Street roots., August 12, 2016, Page 9, Image 9

S tre e t R o o ts •
A u g u s t 1 2 -1 8 , 2 0 1 6
left to feed them and clean them out when their tank began
to smell like old wee,” he recalls. “One day we came back
from school to find she had released them into a pool in a
local park.”
Sharon Comrie, a superintendent with the Scottish
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said: “I
remember the effect the original Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles film had on our rehoming centres in 1990. There was
a noticeable rise in numbers of terrapins coming into our
care after the first film. People are often fooled into thinking
they are easy to look after and don’t fully consider the time
and commitment required to care for them. There can also
be a boredom factor because owners can’t take them for a
walk or cuddle and play with them. They can live for up to 60
years, so the decision to take one on shouldn’t be made
lightly.”
According to a 2014 study by the University of Bristol and
the City University of New York, we’re a bit more loyal to our
furry friends. The fashion for certain breeds of dog can last
up to 10 years after a film comes out. Figures from the
Kennel Club of Great Britain chart Dalmatian ownership
from 906 dogs in 1961, when Disney’s 101 Dalmatians was
first released, to 3,000 by the end of that decade. Far from
dropping off, it remained steady until peaking in 1996 after
the release of the live action remake.
So what does this mean for Street Cat Bob, who makes his
screen debut this winter? The film, the uplifting true story of
Big Issue seller James Bowen and the cat that saved his life,
is sure to win the hearts of millions when it is released this
winter. Will we see our back gardens overrun with ginger
kittens in 2017?
“Famous felines like Street Cat Bob tug at the heartstrings
and highlight important issues surrounding cats in need -
and if that helps abandoned and stray cats find their forever
families, it can’t be a bad thing,” said Caroline Cook from
Your Cat magazine. “However, anyone who sees a film and
wants to get a pet ‘just like that one’ needs to think carefully
about whether they can make that commitment for the
animal’s lifetime, both financially and emotionally.”
So when the kids start to pester for a Hollywood pet this
summer, the safest bet might be to head to the shops and
buy a cuddly plush version. No tanks to clean out for 60
years, no stinging blue tangs in the living room, no
unexpected litters of puppies or kittens - and you’ll protect
the Great Barrier Reef’s ecosystem, while saving animal
rehoming charities a whale of work. It’s a small price to pay.
After all, everyone knows fish can’t talk, Dalmatians don’t get
married, and turtles don’t eat pizza.
News
The man who’s saving Dory
his summer, marine biologists at the
■
University of Florida shared
groundbreaking news: for the first time
blue tang fish, AKA the star of Finding
Dory, were successfully bred in captivity.
This is hugely significant. Every blue
tang in an aquarium right now was taken
from the wild, most illegally.
The breakthrough follows six years of
research, funded by Rising Tide
Conservation. The first positive signs
appeared in late May, when one of the
breeding team, Kevin Barden, was
working with 50,000 eggs. “We were
entering unknown territory,” marvelled the
Dory daddy. “It was a complete roller­
coaster ride.”
That number reduced drastically as
Ukrainian soldier Leonid Maslov pins a medal on Michael
Zaslavsky, who helped to send military and medical supplies to the
front lines. Maslov visited Portland recently and awarded two men
with civilian medals for their contributions to the effort from
Portland.
eggs died off but on June 20 he
discovered hundreds o f blue tang larvae.
On July 4 a group settled in the bottom of
the tank, and one week later 27 were
identifiably growing into ‘baby Dorys’.
Judy St. Leger, president of Rising Tide
Conservation, described it as a “new
chapter,” offering, for the first time a choice
over where the fish come from.
Living mainly on coral reefs or rocky
inshore waters, blue tang are found from
east Africa to Japan, Australia to New
York. It is estimated that a quarter of a
m illion are sold globally each year, not
counting those that die in transit
Many are illegally harvested by divers
squirting cyanide on the reef, stunning the
fish, which are then scooped up. Effects
of the poison include suffocation and
central nervous system damage, while
reefs suffer vast, long-lasting or terminal
damage. The ability to breed them in
captivity could drastically reduce damage
Courtesy o f INSP.ngo/ The B ig Issue UK bigissue.com @
Biglssue
Page 9
to fish and reefs.
FIGHTING, from page 7
served as a consultant for ousted Ukrainian president Viktor F.
Yanukovich. Slate recently described Manafort as a man who’s
“made a career out of stealthily reinventing the world’s nastiest
tyrants as noble defenders of freedom.”
When crowds of Ukrainian protesters seized control of
Yanukovich’s property in 2014, it was revealed the corrupt
politician was living in the lap of luxury
in his opulent palace. According to The
Telegraph, a logbook showed that for
"The longer
every day he was in office, he paid an
yon slay away
average of $1.4 million in bribes. He
tram Ukraine, it
successfully sought asylum in Russia.
fades w ith tim e.
U.S. Senator Ben Cardin
(D-Maryland), a ranking member of the So when people
Foreign Relations Committee, has
describe the wary
called into question the Republican
and that it's s till
platform’s alluded-to position that the
going on and
U.S. should not provide military
people s till need
assistance to Ukraine.
help, they feel
“There is broad, bipartisan support
more connected
for standing steadfast with Ukraine
through political, economic and
and w illin g to
military support after Russia’s invasion h elp."
EDUARD DUDAR
two years ago. Russia’s aggression
U K R A I N I A N A S S O C IA T IO N
violated international law, robbed
O F W A S H IN G T O N
Ukraine of its sovereign territory, and
killed and wounded thousands of
people,” he wrote in a letter he penned for The New York Times.
Locally, Mitkov-Baklanovsky said the Russian-speaking
community is split politically by the annexation of Crimea and the
war in Ukraine. He is a Russian descendent himself, but native to
Ukraine.
“People who support Ukraine in this conflict will vote against
Donald Trump,” he said.
As Maslov flipped through his slide show that evening, he
showed pictures of buildings that had been reduced to rubble, while
sharing humorous stories from the battlefield. He told his audience
about a close call by one of his fellow soldiers - he was nearly
bombed when drunkenly making coffee in an attempt to sober up.
And he laughed as he told them about the time he was “sofa
fighting” at 4 a.m. with a pro-Russian man in Odessa through
Facebook. He was threatening to kill him through online messages,
but at the same time he was on night shift, listening to radio
chatter with bullets flying all around him.
But right before ending his backyard presentation, Maslov’s
mood turned.
“I have to do necessary speeches,” he said. He continued in
Ukrainian, and Zaslavsky translated.
“Several of my friends perished in the war. Military friends.
Some of them were very close friends. I had to put together parts
of the bodies of some of them. I had to collect them and put into
garbage bags,” he said. Then he paused and turned away, taking a
sip of his beer as he futilely attempted to hold back his tears.
“I hope they died for good purpose,” he said.
emily@streetroots. org