DawnWatch: Salt Lake front page and NY Newsday on Katrina animals — 8/28/06
August 29th, 2006 12:24 am by Kelly Garbato———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Aug 28, 2006 8:31 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Salt Lake front page and NY Newsday on Katrina animals 8/28/06
During the anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, there is some coverage of the related animal disaster. The Monday, August 28, Salt Lake Tribune has a front page story, by Lisa Rosetta, focusing on the efforts of the “Best Friends” animal sanctuary. And Monday’s New York Newsday looks at ongoing custody battles between those who lost animals and those who adopted them.
The Salt Lake Tribune front page story is headed, “Left behind, scrappy pets fought to survive.” It opens with a description of a veterinary session with a rottweiler named Sheriff, then tells us:
“A year after a Best Friends Animal Society team plucked 4,000 cats and dogs from the floodwaters of New Orleans, its work is still not done. About 50 dogs and a handful of cats, once marooned on porches and rooftops in the blazing Louisiana heat, still call the Best Friends sanctuary home. Like Sheriff, who was snagged from the St. Bernard Parish, many of them continue to struggle with such ailments as heartworm, broken bones that didn’t heal well, and rocks and sand packed deep in their ear canals. Others have behavioral problems and are only now beginning to trust their caretakers.”
We read: “The Best Friends team spent 249 days in the South – the longest commitment of any animal organization – scouring the St. Bernard and Orleans parishes and caring for them in Tylertown or at Celebration Station, a defunct amusement park in Metairie, La.
After Hurricane Katrina, the organization received $5.8 million in donations to buy food and supplies for the four-legged evacuees. By May 2006, Best Friends had about $289,000 of that money left, which is helping pay for the special care of Katrina cats and dogs now living at the sanctuary.”
(It is worth noting that the organization that rescued over a quarter of the animals received less than a seventh of the rescue funds. Visit www.BestFriends.org to learn more about their work.)
About the animal disaster we read:
“But while 15,000 pets were rescued by multiple animal organizations, many more drowned or starved to death, said Best Friends CEO Paul Berry. An estimated 125,000 animals lost their lives in the disaster, prompting Best Friends to write its own rapid-response plan.”
Best Friends is now working to get animals out of Lebanon.
The article ends with a description of the Best Friends cemetery:
“Sprinkled among the hundreds of tiny headstones are groups of wind chimes that sing in a gentle breeze blown in by an afternoon storm. In the back corner of the cemetery is a memorial for those animals who never left New Orleans. Blue and purple Mardi Gras beads hang on one corner of the memorial, while a black dog collar with spikes hangs on another. It reads: ‘So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us, as we remember them.’”
You can read the whole article on line at www.sltrib.com/ci_4248552.
New York Newsday’s story, by Denise Flaim, is headed, “Tugs of war over pets. One year after Katrina, survivors sue to bring home rescued animals adopted by others.” (Pg B04)
It tells us:
“A year after Hurricane Katrina unleashed a Bible’s worth of natural calamity on the Gulf Coast, some pet owners – mostly of dogs, but a smattering of cats and birds, too – are still searching for the companions they left behind. Rescue groups say when an original owner resurfaced, the vast majority of adopters relinquished Katrina animals, however reluctantly. Indeed, there are heartwarming stories of post-Katrina owners who dispatched dogs in limousines back to their former owners in FEMA trailers, or passed on a financial gift along with the other end of the leash. But then there are the headline-making exceptions to the rule… About a dozen Katrina custody cases are wending their way through the nation’s courts, all of them involving dogs.”
Many of the new families say they will not return the dogs as the animals were in ill-health, suffering from serious ailments such as heartworm, before the storm hit.
Attorney Steven Wise, who is representing some of the people fighting to get their dogs back, is quoted. He says there is “a movement of dogs from poor black owners to middle-class white owners. The message is, ‘You’re poor, and we can take care of these dogs a lot better than you can’….I’m sure if my kids were adopted by Bill Gates, he would be appalled at how I raise them. But I don’t think that should be a legal or moral reason for him to get custody of them.”
We learn interesting details about the legal battles:
“In a delicious irony, Wise, who as president of the Center for the Expansion of Fundamental Rights, advocates legal rights for animals, is using property law, which doesn’t see the distinction between an ottoman and an otterhound, to argue for the animals’ return. Louisiana’s assistant attorney general Mimi Hunley has said that the state’s missing animals are considered lost, not abandoned, property, and owners have three years to claim them under state law.”
You can read the full article on line here OR at tinyurl.com/fwb5c.
The articles cited above present great opportunities for letters to the editor calling for an end to Red Cross and other “no pet” policies, or giving in advice on disaster preparedness for people with pets.
The Salt Lake Tribune takes letters at www.sltrib.com/contactus and New York Newsday takes letters at cf.newsday.com/newsdayemail/email.cfm
But any article on Katrina in your local paper provides a similar opportunity for a reminder of the animal disaster and the importance of policy and personal changes. Though large papers publish letters from everywhere, your very best chance of getting published is in your own paper. Some of the local papers publish the vast majority of letters they receive, so why not write, on behalf of the animals?
Ask me for help if you have trouble finding the correct address for a letter to your editor. And I am happy to edit letters.
Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.
Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn
(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
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