Monk Parakeet Update: Action Needed

[Guest]

Monk parakeets get to fly

Deal allows UI to destroy nests but not send birds to death

KEN DIXON

Connecticut Post

 

A showdown over the extermination of hundreds of monk parakeets was short-circuited in Superior Court in New Haven Tuesday, after The United Illuminating Co. promised to cease capturing the birds — for the time being.

 

Priscilla Feral, president of the Darien-based Friends of Animals, was relieved that dozens or more birds that have escaped capture — and death — will not be asphyxiated.

 

She said, however, it was a Pyrrhic victory, after about 200 of the gregarious green birds were killed in the UI's three-week campaign to remove nests from 103 utility poles from West Haven to Fairfield.

 

The Friends of Animals withdrew their court challenge Tuesday after UI agreed to stop netting the birds and turning them over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has been destroying them in carbon dioxide chambers.

 

A spokesman for UI, which said the nests had to be removed to prevent outages and fires, downplayed the deal reached Tuesday, stressing that the nest-eradication effort remains on schedule, although no more birds would be captured and killed this month.

 

"The point is, we may never know whether they were done gassing the birds or not," Feral said. "We know a lot escaped and UI had planned on going back and getting every one they could."

 

She said she wished the lawsuit could have been filed sooner, but it took three weeks to research the case.

 

But the free birds will have to confront the winter without their nests, as the UI pulls down their thatched-stick shelters, which can weigh 200 pounds or more. Feral said her animal rights group will return to court in January to try to protect the pigeon-sized birds over the long term. "It a terrible time of year to yank their nests down," she said.

 

Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the Legislature's Environment Committee, said he is relieved that UI's eradication plan was apparently altered. Roy credited rising public pressure against the utility as the reason the company let the remaining birds go.

 

"This gives us some breathing room in the Legislature to develop some amendments for the law that has allowed the UI to capture these birds and give them to the USDA," Roy said. Roy said there was no reason for UI to kill the birds that have survived — mostly in fir trees and oaks — along the Connecticut shore for 30 years. Albert Carbone, UI's spokesman, would not say that the Friends of Animals won any concessions during a closed-door meeting Tuesday in the chambers of Superior Court Judge Linda K. Lager.

 

"It's just part of the work plan," Carbone said. "We didn't alter our work plan in response to the complaint."

 

Alan Schwartz, a New Haven attorney representing UI, issued a statement after the meeting, saying: "As planned, the remaining work involves the removal of the inventoried nests and any parakeets encountered in this phase of the work will not be captured. UI has no plans to capture more parakeets during the remainder of the year."

 

Derek V. Oatis, a Manchester lawyer representing Friends of Animals, said he believes that UI did not raid all of the nests and that a substantial number of birds will now avoid euthanasia at the hands of the USDA.

 

"All that I know is that as of Friday, when I agreed to bring the action, UI were continuing to capture more birds," he said. "My understanding is there were a number of inventoried nests they hadn't gotten to yet. I don't care how anyone spins it, if there aren't birds being killed it's a good thing."

 

The Friends of Animals lawsuit included testimony from Dwight G. Smith, a monk parakeet expert who is chairman of the biology department at Southern Connecticut State University. He said that the monk parakeets — actually parrots because of their long tails — have established a niche in the state's ecosystem.

 

Carbone said it may take weeks to remove the nests.

 

"If there are birds, they'll just fly away," Carbone said.

 

The premise of the campaign was to clear transformers and poles for public safety and electric reliability, he said. Customers will receive a week's notice of any planned UI outages as the nests are pulled down with grappling hooks.

 

Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, a member of the Agriculture Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, sent a letter Tuesday to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, questioning the extermination campaign, requesting that he explore other options. U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, D-4, a Bridgeport resident who has seen the monk parakeets in his neighborhood, also wrote to the USDA, expressing his concern about the euthanization of the colorful birds.

 

Washington bureau writer Peter Urban contributed to this report.

 

More at www.friendsofanimals.org

Edited January 4, 2006 by Anonymous

[Guest]

Parakeet case charges dropped

 

KEN DIXON

Connecticut Post

 

State prosecutors said Wednesday they will drop criminal charges against the West Haven nursing student who confronted a United Illuminating Co. crew in an attempt to save monk parakeets from eradication.

 

Mark Hurley, assistant state's attorney, said he and Mary M. Galvin, state's attorney for the Judicial District of Ansonia and Milford, will ask a judge next Tuesday to vacate a breach-of-peace charge that resulted from Julie Cook's arrest Nov. 30.

 

Hurley declined further comment.

 

On Nov. 17, the Connecticut Post reported that UI had started an eradication campaign of euthanizing birds on a Florida model.

 

The issue attracted nationwide attention from bird lovers and animal-rights groups that criticized UI for killing birds, when utilities in New York and New Jersey had removed the parakeets' sometimes-large nests from utility poles without exterminating the birds.

 

Animal-rights advocates, whose lawsuit resulted in UI this week backing away from capturing additional monk parakeets, hailed the decision not to prosecute Cook, who became irate when she saw UI crews capturing birds on Ocean Avenue and then turning them over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be killed by asphyxiation.

 

"I wish I had done more for the birds that are now dead," Cook said.

 

"There are so few of them left. But this is a small fight in a bigger war."

 

Priscilla Feral, president of Darien-based Friends of Animals Inc., said possibly hundreds of monk parakeets may have evaded UI's eradication effort, which ended this week in state Superior Court, where Friends of Animals withdrew a lawsuit and UI agreed to stop capturing the birds through the end of the year.

 

Before UI's program, more than 1,200 of the birds lived in thatched-stick nests in fir trees, oak trees and utility poles in the region. "If they had killed all the birds they intended to capture, we think one-third to one-half of Connecticut's population of monk parakeets would have been destroyed," Feral said.

 

A state-regulated monopoly, UI waited eight years or more before attempting to tear down 103 nests between West Haven and Fairfield, some of which weighed more than 200 pounds and housed up to 40 birds.

 

Laurel Lundstrom, program director for Friends of Animals, said she has received reports from residents saying the birds are returning to the nests where UI had captured them.

[chesty leroux]

At least they dropped the charges, hopefully this brought the bird killing to more of the publics attention.

[Guest]

UI's parakeet purge cost $698.32 for each dead bird

KEN DIXON

 

A total of 179 monk parakeets were killed during the United Illuminating Co.'s three-week campaign to destroy nests on more than 100 utility poles in southwestern Connecticut, the Connecticut Post has learned.

 

Animal-rights activists said Thursday that many more apparently escaped capture by UI crews and death at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which asphyxiated the birds with carbon dioxide.

 

Priscilla Feral, president of the Friends of Animals, which withdrew a lawsuit against UI this week after it agreed to stop capturing the birds, said the parrots died senselessly in the $125,000 eradication program.

 

"That's $698.32 per dead parrot in costs to taxpayers or rate-payers," Feral said Thursday after being informed of the death toll. "What a waste."

 

She estimated that as many as 400 birds escaped capture and will be homeless this winter as UI tears the nests down over the next three weeks in the second phase of the effort.

 

Albert Carbone, spokesman for UI, said the $125,000 included the cost of training crews as well as removing the thatched-stick nests, which the utility says have caused up to a dozen power outages annually, plus four transformer fires in recent years.

 

The cost also included a fee paid to the USDA for euthanizing the monk parakeets — actually green parrots the size of pigeons that have lived along the Connecticut shore for more than 30 years, nesting in fir trees and oaks as well as utility poles.

 

Dwight G. Smith, chairman of the biology department at Southern Connecticut State University who has studied the parrots for years, said Thursday he is convinced UI didn't fully consider nonlethal alternatives when it developed its eradication effort, which began with no public notice the week of Nov. 14.

 

"I and others would be very interested in searching for a solution that's positive for the birds and positive for UI that doesn't involves killing anything, especially an animal that's generally well-liked by the public and brightens an urban environment," he said.

 

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House James A. Amann, D-Milford, said he hopes the General Assembly, which removed protections from the birds in 2003, can work with the utility and the state Department of Environmental Protection to allow UI to clear nests from poles without killing the birds.

 

USDA spokeswoman Corey

 

 

L. Slavitt said Thursday that the department's regional office in Amherst, Mass., which assisted UI, reported the total at 179 euthanized birds. She could not say whether the euthanasia program was permanently shut down after an agreement in a Superior Court judge's office this week.

"The USDA is seeking formal clarification of the project status, but we do not anticipate any involvement for the rest of the year," she said.

 

Feral has said that the lawsuit, removed without prejudice this week, will be pursued further in the new year in an attempt to stop future bird killings.

 

Feral said the 103 targeted nests along the coast between West Haven and Fairfield sheltered in some cases dozens of birds. If only 179 were captured and killed, more than twice that number may have escaped the nighttime raids, she said.

 

Up to 40 birds have been found in the larger nests, some of which dramatically drape UI poles and transformers.

 

Some West Haven neighbors have said in recent days that UI has let the nests grow for eight years or more. Feral believes the eradication campaign, first reported in the Connecticut Post on Nov. 17, has become a public relations nightmare for UI.

 

"I'm not even sure that UI will go ahead now with the tear-down because of the public pressure, but then again why should they worry about that now?" Feral said.

 

"We are done capturing birds and moving into the nest-removal part of the program," Carbone said.

 

He said UI is waiting for a project manager's decision before tearing down the nests. He said the company would consider developing ways to remove the nests without harming the birds.

 

Amann said Thursday that he also hopes a long-term answer can be found.

 

Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the Environment Committee, said he has seen parrots that escaped UI crews on West Haven's Ocean Avenue, near their raided nests.

 

"I hope that as UI does continue its program to relieve the pressure on their lines, that they'll take the utmost care for the safety of the birds," Roy said.

[compassionategirl]

Thanks for posting this Daniel.

[CrispyQ]

Thank you for the update.

[Guest]

Parakeets merit respect from UI

By DANIEL HAMMER -- Connecticut Post (25 December 2005)

 

Forty years ago, the bright-green South American parrots appeared along Connecticut’s coast, refugees of the exotic pet trade. Now, these hardy birds -- monk parakeets, in common parlance -- have carved out an ecological niche for themselves.

 

Connecticut has graciously made room for me, a Utah native; I, like any other member of my species, create more of a mess than a parrot. But now, the United Illuminating Co. wants to purge Connecticut of these birds. Rather than admit that this is for its own convenience, the company cites a factor that’s irrelevant to its operations: the presumed invasive status of parrots.

 

The parrots, although relative newcomers, don’t fit the federal definition of invasive -- according to a 1999 Executive Order, an invasive species is “an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.”

 

We’ve been harmful to the parrots, but they haven’t responded in kind. Experts who predicted 30 years back that the parrots would become an agricultural nuisance turned out to be wrong.

 

Nor do these birds harm the natural environment. Indeed, they’ve become a vibrant part of the web of life, comprising part of the regular diet of hawks and peregrine falcons. The parrots themselves are herbivores, and pose no greater threats to ourselves or other species than squirrels do. The birds feed on weed species: black locust, sycamore, sumac, shadbush, autumn olive. Gracing our ecologically diminished landscapes, monk parakeets help other regional animals -- such as great horned owls, which rely on abandoned nests -- to survive and thrive.

 

You could send me back to Utah and the ecology wouldn’t miss me at all. But it would be poorer without the monk parakeets.

 

Yet in mid-November, UI, with the support of the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Connecticut Audubon Society, the National Audubon Society and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, decided to wipe out this innocuous avian community. State statutes prohibit the capture and killing of wild birds, but in 2003 the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection requested an amendment to exclude monk parakeets from the law’s protection. Asked about the precise basis of the Department’s request, state lawmakers don’t seem to remember what it might have been.

 

UI insists that its treatment of birds is the “best solution to problem.” Evidently the company thinks it need not demonstrate, first, that there is a problem. Estimates regarding problems with power lines indicate that only some 9 percent are animal-related, those mostly involve squirrels. The company hasn’t suggested a round-up and gassing of squirrels, but that’s what they’re doing to the birds.

 

The company’s “best solution” might suit its convenience, but that doesn’t make it best for the public or the biocommunity of which we’re a part. Rounding up and killing birds and snatching away their nests in the middle of winter, while described as “common practice,” is as impractical as it is morally misguided.

 

It’s incumbent upon the UI to take prudent, intelligent steps to maintain utility poles year-round. Doing so would be in the best interest of public safety and would prevent the formation of nests, about whose weight and mass the company now complains. If the company can’t do that much, they’ve got bigger problems than nests.

 

The state legislature, for its part, should restore the provision that has protected monk parakeets for decades. It should acknowledge that monk parakeets have assimilated into the regional ecology. And it should understand and appreciate that public support for the birds shows Connecticut residents at their best.

 

“The bottom line,” as U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays put the point, “is there has been an incredible outpouring of support for these animals, and we need to work with the USDA, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and United Illuminating Co. to find another viable approach.”

 

Over time, if we ourselves are to continue to thrive, it will probably be because we learn to work with nature rather than against it. Conflicts arising from the pressures we impose on our environment will require us to gracefully weather unexpected changes in the habits and patterns of other species. The test before us is whether we can view monk parakeets not as exotic pets, not as inconveniences to be summarily done away with, but as the free birds they are.

 

Daniel Hammer is a staff writer at Darien-based Friends of Animals.

[Guest]

Bird Day is everywhere, and the requested action can be taken electronically. Please send an e-mail today!

 

From Friends of Animals: May Birds Know A World Without Cages

On National Bird Day, 5 January 2005, Friends of Animals will celebrate birds’ freedom to fly, wherever they are in the world.

 

Just to our South, the New York Companion Bird Club will be celebrating in a different manner.

 

Although they will be hearing about activism on behalf of Connecticut’s monk parakeets during an event held at the New York Theosophical Society, bird enthusiasts will also raffle off prizes from Grey Feather Toy Creations, and listen to Robert A. Monaco, DVM, speak about “state-of-the-art medicine and surgery for avian and exotic animal companions.” The raffling off of a “bird gym” will fund the transportation of a bigger cage for a nursing home-based cockatoo. But unfortunately, Grey Feather Toys sees the event as an opportunity to promote “the outstanding quality of their products” and herald themselves as “one of the leaders of the avian toy market” for Bird Club members.

 

Overall, the planned Bird Day event is a promotion of cages, not freedom. Because it’s advertised as taking place at the New York Theosophical Society, it carries the appearance of Society’s endorsement. (To date, the Society has not commented.)

 

On 14 January 2005, the Theosophical Society will provide the venue for Larry D.D. Clifford to speak, exhibiting a macaw. Clifford, the owner of the Exotic Parrot Breeding Aviary, trains animals for Sea World and other shows and television commercials. Clifford’s trainees include cetaceans, sea lions, parrots, grizzly bears, and big cats. For a fee — $65 for single, $85 for couples — Clifford will show how people can correct unwanted habits in pet birds, and train birds to talk. This is an upscale yet circus-like event staged on the Society’s premises. Other animals were not put on this earth to be objects of our amusement.

 

Due to the disturbing mix of subjects described above, we at Friends of Animals want to be clear that we do not endorse these events.

 

Said Friends of Animals legal director Lee Hall, “The Theosophical Society’s mission is to cultivate the spiritual growth of humanity. A pioneer in its history was the acclaimed vegetarian doctor Anna Kingsford, who spoke of the inherent value of animals other than ourselves. To offer a venue for patently exploitive promotions is to flout the Society’s best traditions.”

 

We urge people everywhere to rethink the idea of owning, breeding, or trading birds in captivity. For every day is Bird Day — a day when beings born to fly freely should enjoy that experience.

 

Those who agree should feel empowered to ask the New York Theosophical Society not to host promotions by Grey Feather Toy Creations (5 Jan), or the Members-Only Exotic Bird Training Workshop by Larry D.D. Clifford (14 Jan), or to invite such promotions in the future.

 

It is no justification that a Bird Club thought up and organized these events. They do not merit hosting in a Theosophical Society venue.

 

Contact:

Lyn Trotman

The New York Theosophical Society

212.758.5521

[email protected]

 

The Friends of Animals Contact for this Release is:

Laurel Lundstrom

Phone: 203.656.1522

Fax: 203.656.0267

Email: [email protected]

 

Related links: Friends of Animals; New York Companion Bird Club

[Guest]

A brief update and thanks:

 

Thank you to the advocates who contacted the New York Theosophical Society about the promotions by a bird-trainer and cage vending company.

 

Because the troubling events are advertised as taking place at the New York Theosophical Society, they carry the appearance of Society’s endorsement. We now have confirmation that the Society does not endorse them, and that they will follow up on the matter.

 

We'll keep our blog posted on updates as we continue working on communicating to urge people everywhere to rethink the idea of owning, breeding, or trading birds in captivity.

 

Every day is Bird Day — a day when beings born to fly freely should enjoy that experience. Enjoy Bird Day on the 5th of January, and again, thank you so very much for helping with this intervention. Your concern matters.

 

 

The Friends of Animals Contact for this Update is:

Laurel Lundstrom

Phone: 203.656.1522

Fax: 203.656.0267

Email: [email protected]

 

Friends of Animals’ goal is to free animals from cruelty and institutionalized exploitation around the world.

[Guest]

Friends of Animals Sues United Illuminating Over Parakeet Gassing

January 12, 2006

 

DARIEN, Conn. — Friends of Animals, a leading voice for responsible policies for animals, is immediately serving a Complaint against the United Illuminating Co. on behalf of Connecticut’s monk parakeets.

 

Refugees of the exotic pet trade, monk parakeets have lived freely in Connecticut, mostly in fir trees and oaks, for 30 to 40 years. Dwight G. Smith, who chairs the biology department at Southern Connecticut State University, said the birds — actually small parrots — provide nests for sparrows, finches, and owls, as well as themselves.

 

But the United Illuminating Co. (UI), an electric utility for southern Connecticut’s New Haven and Bridgeport areas, claims the green birds are a nuisance and a hazard.

 

With the blessing of the Connecticut Audubon Society and the National Audubon Society, UI has set about killing the birds in a campaign to remove their thatched-stick shelters from utility poles.

 

Friends of Animals seeks long-term policy change

 

United Illuminating’s parrot extermination campaign was short-circuited in December, after the company assured the Court it would stop netting the birds and turning them over to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has been asphyxiating them in carbon dioxide chambers.

 

“We came out of Court with news of a temporary halt in the roundups and gassings of parakeets,” said Friends of Animals president Priscilla Feral.

 

“But we need responsible, long-term policies,” Feral explained. “The UI Co. dimmed the lights of holiday cheer in Connecticut. We’re demanding brighter ideas for the future, and, from state policy-makers, less flighty conduct.”

 

While UI has failed to implement prudent methods of dissuading these birds from nesting upon utility poles, people in the community have risen to the occasion. A platform construction workshop will be held this Saturday (14 Jan.) to show how to make a viable alternative that can keep parrots off poles, yet living and flying free.

 

Derek V. Oatis, a Manchester lawyer representing Friends of Animals, said, “We’re asking for a judgment declaring that the law requires UI to implement routine maintenance and prevent nesting, and a permanent injunction against the capturing and killing of the monk parakeets.”

 

Added Priscilla Feral, “Maintaining the public trust requires a redirection of resources from the tormenting of the birds to an enlightened response, one that rejects killing or experimenting on the birds or holding them captive.”

 

Controversy over the extermination has reached newspapers nationwide, and as far as London, England. And a growing concern for the birds has come from Connecticut legislators, including U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Christopher Shays, and state Rep. Richard Roy.

 

 

Friends of Animals is an international animal advocacy organization that works to cultivate a respectful view of nonhuman animals, free-living and domestic.

 

Friends of Animals • 777 Post Road, Suite 205 • Darien, CT 06820

Visit our Web site at http://www.friendsofanimals.org

[Guest]

Connecticut Post -- Sunday, 29 January 2006

 

Avoid Leap to Ruin on Monk Parakeets

BY DANIEL HAMMER

 

In one of Aesop's fables, a fox trapped in a well convinces a goat to leap in. Then the fox climbs over the goat and escapes, leaving the goat trapped instead. The moral of the story: Look before you leap.

 

Understanding the background of the monk parakeets' lives in our state should come before any serious call to action. Otherwise, we may suffer the same fate as Aesop's goat. Half-following the controversy and guessing about validity of information should be carefully avoided.

 

The lawsuit initiated by Friends of Animals challenges those who have leaped, or would leap, before they look. It challenges those who would work to eliminate the monk parakeet because a real-world version of the fabled fox says the birds are noisy, invasive or dangerous.

 

Until 2003, the monk parakeets were protected by Connecticut statute, along with other wild birds. But three years ago our state lawmakers blindly leaped into legislating an exemption that would permit the killing of Monk Parakeets. This suited the wishes of the state's Department of Environmental Protection. Supposedly dangerous or unfairly competitive with native species, the monk parakeets were lumped together with starlings and other birds routinely targeted for removal. Soon, federal agents from the Agriculture Department were called in to destroy the birds in gas chambers.

 

A reader and veteran birdwatcher in these pages last week urged the company to hurry it up and do away all with the parrots now, invoking starlings to underscore the point. Whatever one's perspective on starlings might be, they are not the issue here. Anyone who looks at them can tell monk parakeets are not starlings. And expressing a preference for yellow-crowned night herons, as the aforementioned reader did, fails to prove that monk parakeets are invasive, or cause irredeemable nuisances. Neither claim is correct.

 

Friends of Animals requested, through the state's Freedom of Information Act, that the Department of Environmental Protection provide evidence that monk parakeets unfairly compete with native bird species. The files provided by the DEP contain no research to justify such claims.

 

Monk parakeets are unique in the parrot world for their custom of building nests. But others birds also build large stick nests, yellow-crowned night herons included, and no one has made a federal case of it. The claim that monk parakeet nests weigh 200 or even 400 pounds is a gross exaggeration, and it is also beside the point. Bald eagles aren't gassed although they're famed for the ability to create nests weighing up to three-tons, averaging about 6 feet across and 3 feet in height -- the largest towering 20 feet high.

 

What's important from the perspective of an integrated biocommunity isn't the size of monk parakeet nests. It's how the nests provide other species with nesting sites, refugia and nesting material. And they do. This does not mean other species use the nests the way monk parakeets do. Great Horned Owls, for example, will use what the parakeets build as nesting substrates, while disregarding the tunnels.

 

All species of birds, from blue jays to gulls, could be considered intrusive or objectionable on some level. The point here is that monk parakeets have become integrated into the regional ecology. More than just another species to be slapped on a list, they are ecological relevant in that they contribute to the health and stability of other species. Even in the unlikely event that eradication is possible, it would rule out food sources for several species of raptors -- a deleterious ecological effect in itself.

 

Apparently unmindful of all of this, the United Illuminating Co. and a herd of supporters recently leaped into collaborating on a plan to capture and gas monk parakeets found nesting on utility poles in Bridgeport, Milford, Stratford and West Haven. The utility captured 179 and had them gassed.

 

The company's "Monk Parakeet/Nest Removal Communication Plan" states: "People no longer make decisions based on rational analysis of facts. Instead, they decide based on the stories they're told. This is an opportunity to tell a story about how much UI values public health and safety and its ability to provide reliable electric service to its customers."

 

What United Illuminating's communication plan tells us is that people don't look, so tell them a story that will make them leap. In contrast, we at Friends of Animals consider it important to make decisions based on rational analysis, which is exactly what a fair and sensible court will insist that we do.

 

For its part, the state legislature should restore the provision that has long protected monk parakeets, along with other free-living birds. It should acknowledge that the birds have become integrated into our state's ecology. The Legislature should also maintain the provisions that wisely shield wild birds from becoming pets. Bringing wild birds into homes is unwise, even with the best of intentions. And it's not necessary, given that alternative outdoor nesting sites are now proving entirely workable.

 

The best idea, then, is the simplest one, and by far the most ethically sound: Let's empower these birds get back to the business of living.

 

Meanwhile, Friends of Animals, working in collaboration with Professor Dwight Smith, an expert on Monk Parakeets, will continue to provide the company, the communities of southern Connecticut, and the state Legislature with the means for understanding the ecological role of these birds. This knowledge can put Connecticut's government and industry in the best position to avoid another trip to the bottom of a well.

 

Daniel Hammer is a staff writer for Friends of Animals. Information for this article was provided by Dwight Smith, head of the biology department at Southern Connecticut State University.

 

http://www.friendsofanimals.org