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Animal shelters around Fort Campbell, Kentucky are being swamped with animals left behind by soldiers deploying to the Persian Gulf. 

Dogs of every breed, shape and size are being abandoned in the Clarksville,  Tennessee-Hopkinsville, Kentucky area. Soldiers leaving for the Gulf are not all aware of foster programs that can care for their dogs when they are gone. Many dogs are just showing up as strays, but others are abandoned in the shelters by soldiers who feel like they have no other options. 

If you would like to help foster the dog of a soldier, contact foster@netpets.org. In the subject of your email, put "YOUR STATE, Foster Home Application". If  you are in the military of other related government organization and need to find a temporary home for you cat, dog, or bird, call NetPets at (843) 249-5262.

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Susan Wheeler forwards this message:

THE STORY OF EMILIO-GIOVANNI AND SIMONE MATTEO

One day, returning home (to her vet facility near Naples), I saw from a distance a big and dark spot near the street.  I thought it was a dog.  Approaching, I saw a buffalo-calf, just a few days old and so weak it couldn’t stand on its feet.  I drove home to look for help.  The 60 kg calf was loaded in the car and taken to the clinic; high fever, general weakness, nothing but skin and bones, yellow phlegm coming from the eyes and nose, a cow excrement layer all over its body, even in the ears.  I phoned the public veterinary office, thinking that a farmer might be missing a calf.  "Is it male?  You can keep it and grow it.  The farmers don’t need it."

Then the whole story came to light:  In our area, the widely known, ‘Mozzarella di Bufala’ cheese is produced.  It is a fresh cheese made with the milk of the cow buffalo.  These are the ‘big black cows with big horns’.  To produce milk a cow must become pregnant and have a calf.  After the calf is born the milk production begins and the motherly instinct is awakened.  After its birth, the calf tries to stand on its feet and search for its mother’s udder to drink the first milk.  The cow licks the newborn calf to dry and massage it.  A peaceful image.  That is how it should be.

But it isn’t.  In modern farms, the cow becomes pregnant through artificial insemination.  After a 9 month pregnancy (like women), the calf is born.  It is immediately separated from its mother to keep it from drinking any of the precious milk needed for Mozzarella.  The calf is put in a box all by itself, and if it is a male it is either abandoned or put to a cruel death.  Some are thrown into rivers, some are buried alive, or have straw shoved into their mouths so they suffocate.  The ones who are simply abandoned die of starvation as they are too young to eat grass or straw.

Emilio-Giovanni was lucky.  He didn’t want to go under miserably, he wanted to LIVE!  He crossed my way.  It was his destiny.  We ‘saved’ another calf to keep him company by buying him from a farmer.  Simone-Matteo survived too.  We want them to live and speak for their 50,000 fellows who are brutally killed every year in the Italian region of Campania.

THEY NEED YOUR HELP:  Food, straw and the means necessary to fight for the welfare of their fellows.  You can adopt one at a distance.  You can also write to the Ministry of Agriculture, and The Ministry of the Environment (need addresses) and protest against the useless cruelty to animals.  Don’t buy Mozzarella di Bufala, because for every liter of milk, buffalo calves must die cruelly.  EMILIO-GIOVANNI AND SIMONE-MATTEO ARE SAYING THANK YOU WITH A LARGE MUUUUUUHHHHHH!

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Mary Kennedy suggests we could all send e-mails on behalf of FORC:

The situation in South Africa regarding animal care has reached an all time crisis situation. There is an apparent attempt by officials in the Mpumalanga Parks Board (Department of Nature Conservation) and the NSPCA to bring to an end all compassionate protection for the animals in Southern Africa. Exact details are on our web link www.animalact.org under the projects link.

We do not request your money.

All we ask of you and all the 5000 odd animal organisations receiving this letter, is to please send an e-mail to the individuals listed below (in red) requesting that they desist from the blatant persecution, of the animal compassionate community.  Please stress that failure by the Mpumalanga Parks Board to await the outcome the High Court decision in February and any action that will jeopardise the lives and welfare of the 8 lions saved from the canned lion hunting fraternity will evoke a mass call for a tourist boycott of South Africa by your organisation and its membership. It is time that the persons making these autocratic decisions realise that they are not an island and their actions will have the direst repercussions for South Africa.

Please read the press release below, we really need your help.

Thank you,

IRENE WEBB, GEORGE MANDEL, DARREN BERGMAN, CHRISTOPHER MTHOMBENI AND MAGDALENA WYSOCZANSKA
TRUSTEES OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE NEWS MEDIA CENTRE AND ANIMAL ACT MAGAZINE

Please e-mail :
NSPCA's contact details are:
Telephone Number: 011 907 3591
011 907 3592
Fax: 011 907 4013
E mail: spca@global.co.za
The ANC (Ruling party in South Africa) info@anc.org.za
Minister for the Environment - Valli Moosa vmoosa@ozone.pwv.gov.za
frogers@iafrica.com
pbaloyi@ozone.pwv.gov.za
tabane@iafrica.com
Northern Province Nature Conservation Officials
brandtf@finptb.norprov.gov.za
mashlangue@finptb.norprov.gov.za
The Secretariat for Biodiversity Convention
secretariat@biodiv.org
The Secretariat for CITES Convention cites@unep.ch

In breach of the rule against publishing matters which are sub judice, the Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) has issued a press release in which it publishes allegations which are disputed, and are the subject of High Court proceedings which will be heard early in the new year.

Defamatory allegations like 'smuggling' and 'irresponsible' have been used against the trustees of the Enkosini lions in the MPB's extraordinary press release, in which they claim a 'landmark' legal victory against two animal lovers. As a result of this judgment, 8 lions who were rescued from the canned lion industry and are presently being cared for in an excellent forty acre camp within a six thousand acre sanctuary near Lydenburg, are going to be drugged - a life-threatening exercise - and flown to inferior temporary accommodation in Johannesburg to await the hearing of the review case in February; after which, if Enkosini wins, they will have to be drugged yet again and flown back again.

The fact is that MPB has merely succeeded in an interlocutory procedure to overturn the interim interdict which Enkosini had earlier obtained. Hardly a 'landmark' legal decision. At the High Court hearing, the MPB relied upon a misleading affidavit by the NSPCA, as well as people like Marius Prinsloo, a well-known captive lion breeder who is presently being prosecuted in the Free on allegations of smuggling Cheetah into the province from Namibia for sale into the captive breeding/canned hunting industry, and Riccardo Ghiazza, of Tuli elephant ill-repute.

"We are all furious with the NSPCA for betraying the best interests of the lions." says Chris Mercer of the Kalahari Raptor Centre, spokesperson for a large group of organizations in the animal welfare community, including CARE, the IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare in South Africa), the SAAV, XWE, Justice for Animals, Animal Act magazine, Beauty without Cruelty, Sanwild, Milimani, Compassion in World Farming SA , Vervet Monkey Foundation and Wildlife Action Group.

"What is the NSPCA doing on the same side of the Courtroom as people like Prinsloo and Ghiazza? We have been struggling for more than a year now to get the NSPCA to help us to protect our predators by establishing a network of wildlife sanctuaries in South Africa to provide a humane alternative to the canned lion industry and our medieval, racist problem animal control laws. When captive lion breeding and canned lion hunting is finally stopped, and our problem animal laws repealed, where will all the animals go if there are no sanctuaries? We consider that this judgement which threatens the very lives and security of 8 lions for the sake of a six week period before the review case is heard, is at least partly due to the stance taken by management at the NSPCA." 
 

"Just examine the conduct of the NSPCA in this matter," asks Mercer. "They rushed misleading, incomplete and disputed information into the High Court in an affidavit, without waiting for a reply from Enkosini to resolve the very concerns which they themselves had raised in correspondence, and without any warning that there was a cut-off date for the information sought. How unreasonable was this? What was the urgency? The lions were not going anywhere.  Then, when we pointed out the inaccuracies in their affidavit to the Executive Committee of NSPCA, and invited them to send a senior official out to Enkosini to do a proper assessment and to file an accurate and complete affidavit in order to assist the High Court, we got no response. What possible reason could the NSPCA have for refusing such a reasonable request?

And now look at the plight of the lions. To be ripped away from a secure environment in which they have been content over the last seven months, and brutally thrust into a new and inferior facility for what? For the sake of a few weeks? Why cannot they stay where they are for the few weeks that remain before the Court case? We invite journalists to visit Enkosini to see how happy and well-settled they are in scenic and tranquil facilities, and then ask the National Council of SPCA to justify its complicity in this cruel and unnecessary manipulation of the 8 lions." 

The animal welfare community calls upon all concerned citizens to contact the National Council of the SPCA and ask them to demand that the lions are not removed pending the determination of the High Court review proceedings in February.

Submitted by Chris Mercer
Kalahari Raptor Centre
Tel: 053 712 3576
Email: krc@spg.co.za