europe and China with monkeys,  elephants,  tigers,  Asiatic lions,  and snake-charming acts.  Jugglers,  dancers,  magicians,  and musicians often performed in the same town squares,  castle courtyards,  and marketplaces.

Exhibitions of daring horseback riding evolved separately in Central Asia,  probably first competing with the other touring acts for tossed coins in the marketplaces of Afghanistan or Persia.

The Crowninshield elephant

Circus as we know it

All of the elements of the modern circus were in place by the High Middle Ages,  yet were not brought together as components of a single enterprise until English stunt riding entrepreneur Philip Astley––who was already recognized as the first stunt rider to perform tricks on a horse moving in a circle,  not a straight line––formed his first circus in 1768.  Astley added acrobats,  tightrope walkers,  jugglers and a clown to his shows in 1770.

Elephants were front-and-center in this mid-20th century Ringling poster.

Exotic animal acts moved into the center ring through the success and influence of the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Baily Circus,  which originated in 1796 when farmer Hackaliah Baily, of Somers, New York,  bought the first elephant brought to the U.S. from sea captain Jacob Crowninshield and toured the east coast for 20 years.

The Ringling and Barnum names were added later,  through mergers that led to the debut of the first traveling three-ring circus in 1871.

The Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Baily Circus remained on the road,  with shows mostly focused on elephants,  until 2017.

Trainer Alexander Lacey & tiger.
(Circus Krone photo)

Carnivore acts banned first

The multi-act circus as developed in England and the U.S. “came to India in the year 1880,”  Mehrotra recalled,  “when Vishnupant Chatre,  inspired by the Royal Italian Circus,  came up with The Great Indian Circus.

“Circuses have grown since,”  Mehrotra continued,  “and unfortunately,  with them grew the exploitation of animals,”  including acts such as “tigers jumping through burning rings,  lions walking in a line,  elephants standing on stools,  hippos playing with balls,  dogs on bicycles and parrots balancing balls on their heads.”

The Animal Welfare Board of India in 1978 took the lead worldwide in responding to cruelty to circus animals,  banning the use of bears,  monkeys,  and big cats such as lions and tigers in traveling shows,  but the edict went unenforced until 2001,  when it was belatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court of India.

Lion cub rescued from Peruvian circus by Animal Defenders International.

More than 280 lions, 40 tigers, and several dozen ex-performing bears were transferred to seven animal rescue centers accredited by the Indian Central Zoo Authority.

Elephant acts next––and now all animals?

The Central Zoo Authority then decreed in 2009 that elephants could no longer be exhibited by zoos and circuses,  but was unable to enforce that order until the Animal Welfare Board quit licensing elephants for circus use in 2013.

Finally,  “on the Animal Welfare Board of India and Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations’ recommendations,”  Mehrotra recounted,  “the Central Zoo Authority banned the use of any wild animals for performances in circuses in the year 2017.”

Then,  Mehrotra said,  “on November 28,  2018,  the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change proposed a ban on the use of all animals in circuses.  This proposal is currently up for debate for 30 days,  after which the ban could be implemented.”

The 30 days ended on December 28,  2018,  with a final decision by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change pending.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

New Jersey & Hawaii

Meanwhile,  back in the U.S.,  New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on December 14,  2018 signed into law a bill banning the use of wild and exotic animals in traveling acts,  the first of its kind,  although Illinois and New York earlier prohibited the use of elephants in entertainment.

Just ten days later,  Hawaii Governor David Ige “signed an amendment to Hawaii law prohibiting the import of dangerous wild animals for exhibition in circuses and carnivals,”  reported Nina Wu of the Honolulu Star Advertiser,  for what Ige termed reasons of “public safety and health.”

“Under the amended rules,”  wrote Wu,  “dangerous wild animals” are defined as “a non-domestic animal that can cause significant risk to animal and public health,”  including specifically “lions,  tigers,  cheetahs,  bears,  wolves,  elephants,  rhinos,  hippos,  crocodiles,  alligators,  and non-human primates, including gorillas and chimpanzees.

These species may,  however,  be imported into Hawaii “for exhibition in government zoos and for the filming of television and movies under permit and conditions from the state Department of Agriculture,”  Wu noted.

Tyke runs from circus.

HSUS & PETA claim credit

Said Humane Society of the U.S. president Kitty Block,  “This regulation resulted from a legal petition filed by the Humane Society of the United States in 2014.

“The danger of using wild animals for traveling shows was put on terrible display in Honolulu in 1994,”  Block remembered,  “when an elephant named Tyke killed her trainer and mauled another animal handler shortly before a performance for the Great American Circus.”

Charging out into the street,  Tyke was shot by police several blocks away.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the local organization Animal Rights Hawaii also had a part in winning the new Hawaii regulation.

PETA in August 2014 reportedly dissuaded the Moscow International Circus,  part of the Moscow State Circus,  from bringing an animal show to Hawaii.  Performing at the Neal S. Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu,  where the Tyke incident occurred,  the Moscow International Circus used only human performers when the show went on.

Monaco Circus lion pounces Roxana Guevara Huaraca, 32, on August 14, 2014. (Facebook photo)

Other nations have already banned wildlife use

Many other nations have banned at least the use of wildlife in circus,  a trend gathering momentum since 2007.

Among the first,  persuaded by campaigns led by Animal Defenders International,  were the South American nations of Bolivia,  Colombia,  Ecuador,  and Paraguay.

Similar bans were adopted by Greece in 2012;  Cyprus and El Salvador in 2013;  and Mexico and the Netherlands in 2014.

Enforcing the bans has,  however,  proved problematic.

Three years after Peru officially stopped the use of wildlife in circuses, a nominally banned lion named Smith nearly killed schoolteacher Roxana Guevara Huaraca, 32, during an August 14, 2014 performance of the Monaco Circus in Santa Rosa, in the district of San Sebastian, near Cuzco.

Circus Belly Wein workers attacked Irish protesters with baseball bats.
(From ARAN video)

England & Ireland

Successive British governments have repeatedly announced plans to prohibit all wild animal use in circuses by 2020,  but the plans have not yet taken legislative form.

Ireland has not enacted a ban on wildlife use in circuses either,  but Tom Duffy’s Circus,  the last to exhibit lions and tigers in Ireland,  discontinued big cat acts in June 2013,  under pressure from Animal Defenders International and the since disbanded Animal Rights Action Network.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Last of the Chipperfields

Tigers and lions had been exhibited for the 137-year-old Duffy Circus since 1988 by Thomas Chipperfield and other members of the Chipperfield family.

The Chipperfields are descended from James Chipperfield,  who offered a dancing bear act at the Thomas Frost Fair on the frozen Thames River outside of London in 1683-1684.

Thomas Chipperfield tried to continue his career as a circus lion tamer back in the United Kingdom,  conducting an abortive tour of Wales in 2015,  but since then has been unable to obtain a license to exhibit animals from the U.K. Department of Environment,  Food,  & Rural Affairs

(From 1964 Chipperfield Circus poster)

Chipperfield Circus broke up in 1990

Thomas Chipperfield may have been the last member of the family to receive feature billing in a traveling animal show.  Many Chipperfields,  however,  still work in animal-related businesses.

Chipperfield’s Circus,  once the biggest in the U.K.,  split into two separate units circa 1960,  one with the original name and the other called Mary Chipperfield’s Circus.  Both had quit touring with animals by 1990.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Mary Cawley Chipperfield,  61,  and her husband Roger Cawley,  who owned Mary Chipperfield’s Circus,  were in January 26, 1999 convicted of multiple counts of cruelty toward a young chimpanzee and a sick elephant.  Earlier,  one of their staff,  Stephen Gillis, was convicted on related charges for allegedly beating an elephant with an iron bar,  shovel,  broom, and pitchfork.

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40 Americans & Canadians killed by dogs in 2018, 31 by pit bulls

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Fatal & disfiguring attacks declined, but pit bulls––just 5.3% of the U.S. dog population––inflicted upward of 75%

Far fewer dogs killed and disfigured people in the U.S. and Canada in 2018 than in 2016 and 2017,  which saw new records set in almost every dog attack category that ANIMALS 24-7 tracks from media reports––but pit bulls in particular are not getting safer.

Total dog-inflicted fatalities fell from a record 57 in 2017 to just 40 in 2018.   Pit bull-inflicted fatalities dropped from 40,  70% of the 2017 toll,  to 31 in 2018,  but that was 78% of the 2018 toll.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Pit bulls have not killed fewer than 29 people in any year since 2010.  Until 2008,  when pit bulls also killed 29 people,  this would have been a record annual total number of fatal attacks by all dog breeds combined.

ANIMALS 24-7 is still compiling the 2018 data on dog attacks on other animals,  to be published as soon as possible.

No other breed type killed more than two people

Other dog breeds that killed people in 2018 included German shepherds and Rottweilers,  killing two victims each,  plus one victim each killed by Dogo Argentino,  Fila Brasiliero/Cane Corso mix,  Malinois,  Presa Canario,  and wolf hybrid.

Two pit bulls and a Presa Canario known to have been rehomed by animal shelters and rescues,  presumably after passing behavioral screening,  killed people in 2018.  The total of three was the same number of known fatalities by shelter and rescue dogs as in 2015,  2016 and 2017.

Victims of fatal attacks by shelter and rescue dogs in 2018 included Robin Conway,  64,  in Howard County,  Maryland;  Susan Sweeney,  58,  in Las Vegas,  Nevada;  and Khloe Williams,  7 months,  in Clearwater,  Florida.

(See Safety agencies failed woman, infant killed by pit bull mixes.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Skew toward female victims

The 2018 fatality data included several apparent flukes.

            ANIMALS 24-7 began logging fatal and disfiguring dog attacks by breed in 1982.  In most years the numbers of male and female victims have been approximately equal,  both in total and among pit bull victims.

For example,  among the 40 people killed by pit bulls in 2017 were exactly 20 males and 20 females.

In 2018,  by contrast,  only five males were killed by dogs,  four of them by pit bulls,  but 35 females were killed by dogs,  27 of them by pit bulls.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Drop in attacks at year’s end

Also of note,  in 2018 no male was reported killed by a dog after August 18,  while dog attack deaths of females continued at a fairly steady pace until after mid-November.

Additionally,  2017 closed with nine fatal pit bull attacks from November 24 to the end of the year.  Pit bulls through November 24,  2018 had killed 30 people,  only one fewer than to the same date in 2017,  but killed only one more person during the last 37 days of the year,  while dogs of other breeds killed none.

Dogs killed 13 children in 2018,  of whom pit bulls killed ten.  None of the children killed by dogs were more than six years of age,  and only one was older than four years of age.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Other breed types

Altogether,  810 dogs are known to have participated in killing or disfiguring Americans and Canadians in 2018,  down 179 from 2017 and 265 in 2016.

Of the 720 humans who were killed or disfigured by dogs in 2018,  572,  or 79%,  were attacked by pit bulls and close pit mixes.

Another 52 people were disfigured––but none fatally injured––by dogs of breeds never officially identified,  but as many as 40 of those dogs may have been pit bulls or pit mixes,  from the limited information available.

No breed or breed type other than pit bulls accounted for more than 3% of the fatal and disfiguring attacks in 2018.  The distant runners-up were German shepherds and their mixes;  bull mastiffs and their mixes and variants;  Rottweilers;  and Akitas.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Disfiguring injuries

ANIMALS 24-7 counts as disfiguring injuries inflicted by dogs only those of life-changing severity,  notably the most serious of those rating at Level 4 and those rating at Level 5 on the Ian Dunbar Dog Bite Scale,  plus occasional non-bite injuries resulting in broken bones,  heart attacks,  strokes,  and/or concussions causing lasting neurological damage.

Dogs are known to have disfigured 283 children in the U.S. and Canada during 2018,  including 214 children who were disfigured by pit bulls (76%),  the fifth year in a row that pit bulls disfigured more than 200 children.

Dogs are known to have disfigured 437 adults in the U.S. and Canada during 2018,  among them a record 358 pit bull victims (82%),  one more than in 2017.

As dog attacks resulting in lawsuits are often not reported until after the cases reach court,  and other attacks are also sometimes reported late,  it is possible that some of the above totals may rise during the coming months.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fatalities inflicted by pit bulls & pit bull mixes

1)  Laura Williams Ray, 53, West Monroe, LA – 1-9-2018

2)  Rylee Marie Dodge, 3, Duncan, OK – 1-14-2018

3)  David Brown, 46, Owensboro, KY – 2-16-2018

4)  Loxli Chavez, 13 months, Cape Girardeau, MO – 3-9-2018

5)  Noah Trevino, 4, Converse, TX – 3-25-2018

6)  Hong Saengsamly, 49, Milwaukee, WI – 3-25-2018

Noah Trevino
(GoFundMe photo)

7)  Tracy Garcia, 52, Ardmore, OK – 5-10-2018

8)  Georgia Ruth Morgan,  75, Gulfport, MS – 5-16-2018

9)  Gauge Allen Eckenrode, 6, Lakemont, PA – 5-25-2018

10) Liana Valino, 9 months, Miramar, FL – 5-30-2018

11) Donald Steele, 91, Arcata, CA – 6-25-2018

12) Jaelah Smith, 6, Jacksonville, FL – 7-18-2018

13) Jaevon Torres, 2, Philadelphia, PA – 8-2-2018

14) Karen Brown, 57, Chicago, IL – 8-5-2018

Jaevon Torres
(Facebook photo)

15) Olga Rekhson, 64, Lake Tillery, NC – 8-9-2018

16) Gurney Pope Walker, 75, Rocky Mount, NC – 8-18-2018

17) Della Riley, 43, Cincinnati, OH – 8-22-2018

18) Deborah Russell, 63, Morgan County, MO – 9-1-2018 (heart attack)

19) Robin Conway, 64, Howard County, MD – 9-6-2018

20) Teena Carol Mawhorter, 74, Mount Shasta, CA – 9-6-2018

21) Mitchelle Dean Segerdahl, 53,  Baker City,  OR – 9-9-2018

22) Lisa Lloyd, 50, Langdon, Alberta – 9-16-2018

Khloe Williams.  (Facebook photo)

23) Khloe Ann Williams, 7 months, Clearwater, FL – 10-5-2018

24) Denali Gonzalez, 2, Alvin, TX – 10-12-2018 (Catahoula/pit mix)

25) Angela Smith, 55, Washington, DC – 10-15-2018

26) Trinti Harrell, 1, Rocky Mount, NC – 10-24-2018

27) April Collins, 45, Winchester, KY – 11-2-2018

28) Nora Sharp, 19 months, Windsor Township, PA – 10-4-2018

29) Cecileigh Garris, 6 days,  Dunellon, FL – 11-11-2018

30) Sharon Lee Daniels, 77, Big Prairie Township, MI – 11-13-2018

31) Woman, not named, 82,  Fresno, CA – 12-13-2018 (heart attack)

Fatalities inflicted by other dog breeds

Paige Bradley
(Family photo)

Dogo Argentino

Jenna Rae Sutphin, 28, Huntingtown, MD – 6-22-2018

Fila Brasiliero/Cane Corso mix

Kristie Kelley, 44,  Neylandville, TX – 10-27-2018

German shepherd

Sharon Larson, 58, Milwaukee, WI – June 2018 (blood infection)

Paige Bradley, 5 months, Forest Park, GA – 6-13-2018

Malinois (Belgian shepherd)

Joseph Pettaway, 51, 7-8-2018

Presa Canario

Susan Sweeney, 58, Las Vegas, Nevada – 10-1-2018

Gaia Nova  (GoFundMe photo)

Rottweiler

Gaia Nova, 3 months, Sherman Oaks, CA – 5-18-2018

Esta Currier 73, Marietta, NC – 12-10-2018

Wolf hybrid

Aurora Little, 8 days old, Big Stone Gap, VA – 3-7-2018

Beth & Merritt Clifton

 

 

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Dog attack deaths & maimings, U.S. & Canada, 1982-2018 log


Pit bulls killed 30 times more animals in 2018 than human crime

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Pit bulls rehomed by shelters & rescues killed more animals than prosecuted sadists

Pit bulls killed more dogs,  injured more dogs,  and killed more cats in 2018 than ever before,  according to the sixth annual ANIMALS 24-7 survey of dog attacks against other animals.

The numbers of dogs,  cats,  and hoofed animals killed by pit bulls in 2018 were nearly triple the numbers of dogs,  cats,  and hoofed animals impounded in reported neglect cases in any year on record,  and around 30 times greater than the numbers of dogs,  cats,  and hoofed animals killed in prosecuted criminal violence.

(See data table concluding Rescue hoarding” cases horrify Iowa.)

(Beth Clifton photo)

20% of U.S. pit bulls have been in shelter custody in each recent year

About 20% of the total U.S. pit bull population has passed through the custody of animal shelters and rescues in each of the most recent several years––about the same number as have been acquired from breeders.

(See 2018 dog breed survey: at least 41% of U.S. pit bull population are seeking homes.)

Thus it is almost certain that pit bulls rehomed by animal shelters and rescues,  or actually in animal shelter and rescue custody,  killed more animals in 2018 by dismembering them alive than the sum of animals killed in prosecuted sadistic acts in any of the 26 years for which composite records of  cruelty prosecutions exist.

(Beth Clifton collage)

96% of dogs who killed other animals in 2018 were pit bulls

The 2018 volume of pit bull attack mayhem against other animals boosted the six-year average numbers of attacks on dogs and cats to what would have been record highs as recently as 2016.  (See chart below.)

Altogether,  50,850 dogs of all breeds combined appear to have participated in killing or injuring 47,500 other domestic animals in 2018,  including horses,  livestock,  and poultry as well as dogs and cats.

Among the dogs who killed other animals were an estimated 48,975 pit bulls (96%).

(Beth Clifton collage)

Pit bulls killed 86% of dogs,  88% of cats

The pit bulls killed 37,362 other animals,  “only” 79% of the total because dogs of other breeds accounted for just over a third of the deaths of horses,  livestock,  and especially poultry,  most of whom––as in most years––were killed in rampage attacks by just a few small packs of dogs who somehow gained access to large poultry barns.

Pit bulls killed 14,850 dogs (86% of the victims),  injured another 16,800 dogs (93% of the victims),  and killed 8,850 cats (88% of the victims.

(Beth Clifton photo)

10% of dog victims killed or injured at dog parks

Of the 31,650 dogs who were either killed or injured by pit bulls,  3,075––about one in ten––suffered death or injury at a dog park.

There are now about 4.4 million pit bulls in the U.S.,  according to the annual ANIMALS 24-7 surveys of classified ads offering dogs offered for sale or adoption.

(See 2018 dog breed survey: at least 41% of U.S. pit bull population are seeking homes.) 

(Beth Clifton photo)

One pit bull in 90 killed an animal or human

Thus in 2018 about one pit bull in 90 participated in killing an animal or a human.

(For the data on attacks against humans,  see 40 Americans & Canadians killed by dogs in 2018, 31 by pit bulls.)

Pit bulls are just 5% of the total U.S. dog population of 88.7 million,  estimated by the 2017-2018 National Pet Owners Survey,  conducted by the American Pet Products Association.

Pit bulls excluded,  only one dog in 45,000 killed another pet,  livestock animal,  or person in 2018.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Pit bulls 500 times more deadly than all other dogs combined

Thus,  in simple terms,  pit bulls in 2018 were 500 times more deadly to other animals and humans than all other dog breed types combined.

Based on the 2018 data,  over the 10-year average lifespan of a dog,  about one pit bull in nine will become a killer––if the pit bull lives a normal lifespan.  With a turnover rate of nearly 33% per year,  and 50% for adult pit bulls,  most do not live even half a normal lifespan.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Risk comparable to driving

            By way of further comparison,  the odds are about one chance in 520 that any given licensed driver will be involved in an accident that kills a human in any given year,  and one chance in 62 that a driver will roadkill an animal during the year.  (See Roadkill counts,  1937-2006,  showed longterm decline.)

            In other words,  keeping or being around a pit bull starts out being approximately as dangerous to humans,  other pets,  and livestock as driving, which has long been recognized as the most dangerous thing that the average American does.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Driving safety is closely regulated

            But vehicular safety is subject to strict regulation.

            Drivers are required to be heavily insured,  and to take classes and pass tests before they get a driving permit.  Both drivers and passengers are required to wear seat belts.

            Traffic lights and stop signs at every intersection reduce the risk of collision.

Nothing stops speed freaks or drunks from taking their pit bulls to a dog park––or just letting them out the door to run.

(Beth Clifton photo)

No radar guns on pit bulls

            Police patrol the roads around the clock,  with radar guns,  to try to intercept speeders and drunk drivers before they kill anyone,  including themselves.

            No similar measures exist to limit the risk from pit bulls.  Anyone can take a pit bull almost anywhere,  without passing any safety tests and without being insured.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Even if a pit bull kills another animal and is apprehended by animal control,  the pit bull––unlike in the 20th century––is now more likely to be returned to the owner,  no matter how negligent,  or to be rehomed,  than to be euthanized.  (Nonetheless,  pit bulls,  about a third of canine impounds,  still account for about two-thirds of dog euthanasias,  chiefly for behavioral reasons.)

           As with driving,  any reckless behavior on the part of a pit bull owner can markedly increase the odds that a pit bull will kill or injure another living being.

(Beth Clifton collage)

How is the ANIMALS 24-7 data on animal attacks derived?

            First,  ANIMALS 24-7 collects and logs published accounts of dog attacks on other pets and farmed animals throughout each year,  just as we have collected accounts of fatal and disfiguring dog attacks on humans since 1982.

            However,  fatal dog attacks on humans are always reported by news media––we are unaware of any verified exceptions––and disfiguring dog attacks on humans often make news,  though there is a significant under-reporting factor.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Compensating for under-reporting

            Comparing published accounts of disfiguring dog attacks on humans to insurance industry payout data indicates that only about one human injury in 25 that results in a payout involves a disfigurement reported by media.  In other words,  the disfigurement data we track amounts to only the worst 4% of serious dog bites.

            By contrast,  ANIMALS 24-7 has learned from reviewing accounts of dog attacks on other pets and farmed animals that they are almost never reported unless either of three other circumstances were involved in the same incident:  a human was killed or disfigured in the same attack;  someone,  usually law enforcement,  shot the attacking dog or dogs at the scene;  or farmed animals valued at more than $1,000 were killed.

(Beth Clifton photo)

            Also,  dog attacks on other pets and farmed animals belonging to the same household are almost never reported,  since police are rarely called in such cases.  The exception is if a human is killed or disfigured in the same attack that kills or injures an animal.

The formula

ANIMALS 24-7 experimented with several different methods of accounting for the under-reporting factor,  before discovering that applying the same factor involved in reporting human injuries produces the most consistent results from year to year,  with one adjustment:  the reported numbers from documented attacks should be multiplied by at least three,  to compensate for non-reporting of attacks occurring within the dogs’ own households and attacks in which no one is seriously injured,  the attacking dog or dogs are not killed,  and there is no loss of animals with market value of more than $1,000.

(Beth Clifton collage)

            Our formula,  accordingly,  is that reported dog attacks on other pets and farmed animals are presumed to be 4% of the cases that might result in insurance claims,  i.e. involving someone else’s animal and a significant monetary loss (usually for veterinary care),  with the total number of attacks three times as high.

Unidentified attackers

Each year a small but significant number of reported dog attacks on other animals are committed by dogs who are not identified or apprehended:  5% in 2017,  7% in 2018.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Paradoxically,  these attacks tend to account for a high percentage of the reported deaths of horses,  livestock,  and poultry,  who are often housed out of sight and earshot of human caretakers.

            ANIMALS 24-7 proportionately allocates the dog-inflicted animal deaths and injuries in cases where the attacking dogs are not identified.  In other words,  if any given dog breed killed X-percentage of animals in cases where the attacking dogs were identified,  that breed is presumed to have accounted for the same percentage of attacks in cases where the canine perpetrators were not identified.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Hoofed animals

Attacks on farmed animals,  listed as “Other” animals in the appended chart,  may be divided into two categories: hoofed animals,  including mostly sheep,  cattle,  horses,  and goats;  and poultry,  mostly chickens,  but also including some ducks,  geese,  quail,  and exotic birds.

Dogs in 2018 killed about 11,325 hoofed animals;  pit bulls killed about 6,000 of them (53%),  while dogs of all other breeds combined to kill 5,325 (47%).

(Beth Clifton photo)

Poultry

The numbers of poultry killed tends to fluctuate widely from year to year,  because of the very high numbers killed in the worst reported incidents,  in which dogs break into commercial poultry barns.

The lowest figures for “other,”  from 2016,  reflect that we received few reports of dog attacks on commercial poultry barns during that year.

Thus the 2016 “other” totals were projected mostly from attacks on hoofed animals,  whereas the 2017 and 2018 “other” projections included several of the most serious attacks on commercial poultry barns of which we have record.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/ 

How can we fight the veterinary suicide epidemic?

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(Beth Clifton collage)

New CDC study confirms soaring vet suicides, especially among women

ATLANTA–– American female veterinarians are five times more likely to commit suicide as other American women,  while American male veterinarians are “only” twice as likely to commit suicide as other American men,  according to a newly published study of 36 years’ worth of veterinary death data.

The research was directed by Center for Disease Control & Prevention Epidemic Intelligence Service officer Suzanne E. Tomasi,  DVM,  assisted by five co-authors.

Suzanne Tomasi, DVM. (Facebook photo)

Lead author was clinical vet

Tomasi is herself a former clinical veterinarian.  She practiced for MedVet,  the Columbus (Ohio) Animal Care Center,  the Animal Friends Humane Society,  the Banfield veterinary chain,  and the Animal Medical Center of Miamisburg from 2002 through 2014.

The study by Tomasi et al,  “Suicide among veterinarians in the United States from 1979 through 2015,”  appeared in the January 1, 2019 edition of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The Tomasi team discovered 398 deaths by suicide among death records for 11,620 veterinarians,  79% of the suicides having come among clinical practitioners.  Among the suicides were 326 men and 72 women.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Small animal vets most vulnerable

Three hundred of the veterinary suicides came among vets with a known species specialty,  among them 240 men and 60 women.

Among the vets with known species specialties,  226 (75%) “worked exclusively or predominantly with companion animals,”  Tomasi et al reported.  Among the 60 female suicides,  42 (70%) worked mostly with dogs and cats.

“Among female veterinarians,”  Tomasi et al wrote,  “the percentage of deaths by suicide was stable from 2000 until the end of the study,  but the number of such deaths subjectively increased with each 5-year period.”

Tomasi et al expected that this might be the case.

Vet tech Kenny Robbins.
(Beth Clifton photo)

Vet suicide rate,  already high,  has increased

“A higher-than-expected number of deaths from suicide among veterinarians has been described in multiple studies,”  Tomasi et al noted,  including research done earlier in Australia,  Norway,  and the United Kingdom.

A 1982 U.S. study found that the rate of suicide among white male veterinarians who died during the years 1947-1977 “was 1.7 times that of the general U.S. population,”  Tomasi et al added.

Another study Tomasi et al mentioned found that the suicide rate among California veterinarians who died between 1960 and 1992 was 2.6 times that of the general population.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Vets have multiple high risk factors

Why are veterinarians at such elevated risk of suicide?

“In 2014,”  Tomasi et al observed,  “a survey of 11,627 U.S. veterinarians found 9% had current serious psychological distress,  31% had experienced depressive episodes,  and 17% had experienced suicidal ideation since leaving veterinary school.  Each of these is a risk factor for suicide and each was more prevalent [among vets] than in the general population.

“Other regional surveys supported these findings,”  Tomasi et al continued,  “by describing higher levels of anxiety, depression, and compassion fatigue among veterinarians,  compared with U.S. regional population.”

(Transport Accident Commission Australia image)

From north to south & over the sea

Specifically,  Tomasi et al explained,  “a 2012 survey of 394 Minnesota veterinarians reported that 22% had sought medical care for depression,  10% had physician-diagnosed anxiety,  and 10% had physician-diagnosed depression.  A 2012 survey of 701 Alabama veterinarians indicated that 66% had self-reported clinical depression and 24% had considered suicide since starting veterinary school.  In a 1992 survey of 572 US female veterinarians,  87% of respondents considered their job stressful;  67% were experiencing signs of burnout or compassion fatigue.”

These circumstances are not unique to the United States.

“A study of veterinary surgeons from the United Kingdom found higher levels of anxiety,  depression, and suicidal thoughts,  compared with the general population,”  Tomasi et al recalled.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Clinical practitioners at most risk

Clinical practitioners,  male or female,  are approximately twice as likely as veterinarians in non-clinical positions to experience anxiety,  depression and suicidal thoughts,  according to the previous research reviewed by Tomasi et al,  but both male and female veterinarians appear to be at elevated risk.

But what accounts for the elevated risk?

“One potential factor associated with an increased risk of suicide among veterinarians,”  Tomasi et al suggested,  is that “The veterinary school application process commonly selects for perfectionism to meet the rigorous veterinary school academic requirements.  However, perfectionism has been associated with higher risk for developing mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression.”

(Beth Clifton photo)

“Occupational stressors”

Further,  Tomasi et al mentioned,  veterinarians often suffer from “exposure to occupational stressors.  Veterinarians working in clinical medicine,  particularly companion animal medicine,”  Tomasi et al explained,  “are exposed to high levels of occupational stress related to long working hours,  client expectations,  unexpected outcomes,  communicating bad news,  poor work/life balance,  high workloads,  rising veterinary care costs,  professional isolation,  student debt,  and lack of senior support.”

Tomasi et al noted that changes in the demographics of the veterinary profession appear to be a major contributing factor in the rising numbers of veterinary suicides,  especially among women.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Shift from male to female-dominated profession

The research on veterinary suicides that came in the 1947-1977 time frame,  when the veterinary suicide rate was significantly higher than that of the general population,  but was only about half as high as in recent years,  “included only males [in the study cohort],  and most of those veterinarians practiced food animal medicine,”  Tomasi et al explained.

Agricultural veterinarians,  then as now,  have relatively little exposure to the general public and to hopes and expectations pertaining to individual animals.

“In 2017,”  Tomasi et al mentioned,  “75% of U.S. veterinarians practicing clinical medicine worked exclusively or predominantly in companion animal medicine.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Suicides among female vets could increase”

Coinciding with this change,  veterinary schools have been admitting more women than men for about 30 years now,  with the result that today about 60% of practicing veterinarians are female.

This trend is likely to continue,  and indeed to accelerate,  since “in 2016, approximately 80% of students enrolled at U.S. veterinary medical colleges were female,”  Tomasi et al wrote.

Therefore,  absent more effective interventions to prevent veterinary suicides,  Tomasi et al warned,  “As the number of females in the veterinary profession continues to grow,  the number of suicide deaths among female veterinarians could continue to increase.”

Kelly Ann Rada, DVM (1974-2012)

Pharmaceutical overdosing

Studies of suicide have for decades found that men are more likely to shoot themselves,  while women are more likely to overdose on pharmaceuticals.  Tomasi et al found that this is also true among veterinarians.

Altogether,  among the 398 suicides Tomasi et al identified,  180 shot themselves;  167 of the 180 were men.  The 154 veterinary suicides who overdosed on pharmaceuticals included 46 of the 72 women.

More alarming,  Tomasi et al observed,  was that the rate of pharmaceutical overdose among veterinarians was “nearly 2.5 times that for individuals among the general U.S. population who died by suicide in 2016.  These findings,”  Tomasi et al suggested,  “warrant further investigation.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Reduced fear about death”

Pending further study,  Tomasi et al tentatively attributed the high veterinary suicide rate by overdose to “acceptance of euthanasia procedures as well as access to potentially lethal pharmaceutical products.  Additionally,”  Tomasi et al wrote,  “veterinarians are trained to view euthanasia as an acceptable method to relieve suffering in animals,  which can affect the way veterinarians view human life,  including a reduced fear about death,  especially among those experiencing suicidal ideation.”

Concluded Tomasi et al,  “Suicide among veterinarians is likely attributable to a combination of factors and highlights the need for comprehensive suicide prevention strategies targeted toward this unique population.”

In particular,  Tomasi et al suggested,  “Incorporating healthy work design and well-being concepts in the clinical environment to address compassion fatigue and occupational stress,  and offering continuing education on managing occupational stressors, might help to reduce the number of suicides among veterinarians.”

Study quantifies trends observed by ANIMALS 24-7

The study by Tomasi et al,  “Suicide among veterinarians in the United States from 1979 through 2015,”  quantifies with hard numbers many of the trends and observations offered by ANIMALS 24-7 in a 2016 three-part series.

The ANIMALS 24-7 series opened by reviewing the factors contributing to the suicide of Taiwanese veterinarian Jian Zhicheng,  director of the Xinwu Animal Protection and Education Centre,  who on May 12,  2016 killed herself using euthanasia drugs,  after becoming distraught over having to kill dogs for whom the shelter had no cage space.

(See Taiwan shelter director suicide illustrates global crisis, Many human casualties in global shelter culture war,  and “Heal. Then get up and fight another battle.)

Social media

Jian Zhicheng had for some time been targeted by a particularly vicious social media campaign,  led and amplified by mostly anonymous “no kill” advocates.

The ANIMALS 24-7 series noted several other suicides by veterinarians who were prominent and well-respected in the U.S. humane community,  but had become subjects of online bullying.

Among them were Jeffrey Proulx,  39,  director of veterinary services & chief of staff at the San Francisco SPCA’s Leanne B. Roberts Medical Center,  in 2004;  Humane Ohio medical director Kelly Ann Rada,  DVM, 38,  in 2012;  Shirley Koshi, DVM,  55,  of Bronx,  New York  in 2014;   and also in 2014,  Sophia Yin,  DVM,  48,  in Davis,  California.

Tomasi et al did not mention the advent of social media as a potential factor in rising veterinary suicides.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

However,  the surging use and frequent misuse of social media in personal vendettas since the World Wide Web went online in 1994 has paralleled the increasing numbers of veterinary suicides that the Tomasi team noted in each five-year time frame over the duration of their study.

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/ 

Why did the ASPCA pres get $852,231, while we got $9.70 an hour?

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(Beth Clifton collage)

An $8.00-a-month donor prompted us to ask the question

This is an exposé (and appeal) that Beth & I really did not want to have to write,  but one of our faithful & reliable donors of $8.00 per month persuaded us that we had to –– because donors like her,  for the most part,  are paying not only for the existence of ANIMALS 24-7,  but for the existence of the entire animal protection & advocacy cause.

Millions of individual donors like her,  and like you,  contribute eight bucks a month,  or many times more,  depending on your income and ability,  to dozens of animal charities each,  around the U.S. and around the world.

For that eight bucks a month,  or whatever you can afford,  you expect hard work,  dedication,  and performance on a multitude of fronts:  on behalf of wildlife,  farmed animals,  dogs and cats,  horses,  animals in laboratories,  marine mammals,  and the list could go on for quite a while.

Bo the dog.  (Beth Clifton collage)

What you expect & what you get

That’s what you get from ANIMALS 24-7,  in our unique dual role of watchdogging and reporting the news about animal protection & advocacy from a caring perspective informed by decades of experience on animal-related news beats.

You see our work almost every day.  There is no mystery or mumbo-jumbo about what we do,  how we do it,  and what results we get.

You might also have seen our IRS Form 990 for 2018,  posted yesterday.

We each worked more than full-time last year for $9.71 an hour in wages and benefits,  serving more than 573,000 readers –– and ANIMALS 24-7 still ended up $7,800 in the hole,  because,  unfortunately,  not enough of those readers elected to make us one of their choices to get their eight bucks a month,  or whatever,  mostly not through any dissatisfaction with us or the work we do.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Not many ways to cut $8.00

Rather,  for most of our donors,  as for most donors to every animal charity,  there are just too many hard choices to be made among worthwhile-sounding organizations and projects,  with not enough ways to meaningfully divide eight bucks.

Posting the ANIMALS 24-7 filing of IRS Form 990 was embarrassing enough.  We don’t like running deficits,  even after squeezing and trimming all that we can.  We did not want to have to post it and then pass the hat,  especially now when times are hard for everyone because of the government shutdown,  pointless trade embargoes,  a plunging stock market,  and a variety of other scary economic news adding up to just one thing:  times are tough for almost everyone,  not just ourselves,  and even tougher for animals & most of the animal charities that try to help them.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Times not so tough for the 1%

But times do not seem to be tough at all for the 1%,  including at the biggest,  wealthiest 1% of animal charities,  and especially not in their executive offices.

A few days ago we happened to have occasion to look at the recently posted American SPCA filing of IRS Form 990 for 2017.

The ASPCA is among the oldest humane organizations in the world,  founded in 1866,  and has been among the richest right from the beginning,  when founder Henry Bergh passed his famously deep top hat among fellow New York City investors,  industrialists,  and socialites to get it started.

At the end of 2017,  the ASPCA claimed $273 million in assets.  Chief executive Matthew Bershadker took home $804,372 in pay for the year,  including a bonus of $276,000,  and received benefits of $47,859,  for total compensation of $852,231.

$852,231?!!!

We are singling out Matthew Bershadker as an example,  because he happens to have become, by far,  the highest paid individual for a single year in the whole history of the humane movement.

But this is not to bash Bershadker himself,  though we have significant differences with several ASPCA policies,  all of them long predating his tenure.

Bershadker has been at the ASPCA for 17 years.  Coming from a background in finance,  Bershadker previously served as the ASPCA vice president for development,  meaning he was a fundraiser,  and then for a time was senior vice president of anti-cruelty programs,  back before the ASPCA returned responsibility for doing anti-cruelty law enforcement––the first and oldest ASPCA mission––to the New York City police department.

Bershadker ascended to the ASPCA presidency on June 1,  2013,  the first ASPCA president since Sydney H. Coleman,  president from 1930 until his death in 1951,  to have worked for the ASPCA in any capacity before being put in charge.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Raising $57 million a year more than predecessor

As ASPCA president,  Bershadker has presided over achieving a 34% increase in donated income,  a 32% increase in assets,  and a 28% increase in program spending.

The ASPCA,  in short,  is now raising $57 million more per year than when Bershadker took over,  so perhaps––from a strictly business perspective––he has earned his 71% increase in compensation.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Where did the money come from?

But why has the ASPCA been able to raise that kind of money in the first place,  more than the combined annual budgets of every animal advocacy organization with a national presence back when we began reporting the news of the cause,  back when the highest salary in the history of humane work was less than $100,000?

It is not because of anything Matthew Bershadker did,  nor because of anything his predecessors did,  nor because of anything his counterparts at the other big national animal charities did––certainly not by themselves.

It is because people including yourselves and ourselves,  legions of eight-dollar-a-month donors and $9.70 an hour workers and volunteers,  together built a movement.

Muckrake (n): synonym for crusading journalist. From right: Fred Myer, Eppie Lederer (Ann Landers), Cleveland Amory, Ann Cottrell Free, & Henry Spira. (Beth Clifton collage)

Muckrakes with poop-scoops

Among the earliest voices in what came together as the animal rights movement more than 40 years ago were journalists scattered around the U.S. and the world who as concerned and sympathetic individuals,  working in isolation,  fought with editors for the page space in which to report the news about what was happening to animals.

A big part of that ongoing series of scoops included covering why the big animal charities that existed even then––like the ASPCA––were not managing to make much headway against the entrenched animal use industries,  nor even in promoting spay/neuter and adoptions,  so distracted were they with their then-focal role of killing tens of millions of cast-off and stray dogs and cats each year.

Some of those pioneering journalists,  like Cleveland Amory and Ann Landers,  were already big names in the field.  Some,  like Amory,  who started the Fund for Animals,  Animal Rights International founder Henry Spira,  and Humane Society of the U.S. founder Fred Myer,  left journalism to start animal advocacy organizations meant to help steer the old guard in more progressive and productive directions.

Merritt Clifton & feline news source, 1984.

Building the animal news beat

A generation younger,  I was among those who stayed on the animal news beat for many years with small newspapers serving small towns in rural areas,  gaining first-hand knowledge of animal use industries at the same time as helping to build a growing audience for animal advocacy messages.

Later,  as the audience expanded enough to sustain independent media covering the rising animal advocacy cause in breadth and depth,  I served as news editor of one of the periodicals that helped to bring it all together into a movement,  and then founded and for 22 years edited a newspaper that took the message global––and,  along the way,  reached thousands of fellow journalists in hundreds of newsrooms,  inspiring many of them to begin doing serious coverage of animal issues too.

Merritt, Beth, & The Dodo

Surviving the dodo

As electronic social media exploded in use and influence,  that project went the way of the dodo and all newsprint media.

Beth & I together founded and built ANIMALS 24-7,  reaching six times more people now than any of those previous periodicals ever did.

But by now the animal cause is hundreds of times larger,  served by a wealth and multitude of electronic media––and the more,  the better.  This expansion and diversity is what the animals have needed all along.

(Beth Clifton collage)

You are the economic foundation!

It is also what now provides the economic foundation for all of the multi-million-dollar organizations and hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-per-year executives,  who have successfully capitalized on what was once just a small cause among many,  and have turned it into a growth industry.

Millions of eight-dollar-a-month donors,  and some $9.70-an-hour journalists,  too,  have accomplished all of this,  and are continuing to accomplish quite a lot more,  even as the biggest organizations make the most noise to donors,  claiming most of the credit and raking in most of the donations.

We’re not here to argue about what Matthew Bershadker is worth,  or any other individuals––but if the top-paid individuals & organizations in animal advocacy are worth anything approaching that kind of money,  surely we are worth a higher priority when eight-dollar-a-month donors have to choose which animal charities to help.

We are honored & grateful

We are honored and grateful by the eight-dollar-a-month donors who have helped us and ANIMALS 24-7 to get this far.  We only ask to have many more of them,  and maybe a few who can donate more,  too.  Perhaps you can be among them?

Beth & Merritt Clifton

We guarantee we will make the best possible use of every $8.00,  $80,  $800,  or $8,000 that you send us.  We always have.  We always will.

Thank you!

Please donate to support our work: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/ 

Timothy J. Walker, 73, exposed slaughterhouse cruelty

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Timothy J. Walker

by Gail Eisnitz, chief investigator, Humane Farming Association

Timothy J. Walker,  73,  died on September 10,  2018 in Naples,  Florida,  a little known hero for animals sent to slaughter.

After graduating from St. Mary’s High School in St. Louis,  Walker at age 17 joined his two first cousins in the U.S. Navy.

Timothy J. Walker at age 17.

Disaster relief

Initially stationed on the helicopter carrier Thetis Bay,  Walker in October 1963 was among the crew members who helped the U.S. Marine Corps to deliver medical aid and food supplies to thousands of victims of Hurricane Flora,  which killed 7,193 people according to the official toll,  mostly in Port-au-Prince,  Haiti.

After the Thetis Bay was decommissioned and scrapped in 1964,  Walker was transferred to another aircraft carrier,  the Franklin D. Roosevelt,  where his service included a 95-day combat mission off the coast of Vietnam in 1966-1967.

The Thetis Bay during Walker’s time aboard.

Leaving the Navy in 1968,  Walker went on to a variety of civil service positions.

Exposed gasoline fraud

As a Kansas City weights and measures inspector, Walker in the late 1980s found that gasoline stations had been selling “regular” gasoline as higher-priced “premium” fuel for as long as 30 years.  Instead of keeping his mouth shut like everyone else,  Walker blew the whistle.

U.S. Marine Corps helicopters fly off the Thetis Bay.

A General Accounting Office investigation in 1990 confirmed the long-running fraud,  and found that it had been going on in Michigan,  Oregon,  and Tennessee as well as Missouri.  The GAO estimated that the cheating cost motorists as much as $150 million a year.

Later,  as an energy auditor for Kansas City,  Walker tried to get officials to do something about the poverty he saw in the course of duty.  The city,  claiming budget constraints,  refused to act.  Walker ended up buying storm windows for low-income families out of his own pocket,  paying one elderly woman’s real estate taxes,  and bringing Thanksgiving dinner to another.

(Beth Clifton photo)

USDA animal health tech

Eventually Walker moved from Missouri to Florida to take a job as an Animal Health Technician with the USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service.  He did so,  he said,  because he “wanted to help animals.”

Little did he know he would find himself collecting blood samples for brucellosis testing in the blood pit of that state’s biggest slaughterhouse.  The cows that he tested were hanging upside down from the bleed rail.  They were supposed to be dead.

But many of the cows were not properly stunned.  They were shackled, hoisted,  stuck, and had their heads skinned,  all while they were fully conscious,  kicking,  and bellowing.

Gail Eisnitz

Did not take “no” for an answer

Walker complained to the USDA veterinarian in the plant, wrote letters to all of his supervisors,  and when they refused to take action,  contacted the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,  Members of Congress,  and several animal protection organizations.

Walker’s fellow animal health technicians and slaughterhouse employees were afraid to speak out about the atrocities for fear they might lose their jobs.

It was my good fortune that one of Walker’s letters landed in my inbox.  His letter,  and his determination to expose slaughterhouse violations,  launched a nationwide investigation that would involve interviews with slaughterhouse workers who spent a combined total of three million hours on the killing floor.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Informed book Slaughterhouse

The interviews and video documentation that resulted ultimately revealed that,  in the name of increased production line speeds,  animals in USDA-inspected slaughterhouses across the country were routinely being beaten,  dragged,  strangled,  skinned, and scalded,  all while fully conscious,  often kicking and vocalizing.

The book that would result from Timothy Walker’s heroic disclosures,  Slaughterhouse,  and a front page story in The Washington Post which highlighted Walker’s battle,  would prompt the first ever Congressional funding allocated specifically for enforcement of the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.  The law had been on the books for 42 years.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Fired for speaking out

Walker was fired from his job with USDA for speaking out in his effort to stop the violations;  he was an unemployable pariah for two long years as we fought hard to get him protections under the federal Whistleblower Protection Act.

During that time, Walker testified before Congress about the atrocities he witnessed working in the blood pit at that Florida slaughterhouse.  He eventually won his case under the Whistleblower Protection Act and USDA was forced to hire him back.  He ultimately became a highly respected investigator at USDA.

Slaughterhouses are still horrible places.  But the selfless actions of Timothy J. Walker certainly changed the trajectory of my life,  as a cruelty investigator,  and helped expose the American public,  and indeed the world, to the terrible fate suffered by countless slaughter-bound animals each year.

Slaughterhouse:

The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane
Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry

by Gail A. Eisnitz

Prometheus Books (distributed by the Humane Farming Association,  POB 3577, San Rafael, CA 94912),  1997.  310 pages,  paperback, $15.95.

Henry Spira & friend.

Reviewed by Henry Spira (1927-1998),  founder of Animal Rights International, including the Coalition for Nonviolent Food:

Gail Eisnitz offers a nightmare view of the meat industry. Her ten-year investigation of meat packers, the industry’s euphemism for slaughterhouses, depicts a world in which cattle are skinned alive and pigs are boiled to death in giant scalding vats.  When fully conscious cows dangle by one hindleg from a steel shackle, workers snip off their front legs to prevent them from kicking.

Eisnitz was already an experienced investigator when she received a tip from a former slaughterhouse worker about conditions in a Florida slaughter plant. Scarcely able to believe what she heard, she began to travel around the U.S., at great personal sacrifice,  investigating slaughter plants and interviewing scores of workers who shared accounts of the most horrific animal abuse.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Workers testify

According to Eisnitz, who became chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association midway through her research, the trouble begins in the parking lot. Workers describe how “downers,” or animals too weak, injured or sick,  to move on their own, are dragged and beaten, sometimes to death.
There are accounts of animals arriving in subfreezing conditions who are frozen to the metal bars of the trucks, and of workers using crowbars to pry frozen animals off the truck’s metal rails, leaving a chunk of hide behind.

Many of those who can move on their own are shocked with electric prods or beaten mercilessly if they balk at entering the killing line. Here, the first step is the stunner.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Stunning failures

Cattle are stunned with an air-driven bolt gun applied to the forehead, while pigs are rendered unconscious with an electrical device.

Eisnitz reports that the line speeds are so fast that some conscious animals pass without being stunned. The result of inadequate stunning and accelerated line speeds is the same: conscious animals continue down the disassembly line, because, writes Eisnitz, nothing stops the line. Time is money.

What follows, conscious or unconscious,  is “sticking” (piercing the throat to induce bleeding), skinning, and removing legs. In the case of pigs, they are stuck, bled and dragged through a tank of scalding water to remove their bristles. Conscious pigs have been boiled to death or drowned.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Victims of the system

There is more. The book addresses the tremendous physical and psychological danger to workers. The workers emerge as victims of the system.

Eisnitz also deals with the growing epidemic of contaminated meat, suggesting that the industry has the same callous disregard for humans as for animals.

         Slaughterhouse is not a survey of slaughter practices across the country,  but rather an expose of abuses that Eisnitz observed or that were reported to her.

Red-tailed hawk painted by Barry Kent MacKay, caught contemplating a vegan diet.
(Merritt Clifton collage)

Thus it is not clear from Slaughterhouse how prevalent the abuses reported are. But Slaughterhouse offers convincing arguments for better supervision of slaughterhouses and stronger enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act. It also reminds us that the slaughter industry should not police itself.

“Could create a new generation of vegetarians”

Eisnitz’s expose is so powerful that we can almost see the bellowing cows and helpless squealing pigs.

And we can’t help but visualize the children whose lives were cut short because they took a bite out of a tainted hamburger. It has been said that if most meat eaters walked through a slaughterhouse, they would quickly become vegetarians.

Eisnitz’s book is the only tour most readers will ever need. With wide exposure, it could create a new generation of vegetarians.

Afterward

Humane Farming Association investigator and Slaughterhouse author Gail Eisnitz in 2004 received the Albert Schweitzer Medal,  presented by the Animal Welfare Institute for outstanding achievement in animal welfare.

While best known for Slaughterhouse,  Eisnitz in 1994-1995 had a significant role in exposing illegal veal industry use of the synthetic steroid clenbuterol, leading to the criminal convictions of several prominent U.S. veal producers.

In April 2000 Eisnitz obtained videotape documenting extensive but unprosecuted alleged violations of the Humane Slaughter Act at the IBP meatpacking plant in Wallula,  Washington.

Beth & Merritt Clifton
Animals 24-7

Beginning in 1998,  Eisnitz also helped Sioux opponents of factory pig farming to fight plans by Sun Prairie Inc. to establish pig barns on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.  The first Sun Prairie pig barn on the Rosebud reservation opened in 1999,  but a series of lawsuits,  including several wins for opponents in appellate courts,  kept the project from scaling up to the 24-barn complex now in operation until 2008.

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U.S. & Canadian courts favor farmed animals five times in a week

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Camera animals

(Beth Clifton collage)

Jurisdictional issues guided four of the five decisions

            WASHINGTON D.C.,  DES MOINES, Iowa,  TORONTO,  Ontario––A January 2019 blizzard of court decisions,  rendered in both the U.S. and Canada,  appear to have come down heavily in favor of improved animal welfare law enforcement on behalf of farmed animals.

The effect of the U.S. decisions will be felt immediately.  Depending on how the Ontario government responds,  however,  the Canadian ruling may have the most profound long-term effect,  addressing not only what laws are enforced but also who decides how and when to investigate cases and file criminal charges.

(Beth Clifton collage)

What were the cases?

The U.S. Supreme Court on January 7,  2019 declined to hear appeals of lower court verdicts upholding two California laws and another in Massachusetts,  passed in 2004,  2008,  and 2009,  respectively.

Judge James Gritzner of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa on January 9,  2019 rendered summary judgement against enforcement of the state’s so-called “ag gag” law,  passed to stop undercover investigations of conditions at factory-style farms.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Timothy Minnema several days earlier stripped the Ontario SPCA of law enforcement authority,  at least provisionally,  after the Ontario SPCA in October 2018 unilaterally withdrew from enforcing legislation pertaining to farmed animals,  horses,  cockfighting,  and pit bulls,  partly to cut costs,  partly to avoid having to euthanize impounded animals.

Veal calf.
(Humane Farming Association photo)

“States’ rights”

The U.S. Supreme Court may have rejected the appeals of the California and Massachusetts farmed animal legislation in part because Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh,  both appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump,  tend to follow interpretations of the U.S. Constitution favoring “states’ rights.”

The phrase “states’ rights” is usually invoked in support of laws,  or interpretations of laws,  permitting racial discrimination.

The California and Massachusetts legislation on behalf of farmed animals is enforced in part by prohibiting the import of eggs,  veal,  and pork products into those states if the hens,  calves,  and pigs used to produce them have not been raised according to the California and Massachusetts animal welfare standards.

This requires an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution that allows states to enforce legislation superseding federal standards.  A ruling against the California and Massachusetts laws might have been interpreted as a precedent against “states’ rights,”  even though the immediate subject of the laws had nothing to do with traditional “states’ rights” concerns.

Opponents called Proposition 12,  meant to cure the defects in Proposition 2,   “The Rotten Egg Bill.”  (Beth Clifton collage)

California Proposition 2 upheld

Explained New Food Economy features editor Joe Fassler,  “The dispute started with California’s Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, a 2008 ballot measure also known as Proposition 2,  which mandated that the state’s farm animals could not be confined ‘in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs.’”

This requirement,  if strictly enforced,  would have required that egg-laying hens be raised only in cage-free environments,  as well as prohibiting the use of veal crates and gestation stalls for sows,  in which they are confined throughout pregnancy and nursing.

Proposition 2 was not strictly enforced,  particularly as it pertained to egg-laying hens,  leading to the November 2018 passage of a second ballot measure,  Proposition 12,  touted by the Humane Society of the U.S. and other sponsors as a fix for loopholes left in Proposition 2,  but denounced by the Humane Farming Association and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,  among others,  for leaving major loopholes in place.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Interstate Commerce Clause

“After Proposition 2’s passage,”  continued Fassler,  “California egg producers argued that the new law put them at a disadvantage compared to other states that weren’t subject to the same rules. So the state legislature successfully moved to ban all eggs from caged hens—regardless of where they are laid.  In 2014, that prompted a number of other states,”  notably Missouri and Iowa,  “to sue,”  arguing that Proposition 2 improperly supersedes the federal Egg Products Inspection Act and violates the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Interstate Commerce Clause  limits the ability of individual states to impose trade barriers against other states.

This duck would rather hide behind a rock in a pink pond than be in a foie gras farm.
(Beth Clifton photo)

California foie gras ban also upheld

Also on January 7,  2019,  the U.S. Supreme Court rejected without a hearing an appeal by foie gras producers,  led by the Association des Eleveurs de Canards et d’Oies du Quebec,  against a California ban on sales of foie grasFoie gras,  a product made from the livers of ducks and geese who have been artificially fattened by pouring grain through tubes thrust down the birds’ throats.

California banned foie gras in 2004,  but the ban did not take effect until 2012,  surviving several court challenges meanwhile,  and a previous appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,  rejected in 2014.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the California ban in 2017.

Iowa “ag gag” tossed

            Ruling against the Iowa “ag gag” law,  U.S. District Judge James Gritzner ruled that the state had failed to show that any harm was done to agribusiness companies operating in a legal manner when workers photographed or otherwise recorded what they believed to animal abuse.

            Gritzner found that the “ag gag” law violated the fundamental First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

The Iowa law,  recounted Perry Beeman,  managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record,  was passed by the state legislature in 2012,  “supported by livestock interests,”  and was “intended to stop undercover investigations of animal cruelty.”

Gritzner noted that similar state “ag gag” laws had already been thrown out for violating First Amendment rights in Wyoming,  Utah and Idaho.

(Mercy for Animals photo)

Behind the law

            Continued Beeman,  “Gritzner will rule later on injunctions and lawyer fees,  after giving the parties time to file briefs.  Iowa’s law was one of a couple dozen that were passed over the span of a decade when farm groups heavily lobbied state legislatures and distributed a model state law.  The laws were passed after activists recorded workers abusing pigs and chickens.”

            Gritzner noted that before the “ag gag” law was adopted,  Iowa state law already “prohibited disrupting, destroying, or damaging property at an animal facility,  or on crop operation property,  and also the use of pathogens to threaten animals and crops.”

Summarized Beeman, “The [‘ag gag’] amendment banned people from obtaining access to an ‘agriculture production facility’ by false pretenses or giving false statements while applying for a job ‘with the intent to commit an act not authorized by the owner’ of the farm.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Admitted purpose was to stop activists

Recalled Beeman,  “At the time the bill was debated, Senator Tom Reilly said,  ‘What we’re aiming at is stopping these groups that go out and gin up campaigns that they use to raise money by trying to give the agriculture industry a bad name.’  Violations are various degrees of misdemeanor.”

A coalition of organizations led by the Animal Legal Defense Fund,  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Center for Food Safety filed the request for summary judgement,  supported by briefs from the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism.

Added Beeman,  “Lynn Hicks,  spokesman for the Iowa attorney general’s office,  said state lawyers were reviewing the decision and had not decided whether to appeal.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Ontario animal law enforcement

Rhetorically asked Toronto Star national affairs columnist Thomas Walkom,  commenting on the Ontario verdict,  “Who should have the power to enforce animal cruelty laws?  In Ontario for the last 99 years,  the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has played this crucial role,”  receiving $5.75 million per year from the provincial government to do so,  despite having refused since October 2018 to enforce legislation pertaining to farmed animals,  horses,  cockfighting,  and pit bulls.

(See Rather than kill pit bulls, Ontario SPCA quits busting dogfights.)

Superior Court Justice Timothy Minnema,  however,  “found that the law empowering the private charitable organization to exercise police powers in Ontario is fundamentally flawed,”  summarized Walkom.  “In particular,  the judge ruled that the province was wrong to grant policing powers to an agency that in his words was ‘opaque,  insular,  unaccountable and potentially subject to external influences.’  He gave the province a year to fix the law.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Law may be changed,  but how?

Added Walkom,  “In theory,  the constitutional dilemma could be easily rectified.  The judge noted that other provinces have solved this problem by ensuring that animal protection officers are subject to the same kind of oversight as police.

“In Alberta, for instance,”  Walkom said,  “animal cruelty inspectors are appointed by the provincial government.  In Newfoundland and Labrador, regular police are used to enforce animal cruelty laws.”

Ontario could also follow the example of Quebec,  which in 2005 created an independent nonprofit crown corporation,  called Anima Quebec,  to enforce provincial humane law.  This sidestepped a long-running conflict between the Montreal SPCA and regional humane societies over which had jurisdiction over cases occurring outside the immediate Montreal area.

(Barry Kent MacKay painting)

Ontario government is wild card

The Ontario SPCA and the Toronto SPCA have for more than 30 years clashed comparably.

            How the Ontario government may respond to the Minnema ruling is anyone’s guess.  The current government of Ontario,  in office since June 2018,  is headed by Progressive Conservative Party premier Doug Ford.  Ford opposes the provincial ban on pit bulls,  adopted in 2005 at recommendation of then-provincial justice minister Michael Bryant,  a member of the Liberal Party who is now general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Ford has in the past claimed to be an animal advocate and at one time claimed to be an “ethical vegetarian,”  but supports a pending proposal to allow sport hunters to kill up to 50 double-crested cormorants per day.

(See “Ontario allows hunters to kill 50 cormorants a day.”)

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Alleged pit bull starver Lueders &“rescue” horse thief Blackwood both busted

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Bully Breed Rescue president to be arraigned on January 29, 2019

            BRIDGEPORT, Connecticut;  TUSKEGEE,  Alabama––Bully Breed Rescue president and alleged pit bull starver Heidi E. Lueders,  31,  can expect to face a howling mob of former donors,  volunteers,  sympathizers,  and miscellaneous other pit bull advocates when she appears for arraignment on January 29,  2019 in Bridgeport Superior Court.

What alleged horse thief-in-the-name-of-rescue Fallon Danielle “Kelly” Blackwood,  24,  may face in North Carolina and Alabama is as yet anyone’s guess.  Blackwood is believed to have sold at least 51 horses and two goats to slaughter,  after acquiring them from owners who offered them “free to good home” via social media.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Five cruelty counts

“As many people as possible need to show up in the courtroom to send a strong message to the judge and prosecutor,”  urged the Facebook advocacy group Animals R Family.  “The courtroom needs to be packed to the rafters.  Bridgeport Superior Court said that people need to be there by 9 a.m., as court starts at 10 a.m.,  and it takes a while to get people settled, etc.  Heidi Lueders could be called first or last.  People need to plan on being there all day.”

Lueders is charged with five counts of cruelty to animals for allowing five caged or otherwise confined pit bulls to starve to death in the rented New Canaan,  Connecticut home that she herself occupied at the time.  Lueders is also charged with one count of criminal damage to landlord’s property by a tenant in the first degree.

Heidi Lueders

Police summoned to the scene by landlord Claire “Celly” Roberts on November 11,  2019 returned with a search warrant the next day,  discovering the skeletal remains of the dead pit bulls amid what Animals R Family summarized as “an ocean of garbage,  junk,   heroin packs,  needles,  trash,  dog feces and dog urine everywhere.”

Crime scene photographs appeared to verify the description.

Checked into mental hospital

Instead of surrendering to police immediately,  Lueders according to Animals R Family “checked herself into Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan,”  described as “a very expensive drug addiction and psychiatric hospital,  used by celebrities including Catherine Zeta Jones, Mariah Carey,  Michael Jackson and Billy Joel.”

Lueders apparently remained there until January 15  2019.  Fairfield Police Captain Robert Kalamaras told media the following morning that she had voluntarily turned herself in,  and had been released after posting bond of $50,000.

Heidi Lueders (Twitter photo)

Still conspicuously absent from the charge list are any alleged offenses pertaining to illegal drug use and/or misuse of funds donated to Bully Breed Rescue,  both of which have been extensively claimed on social media by former associates of Lueders.

Enablers?

Bully Breed Rescue founder Benedicta “Bennie” McGrath,  for instance,  posted to the ANIMALS 24-7 web site on November 19,  2018 that Lueders “developed a heroin addiction using donated funds.”

McGrath,  an attorney formerly practicing in New Canaan,  Connecticut,  incorporated Bully Breed Rescue in 2005.  Lueders became involved as a volunteer in 2007.  Retiring to Florida in 2013,  McGrath turned the presidency of Bully Breed Rescue over to Lueders,  whose mother Peggy Anderson Lueders joined the Bully Breed Rescue board of directors.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Neither have any charges been filed against possible accomplices,  also despite many social media postings by people who purported to have had prior knowledge that Heidi Lueders had become a heroin addict and had lived in filth comparable to what was found in Fairfield at a prior address in Stamford,  yet continued to participate in Bully Breed Rescue business with her.

(See Alleged pit bull starver Lueders charged, but not her enablers.)

(Beth Clifton collage)

Media spotlight

The Lueders surrender for arraignment was reported within the next 24 hours by more than 770 online media,  among more than 1,500 periodicals distributed online that have published articles about the case.

The media spotlight is reflective of Lueders’ efforts over the years to establish recognition for Bully Breed Rescue and to make herself a regional media celebrity through public appearances,  including participation in televised talk shows.

The attention to Lueders,  and to the allegations against her,  contrasts with a general lack of media notice of at least 63 other instances of supposed “no kill” animal rescues collapsing in 2018,  also often in association with operators abandoning neglected facilities filled with starving,  diseased,  and deceased dogs and cats.

(Beth Clifton collage)

At least 279 dead dogs in other 2018 “rescue” cases

Altogether,  at least 968 dogs were impounded alive from other failed “rescues” around the U.S. in 2018,  while the remains of at least another 279 dogs were discovered on the premises,  according to media accounts collected from local sources by ANIMALS 24-7.

The count of 279 dogs found dead at “rescues” includes 175 dogs,  reportedly mostly pit bulls,  whose remains were identified in October 2019 on the property of an elderly woman in Drew County,  Arkansas.  Other accounts put the total of dead dogs as high as 500.  The woman was not charged,  and Drew County Sheriff Mark Gober declined to identify her.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Cats

Also impounded alive from failed rescues in 2018 were at least 1,218 cats.

The remains of at least 142 more cats were found on the various premises,  but in most of the cases no attempt was made to quantify the dead cats,  since the condition of the cats found alive was sufficient to file whatever charges could be filed.

At least two hundred seventy-five horses were impounded alive from failed “rescues” in 2018.  Just 11 horses were found dead at those locations,  in contrast to years when hundreds of dead horses have been found on “rescue” premises.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Alleged horse theft for slaughter

But the major failed horse rescue case of 2018 involved horses whose remains may never be found,  because they are believed to have been sold to slaughter in Mexico.

Fallon Danielle Blackwood was arrested by Blount County sheriff’s deputies at a rodeo in Oneonta,  Alabama on January 12,  2019,  on a 13-count indictment issued in October 2018  “charging her with bringing into the state property obtained by false pretense elsewhere,”  reported Carol Robinson of Birmingham Real Time News.

Alabama is the second state to charge Blackwood,  a barrel racer and fourth-year veterinary student at Tuskegee University in Macon County,  Alabama.  Though Tuskegee is historically an African-American institution,  founded by Lewis Adams and Booker T. Washington in 1881,  Blackwood is Caucasian.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Blackwood was previously arrested at the Tuskegee veterinary school in April 2018,  and was briefly jailed,  on a North Carolina warrant charging her with similar alleged thefts by fraud.

“Free to good home”

“According to NetPosse,  a non-profit that tracks horse theft,  21 people across the Southeast have now complained Fallon Blackwood also took their horses under false pretenses,”  summarized Randy Travis of the Fox 5 I-Team.  “That’s 32 horses in all,”  a number that since then has nearly doubled.

Blackwood told horse owners who offered horses “free to good home” on Facebook or Craigslist that she was seeking a companion for her barrel racing horse,  people who gave her their horses have repeatedly stated to media.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

If the former horse owners later contacted Blackwood,  asking how the horses were,  she told them stories such as that they had been struck by lightning and died.

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Four black leaders who built the humane movement

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(Beth Clifton collage)

More people recognized William Key,  John W. Lemon,  Richard Carroll,  & F. Rivers Barnwell in their own time than would have recognized ASPCA founder Henry Bergh 

            INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana––“I am the only colored speaker on the program,  and in fact I have not seen a single colored visitor to it,”  wrote the Reverend Richard Carroll from the October 1912 conference of the American Humane Association,  in an open letter to the Greenville News,  of Greenville,  South Carolina.

Carroll (1859-1929),  whose career in many ways presaged that of Martin Luther King Jr.,  could have written the same thing from almost any humane conference today,  or from most others held since the initial conference of the American Humane Association in Albany,  New York,  in 1877.

Martin Luther King Jr.
(Beth Clifton collage)

De facto segregation

But the de facto segregation that Carroll encountered in Indianapolis in 1912 might have been all the more shocking,  even in the often formally segregated “Jim Crow” cultural atmosphere of those times.

Twenty years into the 21st century,  the ongoing de facto segregation of animal advocacy is so entrenched that scarcely anyone even makes noise any more from conference podiums––as was done a generation ago––about outreach to the black community or affirmative action hiring.

A few black vendors sell vegan food each year at the National Animal Rights Conference series hosted by the Farm Animal Rights Movement.  Otherwise,  attendees at that or any other humane conference scarcely encounter even a hint that black vegan,  vegetarian,  and animal advocacy go back all the way to the dawn of these causes.

(Richard Carroll portrait)

Many of the most visible faces of the humane movement were black

In 1912,  however,  and for decades before and after,  the most visible faces of the humane movement to millions of Americans,  of every ethnicity,  included black faces.

Decades before television,   when even silent single-reel films were just beginning to find an audience,  much of the U.S. recognized the touring humane evangelists William Key;  John W. Lemon;  Carroll himself,  a generation younger,  who followed Key into humane work toward the end of Key’s long career;  and Frederick Rivers Barnwell,  better known as just F. Rivers Barnwell,  who followed Carroll into a 30-year career in itinerant animal advocacy in 1914.

Key,  Carroll,  and Barnwell were all nearly lost to history,  though their work lived on,  as recently as January 2018,  when University of Texas historian Janet M. Davis and Paula Tarankow of Indiana University resurrected their stories at the 132nd annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington D.C.

Booker T. Washington

Friends of Booker T. Washington

Both Key and Carroll,  pointed out Tarankow,  “were born into slavery, enjoyed a personal friendship with Booker T. Washington,”  cofounder of the Tuskegee Institute,  “and served as Southern agents of the Massachusetts-based American Humane Education Society.

“Together,”  said Tarankow,  “the story of Key and Carroll uncovers how the early language of animal protection in the New South was a product of the discourse surrounding the failures of Reconstruction,  black racial uplift,  and sectional reunion.”

Ironically,  though forgotten by animal advocates,  Key is remembered at length by James H. Neal in the Tennessee Encyclopedia,  published in October 2017 by the Tennessee Historical Society.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Self-educated horse doctor

Born in 1833 in Murfreesboro,  Tennessee,  the legal property of Captain John Key,  the-then-five-year-old Bill and his whole family were left upon the captain’s death to his cousin,  John W. Key of Shelbyville.  Bill by the age of six was already known for his ability to calm and train horses,  and also to calm John W. Key’s aged and disabled father.

Martha Key,  wife of John W. Key,  taught young Bill reading,  writing,  presentation, elocution and etiquette.

“Key read veterinary texts and experimented with animal remedies until he became a successful veterinarian and equine dentist.  Known as Dr. Key,  he also practiced dentistry and other healing arts for slaves,”  Neal recounted.

Nathan Bedford Forest

Helped Confederates

Already nearly 30 years old when the U.S. Civil War broke out,  Key followed John W. and Martha Key’s two sons when they joined the defense of Fort Donelson against the advancing Union Army in February 1862,  protected them from Union shelling in his own log-covered dugout called Fort Bill,  and then helped them escape to the Confederate Army unit commanded by Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877).

Forrest in 1867 was elected first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,  but in 1869 unsuccessfully ordered that the Klan be disbanded.  Relatives and descendants,  including a grandson who became a Grand Dragon,  remained involved at least until the grandson’s death in 1931.

“In the last years of his life,”  Wikipedia summarizes,  “Forrest publicly denounced the violence and racism of the Klan,  insisted he had never been a member,  and made at least one public speech (to a black audience,  in 1875) in favor of racial harmony.”

William “Bill” Key

“Good cook & poker player”

Bill Key,  meanwhile,  in January 1863,  after the battle of Stones River,  which featured the highest percentage of casualties on both sides of any battle of the war,  was captured by the Sixth Indiana regiment “as he tried to smuggle another black man through Union lines,”  according to Neal.

Key “was sentenced to hang,  but the execution was postponed,”  Neal claims,  “when it was learned that he was a good cook and poker player.  Playing poker with Union officers,  Key purchased his release in exchange for their gambling debts.  Captured and sentenced to hang on another occasion, Key purchased a delay of execution with one thousand dollars he had sewn between the soles of his shoe.  Confederate raiders liberated him the next day.”

The irony of Key’s life to that point,  as a black man who put personal loyalty to the Key family ahead of his own freedom,  took further twists after the Civil War.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Queen of Horses”

While the white Keys were left destitute,  their land mortgaged and buildings ruined,  Bill Key “developed and marketed Keystone Liniment for various animal and human ailments.  With proceeds from gambling winnings and Keystone Liniment sales,”  according to Neal,  “he quickly paid off the mortgage for his former masters,”  and then put both of John W. and Martha Key’s sons through Harvard University.

Key meanwhile “organized a traveling minstrel and medicine show,  at which animals performed skits to demonstrate the apparent effectiveness of his medications,”  Neal continued.  “While in Tupelo,  Mississippi,  Key bought a badly abused Arabian bay,  Lauretta,  from a defunct circus.”

Lauretta,  according to Kristin Berkery in a 2012 online posting called Beautiful Jim Key: the lost history of the world’s smartest horse,  was in truth the “legendary ‘Queen of Horses,’  an Arabian mare who was allegedly stolen from a sheikh in Persia and sold to P.T. Barnum to tour Europe as a circus performer.  After her popularity began to wane,  Lauretta was sold to low-rent circuses in the U.S. where she suffered mistreatment and neglect.”

“Beautiful Jim Key”

Whoever Lauretta was,  Key nursed her back to health and mated her with the standardbred stallion Tennessee Volunteer.

Their offspring,  born in 1890,  was a colt so weak and wobbly that Key “named him Jim,  after the town drunk,”  Neal wrote.  Key nursed Jim to health in his own home.

“Lauretta died when Jim Key was a young foal,”  according to Berkery,  whose account is mostly based on the 2005 book Beautiful Jim Key: The Lost History of a Horse and a Man Who Changed the World,  by Mim E. Rivas.

Jim,  meanwhile,  “ began picking up tricks he learned while watching Bill’s dog fetch sticks, sit, and roll over.  Bill’s wife Lucinda first figured out that Jim Key could answer yes or no questions. She was eating an apple in front of him when she asked,  ‘Jim,  do you want a piece of apple?’  He nodded his head and up down in response.”

Neal’s version is that Key one day noticed Jim open a drawer,  retrieve an apple,  and then close the drawer.

William Key & Beautiful Jim.

“Kindness & patience”

Realizing that Jim displayed rare intelligence,  “Key put Jim on a rigorous training routine that lasted for seven years,”  Neal said.  “When finally exhibited,  Jim could spell,  distinguish among coins and make change,  write letters and his name on a blackboard,  identify playing cards,  play a hand organ, and respond to political inquiries,  among other amazing feats,”  or so audiences believed.

Billed as “Beautiful Jim Key,”   the horse debuted on stage before then-U.S. President William McKinley at the 1897 Tennessee Centennial exhibition in Nashville.

McKinley reportedly called Jim’s performance “The most astonishing and entertaining exhibition I have ever witnessed,”  and an excellent example of what “kindness and patience” could accomplish.

The “Beautiful Jim Key” act was likewise endorsed by band leader and composer John Phillip Souza.

Humane education pioneer George Thorndyke Angell.

Rogers & Angell

Also in the audience was Albert R. Rogers,  a thrill ride promoter,  author,  and officer of the American Humane Education Association,  who according to Neal “was especially gratified that Key’s training methods consisted entirely of positive rewards for performance.”

Rogers arranged for Massachusetts SPCA and American Humane Education Society founder George Thorndike Angell to make Jim an honorary humane agent,  “advanced Key a large sum of money,  and promised that Jim would not be separated from Key as long as either lived,”  Neal wrote.

The timing was right. Angell,  an abolitionist before the Civil War,  had taken to heart criticism voiced by the African American newspaper The Christian Recorder in 1887 after  two black men were lynched in Texas for defending themselves against an armed robbery:

“Where is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,  that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars seeing to it that men do not maltreat their donkeys and dogs,  that they do not protect the animal life that resides in the humanity of the black men?”

A Band of Mercy club circa 1890.

Promoted the Band of Mercy

Wrote Neal,  “Key,  Beautiful Jim,  and grooms Sam and Stanley Davis of Shelbyville traveled to the Rogers estate in New Jersey where, for several months, Key prepared Beautiful Jim for his New York City debut. In August 1897 Beautiful Jim amazed viewers and the New York City press and quickly became a celebrity.”

Rogers,  assessed Janet M. Davis,   “carefully controlled Key’s image,   transforming the Arabian horse into a charming ‘Southern’ horse and penning William’s biography,”  published as The Story of Beautiful Jim Key:  The Most Wonderful Horse in All The World,  “to conform to the image of a loyal Uncle Tom figure of the Lost Cause variety.”

For the next nine years,  Key, Rogers, and Beautiful Jim toured the eastern U.S. on behalf of Band of Mercy,  a national youth organization sponsored by the American Humane Education Society.

Last years

By 1906,  however,  “the duo was slowing down with age,”  Berkery wrote.  “Plans were made for the act to rest all of 1907 and return to performing the following year,  but Rogers went through financial hardship,  had a falling out with the American Humane Education Society and the Massachusetts SPCA,   and was forced out of his official roles in those organizations.”

Beautiful Jim

“After appearing before almost two million spectators,”  the Neal version ends,  “Key and Beautiful Jim retired to Shelbyville,  where Key lived comfortably until his death in 1909.  Jim lived until 1912.”

The Reverend John W. Lemon

If nothing else,  Key had convinced the American Humane Education Society of the value of hiring articulate black men as traveling humane evangelists.

Baptist minister Francis H. Rowley in 1910 succeeded Massachusetts SPCA and American Humane Education Society founder George Thorndike Angell as president of both organizations and soon hired multiple successors to Key.

Francis H. Rowley

Among the first and most successful,  recalled Janet M. Davis in her 2016 book The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America,  was the Reverend John W. Lemon,  of Ark,  Virginia,  who “organized more than 500 Bands of Mercy and gave more than 800 school addresses,  lectures,  and sermons across Alabama and Virginia from 1910 to 1927.”

Challenged segregation

Unlike Key,  Lemon directly challenged racial segregation and the institutionalized discrimination that came with it.

“Lemon’s lectures on animal kindness and civilization dovetailed with his other human-centered topics on racism and economic inequality,”  Davis wrote.  “Our Dumb Animals,”  the monthly magazine of the MSPCA,  “noted that Lemon ‘has labored with unremitting zeal to liberate his race’” from poverty,  abuse,  and ignorance.

“Although Lemon’s lectures acknowledged structural inequality,”  Davis added,  “they emphasized self-uplift and self-help,  which individualized and diffused a more sweeping call for social change.”

Richard Carroll & the first of two schools in Columbia, S.C. that were named after him.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Richard Carroll

Yet,  dynamic as Lemon was,  he in many respects was just the warm-up act for Richard Carroll,  introduced by Davis as “the youngest field representative of the American Humane Education Society and the most widely traveled.

“Our Dumb Animals described his breadth of activity as ‘limited only by the speed of his Ford car.,'”  Davis recounted.  “He logged 1,000 to 2,000 miles a month giving upward of 100 speeches to schoolchildren and dozens of talks to adults at ‘enthusiastic mass meetings,’  and he handed out ‘a great quantity’ of humane literature.  He organized Bands of Mercy and Junior Humane Societies in tandem with his activities for the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools and the National Baptist Sunday School Congress.”

The Gleaners (1857), painted by Jean-Francois Millet.

“Gospel of Christian ethics”

Carroll,  summarized Tarankow to the American Historical Association,  “preached a gospel of Christian ethics,  which braided together the message of humane treatment to animals and African Americans.  He harkened back to the antebellum ‘harmony’ between slaves and masters as a basis for white’s kindness to African Americans.  Carroll enjoyed the patronage and support of South Carolina’s white politicians and community by using animals as a proxy to discuss race relations.”

A capsule biography and description of Carroll’s work published by South Caroliniana Library in Columbia,  South Carolina,  asserts accurately that “Carroll espoused an extreme agrarian philosophy, distrusted city influences and advised South Carolina’s African Americans to remain on the land,”  but wrongly alleges that “Carroll advocated self-help and economic advancement for African Americans while discouraging efforts to achieve political and social equality between the races.”

Professor Jacob’s School, Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina.

“Contribute nothing toward segregation & discrimination”

Carroll perhaps most succinctly summarized what he really stood for,  and advocated,  in a prescient 1914 editorial for his self-help magazine for black farmers,  The Columbia Ploughman.

“To segregate the Negro in schools,  churches,  or otherwise,  is detrimental to his best interests,”  Carroll wrote.  “The white enemies of the Negro race are trying to put Negroes to themselves by making Negro settlements in cities,  Negro communities in the country,  and when this is done you will find that the Negro will suffer.  In the city he will not get light,  fire,  or police protection,  etc.;  in the country,  roads leading by Negro farms will be neglected and not receive the attention that the road by the white man’s farm does.  We hope the Negro will contribute nothing toward segregation and discrimination.”

Slave children photographed by Matthew Brady during the U.S. Civil War.

Son of slave owner & house servant

According to the remainder of the South Caroliniana Library biography,  which appears to be factually accurate,  “Carroll was born a slave in Barnwell County,  the son of a white slave owner.  He benefited from the fact that his mother was a trusted house servant on the W.D. Rice Plantation.

“Rice opened the door of opportunity for Carroll.  He was educated at Benedict College in Columbia, where he developed his gift for eloquence.”

Taking up a Baptist ministry in Orangeburg,  south of Columbia,  Carroll stood against the remainder of the “Colored Convention” in October 1890 in opposing a resolution that black South Carolinians should vote for the straight Democratic ticket.

Benjamin Tillman

Benjamin Tillman

Benjamin Tillman  (1847-1914),  the Democratic candidate for Governor,  upon election by a landslide,  exulted that “The whites have absolute control of the State government,  and we intend at any and all hazards to retain it.”

Tillman’s tenure as governor coincided with a rapid rise in lynchings,  and were in general a disaster for black South Carolinians that Carroll alone had seen coming.  Tillman’s last achievement before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1894 was the introduction of a new state constitution,  taking effect in 1895,  which Tillman admitted in a 1900 speech to the U.S. Senate was written “calmly, deliberately,  and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many [black voters] as we could.”

Carroll’s political opposition to Tillman notwithstanding,  he somehow won Tillman over as a sometime ally in later years.

Scene from 1911 Negro State Fair in Bonham Texas.  (Erwin E. Smith photo}

Colored State Fair Association

Meanwhile,  continues the South Caroliniana Library biography,  “After serving as a chaplain with the 10th U.S. Infantry in the Spanish-American War (1898),”  including during the Battle of Santiago de Cuba,  “Carroll founded the Industrial Home for Boys and Girls,  a school for delinquent African American children,  located near Columbia”  which “drew support from both Northern donors and local businessmen.”

Turning to journalism,  Carroll “from 1906 to 1915 edited The Southern Ploughman and published his own newspaper,  The Christian Soldier.  He also promoted his ideas through various organizations,”  the South Caroliniana Library biography mentions,  “founding the Colored State Fair Association and sponsoring a series of annual race congresses.  In 1907,  President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration invited both Carroll and Booker T. Washington to attend a conference on child welfare at the White House.  He was offered the post of United States Minister to Liberia by President Woodrow Wilson but declined.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Came late to animal advocacy

Nothing discoverable through the extensive coverage of Carroll’s career before 1913 via NewspaperArchive.com indicates that he was to become a nationally prominent animal advocate,  though he certainly had extensive contact with humane societies in an era when more humane societies ran orphanages than animal shelters.

Indeed,  in an address to rural black South Carolinians reported by the January 12,  1898 edition of the Marion Star,  Carroll urged that,  “You can grow rice,  potatoes,  corn,  peas,  cotton,  sugar cane,  millet and grain;  you can raise cattle,  hogs,  chickens,  and other poultry;  you can sell chickens,  eggs,  butter,  and now and then bring a calf or cow to market or to sell to the butcher.  You should never come to town unless you bring something to sell or exchange.  Then,  the creeks,  rivers,  and lakes abound in fish;  the woods are full of fame.  You remember the old-time diet,  opossum and tater?  The raccoon is in the swamps;  where is the opossum dog?  Brer rabbit is as prolific as ever.  You can live if you will.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Wild animal shows”

Opposition by the mainstream humane community to hunting and trapping was stronger,  at the time,  than at any point during the 20th century.

A 1909 report about Carroll’s state fair in Batesburg,  South Carolina mentioned that “wild animal shows will be featured,”  though traveling wild animal shows had already attracted protest from mainstream humane organizations for as long as any had existed.

Carroll appears to have become acquainted with Francis Rowley,  perhaps through John W. Lemon,  somewhat after that.  By 1912,  when Carroll spoke at the American Humane Association conference in Indianapolis,  he was among Rowley’s “twelve apostles” promoting the Bands of Mercy.

Rowley reciprocated by speaking at Carroll’s Race Conference & Corn Exposition,  held from January 27 to February 8,  1913 in Columbia,  South Carolina.

Jim Beckwith (1798-1867), born a slave in Virginia,  became a noted Old West trapper & fur trader.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Changed view of trapping

By then,  wrote Davis,  “Although trapping provided a source of food and income for the rural poor,  Carroll and other activists vigorously fought it,”  contrary to Carroll’s position of 1898,  “because it caused protracted suffering.  They believed that trapping was morally akin to poaching,  promoting subsistence,  itinerancy,  and tacit theft over an idea of agricultural stewardship,  ownership,  and capital accumulation.”

Carroll had long since perfected a speaking style antecedent to that of Martin Luther King Jr. and King’s successor,  Jesse Jackson,  in that Carroll continually reassured white listeners that black people were no threat to whites in seeking to improve their own lot;  shocked his black listeners by appearing to agree with various statements and stereotypes alleged by white racists;  and  then stood those statements and stereotypes on their heads with positive examples of how he believed white and black people ought to interact.

Black church in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1935.

Denounced lynching,  alcohol,  & urban living

Carroll emphasized self-help for the black community,  but encouraged white audiences to contribute to black self-help projects,  citing in particular the later-in-life examples of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Carroll,  a Prohibitionist,  denounced lynching at every opportunity,  yet coupled his denunciations with denunciations of crimes committed by black people,  especially under the influence of alcohol and the fast life of big cities.

At times Carroll warned,  in terms jarring to racial sensitivities today,  that eventually white people and black people would need each other to help fight the Japanese––as occurred a generation later,  in World War II.  In context,  however,  Carroll appears to have used the “Japanese” as a hypothetical external threat that provided a pretext for seeking racial harmony.  There were few if any Americans of Japanese ancestry anywhere near his speaking engagements,  and Carroll conspicuously did not say anything that might have incited enmity against other minorities who were nearby,  for example Cubans,  Puerto Ricans,  and Native Americans.

“Opportunity for humane workers”

Carroll’s knack for framing his message made him eminently acceptable to multiracial crowds at a time and in places where segregation had taken firm hold.

The Waco Morning News of April 25, 1915 for instance,  noted a recent meeting in Austin of the Texas division of the Daughters of the Confederacy,  then mentioned under the subheading “An Opportunity is Here for Humane Workers” that “Women all over the state who are interested in humane work are reminded of an opportunity now in the state for some effective education along the line of humane treatment of dumb animals.

“There is touring Texas a negro evangelist from South Carolina,”  the Waco Morning News  explained,  urging white women to attend a presentation by a black man.  “His name is Richard Carroll.  He is sent out from the colored Baptist educational board and brings very strong credentials from his home.  But,  stronger than that is the endorsement being sent by the Humane Society of Dallas.  Carroll appeared there before a very large audience of blacks.  A section was reserved for the white people and one hundred were present.  These report a strong practical appeal,  an interesting address,  and a deep impression.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Narrowly escaped being lynched”

In Waco,  as at many of Carroll’s other stops,  he delivered separate lectures for men,  women,  and children,  but blacks and whites sat together––if in separate sections––at each.

“Because Carroll publicly acknowledged racism and economic inequality,”  Davis wrote,  his animal welfare work occasionally became dangerous.  After giving a speech in 1923 at a Baptist church in Princeton,  South Carolina,  which denounced debt peonage as virtual slavery,  he narrowly escaped being lynched.”

Carroll died on October 30,  1929,   Founders Day at the South Carolina Negro Fair,  descended from his own efforts.  His funeral was “the first police-escorted funeral held for any African American in the city of Columbia,”  according to the South Caroliniana Library biography,  and was attended by both the then-South Carolina governor and one of his predecessors.

Frederick Rivers Barnwell

F. Rivers Barnwell

Frederick Rivers Barnwell (1883-1958),  born in Fort Worth,  Texas,  was,  like Lemon and Carroll,  a Baptist minister.  He joined the American Humane Education Society as a field officer in 1914.

Like Lemon and Carroll,  recounted Davis to the American Historical Association,  “Barnwell traveled across Texas and the Lower South by automobile,”  staging “lantern slide exhibitions on animal stewardship,  establishing ‘Bands of Mercy’ for thousands of black children,  organizing youthful birdhouse building competitions, and preaching ‘Humane Sunday’ sermons to thousands of people every year,  promoting animal advocacy as fundamental to social justice.

“Combating Jim Crowism,  he collaborated with white animal protectionists, most notably Kate Friend, who helped found the Waco Humane Society in 1902 and included abused women and children in her interracial project of social reform.”

(Painting by Edwin Forbes)

Humane warhorse care

Barnwell found less opportunity than Carroll to address racially integrated audiences,  but made the most of the chances he had,  “including a session with black and white soldiers at Camp MacArthur in Waco in July 1918 regarding humane warhorse care,”  Davis said.

“In a racist society,”  Davis summarized,  “Barnwell subtly critiqued white supremacy with an inclusive ‘gospel’ of kindness for people and animals.  Like other southern black animal advocates, Barnwell targeted the church and the school—two important sites of racial uplift and self-help in post-Emancipation black society.

“Barnwell extended his condemnation of animal cruelty to other forms of oppression, but his emphasis on animals potentially deflected his denunciation of racism,”  Davis assessed,  “thus giving him a measure of freedom to travel and speak about inequality across the color line.

F. Rivers Barnwell’s Band of Mercy at the Gay Street School in Fort Worth, 1927.

Director of Negro Health Service

“Diverse audiences read Barnwell’s activism differently—as an animal protectionist,  or as a champion of social justice,”  Davis continued.  “Hailed by African American civic leaders for ‘accomplishing vast good for righteousness,’  Barnwell was also praised by white politicians,  such as Governor James E. Ferguson of Texas,  who commended him in a proclamation supporting ‘Be Kind to Animals Week’ in 1917.”

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Barnwell remained active in humane work until 1945,  but in the latter part of his life and career was best known as Director of Negro Health Service at the Texas Tuberculosis Association and as a cofounder of the Omicron Upsilon chapter of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity of black businessmen and professionals.

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A black-and-white issue that the humane community has yet to face

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Lila Miller, DVM.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Editorial by Merritt & Beth Clifton

Two nights ago,  in advance of Martin Luther King Day, ANIMALS 24-7 posted as our lead feature Four black leaders who built the humane movement,  profiling William Key,  John W. Lemon,  Richard Carroll,  and Frederick Barnwell Rivers.

Those four forgotten black men between 1898 and 1945 probably reached more people in person, as employees of the American Humane Education Society,  than any humane educators before or since.  That their names are not better remembered in the humane and animal rights movements is a travesty.

Last night,  for the third consecutive year,  ANIMALS 24-7 reposted What animal advocates owe to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

This article,  among our most-read-and-requested offerings ever,  examines the enormous influence that Martin Luther King Jr. had on Henry Spira (1927-1998), in particular,  who more than anyone else inspired and rallied the rise of the animal rights movement in the late 20th century.

Dexter Scott King’s Twitter page.

The King family

ANIMALS 24-7 appreciated also the contributions of King’s widow,  Coretta Scott King;  the ongoing contributions to animal advocacy of his son Dexter Scott King;  and King’s influence on Cesar Chavez (1927-1993).

Chavez,  though better known as a labor leader and civil rights activist,  was a longtime vegetarian who spoke out for animals,  too.

Clockwise: Bill Moyer’s book Doing Democracy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bill Moyer himself.

Bill Moyer

We unfortunately omitted mention of Bill Moyer (1933-2002),  a longtime aide to King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who co-founded the Movement for a New Society and later founded the Social Movement Empowerment Project.

Moyer during his last dozen years tried hard to share his strategic experience and insights with animal advocacy leadership.  His influence on the thinking of some of the many animal advocacy leaders he met with is much more evident posthumously than it ever was during his lifetime.

Nelson Mandela saying goodbye to his Rhodesian ridgeback on April 20, 1964, moments before being taken to prison. Photographer Alf Kumalo, 1930-2012, himself a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, was probably the greatest news photographer South Africa has ever had.

Nelson Mandela

We might also have mentioned Nelson Mandela,  another leader profoundly influenced by Martin Luther King Jr.,  who in 1994 was elected first president of post-apartheid South Africa.  

Retiring in 1999,  at age 81,  Mandela withdrew gradually from public life,  gracefully surrendering most of his titles and affiliations before his death in December 2013,  at age 95.

 To the end,  however,  Mandela remained patron-in-chief of the National Council of  SPCAs,  a post he clearly cherished and had held for nearly 20 years.  

Was hunter,  not veg

Mandela was not deeply involved in animal issues.   He reportedly shot both an impala and a blesbok in 1991 as a guest of KaNgwane (Bantustan) conservation officials.  

Neither was Mandela a vegetarian,  though he had prominent vegetarian friends,  including the chef Bakshi Vemulakonda,  formerly director of catering for Air India,  and the spiritual leader Chinmoy Kumar Ghose (1931-2007).

From left to right: Lloyd B. Mobiley, DVM, U.S. Army Vet Corps. WWII; John Brown, DVM, first Kansas State U. black vet graduate; Theodore S. Williams, DVM, who with Mobiley & Brown was among the first USDA meat inspectors; Charles R. Robinson, DVM, Cornell 1944; Walter C. Bowie, DVM, longtime Tuskegee U. vet faculty member; Eugene W. Adams, DVM, also longtime Tuskegee U. vet faculty member; Thomas G. Perry, DVM, longtime Wichita small animal practitioner; Raymond C. Williams, DVM, United Nations Relief Rehabilitation Agency.

Sincere appreciation

But Mandela had a sincere appreciation of animals.  

Recognizing that animals do not recognize human political boundaries,   Mandela in 2001 opened a gate to allow 40 elephants to pass from Kruger National Park in South Africa to an adjoining area in Mozambique,  as part of the creation of the 13,510-square-mile Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou transborder park,  also including Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe.  

Mandela later attended the release of a troupe of baboons who had been kept in a laboratory into the Shambala Game Reserve.  The baboons had been rehabilitated by the late Rita Miljo (1931-2012),  founder of the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education,  against the advice of the National Council of SPCAs and South African wildlife officials that they could not be returned to the wild.  

The Ku Klux Klan used pit bulls in lynchings, as described here by Cayton’s Weekly.

“The greatest gift:  a more humane society”

“In time,”  Mandela said,  “we must bestow on South Africa the greatest gift––a more humane society.”  

The Cape Town-based Humane Education Trust made extensive use of the quote in support of the South African national humane education program,  introduced in 2003.  

Unfortunately,  the U.S. humane movement today lags as far behind in welcoming,  recognizing,  and celebrating the contributions of people of African descent as our society as a whole did in Martin Luther King Jr.’s lifetime.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Misappropriation

Worse,  much of the U.S. humane movement today is part-and-parcel of advancing pit bull proliferation,  one of the most enduring legacies of the Ku Klux Klan––and is often actively alienating African Americans by misappropriating terminology from the civil rights movement in defense of pit bulls,  and by making outreach efforts to black communities primarily to try to rehome more pit bulls,  even as pit bulls kill and disfigure black people,  children especially,  disproportionately often.

From top left: Zainabou Drame, 6, mauled in 2014 days after Cincinnati repealed ordinance excluding pit bulls; Allen Young, 21 months, killed in 2012 in Bamberg, SC; Amiyah Dunston, 9, killed in Elmont, NY, 2015. 2nd row: Harmony Halyer, mauled in New Brunwick, NJ, 2014; TayLynn DeVaughn, 2, killed in Forest Hills, PA, 2015; Kaden Muckleroy, 2, killed in Longview, TX, 2010; Beau Rutledge, killed in Atlanta, GA, 2013. 3rd row: Kasii Haith, 4, killed in Felton, DE, 2014; Camari Raymane Robinson, 2, killed in Killeen, TX 2014; Erin Ingram, 8, mauled in Atlanta, 2010.

Black children at risk

Relative to numbers,  a black child is today about three times more likely than a white child to be killed by a pit bull.

This was not always the case,  even when Klansmen terrorized neighborhoods undergoing racial integration by releasing pit bulls out of the backs of panel vans and pickup trucks to attack anyone of dark skin until whistled back at the first sound of approaching sirens.

This tactic,  unfortunately,  has already been seen in use in the U.S. this very month,  January 2019.

It was seen in Calgary,  Alberta––reputedly the most pit bull-friendly city in Canada––as recently as 2009,  where two elderly men and two female children were mauled in a series of apparently racially motivated incidents.

Pit bull attacks,  neglect,  violent abuse,  and misuse in dogfighting have since the 1990s often been associated with inner city “gangbangers,”  though all continue to occur most often in mostly white low-income neighborhoods.  

(Southern Poverty Law Center photo)

Klan control

During Martin Luther King Jr.’s lifetime,  by contrast,  pit bulls were rarely seen anywhere that black people lived.  Dogfighting in most of the U.S. was an artifact of history,   persisting almost entirely in the Deep South and a few other enclaves of Klan political influence,  where the “dogmen” could pay off Klan-controlled law enforcement agencies to look away.

Dogfighting when the Ku Klux Klan dominated Southern law enforcement.

The Klan and Klan splinter groups had been even more deeply involved in dogfighting and pit bull breeding a generation earlier. 

As recently as the early 1930s, Klan chapters masquerading as fraternal lodges would openly advertise dogfights, cockfights, and pigeon shoots.

From bedsheets to bike gangs

As overt racism became less and less respectable, along with cruelty to animals, the ads became more discreet.  

By the 1970s,  as the Klan itself faded,  the Klan connection was barely visible.  The Klan itself had largely morphed into motorcycle gangs and skinheads.  

Younger generations of racists had fled to the west and Pacific Northwest, pursuing twisted dreams of building a white supremacist empire that would stretch from Utah to Alaska.

KKK members leafleting at the 1992 Fred C. Coleman Memorial Pigeon Shoot in Hegins, Pennsylvania. (Merritt Clifton photo)

Instead of moonshining, they cooked meth.  Instead of bedsheets, they wore tattoos.  But they took dogfighting with them.

Prison gangs then spread dogfighting and the use of pit bulls to guard drugs into the black community. 

No real wizards

Had the Grand Imperial Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan schemed to leave a deadly legacy to do the maximum possible damage to black people, they could not have concocted a more diabolical plot.  

With the proceeds from dogfighting in decline for generations, there was no longer any reason to keep it as an exclusive franchise,  while unleashing pit bulls amid crowded housing projects and multi-family small framehouses full of small children was a surefire way to kill and maim many more of those children, faster, than the Birmingham Bomber (who killed four black schoolgirls in 1963) ever dreamed of.  

Eartha Kitt, the original “Catwoman” on screen, did cat adoption promo for the North Shore Animal League.

But the Grand Imperial Wizards of the Ku Klux Klan were never really wizards at all.  There was no big plot to what they did.  

The Klan could not have anticipated that pit bulls rehomed by humane societies would kill more black children from 2010 to the present than were killed by all dog attacks combined during the time the Klan itself controlled dogfighting and actively used pit bulls to intimidate black people.

Celebrities

The U.S. humane community does from time to time honor black celebrities who help to promote animal adoptions.

Yet this tradition has degenerated from singer and actress Eartha Kitt’s promotions for the North Shore Animal League into the recent use of imagery featuring convicted dogfighter Michael Vick by the Humane Society of the U.S. in ads pushing pit bulls.

Michael Vick, left, and former HSUS president Wayne Pacelle, right. (From HSUS video.)

Meanwhile the U.S. humane community remains conspicuously reluctant to hire and advance black personnel.

Emmogene James,  a longtime North Shore Animal League senior staff member,  is among the very few exceptions of the past 30 years.

Lloyd Tait,  VMD

Reviewing the original edition of Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff in August 2004,  ANIMALS 24-7 noticed immediately and approvingly that it was “dedicated to Lloyd Tait,  VMD.”

North Shore Animal League

Emmogene James of the North Shore Animal League advertising department.

Tait,  who in 1968 became the American SPCA’s first director of shelter medicine,  “was everything one could imagine in a friend and mentor,”  recalled Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff editors Lila Miller and Stephen Zawistowski.

“Irascible,  supportive,  quixotic,  and fiercely dedicated to animal welfare,’  Miller and Zawistowski wrote,  “he laid the early foundation for the formal practice of veterinary medicine in the ASPCA shelters.”

Tait was later for many years a traveling consultant for the World Society for the Protection of  Animals,  contributing to humane advances in street dog and feral cat population control from the Caribbean islands to eastern Europe to Sri Lanka.

Lila Miller, DVM. (Facebook photo)

Lila Miller

Tait joined the ASPCA staff soon after former ASPCA Brooklyn shelter director George Watford,  long ago retired, as only the second nationally prominent humane worker of African descent since Barnwell.

Miller,  who on January 1,  2019 announced her retirement,  joined the ASPCA staff in 1977.   Despite her seniority and title,  Miller appears to have never been listed on IRS Form 990 as one of the ASPCA’s ten most highly paid personnel.  At her retirement Miller remained perhaps the youngest black person in a leadership position with any of the several dozen largest humane societies in the United States.

Some black guests are occasionally visible at national humane and animal rights conferences.  Almost all,  however,  are either employed outside the humane cause,  or are visitors from Africa.  Those appearing at the podium are most often celebrity athletes or entertainers.

Affirmative action

Since Miller was hired,  a few other people of African ancestry have become prominent in shelter work,  perhaps most notably longtime National Animal Care & Control Association board member Keith Robinson,  long ago retired.  Most of these black people,  however,  have worked in the realm of public service, where affirmative action hiring has long been required by law.

A convention of Afro-American executive directors of humane societies could probably be held around a card table,  and would still have empty chairs.

Lila Miller today.

Neither the first edition of Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff,  nor the second edition,  published 10 years later,  makes mention of the ethnicity of either Tait or Miller.

Yet it needs to be mentioned.

When two of a tiny handful of people of any particular background make contributions to humane work of the magnitude they have,  the rest of the humane community should sit up,  take notice,  and look for more talent from the same source.

United Negro College Fund founder Frederick Patterson, DVM, with then U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.

No random accident

It is highly unlikely that Tait and Miller became who they are,  doing what they have done for decades,  by random accident.

It is also tedious and tiresome that we are still attending national conferences where it is suggested,  based on long-ago surveys of Afro-American students in agricultural veterinary schools,  that African-Americans are somehow less emotionally attached to animals than anyone else.

Any survey of agricultural veterinary students would almost certainly find less emotional attachment to animals than among companion animal veterinary students,  and would probably find less than among the general public.  This is simply not relevant.  It is time to stop looking for differences and excuses,  and start looking for Afro-Americans to hire and train.

Tuskegee Institute first graduating class of veterinarians, 1949.

Abundant qualified talent

The veterinary profession itself offers abundant qualified talent.  Harvard first graduated a black veterinarian in 1889;  the University of Pennsylvania in 1907.  The Tuskegee Institute,  a historically black university,  has graduated entire classes of veterinarians annually since 1949.

Indeed,  the percentage of veterinarians of African-American descent has edged up slowly,  from about 2% at Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to 2.5% today,  but––except at the ASPCA––black shelter veterinarians barely exist.

Charles R. Robinson, DVM, Cornell 1944, lived to see a black U.S. President, but not a black president of a major U.S. humane society.

SOS

Attentive readers may note that this is not the first time ANIMALS 24-7 has said this.  The above editorial is adapted from an article originating in January 1993.  Much of it is word-for-word identical to an opinion column published alongside a review of the first edition of Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff in August 2004,  and alongside a review of the second edition in August 2014.

ANIMALS 24-7 posted previous editions of it,  as it now stands with only minor updates,  in 2016,  2017,  and 2018.

By January 2019 these words should have long since become historical artifacts.  The message should no longer have currency.

Instead,  it is still time for the humane community to stop looking for differences and excuses,  and start looking for black Americans to hire,  train,  and promote into positions of influence.  It will never be too late.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

(See also Shelter Medicine for Veterinarians & Staff,  Second Edition,  edited by Lila Miller & Stephen Zawistowski.)

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Kumpf out, but new bill won’t undo harm he did to Ohio dog law

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William Shakespeare, Klonda Richey, & cat.  (Beth Clifton collage)

“The evil men do lives after them,”  but pit bull victims are dead forever

            DAYTON,  Ohio––Seven years after former Montgomery County dog warden Mark Kumpf led the campaign that effectively dismantled the Ohio dangerous dog law,  Montgomery County state representative Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg) is on January 23,  2019 to introduce yet another of many bills seeking to undo the damage without reinstating breed-specific language.

This is an impossibility,  if the goal of the legislation is to prevent fatal and disfiguring dog attacks before they occur,  but about 90% of all fatal and disfiguring dog attacks could be prevented if “bully breeds,”  responsible for approximately 90% of all fatal and disfiguring dog attacks on humans in the U.S. over the past 36 years,  were put under appropriate restrictions.

(See Dog attack deaths & maimings, U.S. & Canada, 1982-2018 log.)

Niraj Antani

Sponsor opposes “gun-free zones”

The Antani bill appears to be mostly an attempt to undo the harm that Antani did in March 2018 to his own image on public safety issues by advocating that 18-year-olds should be allowed to carry guns on high school and college campuses.  Antani asserted then that “gun-free zones don’t work.”

The Antani bill comes “five years after the fatal mauling of Dayton resident Klonda Richey,”  57,  on February 7,  2014,  observed Dayton Daily News state capitol bureau reporter Laura A. Bischoff.

Savannah Coleman  (Family photo)

Names bill after child victim, who survived

“Antani,  however,  will name his bill after 8-year-old Savannah Coleman,  a Miami Township girl who was attacked in July 2018 by a neighbor’s 60-pound pit bull,”  Bischoff continued.

“Savannah suffered a skull fracture,  nine lacerations to her scalp,  three lacerations to her right ear,  and two lacerations and a puncture wound to her right hand,”  Bischoff explained.  “She required hundreds of stitches,  a blood transfusion and five nights in the hospital,”  according to Coleman’s mother,  Tierney Dumont.

“Bills named after Richey failed to gain traction in three previous legislative sessions,”  Bischoff remembered.  “One died in committee in 2014,  another failed to win final approval in 2016,  and a third bill failed in 2018. Antani will be the fifth area lawmaker to take on the issue.”

Montgomery County dog warden Mark Kumpf with pit bull advocate Jane Berkey, who helped Kumpf to undo the Ohio law recognizing pit bulls as inherently “vicious” dogs.

Kumpf fired 11 days before Christmas

Kumpf was fired by the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners on December 14,  2018,  but the decision to fire him had already been made earlier,  after the Montgomery County Animal Resource center flunked an extensive procedural review done from November 26, through November 30,  2018 by Team Shelter USA,  a consulting firm formed in 2017 by veteran shelter veterinarian Sara Pizano.

Pizano debuted in shelter work in 1995,  as a staff veterinarian for the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington,  New York.  Pizano left North Shore to become director of veterinary services for the Humane Society of Broward County in Fort Lauderdale,  Florida,  1998-2003.  From 2005 to 2013,  Pizano was director of Miami-Dade Animal Services,  also in Florida.  Then,  from 2013 to 2017,  Pizano was a team member at Target Zero,  a no-kill consultancy set up by Maddie’s Fund and the Best Friends Animal Society.

Joining Pizano on the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center review team were Becca Boronat,  DVM,  of the Charleston Animal Society in South Carolina,  Cameron Moore from the University of Florida,  and Kim Sanders,  DVM,  of Anderson County (S.C.) PAWS.

Sara Pizano

“Desire to move forward with new leadership”

“The [Montgomery County] Board of County Commissioners and the County Administrator desire to move forward with new leadership at the Animal Resource Center in order to implement recommendations of the recent external review,”  county administrator Michael Colbert informed animal control staff on December 10,  2018.

Kumpf had survived a series of controversies over allegedly lackadaisical responses to dangerous dog incidents,  including in two cases where repeated complaints preceded human fatalities.

But Kumpf––who was praised in a 2008 cover feature by the Humane Society of the U.S. publication Animal Sheltering for reducing Animal Resource Center shelter euthanasias and increasing adoptions––did not survive criticism from Team Shelter USA for having a “live release rate” of 56.7%,  instead of 90% plus.

(Beth Clifton collage )

Statistical nonsense

The use of “live release rate” as a benchmark of animal control agency performance,  as ANIMALS 24-7 has often pointed out,  is statistical nonsense,  since it fails to take into consideration the characteristics of the agency’s intake.

If a community has reduced surplus dog and cat births to the point that the animal control agency is seldom receiving healthy whole litters,  and has adopted the neuter/return model of feral cat control,  total animal intake today is usually less than half of the intake volume of 30 years ago.

The number of dangerous dogs the agency impounds may be exactly the same as 30 years ago,  yet will have risen as a percentage of animal intake from less than 5% to more than 15%,  and more than 30% of dogs.

Under those circumstances,  achieving a 90% “live release rate” will mean that the shelter is returning a third or more of the impounded dangerous dogs to the community––as well as just not impounding them,  one of the longstanding focal complaints against Kumpf.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Drug investigation

The Team Shelter USA evaluation also found that Animal Resource Center staff “improperly store vaccines,  reuse syringes and likely run afoul of the state law and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency by not keeping track of a euthanasia solution called Fatal Plus,”  wrote Dayton Daily News staff writer Chris Stewart.

Stewart updated on January 9,  2019 that “Both the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office have opened separate investigations” into the allegations pertaining to possible misuse or mishandling of controlled substances.

“A Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office investigator has been looking into other allegations made against the Animal Resource Center that are potentially criminal,”  Stewart added,  “including the disappearance of a dog’s body ordered preserved by a judge in a criminal case against its owners, who also filed a civil lawsuit last year against the ARC for euthanizing the dog there in 2016.

Dyson

Dispute over Dyson

The dog,  a 10-year-old pit bull named Dyson [incorrectly identified as a Labrador in some media reports],  “was seized by a Kettering animal control official in October 2016 and euthanized five days later,”  Stewart summarized earlier.

Dyson’s owners,  Josh and Lindsey Glowney,  “were prosecuted for misdemeanor animal cruelty/neglect in Kettering Municipal Court,”  Stewart wrote.  “They pleaded no contest,  were found guilty and the criminal case is in an appellate court.”

The Glowneys meanwhile responded,  Stewart continued,  with “a civil lawsuit in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court alleging 20 counts including negligence,  constitutional violations,  trespassing,  invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and other tort complaints.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Malfunctioning freezer

Their attorney,  Paul Leonard,  “was notified on December 10,  2018 by Montgomery County’s legal counsel representing Kumpf and Kelley Meyer,  the facility’s veterinarian, that the dog’s carcass could not be found,”  Stewart reported.

This was about two weeks after Team Shelter USA mentioned finding that “deceased bodies” were thawing in a malfunctioning shelter freezer,  “with strong stench smelled in the euthanasia room and nearby hallways.”

Klonda Richey

Klonda Richey

Montgomery County,  before the lawsuit over Dyson and the Team Shelter USA assessment,  had strongly defended Kumpf,  awarding him a 2.5% pay raise in August 2014,  six months after Klonda Richey’s death,  and allocating at least $165,000 since September 2015 toward the cost of defending him against a lawsuit filed against both Kumpf and the county by Richey’s family.

The case is scheduled for trial by jury in March 2019.

Richey was killed by two dogs belonging to her neighbors,  variously identified in court documents as “large-breed pit bulls,  mastiffs,  or cane corsos.”

Richey “made approximately 13 calls to the Montgomery County Regional Dispatch Center and at least 11 calls to the Animal Resource Center” seeking protection from the dogs who killed her in the months before her death,”  summarized Dayton Daily News staff writer Chris Stewart.

Mark Kumpf  (Facebook photo)

Destruction of evidence

“Richey was so scared of the dogs,”  Stewart wrote,  “that she installed a fence between the two houses,  put up a security camera to monitor when the dogs were off leash,  and sought a civil protection order [against the dogs’ owner],  which was denied.”

The lawsuit by Richey’s survivors initially focused just on the failure of Kumpf and the Animal Resource Center to respond effectively to her calls for help.

In March 2015,  Stewart wrote,  “the plaintiff’s counsel warned the Animal Resource Center to preserve documents and records and ‘refrain from destroying all potentially discoverable information’ that could be related to Richey’s death.”

In mid-2018,  however,  the lawsuit against Kumpf and Montgomery County was amended,  Stewart reported,  to additionally allege that Montgomery County had “willfully and with malicious purpose destroyed highly relevant public records,”  specifically years worth of animal control truck logs preceding Richey’s death,  “with intent to disrupt plaintiff’s existing lawsuit against defendant Mark Kumpf.”

Dog owners Andrew Nason and Julie Custer meanwhile were found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of failure to control dogs,  as part of a 2015 plea bargain,  and did jail time.

Maurice Brown

Maurice Brown

On April 25,  2017,  meanwhile,  a pit bull belonging to Anthony Austin,  28,  of Dayton,  killed neighbor Maurice Brown,  60.

“Multiple times in 2008 and 2012,  a dog owner at the same address [where Maurice Brown died] was cited for not having a license for his two dogs,  both listed as male pit bulls,  according to the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center,”  reported Cornelius Frolik and Katie Wedell of the Dayton Daily News.   Whether the dog owner was Austin,  Frolik and Wedell did not say.

In between,  in 2011,  Frolik and Wedell learned,   “9-year-old Dynver Lovett was playing in the yard there when a loose dog from down the block ran up and began to fight with the multiple dogs at that address.  The girl was bitten by the loose dog on her arm and leg.  She needed 50 stitches and has permanent scarring from the experience.

Police officer walks past one of the pit bulls impounded after Maurice Brown was mauled to death.

Non-response

“Her mother,  Kaneika Lovett,  said she was never contacted by the Montgomery County Animal Resource Center and the county has no record of the incident.  Dayton police also didn’t pursue any charges against the dog’s alleged owners,  James Hastings and Carla Whitt,”  but the Lovett family in 2013 won a $179,000 civil judgement against Hastings and Whitt,  which they never collected because Hastings died in 2015,  while Whitt’s whereabouts are unknown.

The Animal Resource Center did respond to a 2015 complaint “regarding the welfare” of the still unlicensed pit bulls,  Frolik and Wedell continued,  but no further action was taken.

Austin on September 10,  2018 pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to control a dog,   filed 16 months after the attack and after extensive publicity about the failure of law enforcement to bring charges.  Austin is apparently still awaiting a jury trial originally scheduled for December 2018.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Alleged failure to help dying victim

In the interim,  reported Dayton Daily News staff writers Frolik and Mark Gokavi,  “Dayton police lieutenant Kimberly Hill,  who used to oversee the department’s Professional Standards Bureau,  was disciplined for not submitting internal investigations [pertaining to Brown’s death] in time for consideration of discipline for the responding police officers.

“A commander’s review of a related investigation of the dog-mauling case said officers Daniel Hartings and Scott Pendley ‘failed to render immediate assistance and/or first aid.’  Hartings retired in 2017,”  Frolik and Gokavi recounted.

Cane Corso believed to be one of the two who killed Klonda Richey and were shot by police at the scene.

Four dog attack fatalities on Kumpf’s watch

Brown was the fourth dog attack fatality in Montgomery County since Kumpf,  working closely with the pro-pit bull Animal Farm Foundation and Best Friends Animal Society,  used his influence as a longtime board member with both the National Animal Control Association and the Ohio Dog Wardens Association to help secure the repeal of state legislation defining “any breed commonly known as a pit bull dog” as inherently vicious.

The Ohio Dog Wardens Association under earlier leadership had lobbied to win passage of the breed-specific legislation,  and had always before defended it.

In the two Montgomery County dog attack fatalities preceding those of Richey and Brown,  Dawn Juergens, 75, was killed by her own two Cane Corsos on September 1, 2012,  while Elizabeth Hirt, 93, died on December 11, 2012,  two weeks after she was mauled by her own two Boston terriers.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

This was the only fatal or disfiguring attack by Boston terriers on record.

Please help us continue speaking truth to power: 

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The Mesa case: from rescue hot-dogging to rescue hoarding

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Rescue addiction & enabling made Teri Finneren and the animals in her care the losers in a quasi-pyramid scheme 

            MESA, Arizona––The January 15,  2019 discovery of multiple skeletal remains of small dogs in the feces-strewn home of of Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue operator Theresa Deanne (Teri) Finneren caused dog and cat rescuers,  veterinary clinics,  and animal shelters throughout Maricopa County,  Arizona and as far away as Los Angeles to frantically query one another as to whether anyone knew what became of dozens of special-needs animals that they entrusted to Finneren’s care in recent years.

Finneren received animals from––among many other organizations––the Arizona Humane Society,  the Casa Grande Animal Care & Adoption Center,  and Old Poodle Consulting & Associates.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Everyone & their dogs

Finneren also received animals from individuals including rich men,  poor men,  beggars and alleged thieves,  a doctor,  a lawyer,  and perhaps an Indian chief, through a charity specializing in “Rez dogs.”

“DANIKA IS MISSING!!”  bannered Saving Orphan Souls Rescue founder Ro Perez on Facebook.

“On February 19, 2018,”  Perez explained,  “Teri Finneran from Tiggy Town adopted Danika from Saving Orphan Souls Rescue.  Danika is disabled,  as her back legs do not work. She came to Palm Glen Animal Hospital from the MASH Unit, and they entrusted us to find her permanent placement.  We thought we did with Teri.

“At that point in time,”  Perez claimed,  “her home was spotless,  animals well cared for etc. After reviewing the intake notes from the raid,  we DO NOT see Danika on the inventory list,  alive or dead.  Where is she?”

“We all heard plea for help”

Another Saving Orphan Souls Rescue dog,  Kojak, was also missing and unaccounted for,”  Perez acknowledged,  admitting “We all heard [Finneren’s] plea for help months ago.  I for one should have taken a step back,”  Perez said,  “reached out on a consistent basis,  and listened to her cries for help to see what we could have done.”

A variety of online resources indicate that Theresa Deanne Finneren,  62,  was formerly known as Theresa D. Baker and Theresa D. Dobbie,  before marrying Michael Patrick Finneren.

A notice declaring Finneren’s house at 1836 North Staple Drive,  Unit 107,  Mesa, Arizona 85203 to be unfit for human habitation was issued to Michael Finneren,  who may have bought the house in 1992,  the only time that real estate records show it changed hands.

Urban Franks

As of 2013,  the same address doubled as home office of Urban Franks,  a business that advertised itself as “mobile purveyors of gourmet hot dogs,”  listing both Michael and Teri Finneren as “executive chefs.”

At peak,  Urban Franks probably moved more “dogs” each day at noon than Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue rehomed in all the years it existed.  But Urban Franks does not appear to have been registered with the Arizona Corporation Commission Corporations Division until July 1,  2015.

A LinkedIn profile mentions that Teri Finneren worked as an operator and in corporate sales for the Sprint telephone network from October 1989 to October 1999;  in customer service for Southwest Airlines from March 1999 to 2001;   and as a muralist and sign painter from January 1999 to the present.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Petmomofmany”

Joining Twitter in April 2009 as “petmomofmany,”  Theresa Deanne (Teri) Finneren on July 12,  2017 posted “I love dogs.  I’m 60 and have 30.”

That by itself should have been a warning.

Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue,  which also used several variants of that name,  was active on social media by May 2016.

But Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue,  which also took in cats and apparently birds,  did not obtain IRS 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

Who was Tiggy?

“Although we primarily help animals in our area,”  Finneren posted to the Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue web site,  “we have rescued animals from other states and have successfully placed our pups in their furever homes as far as Canada.  We specialize in seniors and special needs dogs that are afflicted with varying degrees of medical and physical disabilities.

“Tiggy Town got its name from our very first resident rescue,  named Tiggy,”  Finneren continued.  “When his owners no longer wanted him because he was ‘too old,’  they broke his little heart and dumped him off to die in the cold,  scary local shelter.  Sadly, many dumped senior souls don’t have the happy ending that Tiggy did.”

From the earliest social media postings that ANIMALS 24-7 has been able to access,  Theresa Deanne (Teri) Finneren accepted special needs animals as often as on back-to-back days,  and was effusively praised by other rescuers,  who appear to have seldom if ever questioned why she was taking so many hard-case animals,  or her ability to look after them.

(Beth Clifton collage)

One Voice Dog Rescue testimonial

For example,  posted Karen Nelson of One Voice Dog Rescue on June 18,  2017,  who often transferred dogs to Finneren,  “Teri Finneren has a heart the size of Kansas and devotes her every waking moment to these ones deserving every ounce of love we all can give.

“Tiggy Town works closely with Tootsie’s Vision [a New Mexico rescue] and One Voice,”  Nelson said,  asserting that “Every donation ~ monetary, food, supplies and medical in nature ~ goes directly into the care of each one in her charge.”

Added Nelson on September 14,  2017,  “Let me tell you about the very special lady Teri Finneren,”  after Finneran took in “two little blind girls that One Voice Rescue only days ago pulled to safety out of the southern Los Angeles animal facility and back to Phoenix.”

Toto and Dorothy see the twister, from The Wizard of Oz (1939).

“We’re not in Kansas any more,  Toto”

Wrote Nelson,  “Ms. Teri, with Tiggy Town Sanctuary is considered a sister rescue org with One Voice,  and with Tootsie’s Vision and Lifeline Oro Valley Animal Rescue,  because Teri always says yes for almost any time she is called to help a dog in great need.

“She deals with helping these babies at their end of life,”  Nelson said,  “and she faces their death with them.

“I have never seen this lady ask for handouts,  never place a GoFundMe out there,  have never asked for donations ~ and yet,  time and again,  she is the first to step up and say,  ‘Yes, I will take this baby and help you out,’”  Nelson testified,  running through a veritable checklist of what should have been stoplights.

This went on,  Nelson continued,  even when “Teri was facing a sudden emergency with her husband’s fall and hospitalization,  [and] with worries for her mother in the hurricane,”  apparently Hurricane Irma.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Be sure you know who you are working with”

On that occasion,  after Finneren acknowledged feeling financial stress,  Nelson appealed for donations on her behalf.

Posted the Sulphur Springs Valley Animal Shelter,  after Finneren accepted a dog suffering from congenital curvature of the spine that kept the dog from walking properly,  “These dogs deserve an opportunity to find their happy and I know with Teri,  this precious little girl surrendered to the shelter with an undetermined fate will find her happy.  Thank you Tiggy Town Rescue!

Finneren received many similar endorsements,  including from Citizens for North Phoenix Strays,  whose web page opens with a warning to “Be sure you know who you are working with,”  noting that “Our worst rescues have been from incompetent rescues.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Handpicked list”

But Citizens for North Phoenix Strays included Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue on what it alleged was “a handpicked list of referred trustworthy reliable rescue people and organizations to ‘Help you, help the animals.’”

“One less going into the unknown or to a bad situation,”  posted rescuer Ro Perez after Finneren accepted a seven-year-old dog from her.

Finneren took in mostly small dogs,  especially Chihuahuas and sometimes a Dachshund.  Both Chihuahuas and Dachshunds were among the dogs found dead in her house.

On February 23,  2018,  however,  Smiling Dog Rescue praised Tiggy Town Rescue for accepting an eight-year-old pit bull who was recovering from a fractured hip.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Yelled at” for asking questions

After Finneren was arrested,  Tempe naturopath Lisa Maturo Carrick acknowledged having seen some warning signs.

“Finneren used to get dogs from the county shelter frequently,”  Carrick posted to Facebook.  “She used to ask other rescues to pull dogs for her,  and about a year ago I asked on one of her pleas on social media why she had to have other rescues pull for her,  versus pull [the dogs] herself,  and got yelled at by other rescue people defending her and calling me awful and mean and critical for questioning her obvious good intentions.  I was made into the bad guy for simply asking about her and whether she was someone who should be getting dogs brought to her so much,  without any verification of her as a rescue.”

Dogs arrive at Tiggy Town Senior Dog Rescue.  (Teri Finneren/ Facebook photo)

House “covered in dog feces”

Said the Mesa Police Department report,  “We discovered the living conditions within the home were extremely unsanitary.  The conditions were so egregious that the city had to condemn the residence.  The inside was covered in dog feces to the point that we could not walk anywhere inside.

“We found 12 live dogs and five live cats,”  the police report continued,  mentioning that all 17 live animals had “various health conditions.”

Searching the house,  Mesa Police officers “located six deceased dogs in a trash can in the kitchen.  We found two animal skulls in one of the bedrooms and skeletal remains of what appeared to be a dog in the living room on the couch.  No one was living at the residence.  We seized all of the live animals and the remains of the dead ones.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Finneren:  dogs “died from fighting”

“Within the last year,”  the police report said,  “both the Mesa Police Department and Mesa Animal Control had received numerous complaints about the stench emitting from Theresa’s residence.  On January 16, 2019,  Theresa [told the arresting officer] she was sorry and that things just got out of control.”

The arresting officer  “asked her about the two skeletal remains in a bedroom and she told me those two dogs had died a while ago.  She said a couple of them had died from fighting,  a couple from valley fever,  and a couple from old age.”

In a follow-up interview,  Finneren told the arresting officer that “She felt depressed and as of July 2018,”  about six months after she accepted the pit bull,  who was the dog mostly likely to have killed others,  “she was just overwhelmed and stopped caring.  She said ‘I gave up.  I feel awful every day.  I feel more guilt that I can tell you.  I felt guilty about the dogs.’”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Dog-eat-dog existence

Finneran told the arresting officer during that interview,  according to the police report,  “that one of the dogs got into a fight with another dog and she found it dead in the house.”

The arresting officer “asked her if she was living at the house or taking better care of the dogs,  would that dog be alive today and she told me it would.”

The arresting officer “asked her about the skeletal remains of the dogs and she told me they had died of old age and she had put them in a bag in the trash can,  but the other dogs got into the trash can [and] must have eaten them.”

Noted the arresting officer,  “If the dogs were fed every day,  they would not have eaten the remains of the deceased dogs.”

Three views of Theresa Deanne (Teri) Finneren, with most recent at upper right.

“I hate myself”

Telling the arresting officer “I hate myself,”  Finneran acknowledged that abandoning the dogs was wrong,  and that she should have called animal control,  the police report finished.

Finneren was charged with 17 counts of animal cruelty,  neglect,  and intentional cruel mistreatment.

Reported ABC 15,  “Neighbors said they’d see Finneren stop by the home every now and then,  but no one had been living there for a year and a half.”

Released on her own recognizance,  Finneren is due in court for a status conference on February 4,  2019,  followed by a preliminary hearing on February 11,  2019.

Heidi Lueders & pit bull.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Finneren case parallels Heidi Lueders case in Connecticut

The Finneren/Tiggy Town case in some respects parallels the charges brought against Bully Breed Rescue president Heidi E. Lueders,  31,  for allowing five caged or otherwise confined pit bulls to starve to death in the rented New Canaan,  Connecticut home that she herself occupied at the time.  Facing five counts of cruelty to animals,  plus one count of criminal damage to landlord’s property by a tenant in the first degree,  Lueders is due for arraignment in Bridgeport Superior Court on January 29,  2019.

Both the Finneren case and the Lueders case spotlight the extent to which “rescue” has become a pyramid scheme.

(Merritt Clifton collage)

Pyramid scheme

At the top of the pyramid are some of the biggest,  most affluent humane societies and animal control agencies in the world.

These societies and agencies boost their “live release rates” by parcelling out to ill-funded and under-qualified rescuers many of their hardest-to-place animals,  including older animals with special needs,  pit bulls and other dangerous dogs,  and even some animals who have been owner-surrendered,  most often by people who cannot afford the euthanasia fees charged by veterinarians,  specifically to be euthanized.

Rescuers maintain status in the middle tier of the pyramid scheme by managing to rehome some hard-case animals,  while passing along those who are most difficult to rehome and most costly to care for to the rescuers at the bottom of the pyramid.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

Rescuers at the bottom of the pyramid tend to include the most emotionally needy,  who are easiest to persuade to accept “just one more” until they are overwhelmed,  and animals who might have been euthanized by the big,  affluent humane societies and animal control agencies,  die instead from attacks by other animals,  disease,  starvation,  and comparable conditions of extreme neglect.

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Scotlund Haisley takes Subway to jail for alleged armed robbery

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Haisley formerly headed Animal Rescue Corps,  In Defense of Animals,  HSUS emergency services,  & Washington Animal Rescue League

            WASHINGTON D.C.––“On Saturday,  January 26,  2019,  50-year-old Scotlund Thomas Haisley, of no fixed address,  was arrested and charged with two counts of Robbery of an Establishment,”  the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department announced to media in the early hours of January 27,  2019.

“On Sunday,  January 20, 2019,  at approximately 6:37 p.m.,”  the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department elaborated,  “the suspect entered an establishment,”  a Subway restaurant,  “located in the 4400 block of Connecticut Avenue,  Northwest.  Once inside, the suspect approached an employee with an object and demanded U.S. currency.  The employee complied.  The suspect then fled the scene.”

Collage of images from alleged Subway stick-ups.

Returned for seconds

“On Thursday,  January 24,  2019,  at approximately 8:50 p.m.,”  the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department continued,  “the suspect entered an establishment located in the 4400 block of Connecticut Avenue, Northwest,”  actually the same Subway restaurant,  according to ABC-7 television news.

“Once inside, the suspect approached an employee and demanded U.S. currency,”  the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department media release repeated.  “The employee complied.  The suspect then fled the scene,”  but this time was identified.

“In surveillance video of both robberies,”  ABC-7 explained  “the suspect,  wearing the same outfit with a ski mask on,  can be seen approaching an employee and demanding money at the register behind the counter.  In the first robbery,  it appears the suspect holds and points what appears to be possibly a gun at the back of the employee’s neck.

Scotlund Haisley publicity photo.
(Animal Rescue Corps)

From $101,572/year to alleged $300 stick-up

“Police said the suspect took off with approximately $300 in cash in the first robbery.  At least in the case of the first robbery,  he both arrived and left on the Metro. The nearest Metro station to the Subway restaurant location is Van Ness-UDC on the Red Line,  which he appears to have taken at least when he left,  based on surveillance video.”

Haisley until September 2018 was founder and president of Animal Rescue Corps,  incorporated in Washington D.C. in January 2011.

Raising $2.7 million through 2016,  Animal Rescue Corps paid Haisley $97,256,  $95,114,  and $101,572 in 2014,  2015,  and 2016,  the most recent year for which an Animal Rescue Corps filing of IRS Form 990 is available.

Scotlund Haisley

Fumes

Haisley in a September 27,  2018 interview with Nick Beres of Scripps Media,  Inc. attributed his departure from Animal Rescue Corps to “possible liver failure,”  including inability to “hold food or beverages down,”  resulting in his becoming “very exhausted” to the point of requiring a blood transfusion.

An October 2018 “GoFundMe” posted on Haisley’s behalf raised $5,130.

Haisley suggested exposure to ammonia fumes during raids on alleged animal hoarders had caused his illness.

Former co-workers have,  however,  persistently named Haisley in allegations of substance abuse,  beginning in 1996,  when Haisley was among the first people hired by the then newly formed New York City Center for Animal Care & Control,  and was also among the first people to leave the NY-CACC.

Scotlund Haisley published a ghostwritten autobiography in 2016.

On the streets

A January 1997 profile by Bill Workman of the San Francisco Chronicle said Haisley “ran away from an abusive home life in L.A. at the age of 11,”  and lived “on the streets for five years until he got a job as a construction worker in the nation’s capital.”

Workman also reported that Haisley “didn’t learn how to read until he was 16,  and finally got a GED diploma a year later.”

Former co-workers have also persistently alleged that Haisley has had continuing difficulties with what Haisley himself has termed “dyslexia.”

Haisley worked for PETA for a time before moving to the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control.

Scotlund Haisley promo photo. (Animal Rescue Corps)

Three years at HSUS

After departing from the NY-CACC,  Haisley was briefly chief animal control officer for the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo,  California;  was executive director of the Washington Animal Rescue League for seven years;  and was director of emergency services for the Humane Society of the U.S. from January 2008 until February 2010.

In that capacity,  Haisley in July 2009 led a multi-agency raid on Pang’s Animal Haven,  a nonprofit no-kill facility in Nanakuli,  Hawaii,  two days after the death of cofounder Bonnie Pang.  Her husband Norman Pang had already surrendered the 400-odd animals on the property to the Oahu SPCA.  HSUS became involved after the Oahu SPCA requested logistics assistance.

The Honolulu prosecutor’s office in September 2009 declined to prosecute neglect and cruelty charges recommended by the Hawaiian Humane Society, which had unsuccessfully sought to prosecute the Pangs in 1995.

Scene from The Dog Lover.

Warrant issues

Norman Pang then sued the Humane Society of the U.S. and a variety of codefendants, including four HSUS staff members and three members of the Hawaiian Humane Society staff.

The Pang case was in mid-2010 settled out of court.

Haisley, less than two months after the Pang’s Animal Haven raid, led another multi-agency raid in which Hurley, South Dakota hunting dog breeder Dan Christensen’s dogs “were seized under an improperly obtained warrant as videographers from the HSUS filmed the events,” recounted John Hult of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader,  after the 2016 release of a fictionalized film based on the incident.

The film, The Dog Lover, was financed by Forrest Lucas, founder of Lucas Oil and funder of the anti-animal advocacy organization Protect the Harvest.

Scotlund Haisley

Staff revolt

Haisley left HSUS after 11 of the then-18 members of the HSUS emergency services team either resigned or threatened to resign in protest against his leadership, according to documents obtained by ANIMALS 24-7.

Two of those who resigned, Ronnie Graves and Allen Schwartz, detailed their reasons for departure on the October 18, 2009 edition of The Carroll Cox Show, an environmental news and discussion forum broadcast on Sunday mornings by the 48-year-old Hawaiian talk radio powerhouse KWAI 1080 AM.

Also a longtime columnist for Hawaii Fishing News, Cox was for about 10 years a wildlife law enforcement officer for the California Department of Fish & Game.  For another 10 years Cox was a special investigator for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Then-HSUS president Wayne Pacelle, HSUS National Council member Allison Pittman, & Scotlund Haisley, circa 2008.

Defended by Wayne Pacelle

Graves and Schwartz explained to Cox that they were particularly concerned that Haisley had asked them to wear badges resembling those worn by law enforcement officers, and that this could expose them to legal liability.

“I want the scum to think we are law enforcement,” Graves said Haisley told them.

Graves and Schwartz then took their concern to then-Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Cowboy ways”

“I like the cowboy ways that Scotlund brings to the team,” Graves said Pacelle responded.

Pacelle resigned from HSUS amid allegations of sexual harassment in February 2018.

Haisey, after departing from HSUS, was introduced as chief executive officer at In Defense of Animals on June 4, 2010. Haisley was terminated there by mid-September 2010.

Haisley formed Animal Rescue Corps three months after that.

Birds went from one bad situation to another

The new organization enjoyed a burst of good publicity after taking in 116 exotic birds who were impounded in August 2011 from Hookbill Haven Aviary in Portland,  Tennessee.  Owner Lasandra Walter,  69,  pleaded guilty to four counts of cruelty just two weeks later.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

But many of the birds were reportedly turned over to the Bailey Foundation,  a bird rescue charity founded by former National Aquarium bird caretaker Beth Lindenau.  Forty animals were found dead at the Bailey Foundation address in January 2012.  Indicted on 69 related charges,  Lindenau was acquitted of all counts in September 2012.  Her husband,  Brady Decker,  originally indicted on 93 counts,  pleaded guilty to six counts of neglect in June 2013.

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Scotlund Haisley allegedly took Subway while on bond for alleged assault

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(Beth Clifton collage)

Estranged wife & ex-associates testify online against Animal Rescue Corps founder

WASHINGTON D.C.–– Due for arraignment on January 30,  2019 on two counts of armed robbery for allegedly sticking up a Subway sandwich shop on January 20 and January 26,  2019,  Animal Rescue Corps founder Scotlund Haisley was already in legal trouble for allegedly assaulting his wife.

Reported Nick Beres of NewsChannel 5 on October 22, 2018,  who had often spoken of Haisley’s work in glowing terms,  “Haisley stepped away from day-to-day operations [at Animal Rescue Corps]  to care for a serious liver condition which he says was made worse over the years from exposure to toxic levels of ammonia from feces and urine at rescues.  Well,  now I’ve also learned that just last week Haisley was arrested on charges of second degree assault in Maryland.  He is out of jail on $5,000 bond.  The details of the alleged assault have not been officially released to me by authorities.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Lynne Haisley filled in the gaps

Lynne Haisley,  Scotlund Haisley’s estranged wife,  soon filled in the gaps in the comment string below Beres’ update on Facebook.

“His liver problems are from heroin use and hepatitis C before I met him,”  Lynne Haisley charged.  “I have been married to Scotlund for 16 years and have suffered emotional abuse from the beginning.  He left me when my three kids were under the age of five and my son was a newborn to go on the road weeks on end to ‘save animals.’  The physical abuse started a few years ago.

“Two weeks ago I was physically assaulted by him and feared for my life,”  Lynne Haisley testified.  “He bit me twice on the arm,  he punched with his fist twice on my head and backed me into a closet. Then he dragged me by the neck,  choking me,  and threw me on a chair.  I escaped on foot to run to my friends’ house and he got in the car to follow me.  I made it to my friends’ house and we called the police.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“I am afraid for my life”

The police,  Lynne Haisley said,  “took pictures of all my wounds and went back to our house to see if he would show up.  When he did,  they found illegal street drugs and needles on him.

“I am terrified of him and he must stay in jail,”  Lynne Haisley stated.  “He has threatened to kill me and my sister too.  He has abused our own dogs over the years in different ways.  All while I stayed home taking care of our three beautiful children.  Share my story.  Please get the word out,”  Lynne Haisley finished,  reiterating “I am afraid for my life.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Aunt:  “No forgiveness.”

What Scotlund Haisley may have to say in response does not yet appear to be on the public record.  But a variety of friends and relatives of Lynne Haisley affirmed her statements both on Beres’ NewsChannel 5 Facebook string and in direct discussion with ANIMALS 24-7.

For example,  posted Ginny Kirkpatrick,  identifying herself as Lynne Haisley’s aunt,  “Scotlund has nearly destroyed Lynne and the children.  For that,  there is no forgiveness.  I know the harm he has done.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

Whatever the origin of Scotlund Haisley’s liver condition may be,  his liver was not even mentioned in his October 25, 2018 termination letter from Animal Rescue Corps chief operations officer Tim Woodward.

Fired effective on Halloween

Opened Woodward,  “I am sorry that circumstances make this letter and these notifications necessary.  I am equally sorry that those circumstances require the board of directors to place our responsibilities to Animal Rescue Corps,  the animals in our care,  and our supporters above any expectations you may believe you are still entitled to from this organization.

“In a special board meeting last night,”  Woodward told Scotlund Haisley,  “you were removed from the board of directors of Animal Rescue Corps by majority vote.  In addition,  it was decided that your employment with Animal Rescue Corps will terminate effective October 31,  2018. You will receive all compensation due,  less any outstanding advances.

(Beth Clifton collage)

$61,000 unaccounted for

“These actions have been taken,”  Woodward explained,  because “On August 16,  2018 you received an email from me on behalf of the board of directors expressing serious concerns about the nature and extent of your expense of company funds. The concerns were addressed in a letter from the board of directors and the expenses were detailed in a spreadsheet that listed approximately $61,000 in expenses in question from the preceding four months.

“You were directed to provide an explanation and accounting of these expenses,  to provide all receipts,  cash log,  and to take responsibility for any expenses that were personal in nature.  At the same time,  the board restricted any access you had to spend or commit funds of the organization,  or to make operational decisions or commitments on behalf of the organization.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Failed to respond

“Despite the serious nature of the concerns,”  Woodward said,  “the large sums in question, and the complete restrictions placed on your authority by the board,  you still,  after more than two months and numerous subsequent requests,  have not responded in any way to provide an explanation for the expenses in question,  or take responsibility for expenses that were personal.”

Woodward closed by offering Scotlund Haisley “a last opportunity to take responsibility for your expenses which were personal in nature.  In exchange for you taking responsibility for your expenses,”  Woodward said,  “I believe that Animal Rescue Corps would be willing to offer a mutual release of future claims and additional compensation.”

Ady Gil (left) and Scotlund Haisley (right).

Scotlund Haisley was given until November 9,  2018 to respond,  but apparently did not.

Testimonials from afar

Responding both to the Beres comment string and the January 28,  2019 ANIMALS 24-7 article Scotlund Haisley takes Subway to jail for alleged armed robbery,  several dozen women and at least one man posted testimonials lauding Scotlund Haisley’s hands-on animal rescue work,  in a 23-year career including stints with PETA,  the American SPCA,  the New York City Center for Animal Care & Control,  and the Peninsula Humane Society in San Mateo,  California,  followed by leadership positions at the Washington Animal Rescue League,  the Humane Society of the United States,  and In Defense of Animals,  before forming Animal Rescue Corps in January 2011.

But almost everyone who described actually working with Scotlund Haisley,  or under his direction,  told a different story.

Scotlund Haisley

“Cognitive dissonance on steroids!”

Observed former In Defense of Animals digital artist Mary Vogt,  “It is somewhat surreal watching women tie themselves into pretzels trying to justify the horrible things Scotlund has done – especially to other women! Even when his wife shows up to corroborate. Even when people who worked closely with him share their experiences.  Cognitive dissonance on steroids!”

Advised California animal rights attorney Marla Tauscher, “If you’ve gone on raids with Scotlund Haisley,  I’d suggest getting a lawyer.  Haisley routinely violated countless laws in the raids he did when pretending to be law enforcement and raiding people’s houses.  He pretended to have the authority to do what he was doing,  but the truth is he didn’t have a clue,  nor did he care about the law,  because,”  in Tauscher’s opinion,  “he was only in it for the money and the glory.  He didn’t care one bit about the people whose lives he destroyed,  or what happened to the animals he took,  once he was done using them for publicity.”

Former HSUS president Wayne Pacelle (left) and Scotlund Haisley (right) with unidentified dog.  (Facebook photo)

“Never saw him actually do a rescue”

Agreed Florida animal orthotist and prosthetist Ronnie N. Graves,  long involved in animal disaster relief work with several different organizations,  “I had the misfortune of working alongside of Scotlund Haisley [in 2008-2010] while he destroyed the Humane Society of the U.S. disaster services team.  I never saw him actually do a rescue,”  Graves alleged,  “but saw him push others out of the way when the cameras were around.  After watching 14 of the very best rescuers quit,  I pulled all of my equipment and my teammates from doing anything for HSUS.

“I knew of several sexual harassment claims made against [Scotlund Haisley] that got swept under the rug by [former HSUS president] Wayne Pacelle,”  Graves said.

“We saw [Scotlund Haisley] break the law many times.  He attempted to force our team to wear badges that he purposely made to look like law enforcement.  Wayne Pacelle protected him,”  Graves charged.  “Myself and others gave testimony in a deposition against [Scotlund Haisley] for a totally bogus seizure in South Dakota.  We turned in lots of evidence to the HSUS board of directors,  who decided to do nothing until [Scotlund Haisley] cost them millions.

Collage of images from alleged Subway stick-ups.

“He’s a parasite”

“I’m president of Florida Disaster Animal Response & Transport,  a 501(c)3 [charity] and never taken a salary,”  Graves testified.  “I paid 87 employees to handle moving wildlife during the BP oil spill [off the Louisiana coast in 2010] and never took a paycheck.  [Scotlund Haisley] can’t say the same thing.  He’s a parasite who needs to be put away for a long time,”  Graves opined.

“I feel very bad for his wife,”  Graves said,  “who got the very worst of his personality and still tried to make it work.  I feel bad for the Subway employee that he terrorized.  Can I see Scotland pointing a gun at someone’s head?  Yes,  I can,”  Graves finished.

Scotlund Haisley

“Physically shoved me out of the way”

Consie von Gontard,  an American SPCA field responder,  offered corroborating testimony.

“We tried to stop [Scotlund Haisley] when he was with HSUS and failed,”  von Gontard recounted.   “I quit my dream job to get away from him.

“He actually physically shoved me out of the way,”  von Gontard said,   “took the dog I was carrying,  put the dog back where I found him,  and told the photographers to shoot him taking the dog out.  He was red-faced furious that they dared take a picture of me instead of him.  It was sadly hilarious at the time.”

Von Gontard said she had personal knowledge of alleged sexual harassment involving Scotlund Haisley at HSUS,  and of Haisley engaging in domestic violence in a relationship prior to his marriage.

(Beth Clifton collage)

“I’m not the one going to jail if caught”

Admitted Christy Howard,  a partner in Three Dog Bakery,  of Dallas,  Texas,  “I drank the kool-aid after helping an HSUS case,”  in which Scotlund Haisley “was in charge.”

After Scotlund Haisley formed Animal Rescue Corps,  Howard said,  “I was one of his early ‘sheep.’  I was in awe of him and what he was doing.  Until he had me do an illegal seizure.  He said,  when asked why he wasn’t going with us,  ‘I’m not the one going to jail if caught.’  He thought we were out of earshot,  but nope,  I heard it.  I didn’t want to believe it.  So I did what I was told to.

“Then I would see fundraising for seizures out of state and I would be in the pictures.  They were recycled pictures from old seizures.  He was just drumming up money.

“We would be covered in blood, sweat and tears (literally) as [Scotlund Haisley sat in his air-conditioned SUV.  The camera would come out and he would be the first one in front of it.”

(Beth Clifton collage)

“Operation Broken Chain”

Affirmed former Animal Rescue Corps volunteer Keely Longer,  of Old Hickory,  Tennessee, “Many of us were there [at ARC] from the beginning and walked away because of what we saw.  I was fooled initially too.  Then I saw so much that wasn’t right I had to leave.  I was around from 2011 until Operation Broken Chain,”  a dogfighting raid undertaken in November 2012.  “By then I’d seen all I needed to see to know something was off.  That whole ‘operation’ was troubling,”  Longer said.  “Everything about it.”

The “Operation Broken Chain” raid originated when firefighters responding to a brush fire discovered a large number of pit bulls and beagles on the property. Two men were eventually convicted of related misdemeanor charges.

Kristina Bowman during 2009 puppy mill raid.  (Facebook photo)

Founding board resigned

Recalled Dallas artist and photographer Kristina Bowman,   an Animal Rescue Corps founding board member,  “The entire original board,  minus Scotlund and the chief operating officer [Tim Woodward],  resigned all at once,  on June 3, 2013,  because of major issues with the way ARC was being run.  Also,  just about every major original team member resigned at the same time.”

Animal Rescue Corps went on to raise at least $2 million in the next four years after that.  Scotlund Haisley was paid an average of about $100,000 per year,  according to the IRS Form 990 filings for 2014,  2015,  and 2016.

Beth & Merritt Clifton

What will become of Animal Rescue Corps post-Scotlund Haisley at present appears to be almost as unclear as what will become of Haisley after all the pending charges against him are heard in court.

Please help us continue speaking truth to power: 

http://www.animals24-7.org/donate/

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