MADISON, Wis. (AP) –

Badge? Check! Gun? Check! Pooper Scooper? Maybe not. Officials in Madison, Wisconsin, are considering a proposal that would exempt police from the local pooper scooper law. Now, officers who are part of mounted patrols or K-9 units have to pick up after the animals, just like every other pet owner. The measure to be considered by the city council today would drop the droppings requirement for officers while on duty. One alderwoman notes that picking up the poo can be difficult for the mounted officers who do crowd control at the University of Wisconsin football games.

PHOENIX (AP) – A police officer in Arizona has been booked on animal cruelty charges, accused of leaving a police dog in a patrol car for more than 12 hours on a 109-degree day.

Authorities say the suburban Phoenix officer was booked on a misdemeanor charge after a two-week investigation into the death of the Belgian Malinois (mal-in-wah) named Bandit.

The investigation found that Bandit was left in the patrol car last month while the officer ran errands, napped and ate out with his wife. The investigation says the officer later found the dog dead in the car.

The officer says he is scheduled to appear in court September 25th, but he says his lawyer has advised him not to comment further.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

NEW YORK (AP) – A carriage horse’s death in New York’s Central Park is renewing animal-rights activists’ concerns about the animals.

Several protesters gathered near the park after a startled horse bolted, injured itself and died yesterday afternoon. The hubbub spooked another horse that darted into traffic and collided with a car. As one protester put it, “Horses shouldn’t be in traffic.”

A spokeswoman for the Horse & Carriage Association of New York calls the episode “a freak accident.” She says it’s a blow to an industry that cares deeply about its animals.

She says the horse that died, a 13-year-old mare named Smoothie, had been a carriage horse for only a year. Witnesses say the horse may have been startled by a street performer.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Sunday, September 16, 2007
By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Wyo. — In the three decades since 18 bison stumbled onto a federal elk feeding ground outside this mountain town, the herd has ballooned to 1,200 animals _ one of the largest groups of bison in the United States.

But the National Elk Refuge was not created for bison, 6-foot-tall, 1-ton brutes also known as buffalo. Since their arrival, the bison have pushed elk off the refuge’s artificial feed lines, trampled its 25,000 acres of grasslands and introduced diseases that put livestock at risk.

Beginning Saturday, refuge officials and state wildlife officials will hold annual hunts aimed at cutting down the herd by at least 700 animals over the next few years. Hunters are entitled to one bison each.

Meanwhile, the artificial feeding will continue each winter, angering animal rights groups and environmentalists who say the government is baiting bison to unnecessary slaughter.

Refuge managers agreed that feeding the very bison they want hunters to shoot was not ideal. They said the conservative politics of northwest Wyoming _ home to Vice President Dick Cheney and a strong hunting culture that is a driving economic force _ gave them little choice.

“It’s a political compromise,” said Eric Cole, the refuge’s wildlife biologist. “The worst-case scenario is the hunt doesn’t happen and we have 1,200 bison. That’s a lot of mouths for a limited land base.”

Through a separate hunt, federal and state officials want to reduce the refuge’s elk population, from almost 8,000 animals to about 5,000.

Yet it’s the plan to kill bison that has garnered the most objection. That’s because of the animals’ docile nature _ hunting them has been compared to hunting a sofa _ and their iconic status as a last vestige of the once-wild American West.

“It’s senseless and it’s inhumane,” said Jonathan Lovvorn, an attorney with the Fund for Animals.

The group filed a lawsuit in 1998 seeking to stop the hunt, which forced the federal government to delay the killing of bison until an environmental study was completed earlier this year.

Refuge manager Steve Kallin said the bison hunt would have been much smaller if the Fund for Animals had never filed a lawsuit. When a hunt was first proposed in 1998, there were about 500 bison on the refuge _ a number Kallin said could have been sustained by hunting 70 animals a year.

Most states forbid or discourage feed grounds because they allow the easy transmission of wildlife and livestock diseases. Aside from the elk refuge, there are 22 state-run feed grounds in northwest Wyoming, a region of towering mountains and fertile valleys where punishing winters routinely kill off wildlife.

Local hunters and federal wildlife officials say the first were started a century ago, by ranchers hoping to keep elk from eating the hay they had set aside for livestock during winter.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established the National Elk Refuge in 1912. Feeding of the elk began the same year. As elk hunting gained popularity, bringing streams of wealthy outsiders to Jackson every fall, the feed grounds helped ensure an ample supply of the animals.

The refuge’s feed lines have since expanded into a $250,000 annual program that doles out up to 80 semitrailer loads of alfalfa pellets each winter, according to federal documents and former refuge manager Barry Reiswig.

In recent years, a separate feed line was established for bison to keep them from out-muscling elk. Bison eat up to 20 pounds of alfalfa a day, versus about 8 pounds for elk.

Reiswig, who retired from the Fish and Wildlife Service in June, said he never liked the feeding program but was forced to accept it as a political reality.

“For us to march in and say, ‘We’re going to phase out this feeding program,’ that was not an option,” Reiswig said. “Realistically, in a Western state, given this administration, that’s just not the way this game is played.”

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

UNDERWOOD, Minn. — A donkey is happily eating grass again after falling down a dry, abandoned well and being freed in an intensive rescue effort.

It appeared that the animal wandered away from its farm and onto some boards covering the well, which broke, said Bruce Huseth, fire chief in this western Minnesota town.

Firefighters quickly realized that the animal, which belongs to farmer Warren Gundberg, couldn’t just be pulled from the abandoned well on Bryan Nelson’s land.

So they started pulling away earth with a tractor and dismantling the well block by block Thursday. Once one wall had been taken apart, firefighters put a harness around the donkey and guided it out with a rope.

“Whatever it takes,” Nelson said as he watched his well come down. “I love animals, and I’m just glad it’s OK.”

Gundberg admonished the animal after the rescue: “I bet you’ll think twice about doing that again. If you would have stayed home you wouldn’t be in this trouble.”

Huseth said that he has rescued cows that have fallen through ice, but that the donkey was a first.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.