Spring 2009
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Sea Otters in the Prince William Sound, About the Cover This sea otter in the Prince William Sound of Alaska may be identified and studied from a distance, avoiding stress and injury to the animal thanks to a photographic computer system called the Sea Otter Nose Matching Program, or SONMaP. (See page 19 for study findings.) The pristine-looking... more...
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Circus Finally Exposed in Federal Trial The Animal Welfare Institute’s case against Feld Entertainment, Inc., the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, finally went to trial in February. We charged the circus with violating the Endangered Species Act by beating elephants with ankuses and chaining them... more...
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Table of Contents ANIMALS IN AGRICULTURE 6 Taken for a Ride 26 Merciless MRSA Strain Alive and Kicking 26 AWI Establishes Abandoned Horse Reward Fund ANIMALS IN LABORATORIES 24 Tickled Pink ANIMALS IN THE OCEANS 8 Fish Smarts 8 Fish Fight... more...
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Obama Administration Restores Scientific Review to ESA The Obama administration is to be congratulated for its restoration of a key scientific review provision of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Before President Bush left office, his administration removed an ESA requirement compelling federal agencies to consult with the U.S. Fish and... more...
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Congressional Directory Now Available from AWI The Animal Welfare Institute often asks that its supporters contact members of Congress on various animal welfare bills and issues. Now it is easier to locate your elected officials, as we have just released a portable directory of the 111 th Congress. The handy full-color booklet includes... more...
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Arkansas Buckles Down on Animal Cruelty With the recent passage of its felony animal cruelty law, Arkansas has shed its dubious distinction as one of only five states—including Idaho, Mississippi, and the Dakotas—still treating heinous acts of animal abuse as mere misdemeanors. Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel worked with... more...
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Taken for a Ride by Tracy Basile A snowstorm was in full force one wintry day last December when filmmaker Donny Moss decided to film the carriage horse drivers picking up tourists outside Manhattan’s world-famous Plaza Hotel—a tradition more than 70 years old. As one of the horses came trotting... more...
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Congressional Directory Now Available from AWI The Animal Welfare Institute often asks that its supporters contact members of Congress on various animal welfare bills and issues. Now it is easier to locate your elected officials, as we have just released a portable directory of the 111 th Congress. The handy full-color booklet includes... more...
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Fish Smarts: Studies Demonstrate their Abilities Researchers from the Technion Institute of Technology in Israel recently put the notion that fish only have a three-second memory span to the test. Their recent study trained young fish to associate a certain sound with food over the course of a month, then released the animals into the... more...
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Fish Fight Climate Change espite grim predictions that carbon emissions will only rise in the coming decades and threaten a vast array of sea life, a recent study published in the journal Science early this year has proven that fish are unwittingly helping to lower elevated CO 2 levels in their ecosystems … through... more...
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Carbon Emissions Threaten Survival Rising acidity levels in seawater, resulting from the ocean absorbing increasing amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are causing clownfish some serious problems. According to the British online news site The Guardian, scientists have tested clownfish larvae and discovered that the... more...
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Sea Lion Seizures caused Researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uncovered a correlation earlier this year between the interaction of the toxins DDT and domoic acid and the occurrence of epileptic seizures in California sea lions at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. As... more...
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Help For Right Whales Entangled In Fishing Gear Thanks to a new sedation delivery system, more endangered North Atlantic right whales may be saved from a slow, painful death as a result of entanglement in fishing gear, Science Daily reported in March. Though some whales manage to free themselves, the struggle could last for months,... more...
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Invigorate, not Capitulate: The Prescription for Whaling Commission Success The Member-Nations of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) were poised to make a critical decision at the 2009 Intersessional Meeting held in Rome in March. They were faced with whether to continue pursuing a package of compromise rooted in groundless fears and flimsy hopes, or grasp a... more...
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Animal Migrations May Be Moving Toward Extinction There can't be a more remarkable sight than a mass migration of animals, be it across the plains of Africa, on a cloud-covered skyline, or along the wave-ridden ocean coasts. Even as you read this article, animals are charging forward, moving from one region or climate zone to another in search... more...
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Elephant Cruelty Under the Big Top Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Finally exposed in federal court trial By Tracy Silverman, Esq. " The elephants I grew to know and love at the circus were beaten daily with sharp bull hooks and chained like prisoners for hours on end ." -Tom Rider, former Ringling Bros. employee After nearly nine years of intense legal wrangling, the Animal... more...
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Beating the Bushes for Carnivore Scat By Aimee Hurt There I stood upon a steep hillside in the lush and wild heart of Idaho, using all fours to steady myself, though not nearly as deftly as my canine co-worker, Wicket. I’d grab onto the brush to keep it from scratching my face and use it to haul myself upward, inching my... more...
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The Nose Knows: A New Method of Tracking Individual Otters By Randall W. Davis Recognition of individual animals enables detailed studies of movement patterns, foraging, life histories and survival. It is also important for understanding the ecology and behavior of species. Artificial marks, such as tattoos, dyes, brands, colored or numbered... more...
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Death of Last U.S. Jaguar The Phoenix Zoo had the unfortunate task of euthanizing the last living wild jaguar in the United States in March. Dubbed "Macho B" by researchers who had photographed him sporadically for more than a decade, the 16-year-old animal was accidentally captured by the Arizona Game and Fish... more...
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“Living Fossil” Rediscovered Feared to be extinct in the Caribbean—the only region of the globe it once called home—the solenodon was recently caught on film and eventually captured by conservationists. Researchers from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Ornithological Society of Hispaniola took... more...
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Chimp Plans for Tomorrow, Leaves No Stone Unturned Though the proverb warns that "people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones," it makes no mention of primates in zoo exhibits. Santino, a 30-year-old chimp in Sweden’s Furuvik zoo, has been doing just that for 14 years now, angrily launching rocks and discs of concrete into crowds... more...
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Human Appetites Driving Frogs to Extinction An international team of scientists have added human consumption to the long list of things already threatening global frog populations, the BBC reported in January. A new study, published in the journal Conservation Biology, found that upwards of one billion frogs may be captured from the... more...
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“Extinct” Quail Spotted Too Late One ornithologist’s treasure is another man’s dinner. As the American Free Press (AFP) reports, while filming a documentary on traditional bird trapping methods in the Caraballo Mountains of the Philippines, a TV crew unwittingly got footage of Worcester’s buttonquail being captured by... more...
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Hermits: The Unfortunate Victims of Society It was an unusual discovery. As the mercury soared to triple digits last October in Yuma, Ariz., a hermit crab later named "Hermie" was found near a drip irrigation line in a state park—a victim of the crustacean pet trade. More than likely, he was purchased at a local pet store and then... more...
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Tickled Pink Sylvie Cloutier, Ph.D., and Ruth C. Newberry, Ph.D., present playful handling as social enrichment for laboratory rats When animals are used in research, there is seldom, if ever, a focus on affectionate or playful handling. However, based on what has already been proven about... more...
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Merciless MRSA Strain Alive and Kicking Disturbing evidence of a potential epidemic has been published in a study by University of Iowa College of Public Health researcher Tara Smith et al this January. The study was the first in the country to document animal-to-human transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus... more...
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AWI Establishes Abandoned Horse Reward Fund Just as some people fail to recognize their responsibility to their dogs and cats, so too is the case with horses, many of whom are abandoned by their owners each year. Though tough economic times can increase the financial burden on animal owners, it is important for them to realize that... more...
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The Inner World of Farm Animals By Amy Hatkoff Stewart, Tabori & Chang ISBN-10: 1584797487 176 pages; $19.95 Amy Hatkoff makes clear in her new book, The Inner World of Farm Animals: Their Amazing Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Capabilities, that these animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and... more...
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Righteous Porkchop By Nicolette Hahn William Morrow ISBN-10: 0061466492 336 pages; $23.99 Righteous Porkchop begins with author Nicolette Hahn describing her first exposure to the realities of industrial pig "production" as senior attorney for Waterkeeper Alliance. Nothing she had read prepared... more...
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Oil Pollution Persists from Exxon Valdez Spill Twenty years ago, the single-hulled Exxon Valdez tanker collided with the Bligh Reef in Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine and ecologically significant Prince William Sound. The massive spill—caused by human error and lack of oversight—ruined one of America’s... more...
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Jun 18, 2009 More on Merciless MRSA Strain War and Stench: The pandemic that was and yet may be by Tom Garrett War and pestilence ride together and there is no better place than an army camp full of recruits, stressed and far from home, for an epidemic to begin. Camp Funston, hastily erected at the outskirts of Ft. Riley, Kansas... more...
