Animals collective

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Dog

janitaecon — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:30:04 +0000

Kinney, a corgi, has an obscure fondness for The Beatles…or at least their accents. Beatlemania barks on!

Dog Declares Love, Literally

janitaecon — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:12:15 +0000

I know we just met, but I think I love you, too.

Freeing Dogs With…Fences?

janitaecon — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:09:17 +0000

Tonic, Diane Herbst
Mikael Hardy was horrified to see how many people near her home in South Carolina kept their dogs chained up, outside, every hour of every day. So she got up off the couch, knocked on their doors and did something about it.
When Mikael Hardy (right) moved from Atlanta to Greenville County, S.C., she discovered a frightening way of life. Some of her new neighbors kept their dogs chained up outside every day and every night — oftentimes emaciated, sad creatures with empty water buckets and no food. “I saw all these chained dogs, and I said, ‘What is this?’” Hardy says. “I knew I needed to save them.”
Last year, Hardy, 40, started knocking on doors, asking these neighbors if she could build them a fence, get their dog spayed or neutered, and provide dog food, toys and veterinary care. For free. “At first they thought there was a catch,” she says. “They probably thought I was on crack.”
Since August of 2008, however, Hardy has persuaded almost 60 different owners to allow her to build a fence and provide romping room for some 70 dogs. The only requirement: each owner must spay or neuter their dogs before construction begins, paid for by Hardy and her nonprofit, PAWSitive Effects. Incredibly, Hardy has a 90-percent success rate. “We’ve approached this as a friendly venture, I keep on talking and eventually they say yes,” she says in her fast Southern drawl. “It is just so emotionally and physically abusive to keep these dogs at the end of a chain.”
For her first few fences, each 600 square feet, Hardy borrowed money from her mother. “

We had no money,” says Hardy, whose husband, Brad, 40, two teenage children and a loyal group of volunteers all pitch in to build the fences, which cost $400 a piece; medical costs for each dog is another $130. “The people she builds the fence for are so grateful or so thankful, and they can’t help but notice the change in their dog,” says regular volunteer Jami McLean, 32, a human resources manager for a Fortune 500 company.
“You have a dog that is snarling, defensive, and as soon as you release him into the fenced area, the dog changes immediately,” she continues. “They begin running around, sniffing, throwing their toys in the air. It is by far the most rewarding part of building the fence.”
Most everyone Hardy has encountered who chain their dogs are uneducated and poor. They tell her the dog is chained for protection. Or they need the money from the puppies. Hardy’s gift of gab works wonders. “I tell them it’s a lot easier for me to break in if they are chained,” she says. “I tell them no one wants the puppies, they just end up in a shelter.”
When not building fences, Hardy juggles co-owning a flooring company with Brad, and raising daughter Tatum, 13, and son Tyler, 14, who has bilateral ophthalmia (no eyes), autism, obsessive compulsive disorder and a low I.Q. Both kids work on the weekly fence-building projects, with a waiting list through September.

“Tyler tells people what to do,” says Hardy, laughing. The Hardy family also includes eight dogs — four rescued from living
on a chain. “It’s hard not to gush about Mikael and the whole Hardy family,” says McLean. “You see Tyler, with a lot of obstacles to overcome, and not once do you hear the kid say ‘I don’t want to do that.’”
Hardy tackles each home that she visits knowing the result will be a fence. Occasionally, she skips the fence and rescues the dog. One dog (above, left) was all skin and bones, so thin that her front left arm slipped through her collar, which embedded deep in her skin. Sores enveloped the pup’s body. “I said, ‘Keeping a dog like this is illegal,’” Hardy recalls.
The owners gave their dog to Hardy, who found a loving family — one that includes two dogs and a 30-pound cat — to adopt her. However, an angry Hardy pressed charges against the owners, who were allowed to settle their case and 30 days later obtained another dog — who they chained up. Says Hardy: “It’s deplorable.”
Hardy’s efforts are part of a burgeoning number of volunteers across the US working to let chained dogs free, sometimes with unintended results. Hardy had volunteered for the Pennsylvania-based group Dogs Deserve Better, whose founder was convicted of theft in 2007 for rescuing a chained, dying dog who could not stand, refusing to return him to his abusers. Hardy’s experience with the group eventually led to her founding PAWSitive Effects.
Since Hardy built her first fence last year, she has raised and spent some $45,000 — all from private donations. “At least I’m making a dent,” she says. “At the end of the build, when I put that dog in that fence, you’ve dramatically improved that dog’s life. It makes you feel so good.”
To take a stand and help Mikael better the life of local pups, click here to donate.
Photos courtesy of Mikael Hardy.
tonic.com/article/giving-dogs-their-freedom-one-fence-at-a-time/

Canada Geese Gassed And Fed To Oregon’s Homeless

janitaecon — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:22:00 +0000

CTV News
On Canada Day, one of our national symbols is under attack in Oregon State, where one town has put Canada goose on the menu at homeless shelters.
Officials in Bend, Oregon, are so fed up with the mess left by Canada geese that they’ve opted to gas 109 birds.
The local parks and recreation board says the geese were euthanized with carbon dioxide, leaving the meat safe to eat. Now the birds are heading for the dinner plates at local homeless shelters.
Sandy Klein at the NeighborImpact shelter in Bend says that the last time she got a shipment of Canada goose meat, no one knew what to do with it.
“So this year, I think I’m going to provide a recipe to go with goose meat so people know what to do. It’s a different flavour. It makes a good stew,” she said.
In fact, recipes for Canada goose meat abound on the internet, including one for that calls for garlic and rosemary.
But in Stanley Park, Vancouverites were taken aback by the idea that a Canada goose flying south might never come back, calling the euthanasia “barbaric” and even “crazy.”
Even the head of the Vancouver Park Board, Aaron Jasper, was shocked.
“We don’t take the approach of culling them. I think, if there’s deemed to be a bit of a problem with the population, our staff will identify the nests, and we’ll shake the eggs, and that’s how we address the issue of overpopulation,” Jasper said.
In Bend, the parks and recreation department held several public meetings and found that most people supported the idea. Still, it’s not planning any further kills this year.
ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100701/bc_cooked_goose_100701/20100701/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

Survival of the Nuttiest: Smart Squirrels

janitaecon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:03:34 +0000

The New York Times, Natalie Angier
I was walking through the neighborhood one afternoon when, on turning a corner, I nearly tripped over a gray squirrel that was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, eating a nut. Startled by my sudden appearance, the squirrel dashed out to the road — right in front of an oncoming car.
Before I had time to scream, the squirrel had gotten caught in the car’s front hubcap, had spun around once like a cartoon character in a clothes dryer, and was spat back off. When the car drove away, the squirrel picked itself up, wobbled for a moment or two, and then resolutely hopped across the street.
You don’t get to be one of the most widely disseminated mammals in the world — equally at home in the woods, a suburban backyard or any city “green space” bigger than a mousepad — if you’re crushed by every Acme anvil that happens to drop your way.
“When people call me squirrely,” said John L. Koprowski, a squirrel expert and professor of wildlife conservation and management at the University of Arizona, “I am flattered by the term.”
The Eastern gray tree squirrel, or Sciurus carolinensis, has been so spectacularly successful that it is often considered a pest. The International Union for Conservation of Nature includes the squirrel on its list of the top 100 invasive species. The British and Italians hate gray squirrels for outcompeting their beloved native red squirrels. Manhattanites hate gray squirrels for reminding them of pigeons, and that goes for the black, brown and latte squirrel morphs, too.
Yet researchers who study gray squirrels argue that their subject is far more compelling than most people realize, and that behind the squirrel’s success lies a phenomenal elasticity of body, brain and behavior. Squirrels can leap a span 10 times the length of their body, roughly double what the best human long jumper can manage. They can rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and so keep a grip while climbing no matter which way they’re facing. Squirrels can learn by watching others — cross-phyletically, if need be. In their book “Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide,” Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell of theSmithsonian Institution described the safe-pedestrian approach of a gray squirrel eager to traverse a busy avenue near the White House. The squirrel waited on the grass near a crosswalk until people began to cross the street, said the authors, “and then it crossed the street behind them.”
In the acuity of their visual system, the sensitivity and deftness with which they can manipulate objects, their sociability, chattiness and willingness to deceive, squirrels turn out to be surprisingly similar to primates. They nest communally as multigenerational, matrilineal clans, and at the end of a hard day’s forage, they greet each other with a mutual nuzzling of cheek and lip glands that looks decidedly like a kiss. Dr. Koprowski said that when he was growing up in Cleveland, squirrels were the only wild mammals to which he was exposed. “When I got to college, I thought I’d study polar bears or mountain lions,” he said. “Luckily I ended up doing my master’s and Ph.D. on squirrels instead.”
The Eastern gray is one of about 278 squirrelly species alive today, a lineage that split off from other rodents about 40 million years ago and that includes chipmunks, marmots, woodchucks — a k a groundhogs — and prairie dogs. Squirrels are found on all continents save Antarctica and Australia, and in some of the harshest settings: the Himalayan marmot, found at up to 18,000 feet above sea level, is among the highest-living mammals of the world.
A good part of a squirrel’s strength can be traced to its elaborately veined tail, which, among other things, serves as a thermoregulatory device, in winter helping to shunt warm blood toward the squirrel’s core and in summer to wick excess heat off into the air. Rodents like rats and mice are nocturnal and have poor vision, relying on whiskers to navigate their world. The gray squirrel is diurnal and has the keen eyesight to match. “Its primary visual cortex is huge,” said Jon H. Kaas, a comparative neuroscientist atVanderbilt University, A squirrel’s peripheral vision is as sharp as its focal eyesight, which means it can see what’s above and beside it without moving its head. While its color vision may only be so-so, akin to a person with red-green colorblindness who can tell green and red from other colors but not from each other, a squirrel has the benefit of natural sunglasses, pale yellow lenses that cut down on glare.
Gray squirrels use their sharp, shaded vision to keep an eye on each other. Michael A. Steele of Wilkes University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues have studied the squirrels’ hoarding behavior, which turns out to be remarkably calculated and rococo. Squirrels may be opportunistic feeders, able to make a meal of a discarded cheeseburger, crickets or a baby sparrow if need be, but in the main they are granivores and seed hoarders. They’ll gather acorns and other nuts, assess which are in danger of germinating and using up stored nutrients, remove the offending tree embryos with a few quick slices of their incisors, and then cache the sterilized treasure for later consumption, one seed per inch-deep hole.
But the squirrels don’t just bury an acorn and come back in winter. They bury the seed, dig it up shortly afterward, rebury it elsewhere, dig it up again. “We’ve seen seeds that were recached as many as five times,” said Dr. Steele. The squirrels recache to deter theft, lest another squirrel spied the burial the first X times. Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, the Steele team showed that when squirrels are certain that they are being watched, they will actively seek to deceive the would-be thieves. They’ll dig a hole, pretend to push an acorn in, and then cover it over, all the while keeping the prized seed hidden in their mouth. “Deceptive caching involves some pretty serious decision making,” Dr. Steele said. “It meets the criteria of tactical deception, which previously was thought to only occur in primates.”
Squirrels are also master kvetchers, modulating their utterances to convey the nature and severity of their complaint: a moaning “kuk” for mild discomfort, a buzzing sound for more pressing distress, and a short scream for extreme dismay. During the one or two days a year that a female is fertile, she will be chased by every male in the vicinity, all of them hounding her round and round a tree with sneezelike calls, and her on top, refusing to say gesundheit. A squirrel threatened by a serious predator like a cat, dog, hawk or wayward toddler will issue a multimodal alarm, barking out a series of loud chuk-chuk-chuks with a nasally, penetrating “whaa” at the end, while simultaneously performing a tail flag — lifting its fluffy baton high over its head and flicking it back and forth rhythmically.
Sarah R. Partan of Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and her students have used acustom-built squirrel robot to track how real squirrels respond to the components of an alarm signal. The robot looks and sounds like a squirrel, its tail moves sort of like a squirrel’s, but because its plastic body is covered in rabbit fur it doesn’t smell like a squirrel. Yet squirrels tested in Florida and New England have responded to the knockoff appropriately, with alarm barks of their own or by running up a tree. Human passers-by have likewise been enchanted. “People are always coming over, asking what we’re doing,” said Dr. Partan. “We’ve had to abandon many trials halfway through.” An iSquirrel? Now that’s something even a New Yorker might love.
nytimes.com/2010/07/06/science/06angi.html?_r=1

Cheap Meat Can Be Costly

janitaecon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:39:18 +0000

The Huffington Post, David Kirby
Grand Lake St. Marys — Ohio’s largest inland body of water and a treasured recreational area — is dying. And if you barbecued some supermarket pork over the holiday weekend, you helped contribute to this disaster, however indirectly.
The lake’s 13,000 acres of water surrounded by parkland, cabins and campgrounds, is one of the leading summertime attractions in the area, which brings in some $216 million in tourist spending each year, $160 million directly from the lake, (not to mention 2,600 jobs). Now, many visitors are shunning the place like an oil-stained Alabama beach. Swimming and waterskiing are discouraged, and even boating might be a health risk.
The main problem is phosporous and other nutrients, mostly from farms, including the 15 or so animal factory farms in the lake’s watershed, and nutrients from the megatons of fertilizer applied on taxpayer-subsidized corn and soybean fields. Those products then become cheap feed that keeps the factory farms humming, Big Box prices low, and summertime barbequers happy.
Factory farms, in addition to their insatiable demand for subsidized feed, also generate thousands of tons of animal waste each year, far more than the surrounding land can absorb. The manure — in this part of Ohio, most factory farms are either pork, or “layer” (egg) operations — is sometimes liquefied and sprayed from giant sprinklers that spew brownish-yellow water onto cropland which — too often — runs off into streams and ditches that feed into rivers and lakes, including Grand Lake St. Marys.
The Ohio Farm Bureau insists that most of the farms in the area are “family farms,” which is true — the majority of farms in the area not factory farms, and do no generate anywhere near the amount of nutrients that industrialized operations create. And besides, even massive factory farms (officially known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs) are usually owned by families, although they don’t typically own the animals. They contract out to large corporations, sharecropper style, to raise them. The contractor is left with the problem of disposing of so much manure, not the company.
For years, nutrient levels in Grand Lake St. Marys have been rising. But only in the last three years have they gotten dangerously high, fueling algae blooms that strangulate fish, smother the water in a putrid green-and-turquoise foam, clog boat engines, foul the air with rancid odors, and emit toxins that can cause permanent health problems in people.
“We have a crisis situation,” Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) said in a letter Friday to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and, tellingly, USDA Secretary Tom Vislack. “The economic viability of this region is ultimately linked to the health of this natural resource. We have reached a tipping point where the degraded nature of the lake is causing significant loss to local businesses and the total livelihood of the region.”
In April 2009, levels of a toxin called microcystin were found to be extremely elevated, and the state issued a warning for people to “minimize contact” and avoid ingestion of the lake water.
And just two weeks ago, “the lake water turned a dark green color and became covered in a thick blue green scum,” Strickland said, adding that state testing has also detected the presence of harmful bacteria and their associated toxins, one that attacks the liver and another that causes nerve damage.
Strickland asked the Feds for immediate environmental and economic assistance and, given the EPA’s aggressive stance against farm runoff since Obama took office, his SOS will likely get some attention.
It is not logical to blame most of this mess on smaller, more sustainably run farms where animals are not packed in by the hundreds or thousands, and where there’s enough land to adequately absorb the waste, thus reducing the chance of nutrient runoff.
Besides, small farms have graced this area for generations on end, and the lake did not become a Petri dish for liver toxins until now. Something has changed, and that something — in my opinion — is factory farming and its excess manure. And local people know it.
Local residents “say stricter regulations are needed on large farms,” the Associated Press reported, “limiting when they can apply manure to their fields and how close they can plant to streams.”
When I was researching my book Animal Factory – The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment – I came across this same situation wherever CAFOs had invaded: the tidewater area of North Carolina, the mega-dairy region of Yakima Valley, WA, or the “poultry belt” of Arkansas (whose big chicken growers like Tyson have been sued by the Oklahoma Attorney General for allowing nutrients from poultry waste to cross the border and pollute lakes and rivers).
In each case, once pristine waters had been spoiled after the CAFOs showed up.
I also spent time in western and northwestern Ohio, where property and small business owners are growing increasingly alarmed by the number of CAFOs that have been moving into the area. And I witnessed the Maumee River, choked with agricultural nutrients, which empties into Lake Erie, site of a massive and growing “dead zone.”
The lake was the color of cappuccino, and there were warning signs about dangerous bacteria in the water. And yet, families with small children were still splashing around in the murky, foamy liquid.
I wondered if they knew that factory farming upriver was contributing to this slow death of a great lake, and if they knew that their barbequed chicken, egg salad sandwiches and pork sausages were likely produced at factory farms that leach nutrients into waterways that belong to the public.
We all contribute to factory farming every time we reach for the cheapest meat, milk and eggs at the supermarket. That bacon you had for breakfast might have come from a CAFO in the Lake St. Marys area — or else fed on discount corn grown within the watershed.
Even if you are a strict vegan, your tax dollars still go to sustain this unsustainable system. So unless you are out there actively lobbying to kill taxpayer subsidies in the Farm Bill, don’t think you get completely off the hook, either.
Which brings us back to the devastated economy of Grand Lake St. Marys – already buffeted by post-industrial job losses – and its desperate and rightfully angry people.
I know this question will not make me popular around the lake, but I do wonder how many residents there enjoyed some nice, juicy, barbequed pork ribs on the Fourth of July that were on special down at the discount center.
Like I said, we are all responsible for factory farm pollution, even those who suffer most from its excesses.
David Kirby is author of “Animal Factory – The Looming Threat of Industrial Pork, Dairy and Poultry Operations to Humans and the Environment” (St. Martin’s Press).
huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/the-price-of-cheap-meat-a_b_635599.html?ir=Food

This Water Is REALLY Bugging Me!

janitaecon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:16:25 +0000

A dog bed might help this sleepy puppy.

VIDEO: Sea Shepherd Captain, Paul Watson, Responds To Bethune Verdict

janitaecon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:14:16 +0000

See the full interview with Paul Watson, leader of the Sea Shepherd, after hearing Pete Bethune was given a suspended sentence.

Pete Bethune has received a two-year suspended sentence and banned from Japan for five years, for obstructing a whaling fleet in the Antarctic Ocean.

He is expected to be deported back to New Zealand on the next available flight.

Bethune, 45, was also found guilty of assault, for throwing a bottle of rancid butter at whalers on board the whaling ship Shonan Maru II.

The ruling was made at the Tokyo District Court this afternoon, after Bethune obstructed the activities of a Japanese whaling fleet in February.

The sentence is suspended for five years, meaning Bethune will not be jailed.

Watch the video

Bethune released

Whaling Activist Pete Bethune Gets Suspended Jail Term

janitaecon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:06:44 +0000

Anti-whaling activist Pete Bethune has been given a suspended two-year prison term in Japan for boarding a Japanese harpoon ship earlier this year in Antarctic waters.

New Zealander Peter Bethune, of the Sea Shepherd conservation group, said he boarded the ship to stop the whale hunt and make a citizen’s arrest of its captain.

He pleaded guilty to four out of the five charges brought against him, but has denied assault.

Roland Buerk reports.

The New Zealander, an ex-member of direct action group Sea Shepherd, faced charges of illegally boarding a whaling ship in the Antarctic in February.

He said he wanted to detain its captain but he was instead taken to Japan, where he was arrested.

He had pleaded guilty to four out of five charges but had denied assault.

Bethune had admitted charges of trespassing, vandalism, possession of a knife and obstructing business.

He was also found guilty of assault, by throwing stink bombs made of butyric acid – rancid butter – at whalers.

His suspended sentence means that he will not be jailed. He is expected to be deported to New Zealand soon.

Bow and arrows

Large numbers of police officers were on duty outside the court in Tokyo where the verdict was delivered.

A small group of right-wing protesters brandished banners calling for a tough sentence.

Bethune was part of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group, which tries each year to block Japan’s annual hunt.

He was the captain of the Ady Gil, a speed boat split in two during a clash with the whalers on 6 January.

Bethune said he had boarded the Japanese vessel, the Shonan Maru 2, on 15 February to make a citizen’s arrest of the captain.

The whalers instead detained him and took him to Japan to face charges.

Sea Shepherd has since cut its ties with Bethune, saying he defied group policy by taking bows and arrows with him to the Antarctic.

Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1986 after agreeing to a global moratorium.

But it says that whaling is part of its culture and catches hundreds of whales each year as part of what it calls a scientific research programme.

Conservationists say the whaling is a cover for the sale and consumption of whale meat.

Last month nations failed to agree a compromise deal at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Morocco.

Under the plan, Japan would phase down its annual Antarctic hunt and in return be assigned a quota for whales in its coastal waters.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10538106.stm

Bethune Won’t Get Jail Time

janitaecon — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:38:53 +0000

Associated Press, Mari Yamaguchi
TOKYO — A Tokyo court on Wednesday convicted a New Zealand activist of obstructing the Japanese whaling mission in the Antarctic Ocean, sentencing him to a suspended prison term.
Peter Bethune was also found guilty of assault for throwing bottles of rancid butter at the whalers aboard their ship, including one that broke and gave three Japanese crew members chemical burns.
The court sentenced him to two years in prison, suspended for five years — meaning he won’t be jailed.
Bethune, 45, climbed onto the Shonan Maru 2 in February to confront its captain over the sinking of a protest vessel the previous month. The former Sea Shepherd activist was arrested when the boat returned to Japan in March.
The U.S.-based Sea Shepherd has been protesting Japan’s research whaling for years, often engaging in scuffles with Japanese whalers. The group claims the whaling mission, an allowed exception to an international ban, is a cover for commercial hunting.
Bethune’s trial began in late May. During earlier trial sessions, he said he just wanted to confront the ship’s captain and hand him a $3 million bill for the destruction of the Ady Gil, the protest ship that sank during a collision in January.
In his tearful closing statement June 10, Bethune apologized for the trouble but said he never intended to hurt anyone. He also told the court that he will likely no longer continue his anti-whaling protests.
Sea Shepherd recently said it expelled Bethune because he violated its policies against carrying weapons. The group said he had a bow and arrows with him while he was aboard the Ady Gil, although he never used them.
Japan, Norway and Iceland hunt whales under exceptions to a 1986 moratorium by the International Whaling Commission. Japan’s whaling program also involves large-scale expeditions down to the Antarctic, while other whaling countries mostly stay along their coasts.
Separately, Japan has said the leader of Sea Shepherd is now on an Interpol wanted list for allegedly ordering Bethune as part of the group’s disruption of Japanese whaling in the Antarctic Ocean.
Canadian citizen Paul Watson, 59, was placed on the Interpol list in late June at the request of Japan, which accuses his group of risking whalers’ lives during their expedition.
google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbsFQi9NRCRAFsRQfj438hRfFiBgD9GQ0TA80
theaustralian.com.au/news/world/anti-whaling-activist-peter-bethune-gets-suspended-sentence-in-japan-court/story-e6frg6so-1225889019682