Chronology of humane progress (Part 2 of two parts: Mohandas to Maneka)

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

 

 

Chronology of humane progress

(Part 2 of two parts: Mohandas to Maneka)

by Merritt Clifton

 

 

1947 -- At request of Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharal Nehru wrote

into the constitution of India as Article 51-A[g] that " It shall be

the fundamental duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve

the Natural Environment including forests, lakes, rivers and

wildlife, and to have compassion for all living creatures. " This

was reinforced by the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

 

1947 -- Defenders of Wildlife formed as an anti-trapping

organization, but was taken over by hunters in 1957 and became a

mainstream hunter/conservationist front.

 

1948 -- Minnesota adopted the first law requiring public

shelters to make dogs and cats available to laboratories for

biomedical research, testing, and teaching. Similar laws were

passed by 1960 in Wisconsin, New York, South Dakota, Oklahoma,

Connect-icut, Ohio, Utah, and Iowa. The New York law was repealed

in 1977. Thirteen states, including Connecticut among nine

contiguous northeastern states, outlawed selling shelter animals for

lab use between 1977 and 1985.

 

1948 -- David Sheldrick founded Tsavo National Park in Kenya.

His young wife Daphne began rehabilitating wildlife, and eventually

became the first person to successfully rehabilitate orphaned

elephants. Daphne Sheldrick was acquainted with another young

rehabilitator, Martine Colette, the daughter of a Belgian diplomat

who was stationed in Kenya. Colette later founded the Wildlife

Waystation sanctuary near Los Angeles. David Sheldrick died in 1976,

six months after a forced relocation to Nairobi National Park to

accommodate the interests of well-placed ivory traffickers. Daphne

Sheldrick persevered, however, eventually winning a national ban on

sport hunting and the thus far resolute opposition of the Kenyan

government to resumption of international trade in ivory.

 

1951 -- Christine Stevens founds the Animal Welfare

Institute, influential in winning passage of most of the present

federal animal welfare and endangered species conservation

legislation, often with the help of Washington D.C. journalist Ann

Cottrell Free, who covered the White House during the Eisenhower

administration. Stevens headed AWI until her death in 2002.

 

1954 -- Formation of the Humane Society of the U.S. by former

American Humane Association National Humane Review editor Fred Myers,

Cleveland Amory, Helen Jones, and others, mostly formerly

associated with the American SPCA or the AHA; formation of the

North Shore Animal League by Elizabeth Lewyt and friends. HSUS,

founded largely in opposition to the ASPCA and AHA acceptance of the

use of animals in biomedical research, later led opposition to the

use of decompression chambers to kill homeless dogs and cats, but by

the mid-1980s was a leading voice of tradition in humane work.

No-kill sheltering, meanwhile, had existed before North Shore only

in the care-for-life paradigm of retirement homes for privileged pets

and horses. North Shore introduced the use of paid ads to promote

adoptions, and initiated interstate transport of adoptable dogs and

cats from animal control facilities where they would be killed to

high-volume adoption centers. At peak, circa 1990, North Shore was

adopting out as many as 45,000 dogs and cats per year (about twice as

many as in recent years.) North Shore funding has also increased the

U.S. pet sterilization capacity by about 70,000 surgeries per year.

 

1954-1955 -- The San Francisco SPCA formed the Northern

California SPCA and the Western Humane Education Society to promote

" appropriate and humane kenneling " and " humane education. " By this

it apparently meant teaching the use of decompression to kill

animals. Both subsidiaries folded and the SF/SPCA was nearly

bankrupt by 1976, when exposes by TV reporter Marilyn Baker brought

a regime change. New executive director Richard Avanzino scrapped

the decompression chamber on his second day, introduced high-volume

dog and cat sterilization, returned the San Francisco animal control

contract to the city in 1989 after a five-year phase-out, and in

1994 introduced the Adoption Pact, under which San Francisco became

the first city in the U.S. to practice no-kill animal control.

Baker, who died in 2001, went on to found Orphan Pet Oasis, in

Palm Desert, California.

 

1954 -- Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev introduced the first

Soviet animal protection law in 1954, a year after the death of

Joseph Stalin, as part of an effort to introduce at least a

semblance of compassion to the Soviet police state.

 

1957 -- Alice Harrington founded Friends of Animals, whose

initial project was operating the first low-cost dog and cat

sterilization clinic in the U.S. at Neptune, New Jersey. FoA later

opened a second clinic in Miami, Florida, and then started the

first national low-cost sterilization program, still the largest

program of the organization. FoA evolved into the present

multi-purpose animal advocacy group during the 1980s. Splits within

FoA during that era indirectly produced Animals' Agenda magazine

(1981), the Doris Day Animal League (1986), the Rutgers Animal

Rights Law Clinic (1987), and Spay/USA (1990), among many other

groups whose founders or cofounders were FoA staff just before

starting their own projects. Splits within Animals' Agenda

eventually produced Animals' Voice (1987), E Magazine (1988), and

ANIMAL PEOPLE (1992).

 

1957 --The Soviet Union scored a space-race first by shooting

into orbit a small stray dog named Laika. She lived only a few

hours, according to recently released Soviet archives, but at the

time the world believed she had lived long enough to be burned alive

in re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Somewhat naive horror at

the fate of Laika outraged animal advocates everywhere. The public

was then largely unaware that pound dogs were being experimented

upon, electrocuted, decompressed, shot, or gassed by the tens of

millions, throughout the world, while the Soviet propaganda machine

made Laika probably the most famous dog in history before discovering

that millions of people were more upset about her plight, isolated

in space, than were thrilled at the scientific triumph that she

represented. Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev responded by

authorizing the formation of the Animal Protection Society, the

first and only Soviet humane organization. It was disbanded and

supplanted by independent nonprofit humane groups after the 1990

collapse of Communism.

 

1958 -- Congressional passage of the Delany Amendment, which

mandated animal testing as part of the assessment of consumer

products for cancer-causing properties. The Delany Amendment was

repealed in 1996, at request of leading chemical manufacturers,

including Procter & Gamble, with virtually no input or even

awareness from the animal advocacy sector.

 

1958 -- Pet theft for laboratory supply emerges as a

hot-button issue. After reading about pet theft by lab suppliers in

a popular magazine, which provided few hard facts, Minnesota

schoolteacher Lucille Aaron Moses began doing her own investigation,

eventually as a field representative for the Humane Society of the

U.S. Her work and that of other investigators in other parts of the

U.S. prompted the 1966 Life magazine expose that resulted in the

passage of the Laboratory Animal Protection Act. Moses retired,

married, and moved to California, where she continued animal

advocacy work as Lucille Moses Scott until her death in 1991. Her

anti-pet theft work was continued in Minnesota by Mary Warner, who

moved to Virginia circa 1976 and formed the anti-pet theft group

Action 81. It was absorbed in the early 1990s by the Animal Welfare

Institute. By then pet theft for lab supply had become an

anachronism. The passage of the1990 Pet Theft Act gave the USDA

Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service the legal tools it needed

to close the U.S. border to imports of random source dogs and cats in

February 1993, and to initiate vigorous prosecution of random source

animal dealers within the U.S. who could not document the origins of

their animals. Seven USDA Midwest Stolen Dog Task Force agents were

killed in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by

white supremacist terrorist Tim McVeigh, but by then many of the

most notorious alleged sellers of stolen pets had already been put

out of business. Lab demand for random-source dogs and cats

plummeted, meanwhile, with the advent of genetic research, which

requires the use of animals with known genetic histories. Of more

than 300 sellers of random-source animals to labs in 1980, fewer

than 30 remained active by 2000. Total U.S. lab use of dogs fell

from 211,104 in 1979 to 70,541 in 1999. Total U.S. lab use of cats

fell from 74,259 in 1974 to 23,238 in 1999. Pet theft post-Pet Theft

Act is mostly associated with dogfighting and acts of individual

sadism and abuse.

 

1959 -- Joy Adamson, wife of Kenyan game warden George

Adamson, authored Born Free, about her rehabilitation for release

of the lioness Elsa. The story became an influential hit film. The

Adamsons and George's brother Terrence remained active in wildlife

rehabilitation and protection for the rest of their lives. Joy was

murdered by a former employee in 1980, Terrence died from natural

causes in 1986, and George was killed while defending a German woman

from a gang of poachers and marauders in 1988. Their legacies

included establishing the Elsa Appeal and the Born Free Foundation,

and helping many other noted African wildlife conservationists to get

started, among them Esmond Bradley Martin and Tony Fitzjohn.

 

1959 -- Jane Goodall became the first of " Leakey's Angels, "

a trio of young women sent by anthropologist Louis Leakey to live

among and observe wild great apes. Goodall's observations of wild

chimpanzees, Dian Fossey's observations of wild gorillas, and

Berute Galdikas' observations of wild orangutans substantially

revised human perception of our closest relatives. Fossey was

murdered in 1985. Goodall and Galdikas remain highly active

advocates for animals of all species. Goodall in particular

revolutionized the techniques of wildlife study.

 

1959 -- Formation of the Blue Cross of India. Cofounder

Chinny Krishna in 1964 introduced the first neuter/return program for

street dogs in the world, which he called " ABC, " short for " Animal

Birth Control. " In 1997 the Indian goverment accepted the

recommendation of the Animal Welfare Board of India that ABC should

become national policy, and endorsed the goal of abolishing animal

control killing throughout India by 2005.

 

1959 -- Congressional passage of the rarely enforced Humane

Slaughter Act, 85 years after Switzerland became the first of 14

nations to pass similar laws before the U.S.

 

1959 -- Breaking with HSUS, Helen Jones founded the National

Catholic Humane Society, renamed the International Society for

Animal Rights in 1981. The National Catholic Humane Society, an

early advocate of no-kill sheltering, was for about 20 years the

most militant major U.S. animal welfare organization.

 

1961 -- Ohio canceled the deer hunting season due to a

scarcity of deer. This led to the rapid adoption nationwide of " buck

laws, " which promote the hunting of bucks only, ensuring that the

wintering deer population will consist mainly of pregnant females--

who because of the lack of food competition from bucks are more

likely to bear twins. In less than 30 years the U.S. goes from a

deer shortage to alleged deer overpopulation.

 

1961 -- The World Wildlife Fund was founded by trophy hunter

Sir Peter Scott and cronies, among them captive bird-shooters Prince

Philip of Britain and Prince Bernhardt of The Netherlands, the

whaler Aristotle Onassis, and then-National Rifle Association

president C.R. " Pink " Guter-muth. Simultaneously, trophy hunter

Russell Train founded the African Wildlife Leader-ship Foundation,

now called just the African Wildlife Foundation. A primary goal of

both WWF and AWF was to promote funding of wildlife conservation

internationally by sales of hunting permits, as the National

Wildlife Federation had already achieved in the U.S. This, it was

hoped, would prevent newly independent former colonies of European

nations from following India and Kenya in banning sport hunting

(which was not finally accomplished in either India or Kenya until

1977, although attempts began much earlier).

 

1962 -- Miami Seaquarium staff including trainer/diver Ric

O'Barry evaded the first anti-dolphin capture protest on record to

capture Snowball, an albino dolphin who lived for three years at the

Seaquarium. O'Barry left the Seaquarium in 1967, after production

of the Flipper TV series ended. He became a semi-recluse for a

while; became a vegetarian; traveled to India to seek his soul;

returned to the U.S. to participate in marine mammal intelligence

research; and was called one day to try to save the life of one of

the Flipper dolphins, Kathy, who died in his arms from conditions

O'Barry diagnosed as consequences of stress and neglect. On Earth

Day 1970, O'Barry tried unsuccessfully to free a captive dolphin

from the Lerner Marine Laboratory in Bimini. He learned from his

failure, and has been freeing captive dolphins, with increasing

success, ever since. His work in recent years has been sponsored by

WSPA.

 

1963 -- Canadian naturalist and author Farley Mowat published

Never Cry Wolf, which with A Whale For The Killing (1972) and Sea of

Slaughter (1989) are among the most influential books in the history

of animal advocacy.

 

1963 -- William Allen Swallow, a lifelong humane worker,

authored The Quality of Mercy, a " history of the humane movement in

the United States, " published by the Mary Mitchell Humane Fund,

which made no reference to dog and/or cat sterilization, and

envisioned running pet cemeteries and rest homes for horses as the

future of the cause.

 

1965-1978 -- Frederick L. Thomsen, former USDA director of

marketing research, founded Humane Information Services, with a

lobbying arm called the National Association for Humane Legislation.

The chief activity of Humane Information Services was publishing the

quarterly newsletter Report to Humanitarians. This expanded into a

quarterly newspaper, The Humane Report, circulating 19,000 copies,

but ended with his death. Henry Spira introduces financial

accountability reporting about leading humane organizations as a

guest essayist in 1976. Ironically, Humane Information Services

itself dissolved in scandal, and eventually surrendered its

remaining fiscal assets to a humane agricultural research project at

Texas A & M University.

 

1966 -- A Life magazine expose of conditions at facilities

that sold impounded (or stolen) dogs and cats to research produced

more mail to Congress that year than any subjects other than Social

Security and the Vietnam War. Public outrage over the Life expose

brought the passage of the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act. This was

expanded into the present Animal Welfare Act in 1971, and was

strengthened by amendment in 1985 and 1990, but was weakened by the

permanent exclusion of rats, mice, and birds from laboratory animal

welfare standards in 2002. Rats, mice, and birds were previously

excluded in the enforcement regulations, but not by law.

 

1967 -- Greenpeace was founded as the Don't Make A Wave

Committee, a Quaker peace group, and became Greenpeace in 1971

after several years of disrupting nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

Canadian volunteer Paul Watson created the international reputation

of the group with dramatic high-seas confrontations against Russian

whalers and on-the-ice clashes with New-foundland sealers, but left

Greenpeace in 1977 to found the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Post-Watson, Greenpeace dropped anti-sealing and anti-fur campaigns,

and backed away from total opposition to whaling --although some

chapters outside the U.S. and Canada continue in the Watson mode.

 

1967 -- Cleveland Amory and Marian Probst founded The Fund

For Animals, out of frustration with the failure of the Humane

Society of the U.S. and other leading humane groups to oppose sport

hunting. By the early 1980s they all opposed sport hunting.

 

1968 -- Former Humane Society of the U.S. California office

chief Beltan Mouras founded the Animal Protection Institute, one of

the first animal advocacy organizations built primarily by direct

mail. A 1986 split impelled Mouras to found United Animal Nations,

which he left in 1996.

 

1969 -- Privatization of the U.S. Postal Service led to the

introduction of bulk mail presort discounts, enabling the growth of

the direct mail advocacy fundraising industry.

 

1969 -- Best-seller The Year of the Whale, by Victor B.

Sheffer, took whale-saving from the pursuit of a handful of

scientists (most influentially, Sheffer himself and Sydney Holt) to

the rise of an global Save the Whales! movement.

 

1969 -- Brian Davies founded the International Fund for

Animal Welfare, which grew into a web of 14 organizations operating

in 10 nations. Spinoff organizations and projects include the

International Wildlife Coalition (1985), International Aid for

Korean Animals (1998), the Kenyan group Youth For Conservation

(1999), and the Animals Asia Foundation (2000).

 

1970 -- Dog and cat killing in U.S. pounds and shelters

peaked in frequency at 115 per 1,000 human citizens. By 2002 it was

down to 15.7 per 1,000. Steep drops followed public acceptance of

sterilization of pet dogs during the 1970s, sterilization of pet

cats during the 1980s, and sterilization of feral cats during the

1990s. How rapidly the numbers can fall once high-volume dog and cat

sterilization begins is especially evident in North Carolina, whose

shelters in the mid-1980s were killing 238 dogs and cats per 1,000

humans, but by 2000 were killing 35 per 1,000--still, however,

more than twice the U.S. average. Gross numbers of animals killed in

U.S. shelters are less indicative than rates per 1,000 humans because

of human population growth, but also show a steep decline, from

circa 23.4 million in 1970 to 17.8 million in 1985 to 4.4 million in

2001.

 

1971 -- Film Bless The Beasts & The Children more-or-less

prophesied the rise of the modern animal rights movement.

 

1971 -- Passage of the Animal Welfare Act and Wild And Free

Ranging Horse and Burro Protection Act, followed by the Marine

Mammal Protection Act (1973), the Endangered Species Act (1973),

and U.S. ratification of the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species (1973). Polarized by the Vietnam War, President

Richard Nixon, a Republican, and Congress, dominated by Democrats,

found that animal protection was a topic popular with voters, that

they could agree upon without political risk. Opposition to the ESA

and other federal laws protecting animals did not emerge as a

Republican " wedge " issue until the 1980 Presidential campaign of

Ronald Reagan.

 

1972 -- Eleanor Seiling founded United Action for Animals.

The UAA library assisted Peter Singer during the writing of Animal

Liberation. UAA also encouraged the formation of the Animal Legal

Defense Fund (1978) and many other activist groups, mostly in the

New York City area.

 

1973 -- Mercy Crusade, of Los Angeles, opened the low-cost

dog and cat sterilization clinic which became the first in the U.S.

to receive a municipal subsidy.

 

1973 -- Martine Colette founded Wildlife Waystation,

possibly the first and certainly the most emulated U.S. sanctuary for

captive wildlife, near Los Angeles. Also in 1973 the U.S. adoption

of the Endangered Species Act and endorsement of CITES together cut

off most zoo access to replacement stock from abroad. The American

Association of Zoological Parks & Aquariums urged members to reduce

the size and variety of their animal inventories, and allow their

animals adequate space to facilitate captive breeding. The result,

from 1973 until AAZPA charter amendments in 1986 and 1991 cut off

most of the flow, was a mass exodus of " genetically redundant " zoo

animals into private hands. This in turn fueled a boom in exotic

petkeeping, roadside zoo start-ups, speculative breeding schemes,

canned hunts, and eventually, the creation of sanctuaries to try to

cope with the overflow. At least six organizations formed between

1991 and 2003 to attempt to establish a unified voice and standards

for the fast-growing sanctuary movement. The Association of

Sanctuaries (1991), American Sanctuary Association (1996) and Animal

Centers of Excellence (2003) are attempts to elevate standards; at

least two of the others appear to be defensive responses from

facilities that would not meet the TAOS, ASA, and ACE requirements.

 

1973 -- French screen star Brigitte Bardot retired from

acting to promote animal welfare. Her efforts were viewed at first

as a publicity stunt. Thirty years later, she has been a fulltime

animal advocate for more than twice as long as she was involved in

film making, and her Fondation Brigitte Bardot is a leader in

helping the humane movements of impoverished nations. Swedish-born

actress Tippi Hedren made a similar career change in 1972, founding

the Shambala Preserve near Los Angeles to house exotic cats and two

elephants, but the Hedren project grew out of her own animal

purchases in connection with making a film about African wildlife.

 

1974 -- Success of books Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

and Man Kind? by Cleveland Amory begins the process of coalescing the

animal rights movement.

 

1976 -- In a message to news media while awaiting arrest,

research assistants Steven Sipp and Ken Lavasseur coined the term

" Animal Liberation Front. " Sipp and Lavasseur had just released two

dolphins from the marine science laboratory headed by Lou Herman at

the University of Hawaii, as an act of peaceful civil disobedience

for which they accepted both the credit and the consequences.

 

1976 -- Shirley McGreal founded the International Primate

Protection League in Thailand. IPPL and the Blue Cross of India in

1978 won a ban on the export of monkeys from India to foreign labs.

Similar bans were later won in other Asian nations and in parts of

Africa.

 

1976 -- Protests led by Animal Rights International founder

Henry Spira forced the American Museum of Natural History to halt cat

experiments--the first time

anti-vivisection activism ever stopped a funded research project.

This is recognized as the first victory of the modern animal rights

movement. Spira followed up by persuading Avon and Revlon to abandon

animal testing (1980), and then won a 1984 agreement from Procter &

Gamble to fund research and development of alternatives to animal

experimentation, and then phase them into use as rapidly as

possible. As P & G was signing the agreement with Spira, word of it

somehow leaked out to PETA, Peter Singer recounts in his 1998

biography of Spira, Ethics Into Action. Trying to claim a piece of

the " victory, " PETA declared a last-minute boycott of P & G, joined

by the Humane Society of the U.S. (which dropped out of the boycott

in 1997), In Defense of Animals, Uncaged Campaigns, and many other

animal rights and antivivisection organizations. They were all

ignored. During the first 10 years of the boycott, P & G tripled in

size, and it has continued rapid growth, while reducing in-house

animal use since 1984 by approximately 75%. In June 1999 P & G

announced that it had ended all use of animal tests for current

beauty, fabric, home care, and paper products, except as required

by law. " This announcement covers roughly 80% of P & G's total product

portfolio, " said P & G spokespersons Mindy Patton and Amy Neltner.

After the P & G campaign, Spira formed the Coalition for Nonviolent

Food and focused on farm animal issues.

 

1976 -- Richard Morgan formed Mobilization for Animals.

Among the most influential animal rights groups of the era, it is

best remembered for a 1983 report on the budgets, assets, and

spending of 16 leading animal welfare and advocacy organizations.

The report was the direct ancestor of the annual " Who gets the

money? " reports produced by ANIMAL PEOPLE since 1991.

 

1978 -- Founding of Primarily Primates, the first sanctuary

to rehabilitate ex-laboratory primates.

 

1979 -- Emergence of covert " ALF " activity in Britain.

Parallel actions began in the U.S. two years later.

 

1979 -- Paul Watson and crew ram med the Portuguese pirate

whaler Sierra on the high seas, the first of 10 whaling vessels sunk

or incapacitated by the Sea Shepherds and allies during the next 14

years. The Sea Shepherds went on to confront illegal driftnetters

and other maritime poachers, facing prosecution by government in

some jurisdictions, emulation by government agencies in others, and

encountering both in Atlantic Canada, where Watson served jail time

in the mid-1990s for challenging foreign fishing vessels two years

before the government itself did.

 

1979 -- Leo Grillo founded DELTA Rescue, eventually the

largest care-for-life dog and cat sanctuary in the world, housing

only animals he personally rescues from the Angeles National Forest

and other locations around Los Angeles. (Programs to aid horses and

wildlife were later added.)

 

1980 -- Stephen Kellert published American Attitudes Toward

and Knowledge of Animals, a study based on interviews done in 1977

with 3,107 randomly selected Americans. Commissioned by the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service, the study was meant to help promote

sport hunting. Kellert identified a generational shift in attitudes

from utilitarian views predominant among people raised on farms to

more empathic views found mainly among people who do not use animals

in connection with making their livings. Franklin Loew, formerly

dean of the Tufts University and Cornell University veterinary

schools, pointed out nearly 15 years after Kellert published the

data that in retrospect it had not only predicted the rise of the

animal rights movement but also the eventual success of it in

achieving a cultural transformation, as the holders of the

utilitarian viewpoint die out. Kellert also identified a

" dominionistic " attitude toward animals held to a significantly

greater degree by hunters, trappers, and rodeo and bullfight fans,

characteristics of which, Kellert wrote but later denied, are that

the individual's " primary satisfactions [are] derived from mastery

and control over animals. " Measuring the influence of dominionism on

a scale with a maximum possible score of 18, Kellert found that

humane society members rated 0.9, anti-hunters 1.2, the general

public 2.0, livestock farmers 2.7, fishers 3.0, meat hunters 3.3,

and sport hunters from 3.8 to 4.1. Among the sport hunters, trophy

hunters--whom studies by University of Wisconsin sociologist Thomas

Heberlein have identified as being especially dedicated to

hunting--were most inclined toward dominionism. Trappers, Kellert

found, were twice as dominionistic as recreational hunters, at 8.5,

and more than four times as dominionistic as the general public.

The desire for mastery and control are also recognized leading

characteristics of sadists and pedophiles, who typically reinforce a

weak self-image through their dominance of their victims. Kellert's

findings reinforced to the humane community the importance of

publicizing the frequent association of violence toward animals with

violence done to human victims by the same perpetrators. Even major

humane groups, however, have tiptoed around the 1994-1995 ANIMAL

PEOPLE finding that rates of convicted pedophilia and child abuse

closely parallel the rates of hunting participation at the county

level in the states of New York, Ohio, and Michigan.

 

1981 -- Number of licensed hunters in the U.S. peaks at 21

million. As of 2002, it is down to 13 million. Number of licensed

trappers also peaks in 1981 at 800,000, but falls under 100,000 by

1994 and has hovered just over 100,000 since then.

 

1981 -- Existing overseas programs of the Royal SPCA of Great

Britain, Massachusetts SPCA, and Humane Society of the U.S. are

merged to form the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

 

1981 -- Debuts of People for The Ethical Treatment of

Animals, Trans-Species Unlimited, Farm Animal Reform Movement, and

Animals' Agenda magazine, produced by the merger of two newsletters

that debuted in 1979. Formed within the next five years were many of

the other groups that are generally considered to be at or near the

core of the animal rights movement: In Defense of Animals (1983),

the Humane Farming Association (1985), the quasi-PETA subsidiary

Physicians Committee for Respon-sible Medicine (1985), and Farm

Sanctuary (1986). PETA, founded by former Washington D.C. animal

control chief Ingrid Newkirk and former Fund for Animals volunteer

and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew member Alex Pacheco,

became the dominant U.S. animal rights group in part due to the

prominence of the " Silver Spring monkey case, " in which researcher

Edward Taub was prosecuted for cruelty as result of an undercover

investigation by Pacheco. Taub was convicted on six of 17 counts,

but the convictions were reversed on jurisdictional grounds. The

case was in court from August 1981 to May 1991. Belonging to the

National Institutes of Health, the monkeys remained in NIH custody

until all either died or were used in terminal experiments.

 

1982 -- The first Best Friends Animal Sanctuary opened near

Prescott, Arizona. Best Friends moved to Angel Canyon, near Kanab,

Utah, in 1987, and grew from an all-volunteer group just barely

surviving into a $15 million a year institution most noted for

teaching other animal advocates how to develop their own local

sanctuaries and anti-pet overpopulation projects.

 

1982 --The formation of the Korea Animal Protection Society

by Sunnan Kum and the rise of the Philippine Animal Welfare Society,

founded by Nina Hontiveros-Lichauco, began organized opposition to

dog-and-cat-eating in Asia. Taken up by IFAW and other international

groups, the campaign won unenforced legislative victories in Korea

(1991) and the Philippines (1997). KAPS thereafter struggled to

obtain real change in Korea almost alone until Sunnan's sister Kyenan

Kum formed International Aid for Korean Animals in 1998. IAKA

revived global attention to the issue. Other Korean animal advocacy

groups started at about the same time, and more have since debuted.

 

1983 -- The neuter/return method of feral cat population

control is promoted by the Cat Welfare Society of Britain, the

Universities Federation for Animal Welfare of Britain, and the Kenya

SPCA, apparently after some trial use in South Africa. It catches

on in the U.S. in a major way through the efforts of Alley Cat

Allies, founded in 1991, although several smaller organizations had

already been using it since the middle 1980s, and various

individuals were sterilizing feral cats on their own even before that.

 

1983 -- Tom Regan publishes The Case For Animal Rights,

followed by The Philosophy of Animal Rights (1985), Animal

Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on the Use of Animals in Science

(1986), and The Struggle for Animal Rights (1987). His works

distinguish between the concept of " animal rights, " which holds in

simplest form that " Animals are not ours to eat, wear, or

experiment upon, " as PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk puts it, and

" animal welfare, " which allows human use of animals so long as the

animals are not subjected to avoidable suffering.

 

1984 -- Start of a 10-year suspension of the Atlantic Canada

offshore seal hunt. The hunt resumed in 1995, after the failure of

the depleted cod fishery to recover from overfishing left the

Canadian and Newfoundland governments looking for someone or

something to blame, and by 2002 was back up to near-peak levels.

 

1984 -- Maneka Gandhi formed People for Animals, the first

national animal advocacy network in India, with active chapters in

nearly every major city. Many operate the local Animal Birth Control

programs.

 

1985 -- Houston and Dallas were reputedly the last two U.S.

cities to stop killing shelter animals by decompression, nine years

after San Francisco was the first. Sao Paulo, Brazil, used

decompression until 2001.

 

1986 -- The International Whaling Commission imposed a global

ban on commercial capture of baleen whales and sperm whales. Japan

formally accedes to the ban in 1988, but continues and steadily

escalates so-called " research whaling. " Norway resumed commercial

whaling in 1993.

 

1993 -- Hit film Free Willy! and sequels brought a boom in

fundraising and other activity to free captive cetaceans. The boom

faded as more than $20 million was spent to try to return the orca

star of Free Willy! to the North Atlantic. In midsummer 2002 he

finally swam free for a prolonged time-- to coastal Norway, where he

sought human friends and fish handouts. Ric O'Barry had warned all

along that this particular whale was too well socialized with humans

for successful release.

 

1994 -- San Francisco became a no-kill city. (See 1954-1955.)

 

1995 -- The first No-Kill Confer-ence attracted 65 people.

Within five years the annual conference drew 600. It became a

project of the North Shore Animal League America (a co-sponsor all

along) in 1999, and in 2002 was renamed the Conference on Homeless

Animal Management and Policy. The rapid growth of the no-kill

movement reflected the realization of activists that individual

action in response to homeless dogs and cats can cumulatively bring

about societal change; the emotional reinforcement that individuals

obtain by working directly with animals; and the relative ease of

fundraising for hands-on work. While the original conference went

mainsteam as CHAMP, Best Friends in 2001 initiated the regional No

More Homeless Pets conference series, which continue the early

No-Kill Conference focus on empowering new and small organizations.

 

1996 -- A sequel March for the Animals drew barely 10% of the

crowd of the first one, and in effect marked the end of the first

phase of the modern animal rights movement. Opinion research by Dr.

Scott Plous of Wesleyan University discovered a generational shift in

priorities: while activists over age 40 still saw vivisection as the

most important issue, activists under age 40 saw the treatment

of farm animals as most important, followed by dog and cat

overpopulation. Most of the subsequent growth and accomplishment of

the cause has been in response to farm animals and companion animals.

The Plous findings coincided with meat industry research which shows

lower per capita meat consumption among both men and women in each

younger age group. The trend suggests a precipitous drop in U.S.

meat consumption with the passing of the World War II and Baby Boom

generations.

 

1998 --PeopleSoft computer software founders Dave and Cheryl

Duffield created Maddie's Fund, dedicated to financing community

efforts to achieve no-kill animal control, with an endowment of $225

million investment fund--larger by itself than all of the other

investment funds dedicated to animal welfare. The Duffields hired

Richard Avanzino away from the SF/SPCA to direct it.

 

1998 -- Deaths of Helen Jones, Henry Spira, and Cleveland Amory.

 

1998-2002 -- Maneka Gandhi served as the first minister of

state for animal welfare in India, and the world. She was removed

from office after conflicting with the biomedical research and

pharmaceutical industries, as well as with practitioners of animal

sacrifice, and the authority of the ministry is significantly

reduced.

 

The ANIMAL PEOPLE " Chronology of Humane Progress " pauses with

the major events of 1998 in order to give more recent events more

time to settle into perspective. Humane progress itself continues.

We hope to continue recording it through many more years and triumphs.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

for free sample, send address.]

--

--Merritt Clifton, editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE.