Horse Contraceptive, Squirrels, CA fires and more...

Where's Dave?? Here's the latest words and photos from Dave as he travels for the animals area.

Me ( camo) and Dr Mark Johnson on a previous SD Darting trip. Horses are in background
eating off round bales. Andrew Merwin Photo

This "greenish" dart in the rump of this horse delivers 1 cc of vaccine (PZP) which will allow the mare not to conceive next spring but will not remove her (sterilize) from the gene pool. The darts are air propelled from distances of 15-45 yards. dpauli photo


"Where in the world is Dave: Good question!!! My apologies for being remiss in giving you updates. Speaking of which... I have a few. First OUR squirrels Scrat and Squeakers have been living back at their birth tree for about two weeks. Squeakers has gone wild and taken over her birth tree. Scrat the male, still comes down every day to the soft release cage they lived their last few months in confinement in. But both are back in their little niche being the squirrels that they were meant to be.

Also, those tadpoles that we rescued with Dr Hsia from Taiwan are now turning into ....... TOADS. Spadefoot Toads to be exact. To refresh memory we took about 200 out of the muck and mire in mid-August where we rescued the 37 Western Paint Turtles from the urban sprawl development of an old gravel pit. Most were obviously native frogs and they were released immediately but about two dozen were big enough to possibly be non-native bull frogs. So far six of those have morphed into frogs and are finally getting big enough to classify as Spadefoot toads. So they will now be over wintered and released in the spring.

OK... so where the heck have I been.... TRAVELING for sure. I have done public forums on dog fighting in Idaho, on banning trapping on public lands in Montana, and been involved in a few more rescues on raccoons, injured raptors and one project to translocate White footed deer mice from someone's house.

I also had the privilege to send our truck and equine trailer to the California Wildfires. Andrew Merwin ( Sandra's husband) was one of the three great team members who drove the truck and trailer to San Diego and did great work for the Animals.

I stayed home as I was leading a team of eight to South Dakota to dart ( contracept) wild horses. I leave again tomorrow morning to take the same team back to give the horses a booster dart that will help achieve the birth control. After this week we will have helped this sanctuary prevent births in over 125 mares. This will give the sanctuary another tool to help them manage their population of wild horses for the range conditions and hay prices.

I also have been spending lots of time preparing for an upcoming endangered species relocation project that I am helping a tribal fish and game department with. We have permission to live capture up to forty Swift foxes from near the Kansas/Colorado border and take them to a South Dakota native nation to reintroduce the species.

At the same time I have been working on upcoming legislative battles in Six of our Eight states. We have great bills on Farm Animals, Felony Animal Fighting, Felony Cruelty , Canned Hunting, Internet Hunting and Student Choice coming up in six states. It will be an exciting and draining January-May 2008.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! I have sooooo much to be thankful for." Dave

********
Click here for:

Original Art for Sale to Help Animals

Giftware and Prints for Sale to Help Animals

Ebay Auctions to Help Animals

All About Art Helping Animals