More mountain lion killings on Kofa NWR

I’ve written about Mountain Lions and Kofa NWR in the past - the Arizona Game and Fish Department (which could be renamed to “Arizona Hunting Revenue Department”) periodically kills mountain lions on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. This is not limited only to Kofa, but I’ve ended up posting specifically about the situation at Kofa several times, and Ron, a former employee from there, keeps me updated with the latest happenings.

There are a lot of prejudices against predators as a general rule, and much of it is due to a lack of understanding of basic biology principles. (To put it simply: kill off all the predators, and you interfere with the checks and balances of entire populations, and this leads to extreme overpopulation by one species, and ultimately the deterioration of individual and group health.) This annoys me to no end, perhaps because Biology was my major for my first degree, and I think I’m justified in expecting that the people managing wildlife refuges would be at least as educated as I am on the topic. Likely they are, and simply rely on general ignorance of the topic to push their agendas with little outrage from the general population. Mostly it is only hunters, to whom they pander, who pay close attention to the decisions being made at the refuges in any case.

There are, however, many hunters who are just as outraged as animal rights activists over the killing of mountain lions, which should tell all of us something.

Underlying the decision making by the refuge managers is the essential view of the AGFD and USGFD towards these wildlife refuges; from their decisions and actions I can only infer that to them, refuges are primarily places to hunt. The refuge management wants to maintain the prey species population so that there is a large enough population of the prey species to justify the “need” for hunting, and thus make the hunters happy. You get one guess as to where a large amount of the refuges’ money comes from. A more accurate name, instead of wildlife refuge, would be hunter refuges.

In addition to ignoring basic population biology principles to justify killing mountain lions and propping up hunting revenues, the AGFD is using radio collars on the mountain lions to track them down to kill them, in what amounts to a canned hunt. Why are they wearing radio collars to begin with? As part of a costly research project which is obviously being made absolutely worthless by the fact that the subjects are killed. That’s our tax money wasted, and while it is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been spent on one day of the Iraq War II, it is still a significant amount of money. At least $142,000 is an amount I would consider significant.

The criteria, by the way, for killing the mountain lions, is if they are known to have killed more than 2 bighorn sheep in a six month period. (Though whether there is any attempt at confirming that the death of a sheep is actually caused by a mountain lion, who would kill by jumping at them from behind and biting through their skulls, making it hard to mistake, is something that the AGFD is not willing to let us know.) At that point, as soon as they wander off refuge land, they’re killed.

Think about that one.

I’m just not sure how we have communicated to them the slimming regime we’ve put them on that we’re making a life or death issue of, let alone communicated the boundaries of the refuge, their relative safe zone.

Of course if they ate only once every 3 months, I’m not sure they’d be surviving in any case. Not that Bighorn Sheep are the only species that a lion will prey on, but since Kofa has helpfully built “big game guzzlers” (artificial ponds) for the sheep, they’ve also built in easy access to a big meal for the lions. And large game is indeed their main meal.

So, the latest Mountain Lion was killed recently. Ron, the former employee of Kofa who keeps me updated on these things, wrote to the AGFD and requested very specific information, such as the exact GPS location of the Bighorn Sheep that was (presumably) killed by the Mountain Lion, and other information that we are all free to request as part of the Arizona Open Records Act.

Here is one of his recent comments about the Mountain Lion who was tracked via radio collar and killed:

What bothers me most Deb, is this old tom had lived many years free and wild living an existence evolution allowed him. Then, with a split second pull of a trigger, his wondrous life was over just for fulfilling his ecological niche. I have lived in the same harsh climate as this old tom did, and for over 31 years I have spent many days and nights afield and I love my life and freedom.

The AGFD took freedom away for that tom and I got a knot in the pit of my stomach when I heard this news. I tried for over 5 weeks to get information from the AGFD that might have saved this lion’s life, but the Department staff just ignored me and there was simply nothing I could do to help the tom. I was powerless for the first time in my life and I have a kind of emptiness I have also never experienced in my life before. I will do everything ethically and legally I can to ensure that the Department does not kill another Kofa lion.

One thing that seems clear to me - this isn’t merely the killing of a tom, or the second killing of a tom on Kofa. This is one more killing in what amounts to an extermination program. This program began as soon as it was confirmed that there were 5 resident mountain lions living on Kofa. So far they have killed two of the five for certain. The collar “fell off” a third, which could be any number of things. The first thing that comes to my mind is a cover up of an “unsanctioned” kill. There is one known Lion queen still living on Kofa land. Maybe one more tom.

Kofa is 665,400 acres. You’d think it would be more than enough for a few mountain lions, but that is only true if humans don’t feel that their “entertainment” via hunting is impeded.

And the truth is that Kofa, like almost everywhere in this country, has been in drought conditions for several years. Here’s a shocking biological fact - populations of almost every species (though certainly not humans) decrease when drought limits the amount of food that is available. Who would have thought!

Well, the Kofa Refuge managers are apparently unaware of this. They seem to expect the Bighorn Sheep populations to remain at earlier levels, irregardless of drought conditions. This is likely a myth they maintain to keep hunting permit revenue flowing in, as well as to give them an excuse to eliminate the only known competition (that can actually be fought with a gun) for the Bighorn Sheep.

The refuge managers have also illegally installed additional man-made water sources (which they tellingly call “Big Game Guzzlers”) on protected Kofa land. Hunters often hang out near these water sources to get easy kills.

Daniel Patterson, an Arizona local, has posted more on this topic, including linking to a legal brief filed by PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility), and some quotes by Ron. Another post of Daniels’ add some insight to the priorities of the refuge managers and the groups that support them.

Okay, so what can we do about this? I haven’t come up with anything especially creative, but here is my current list of ideas:

• comment (with knowledge and politeness) on this article: http://www.yumasun.com/news/killing_40802___article.html/officials_lion.html
• write to the Kofa and AGFD officials, in protest against the illegal big game guzzlers, the killing of the mountain lions, the hunting permits for bighorn sheep that continue to be granted to hunters, and finally against the collaring of any other Mountain Lions, since it has proven to be a death sentence for them.
• write to whatever national or local animal group you support, and urge them to take action
• write to any reporters for your local paper who you know have an interest in animal, environmental, and/or wildlife issues, and ask them to cover it. Reporters with an interest in misdeeds by government officials might also be interested in covering this issue. (any attention, regardless of motivation, at this point…)
• write a snail mail or make a phone call (emails are considered worthless to them) to any politician you know is sympathetic to environmental and animal concerns
• Edited to add: Contact your favorite podcast hosts and ask them if they’d cover the issue!
• encourage anyone who would be willing to take action on this to do one or more of the above

The people at Kofa and AGFD to send emails to are as follows:

RDTuggle at fws dot gov (Region 2 Director Benjamin Tuggle, Ph.D.)
Chris_Pease at fws dot gov (Chief NWRS Region 2)
Thomas_Harvey at fws dot gov (Region 2 Refuge Supervisor AZ/NM)
directorsoffice at azgfd dot gov
mitch_ellis at fws dot gov (SW Arizona NWR Complex Manager)
BHernbrode1 at azgfd dot gov AGFD Commissioner
JMartin at azgfd dot gov
lvoyles at azgfd dot gov Larry Voyles, Director AGFD (they promoted the guy who is anti-predator and anti-wilderness and who lied about the secret McPhererson Tank project.)
sferrell at azgfd dot gov Steve Ferrell Assistant Director AGFD
mgolightly at azgfd dot gov Mike Golightly AGFD Commissioner
rwoodhouse at azgfd dot gov Robbie Woodhouse AGFD Commissioner
donna_shoemaker@fws.gov; Tuggle’s secretary

The consequences for our inaction are clear. This is the tom that was killed this past fall.

in gratitude

I just want to thank everyone who has commented in the past couple days. I’ve been heartbroken about Sally’s death, but I pushed through to tell some other stories, and to write a rambling post about something that had been on my mind for a while. And the responses, to both, have been really encouraging, motivating, uplifting. I have really benefited from the interactions, which pushed my thoughts out of the loop they’d been stuck in and I’ve also gotten a few book recommendations that I want to share. For anyone who was interested in or engaged in the previous post, on using our personal strengths, I think that both these recommendations will add quite a bit.

Lenn recommended Marketing Social Change by Alan R. Andreasen, which I ordered a used copy of since my library doesn’t have it. It looks very interesting, and likely will be pertinent to the general question of being effective. Book Summary:

This important book offers a revolutionary approach to solving a range of social problems–drug use, smoking, unsafe sex, and overpopulation–by applying marketing techniques and concepts to change behavior. For example, it shows that at-risk teenagers are consumers who decide whether or not to “buy” safe sex practices. This successful approach is based on Alan R. Andreasen’s more than twenty years of experience in consulting, teaching, and research with social marketing programs around the world.

Andreasen shows that effective social change starts with a thorough understanding of the needs, wants, and perceptions of the target consumer–who has ultimate control over the outcomes. The book offers a detailed explanation of how to design a step-by-step program that will move the customer from ignorance and indifference to action and ultimately maintenance of that action. Marketing Social Change offers a wealth of information for developing an effective social marketing plan.

It is easy to see how this is applicable to our activism.

Colin recommended a video that talks about protest culture. It is about 50 minutes long, and I watched it this evening. I found it very interesting and definitely worth watching. While it could be considered something of a tangent, it definitely helped me see a bigger picture, different patterns. The summary of the video:

Clay Shirky joined an intimate group at the Berkman Center for a deep dive discussion on one chapter of his new book, Here Comes Everybody, which deals with protest culture — ad hoc vs institutional, and what it means.

I was very interested in what Clay Shirky had to say, so I put myself on the waiting list for his book at the library. Book summary:

A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for illA handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit’s arrest.

With accelerating velocity, our age’s new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don’t have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin’. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d’tre swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is profound.

One of the culture’s wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky’s assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler.

One lightbulb for me during this process of coming to my own mental dead end and then hearing what other people thought about this topic, I realized that for all the thought I’ve put into being an animal rights activist, for all the discussions I’ve heard and sometimes participated in about “the movement”, I really didn’t have a deep knowledge of movements in general. When discussing the AR movement, things get political, fast. I know it isn’t unique to AR, it’s something all movements deal with.

And I just can’t find the interest in that aspect, though I was left with a nagging feeling that I needed to put some thought into my role, even though I didn’t feel that what I needed to think about was in the same line of thought that most of the discussions I read or had got stuck on. What Clay Shirky and the commenters here had to say was much more interesting to me, and certainly far more relevant.

So thanks again to everyone. I now have some more paths to follow as I think about this issue!

Right, the giant eye and nose. Tempest, my cat, loves to pose, and I love to take her picture. Add in some photoshop classes and a lab class where the point was to play with our pics and the techniques we learned, and a giant Tempest eye and nose pic is the natural result! I have it as a background at work, and I’m pretty sure it both fascinates and freaks out my coworkers.

using our personal strengths

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I still feel like I don’t have very clear answers for myself. Maybe there just aren’t clear answers.

I’ve been blogging for almost two years, if not consistently. I’ve been keeping in touch with a couple of the SHAC folks for over a year. One of the frustrations they’ve expressed, especially in response to some of the frustrations I’ve expressed, is that the blogosphere is not the movement.

Does blogging make a difference? I have no idea. I started because it was suggested by a friend, not because she thought I had interesting things to say, but because she thought it would be interesting if I used my photography interest to sort of give visuals of activism. I never really thought I’d make a difference, and I doubt I have.

Does leafletting make a difference? I have no idea, though it seems to address some points that blogging doesn’t - getting information into the hands of people who aren’t necessarily seeking the information. And I have no issue with taking an hour here and there and passing out a few hundred pieces of information. If I’m not being effective, I’m certainly not expending much effort in any case, and it isn’t taking away from other things I would otherwise be doing. I do like to do passive leafletting, for lack of a better term, by stocking my local coffeeshop and library with pamphlets. That’s even less effort.

What does make a difference?

I really have no idea. The people I’ve influenced (that I know about) were purely by accident on my part. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.

I’m not sure if anyone really knows what makes the most difference. And even if they did, there is still the question in my mind about how I, personally, can make the most difference. See, what if getting up in front of large crowds and giving speeches was the most effective way, in general? I just can’t do that, so while it might be effective (and I’m making no claims either way, I’m just using it as an illustrative example), it wouldn’t be something that I could do to be effective.

We’re not all the same. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, different interests, different ways of interacting. It seems to me that we should make it a point to do what we can where we would be most effective as individuals.

I usually feel like when people encourage us to get involved, there is little consideration given to what our personal strengths might be. We’re told to put thought into what we’re doing (at least some will tell us that) but the suggestions I hear are always the same.

I don’t have suggestions to give to people, so maybe this is just a pointless post, but what I think is actually that we are the ones that will come up with where we can be most effective. I have a friend who is getting back into a web-design business, a second job for him, and he’s determined that he will give a portion of his time to non-profits that he believes in. He’s already made a big difference for one sanctuary by volunteering to design their website, and I think it has a lot of potential in general.

I’m sure there are a lot of potential ideas out there. I love hearing about creative ways people make a difference in the movement.

I also think that we too-often ignore supportive roles, and their very real worth within the movement. Of course I could be saying this in a self-serving way, since much of what I do seems to be supportive rather than directly working on changing people…

Regardless, I know that my biggest interest and talent are in spending time at sanctuaries and taking pictures. I am no Ansel Adams, not even close, but I have been able to use my photography in small ways. Maybe I’ll figure out how to put it to better use as time goes on. I do feel that it makes more sense to me to focus on that, than to try to become something I’m not. Like a public speaker, someone who enjoys talking to politicians, or any number of things that are likely very important but which I’m not suited for.

It might be hard to see in the small picture, but this was Ainsley, who is about 2 years old now, and Sally two weeks ago, checking each other out. It was sweet the way the cows were so interested in her antics, and in meeting this little baby. Check out a bigger picture if you like.

(miss you sally)

Yet more babies arrive at Poplar Spring…

I swear, this has been the spring of many babies at Poplar Spring! I asked Dave today if it has been an unusual year, in that sense, because I don’t remember this many babies arriving last year. I gather that there have been some more than usual, but in general there are babies arriving year round. And that’s true enough of this past year as well - Emily, the blind calf, arrived about a year ago. Newman, arriving as a six-month old goat, came sometime this past fall. And there was Hermie, the itty bitty chick rescued from a reptile show in September or October, and then the five baby chicks that came in early November, I think. In December or January it was Petey and Otis, two baby pigs rescued from an abuse situation, and then more recently it was Sally, the flying nun, and the two baby lambs (Billy and Butch) and their momma (Betty). So it has been pretty continuous.

Today there were four babies! Two more baby goats, four days old, and two baby pigs, who had never even seen straw until just a few days ago.

Sadly there was some awful news today as well. Sally died this past week, primarily due to the negligence of the vet clinic. It is hard to comprehend, really, that the sweet little goat that was so full of life and happily performing acrobatic feats off of the pigs just two weeks ago has died. I can remember how she felt as I carried her two weeks ago from the pig yard to her stall in the goat yard for her nap.

She’d wormed her way into all of our heart, as babies have a tendency to do. As hard as it is when any of the animals die, there is something comforting in being able to say “they had a good life at PS, and had a chance to be comfortable in their last years” when the animal is older. Sally was only a few months old, and her death is the kind where you can only say “it shouldn’t have happened.” She’s not the first who has been lost to the negligence of the vets - you can imagine the struggle any sanctuary has finding vets who will treat “farm animals” with the same consideration and competence we demand of those who treat our cats and dogs and other pampered pets. Terry and Dave actually had taken Sally to a vet that is 3.5 hours away, because they can only trust the local vets for certain procedures, and even then they aren’t always happy with the service they get. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

We need some animal rights people to become large animal and bird vets and live near the various sanctuaries so that the sanctuaries can depend on qualified people who understand just how seriously the sanctuaries take the health of their residents. I know that all sanctuaries deal with this issue.

Spending time at the sanctuaries tends to drive the cycle of life home. For every moment spent in grief over the loss of one, there are moments of joy over the saving of others. Today was especially bittersweet, with the new baby goats.

Leo, just four days old today, arrived this past week with his brother. They seem quite big for just being four days old! You can see their extreme youth in their unsteady balance, and in their focus on nursing from whatever they can find that seems vaguely nipple-ish. Fingers are popular, but they’ll make do with jackets and noses as well.

Lenny is the bigger and bolder of the two, though they were both very friendly and had no hesitation in approaching new humans and demanding food of them. They’re an “alpine breed” and their story is very interesting, as it highlights the misconception of the “friendly family farm.”

It starts with a woman who went to a small family farm that sells goat cheese. I can fill in the blanks and make some guesses - she probably believed that small family farms were “better”, perhaps she believed in buying locally, and in any case she made the effort to go to the source to buy her goat cheese.

What she found there horrified her enough that she purchased six one day old babies, to save them from being sent to the market for slaughter. The woman running the farm with her husband was more than happy to sell these babies for $15 each, since she’d likely get from $1 to $5 at market, and selling them for a greater price at a younger age both maximized this woman’s profits and minimized her expenses.

When she picked up the baby goats, instead of the goat cheese, she witnessed a baby being born. The goats are bred spaced throughout the year so that there is never a downtime when there are no goats lactating. And so the babies are born year round. This woman watched the baby being born, after which the husband scooped up the baby and dumped it in a manure bucket and carted it off. As if it was waste. Which, to them, it is. Their money comes from the cheese, the babies are simply a by-product of a process they need to make happen in order for the goats to produce milk. The babies aren’t allowed to nurse at all because, as the husband told the woman-rescuer, it would cut into their profits.

Nice.

So the woman who now had her eyes opened wider than she could comfortably bear about the dairy industry, having witnessed the horrors on a family farm first hand, came home with six day old baby goats, and quickly realized it was more than she could handle on her own. And that is how Leo and Lenny came to Poplar Spring this week.

Since this post is already incredibly long, I’ll just keep going!

Mork and Mindy are the two piglets who arrived this week. They actually came from the same vet clinic that killed Sally, for a bit of irony. They were used, essentially, for vet students to learn procedures on. Most years what happens is that the piglets, bought at market, are used for this purpose, and then sold for slaughter. And yes, this is a vet school doing that, which I find chilling. This year they brought the two piglets to Poplar Spring instead. Mork and Mindy lived their entire lives on concrete, in cages, except when they were being prodded, bled, and having tubes inserted into them. They were driven down, a 3.5 hour ride, in cages with no bedding. When they arrived at PS, it was the first time they’d ever seen straw. Can you imagine? Clearly they are loving their new home already, though they’re still quite frightened.

They’ll be rolling over for belly rubs before long, I have no doubt. Mork is on the left, having buried his face in the hay. Mindy is the cutie on the right.

Billy, Butch and Betty are mingling with the rest of the sheep and the goats now that they’re clear of all parasites. Many of the sheep are a bit frightened of them, but with the babies as ambassadors it won’t be long before they are all comfortable with the new trio. Billy is the white lamb, Butch the brown lamb (though technically they’d call it “black”!) and Betty is their mom.

I realized as I watched them today that I have never had the chance to see babies grow up with their mom at PS. And indeed, it is an unusual event to have the moms arrive with the babies. There was one cow years ago who arrived pregnant, and so there is a mother-son pair of cows, but Stewart was grown long before I ever visited PS. It will be interesting to watch Billy and Butch grow up under the watchful gaze of their momma in a community of fellow sheep.

Spring at Eastern Shore

Rich came down from NYC this past weekend so that we could head out to Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary and lend pattrice a hand for a day. Rich has wanted to visit the sanctuary for a while, and I like to get out there once a month or so. Well, once a month is my stated goal, but I’ve only made it out there four times in the past ten months!

There are many reasons why it is important to me to make that trip. Partially simply to show some kind of support and solidarity, to make the effort for someone who is a bit off of the beaten path, for someone who contributes so much to the movement, and to the life and health of over a hundred chickens. And a few ducks, cats, and dogs as well. Support is important, and sometimes I think it is a part of activism that we don’t pay enough attention to. As it happens, pattrice is the author of Aftershock, and creating sanctuary for each other is something she talks about. It is something I think about often.

There is also the fact that I learn a lot every time I am there. I learn about gardening, about composting, I learn that the chickens and the wild birds communicate effortlessly, and that even I can pick up a phrase here and there. Last weekend it was the hum that can be loosely translated to “be alert, something might be up.”

Added to that is simple enjoyment. I got to see the babies I’d taxied down last month, as well as the rooster. The rooster was the same, a bit full of himself, but not so much that he was challenging the others. He is obviously thrilled to be wandering around the sanctuary. The babies grew a ton, but were still definitely babies. They grow so fast! I’m glad I got to see them one more time in their baby guise. They’ll be full grown in no time.

Don’t they look like the rooster is showing them something important?

After Rich and I cleaned out one of the coops and spread a fresh layer of hay, we raked two areas of the yard clear of the sweetgum fruits. They are hard to walk on, for birds, humans, and I imagine dogs and cats as well, and they also inhibit growth of plants. So we raked up the fruits and added them to the compost pile. pattrice worked on some gardening tasks, which included planting a couple clumps of grass. This proved fascinating for the birds, who gathered around to nibble on the treat!

On one of my trips back from the compost pile, Sparrow posed for me. Beautiful and photogenic, which I think she was well aware of!

Of course it wasn’t all work, as enjoyable as it was to spend time working outside in perfect spring weather! Rich and I brought some lunch and other goodies from Stickyfingers, and so we all enjoyed a delicious lunch, great conversation, and had plenty of time to give love and attention to the various cats and dogs that have come to find a home with pattrice as well. The most recent addition is Loca, who is full of amazing energy and joy.

Someday I’ll have to post about Madeline, who is part deer, part cat, part pig, part Jurassic mammal, and all that hidden in a dog costume. She needs her own post, as you can imagine!

cat bounty update

I’m not exactly posting on breaking news, but having posted already about the cat bounty in Randolph, Iowa, it seemed only fair to post that they’ve rescinded the bounty.

The City Council approved the bounty after receiving numerous complaints about feral cats. Under the initial policy, which went into effect March 1, stray cats without collars would be taken to a veterinarian, and if they weren’t claimed, they’d be euthanized. That caused an uproar among animal lovers.

On Thursday, the city voted to end the bounty and form a task force involving three organizations, Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies, Best Friends Animal Society of Utah and Feline Friendz in Nebraska.

“We’re very keenly interested in helping this community. The mayor is reaching out for help,” said Barbara Williamson of the Best Friends group.

The task force will meet next week to devise a plan, which the City Council will consider on Thursday, said Elizabeth Parowski, spokeswoman for Alley Cat Allies.

“What will happen is the cats that are truly feral will return to the outdoors and the cats that are strays that are actually socialized will be adopted into homes,” Parowski said.

Sherry Haftings of Feline Friendz said she already has several veterinarians lined up to help, but a lot more needs to be done.

This change of heart doesn’t surprise me - when you have a town of 200 people hitting headlines in the national news in a way that makes them look like uncaring animal haters, there are a few things that is going to happen. You’ll have animal groups stepping up to make a point and help the people and animals, and you’ll have a town that is going to be more than happy to get the negative attention off their backs.

I have no doubt that the story was manipulated on several levels. Misrepresentation was likely the order of the day. I am quite sure that the people of the town were not as awful as their mayor was quoted to make them sound, and I’m also sure that the quote by the HSUS representative was carefully chosen to give a certain impression. It is all in the name of selling papers and getting attention, and if that means making both the residents of a town and an animal welfare organization sound like animal-haters, well then by golly that is what AP is going to do.

Meghan, with HSUS, left a comment on my blog:

The HSUS’s comments were misrepresented in the article referenced above. HSUS President and CEO Wayne Pacelle wrote on his blog Friday about the organization’s support of Trap-Neuter-Return programs to humanely manage feral cats; you can see that at http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2008/03/feral-cats.html.

And so I went to check it out. I knew what to expect, more or less. I figured that if an HSUS employee (her IP identified her as such, so I’m not just guessing that she’s an employee) was sent out to find random blogs, even small low-traffic ones like mine, to spread the word in an attempt to correct the impression of HSUS, well, the post she’s sending me to is guaranteed to be a bit of damage control spin-doctoring.

I was interested to see how the misrepresentation came about. After reading a rather long post about Cleveland Armory and how much he loved cats, and what various things HSUS does for cats, we came to the closing of the post:

We’re not alone, of course, and I’m personally grateful to see Alley Cat Allies, Alley Cat Rescue, Neighborhood Cats, Best Friends, the ASPCA, and other groups working so hard on this front. A major challenge like this requires that kind of organizational unity, along with the contributions of literally thousands of volunteer cat advocates on the front lines in communities across the nation.

In many communities, feral cats are not welcome, and they’re sometimes demonized by public officials. This happened just the other day, in an Iowa town, where, unfortunately, The HSUS’s role and comments were misrepresented in a poorly edited story that was widely circulated. That situation has been resolved, with an offer of Trap-Neuter-Return assistance being accepted by the local government. But it reminds us that the issue is a challenge in communities throughout the nation. We need to do even more to defuse local controversies surrounding the presence of feral cats, and to address them humanely and responsibly. And we will. Cleveland Amory wouldn’t have it any other way.

And I can honestly say that while I gave them the chance to explain the misrepresentation, they squandered that. And the spin doctor, to me, is that they are trying to imply credit for what Best Friends, Alley Cat Allies, and Feline Friendz are doing for the town in Iowa. The reporter writing the article for the Mercury Sun was careful to include quotes from all three of the groups forming the task force. It irks me that the blog post that was supposed to address the alleged misrepresentation really didn’t address it. At all. And still tried to give the impression that they are part of the task force.

Pfft.

I’m extremely happy that the cats will be helped. That’s the point, in the end.

But I was curious, so I emailed AP to see what the reporter who originally reported on the bounty would have to say, hoping she’d provide the full text or something along those lines. AP doesn’t give us, their audience, direct access to their reporters. You have to go through the general email address and hope that it is a slow day for them (yeah right) and that they’ll bother to forward your email to the appropriate person.

This makes the AP reporters as good as anonymous to me, and if a reporter doesn’t have to answer to his or her public, I wonder whether they feel accountable at all. If we can’t ask them to clarify something, if we don’t necessarily know who they even are, or whether a person by that name really exists, how can we trust them?

I can’t!

Wayne could have easily convinced me that the AP reporter was blowing smoke. He didn’t.

Wednesday = Vegan sandwich night in DC

Wednesdays are vegan sandwich night at the Infoshop starting today:

Come out to the Infoshop Wednesday, March 19th for the first vegan sandwich night. Starting Wednesday there will be weekly vegan sandwich nights with different sandwiches each week. Next week will feature vegan pulled pork sandwiches and vegan meatball subs.

Sandwiches will be available to pick up at the Infoshop starting at 6:30PM.

$6 donation per sandwich. Donations will benefit the Infoshop.

www.dcinfoshop.org

Which I can’t go to for the next couple weeks, at least, because I have a class that will make it impossible. Hopefully I’ll be able to check it out next month!

The mouse lives! And The Flying Nun…

If anyone was wondering about the mouse from last week at the sanctuary, good news - he made a complete recovery after a couple days, and they were able to release him back to the chicken barn!

In fact, I think I saw him again yesterday. There was a mouse who scurried under the water bowl as I went to pick it up, the very same water bowl that I found last week’s mouse under. After I picked the bowl up, the mouse hesitated a second, and then ran to the hidey hole in the wall. Terry says that it does happen sometimes that the mice go under the water bowls (they haven’t figured out how to stop them from doing that) and then get cold and can’t seem to warm up on their own. This is how she knew that they often perk right back up after they get warm!

Yesterday was a gorgeous day at the sanctuary - sunny and hardly windy, and the temps were in the mid 60’s I think. Sally, a.k.a. The Flying Nun, came with us to the pig yard. She gets lonely in her quarantine stall, so hopefully she’s out with the goats today - they were going to hear back from the vet yesterday as to whether all the bugs she came with were taken care of. Until then, she has to stay quarantined from the other goats and the sheep. Yesterday she came with us to the pig yard, where she had a great time. She seemed to think that the pigs were great big boulders for her to climb on, and the pigs seemed perfectly content for Sally’s little bitty goat feet to scurry across their bodies as they bathed in the sun.

Sally did actually know that the pigs weren’t rocks - she tried to get Sassafras to play head-butt, but Sassafras didn’t even bat an eyelash.

The cows were fascinated by the show Sally was putting on. They’re so curious in general, but they seem especially drawn to the antics of the little ones. I remember them doing the same thing when the two baby pigs, Otis and Petey, went in with the big pigs for the first time as well.

It was all very cute. I carried Sally back to her barn afterwards so she could nap, and she’s just the sweetest thing.

cats, and overpopulation “problems”

On CNN this morning I ran across an article about a tiny little town that is having a cat overpopulation “problem”, and is dealing with it by offering a $5 bounty on ferals and strays brought in alive.

If they’re not claimed after an unspecified amount of time, they’ll be killed.

These cats have done things such as eaten cat food that wasn’t explicitly gifted to them, attacked dogs (and I’m sure the dogs were perfectly mannered, and didn’t go after the cats), and in general, existed. For such crimes: death.

Now, in the town’s favor, they probably haven’t a clue how to manage a feral colony. The mayor’s reaction to TNR and other solutions was essentially “you really think anyone in this town would donate money to cats?”

The mayor said several suggestions have been made, including neutering, trapping and asking for donations.

“You couldn’t get a donation to save a cat in this town for the life of them,” Trively said.

And that either says something about how out of touch he is with the thoughts and feelings of the people he is representing (I’m betting on that one) or how cold the people of that town, collectively, are. They also implied that the problem was sudden -either they’d been ignoring it for a long time, or someone recently started dumping cats in their backyard. I’m guessing on the former for this one as well.

The issue, when talking practicalities, is that removing and killing the ferals and the strays living as ferals is that the problem doesn’t go away. It is masked for a while, and then it comes back. It is one of the most basic aspects of population biology. Too bad few people bother to learn anything about this when they’re trying to make decisions that have to do with population biology!

HSUS managed to drop the ball as well.

John Snyder of the Humane Society of the United States said he doesn’t have a problem with humanely killing a stray cat, but said the money spent on the bounty and the vet expenses would be better spent hiring someone who knows what he or she is doing.

They don’t have a problem with needless killing, but I do. And since we all know that HSUS loves to claim victories, why didn’t they take this small localized opportunity to work with the people of that particular town to say “hey, here’s how you set up feral colonies, here’s why it works, and here’s a year’s worth of vouchers for spay/neuter clinics.”

But nope, they instead took the opportunity to assure all of us that they have no problem with killing ferals. Well, maybe someone from that town will win HSUS’s “pet portrait” contest, and get enough money to start up a TNR program themselves.

Ironically I’ve seen people up in arms about how cats are treated in China. I don’t know all the details about what’s going on in China, but I know damn well what’s going on here - 10 million+ homeless pets killed every single year, and 10 billion other land animals killed every year for food. How is it that we think we can point fingers?

babies, mice, and rain

Yesterday was a wet and sort of gross day at the sanctuary, at least in terms of weather. Cuteness abounded, however, and we got to spend time with the baby goat, who has been named Sally after Sally Fields in “The Flying Nun“, and the baby lambs and their momma. I think the momma sheep is “Bessie” though Terry might have said “Betsy” or I could be misremembering completely. The babies are Billy and Butch, with Billy being a mostly white fellow, and Butch being a black sheep like his mom. Butch is the bolder one of the two, and he’ll come right up to you to check you out, and even had thoughts about trying to escape the barn where they’re living until they have a clean bill of health and can join the other sheep and goats. Billy is curious as well, but more inclined to stick a bit closer to mom.

When we were in the chicken barn doing our normal chores, I was taking care of the water bowls. I brought one back in and was about to put it down when I saw a mouse on the cement block that we put the water bowls on. Mice live in barns, you often catch sight of them scurrying around, but this one was laying on his side. I thought he was dead. I would like to say I handle these things well and that my excuse for just standing there was that the water bowl was in my hand. And that is partially true, the water bowl really was in my hands, and it is big enough that I couldn’t have done anything while holding the water bowl, but the reality is that I don’t handle these things well, and so I was sort of stuttering and saying “oh my god, there is a dead mouse!”

Turns out he wasn’t dead, though he obviously wasn’t doing well. Terry said that sometimes they just get cold, and if you warm them up they perk right up. She picked him up and held him under the heat lamp. He gasped a few times, and we kept thinking that this was it for him, but then his breathing seemed to get better and he was doing sort of better. I got a mouse box that they created just for situations like this from the storage barn.

The mouse box is a little cardboard box, sort of like a shoe box, but either for kids shoes or for something smaller than a typical adult shoe, and they have cut holes in the sides near the bottom as well as one in the lid, and taped pieces of wire mesh over the holes. There’s a tiny little dish in there they can use to put mouse food (which I suspect is the same as chicken food) and water in. We put some hay in the bottom of the box, put the little mouse in it, and Terry brought him up to the house to see if he’d do better once he warmed up.

When I left a little while later he was still breathing, so I guess time will tell. If nothing else, if he doesn’t make it, he’ll have been warm and comfortable for his last little while.

Terry always impresses me with how well she handles situations like that. She and Dave always seem to be prepared for helping even the littlest of their residents. The mouse ladders, a little mouse infirmary box. It is one of the things I love about spending time there. Everyone counts.

I got to feed little Sally her bottle before I left too. All in all, it was a really great day at the sanctuary, despite the drizzling rain!