Animal Defenders of Westchester

lion baby

Home Page
Action Alerts
Articles
Campaigns
Events
Event Photos
How Can I Help?
Letters
Press Releases
Rodeo and Hunting Fan Mail
ADOW's TV Show
Who We Are
Become a Member
Companion Animal Memorials
Links

We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts.

Animal Defenders of Westchester
P.O. Box 205
Yonkers, NY 10704

Articles

Who or what killed Hal?

In today's NY DAILY NEWS WWW.NYDAILYNEWS.COM is an article investigating Hal's death; and horse-doping at the Meadowlands:

BY JOE MAHONEY and LISA L. COLANGELO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Hal the coyote

Think "CSI" - only the victim is a coyote.

Five days after the wily one known as Hal dropped dead, there's no shortage of theories about what killed him.

Was it poison? A hidden disease? Or human error?

Hal led cops on a wild chase through Central Park last month, only to be captured and die suddenly while state wildlife officials were tagging him.

Some wildlife rehabilitators fear a Department of Environmental Conservation biologist and a Cornell graduate student who tried to tag Hal were unnecessarily rough with the stressed-out animal.

Meanwhile, a veteran wildlife pathologist performing the necropsy on Hal's body said a heartworm infestation may have contributed to his demise - and he's also trying to determine whether the carnivore wolfed down rodenticide.

"One thing I want to look at is did it eat something containing some poison along the way," said Ward Stone, a top researcher with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

"There was a lot of internal bleeding, and so we want to find out the explanation for that."

But Elise Able, who runs Fox Wood Wildlife in upstate East Concord, thinks "careless and inhumane" handling by the DEC is to blame.

"Hal was snared around the neck with a catch pole," Able wrote on her Web site. "Imagine the stress and terror the coyote felt."

DEC officials said they placed a muzzle on the coyote's face, tied his legs and held him with a catch pole to carry out the prerelease tagging.

Stone can't say yet whether Hal suffered serious trauma following his capture - so stay tuned.

"I don't want to reach any conclusions on that until I have all my pieces together," he said.

Originally published on April 4, 2006


Fair Use Notice: This document may contain copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners. We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Your comments and inquiries are welcome


This site is hosted and maintained by:
The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation
Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org.


Since date.gif (991 bytes)