A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men – Plato
Wayne Pacelle refers to Cleveland Amory as “the founding father of the modern animal protection movement.”
Here is an introduction to the accomplished man and his many accomplishments. Wildlife watchers everywhere are in his debt. His book Man Kind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife, was published in 1974; is out of print, but used copies can be ordered online. It is more than worth the price for a copy that may be yellowing and brittle, but with content as vital and probably more entertaining, than anything available today. In the video below, Amory blasts the wildlife “management” establishment as we all have done over the years either in the media, or behind the scenes, as we experience year after year frustration, roadblocks, opposition, apathy, myths, outright lies, ignorance from those we once naively thought were interested in protecting, propagating and restoring our native wildlife. Amory delivered this tirade in 1974. That was 48 years ago. We’ve moved forward a bit here and there. But almost everything Amory says is just as true today. What are we going to do about it? How do we honor his legacy?- By Trish Swain, Editor Nevada Wildlife Watcher
Man Kind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife
“My book is a thorough and convincing argument that game management as practiced today in the United States of America is a cruel fraud.” Amory believes the country “will survive the privation” if NRA “just goes”. “State laws against cruelty to animals must be applied to wild animals… and they must be upheld by the courts” [I, your humble editor, have expressed this concept for years! But we have yet to see any action upon it. Action by me or anybody else.] Echoing many of us, Amory goes on to say “State Fish and Game Departments must be reconstituted so that their numbers represent non-hunters.” “Game management must get out of the game . . . “
The Fund for Animals
The Fund for Animals was founded in 1967 by author and animal advocate Cleveland Amory, and spearheaded significant events in the history of the animal protection movement. Among its historical work, the organization implemented a massive four-year airlift to rescue burros scheduled to be shot by the National Park Service in the Grand Canyon; launched a three-year rescue of burros in Death Valley National Park; rescued 3,000 goats from San Clemente Naval Weapons Facility; and halted some hunting seasons of wolves, bison and bears across the U.S. In 1979, the Fund for Animals purchased land in Texas to build Black Beauty Ranch, now a 1,400-acre sanctuary for nearly 800 animals—40 different species—rescued from cruelty and neglect, including tigers, bears, primates, burros and horses. – HSUS
Black Beauty Ranch
. . . Inspired by Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty, Amory established the Black Beauty Ranch, a 1,460-acre sanctuary that sheltered various abused animals including chimpanzees, burros and elephants. Located in Murchison, Texas, this ranch accommodated over 600 resident animals. Amory’s goal was to “create a sanctuary where its inhabitants would roam unfettered and unbothered by human taskmasters.” The words on the ranch’s gate are taken from the final lines of Sewell’s novel, “I have nothing to fear, / and my story ends. / My troubles are all over, / and I am at home.” The ranch is currently operated by Humane Society of the United States.
Compleat Cat
Cleveland Amory and Polar Bear
“You cannot expect everything even from the friendliest cat. It is still a cat.”
“Cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human mind. They realize…that we have an infuriating inability to understand, let alone follow, even the simplest and most explicit of directions.”
“Unlike some people who have experienced the loss of an animal, I did not believe, even for a moment, that I would never get another. I did know full well that there were just too many animals out there in need of homes for me to take what I have always regarded as the self-indulgent road of saying the heartbreak of the loss of an animal was too much ever to want to go through with it again. To me, such an admission brought up the far more powerful admission that all the wonderful times you had with your animal were not worth the unhappiness at the end.”
The Compleat Cat includes three books – each volume an international bestseller upon publication. The three are consecutive – the history of Amory’s relationship with adopted stray, Polar Bear. In fact, the books are as much autobiographical as they are a tribute to their relationship. Amory weaves in sidelights from a life few if any of us could hope to match. Amory has drinks with Cary Grant at the Hollywood Polo Lounge; enlists Princess Grace of Monaco, Doris Day, Mary Tyler Moore, and other luminaries as sponsors of his Fund for Animals; buys the first Sea Shepherd for Captain Paul Watson and goes on mission to Canada’s Magdalene Islands to protect baby seals from being clubbed to death by the fur trade. And that’s not all – just a sampling. In fact, Polar Bear becomes a celebrity with heaps of fan mail, but he “did not like anything about being a celebrity. For one thing, celebrities have to meet a great many new people, and Polar Bear did not like new people. . . He had already met everyone he wanted to meet, and in fact he would have dearly liked to subtract some of these.”
Trapping
Amory devotes 116 pages of Man Kind? to trapping under the title: “Real People Wear Fake Furs” This provides a wealth of trapping and anti-trapping history. The story is richly detailed, taking us from colonial days to the National Anti-Steel Trap League, to the Friends of the Earth to the Fund for Animals to pushback from groups like The Fur Conservation Institute of America and Fur Age Weekly and so many others. Many of the stories here are unbearable to read, but Amory did not flinch from the blood-soaked truth. Will it take another 50 years for the world to see an end to the despicable practice of trapping?
“I consider the leghold trap the most devilish instrument ever inflicted by the hand of man on a fellow creature”
“I have read book after book about the early days of the fur industry and hardly one of them mentions anything about the death of the animals, let alone what kind of death.”
Sea Shepherd
In 1978, Amory purchased the first oceangoing vessel for Captain Paul Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Watson says: “I needed a ship and there was only one person who I could turn to for help. That was Cleveland Amory, the founder of the Fund for Animals. I approached Cleveland with an idea and he said, “Go and get your ship” and handed me $120,000 in cash.
“With that money, I located an old British trawler in October 1978 named the Westella and renamed her “Sea Shepherd.”
Without Cleveland, I could not have done it. He was my friend and mentor until his death in 1998.”
The Sea ShepherdIn 1993, Sea Shepherd named a ship in Cleveland Amory’s honor
Author,Journalist, Editor, TV Commentator, Critic
“Cleveland Amory meanwhile became one of the most subversive elements ever to mock the status quo from a social position securely inside the establishment.” – Merritt Clifton
1939 – 41 youngest editor ever hired by Saturday Evening Post
military intelligence US Army1941-43
1952 regular columnist for Saturday Review
1952 hired as commentator on NBC’s Today
1963-76 Critic for TV Guide
inspired CBS documentary on hunting: “The Guns of Autumn”
Daily radio essay “Curmudgeon at Large”
Syndicated column “Animail”
1980-98 contributing editor Parade magazine
Only film appearance: Mr. Danforth in comedy-drama “Mr.North”
All books are nonfiction, unless noted otherwise.
The Proper Bostonians (1947)
Home Town (1947) (novel)
The Last Resorts (1952)
Who Killed Society? (1960)
Celebrity Register (1963) (with Earl Blackwell)
Man Kind? Our Incredible War on Wildlife (1974)
Animail (1976) (collection of Amory’s syndicated columns)
The Trouble With Nowadays: A Curmudgeon Strikes Back (1979) (fictional satire)
The Cat Who Came for Christmas (1987)
The Cat and the Curmudgeon (1990) (alternate title: The Cat Who Stayed for Christmas)
The Best Cat Ever (1993)
Cleveland Amory’s Compleat Cat (1995) (all three “Cat” titles in one volume)
Ranch of Dreams (1997)
Vanity Fair, A Cavalcade of the 1920s and 1930s (ed. with Frederic Bradlee)
“I’m just a long-time wildlife advocate, now convinced that our wildlife management system is badly in need of reform so that trapping abuses can be curtailed. Wildlife management needs to be more democratic and friendly to all wildlife. The wildlife commission’s ‘war on predators’ needs to stop.
“I have several long-standing concerns about mountain lion management in Nevada.”
About 1975, one of the two Reno newspapers ran a front-page story about a man who killed a mountain lion on Mount Rose. A photo was included, showing the dead lion draped sideways over the hood of the car with the beer-bellied hunter standing in front. The caption said (if memory serves) that there were only 39 mountain lions remaining in Nevada.
The photo and story alarmed me. I checked to see where I could go to express my concern about this story. I found out that the Nevada Department of Fish and Game was the state agency charged with wildlife management in Nevada. Coincidentally, the Nevada Fish and Game Commission was meeting in Reno soon after the story appeared.
I found the agency, appeared at the front desk, and asked for the location of the commission meeting. I was escorted into a small room with maybe a dozen men sitting round a table.
After momentarily interrupting their meeting, I was asked my name and the reason for my visit. I showed them the photo I’d clipped from the paper and expressed my concern…. nay, my outrage at the story. I was quickly advised by the agency director that the story was wrong. He said there were 750 mountain lions in Nevada.
After expressing relief at that news, I inquired as to the source of that number. I was told a mountain lion hunter told them so!
The agency had hired a mountain lion hunter living in Northern Nevada to advise it about Nevada’s lion population. The lion hunter, a convicted poacher, knew of about 30 lions living along the Sierra Front which he regularly chased with his dogs.
He then sat down with topographic maps of the entire state, looked at elevation contours, and marked an X at every spot he thought a lion might be living. Adding all the X markings to the 30 lions he already knew about……presto! An answer.
Nevada has 750 mountain lions. Who knew???
When I heard that account, it alarmed me as much as the original story in the newspaper. Is this the way wildlife is managed in Nevada? Is the Fox truly in charge of the Henhouse??
That event started me on my path of wildlife advocacy in Nevada, now some 45 years in duration.
Parenthetically, over the years since then, the mountain lion population in Nevada, estimated by the Nevada Department of Wildlife, has varied from 350 up to 5000!
The last estimate, produced for a wildlife commission meeting in 2014, was about 1400 animals.
Currently, the department makes no estimate of the lion population.
Stephanie Myers, former trial consultant, ballerina and teacher, is now retired allowing her long-time wildlife advocacy, spurred by her golden retriever’s severe injury after being caught in a leghold trap.
Stephanie shares impressions from two nights of protests at Mandalay Bay. Protest signs provided by CompasssionWorks International.
About two dozen protesters stood in front of Mandalay Bay Resort on the Las Vegas Strip to rally against the Safari Club International conference this past week (Jan 19 – 22). Some conventioneers were disgruntled with our presence. One taxi slowed down so the passenger could tell me, as I held a sign featuring a lion and the words ‘Trophy Hunting is a Crime Against Nature’ and ‘Killing Isn’t Conservation’, “Don’t you know that Cecil’s hunter paid $500,000…That’s conservation!,” and sped way as I retorted, “Oh, there’s a price tag on a life?” Another walked by and kept repeating, “Get educated, you don’t know what you are talking about! If you don’t have a hunting license, you are not conserving wildlife!” These men and others stubbornly insist that the only conservation happening is through money paid to hunt wildlife.
But there were even more passers-by who raised their thumbs and honked their horns in solidarity with our message.
Law enforcement, with lights swirling, was with us, mostly Friday night when Don Trump, Jr. addressed the meeting attendees. The officers stated that they were there for our safety and protection.
Next year’s convention is in Nashville.
Gruesome stuff for sale at SCI Convention. Safari Club International holds a convention every year celebrating kills, despite a global biodiversity crisis. Credit: Humane Society of the United States
The flicker was eating from the suet when I tromped through knee high snow to scatter seed to the sparrows and quail. I tried to be quick and not look directly at him. I didn’t want to disturb his meal. In previous encounters, I’d had only seconds to appreciate the gorgeous black bow tie like feathers on his chest, the bright orange under his wings, the power of his long thin bill which can drive into trees – before he would sense me and fly away. Had I realized he was eating, I would have waited to take food to the other birds.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw huge wings flap but a bird going nowhere. I turned to face the frantic flicker, his foot caught in the ornament to which the suet cage was attached. Crying “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I struggled across the snow to help him. He relaxed his powerful body into my hands and met my eyes as I figured out how his bleeding foot was trapped and worked to free it without causing further injury. Blood and tears dripped into the snow. Finally, I was able to set him down on a drift. He waited an instant before spreading his wings and taking off in flight.
I texted our flicker-loving neighbor to watch out for an injured bird. I moved the suet to a safer location. Thoughts turned to people who trap animals and birds on purpose. I grabbed the snow shovel and started digging and sobbing both from relief at seeing him fly and anger that we are in the midst of trapping season. There was enough snow with more coming down sideways from the wind to keep me shoveling for a couple of hours.
Normally, all birds would have avoided such noise and activity but not that day. First one flicker flew to the tree above my head and kept me company. Two more came and tried to feed simultaneiously from the safely placed suet A fourth flicker flew to the edge of a flowerpot, waiting her turn to eat. I don’t know if the bird who had let me free him was one of them but I hope so.
Years ago, we once assisted a water-logged dragon-fly to dry off his wings. By the time the rains stopped, he was able to fly. Hours later, a thousand dragon-flies landed on us, covering our bodies for a few moments before disappearing in the sky. The flickers’ surrounding me while I worked brought back that memory of grace and connection. If everyone could feel this, purposely set traps would disappear.
“I’m just a long-time wildlife advocate, now convinced that our wildlife management system is badly in need of reform so that trapping abuses can be curtailed. Wildlife management needs to be more democratic and friendly to all wildlife. The wildlife commission’s ‘war on predators’ needs to stop.
“I have several long-standing concerns about mountain lion management in Nevada.”
We know from the work of Alyson Andreasen, Ph.D. during the past decade, Nevada Department of Wildlife’s (NDOW’s) Project 36 and its successor, Project LIFT, that lions continue to be adversely impacted by incidental trapping of the animal during trapping season.
We know from hunter ‘harvest’ data and Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis that such incidental trapping occurs all around the state.
Significant injury, death from starvation and near-decapitation from snares have been well documented by NDOW staff with many dozen photos and other information. Yet, I know of no effort by NDOW to correct this situation.
How a valuable game species can continue to be subjected to this mistreatment without mitigation efforts by the agency is another embarrassment to be endured by those of us who are concerned about treatment of the animal.
