AR-News: animal rights activist wages battle

Mon Jan 19 09:05:11 EST 2004

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-feral4jan19.story 

On the hunt: Darien animal rights activist wages battle on many fronts

By Louis Porter
Staff Writer

January 19, 2004

DARIEN -- Priscilla Feral has had a busy winter. When she wasn't fighting with the state of Alaska over wolf hunting, she was brawling with Audubon Connecticut over deer hunting on its Greenwich sanctuary.

Deserved or not, many animal rights groups have a reputation for extreme views, and those of Friends of Animals, based in Darien, may be the most radical. Feral, its president, is not afraid to attack not only hunters but environmental-protection agencies and animal cruelty prevention groups that do not go far enough.

Her organization is not satisfied with improving conditions on factory farms, or advocating for less cruel hunting techniques. Friends of Animals wants to abolish these practices.

"If you get to the heart of the problem, that is probably radical," Feral said Friday at Friends of Animals headquarters on the Post Road. "People ought to just stop eating animals."

Feral was born Priscilla Brockway, but after her divorce in 1974, she took as her last name the word that describes a domestic animal gone wild.

"I gave serious consideration to it," she said. "I did it with intent and to define myself."

Animals are sentient beings and there is no acceptable reason to harm them, according to Friends of Animals.

"We are animals, too," Feral said.

Besides Darien, the group has offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., employs about two dozen workers and has an annual budget of $4 million to $5 million. Feral began volunteering with Friends of Animals in the 1970s and has been president since 1986.

One of Feral's biggest disagreements lately has been with Connecticut Audubon, which allowed bow hunting on its 285-acre Greenwich property late last year. The environmental group is "a hunting club" and "an arm of the NRA," according to Feral.

Tom Baptist, vice president and executive director of Audubon Connecticut, said it doesn't make sense to oppose all hunting when too many deer are harming vegetation.

"People are responsible for the burgeoning deer population," Baptist said. "Doing nothing will have a significant adverse impact on the environment."

Humans created a problem by killing off predators and changing the landscape so that too many deer thrive, Baptist said.

"Fencing is not a viable option. You can't construct a fence that only impedes the movement of deer" without affecting bobcats, coyote, river otters and other animals, Baptist said. "And it doesn't address the problem of the overpopulation of deer."

Humans have been hunting deer in Connecticut for 10,000 years, he said.

"To suggest today that there is something wrong with hunting reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of importance of predators in nature," he said.

Venison from the Greenwich hunts is sent to food banks.

The Greenwich Sportsmen and Landowners Association, which is doing the hunting, has donated 2,000 pounds of meat this year, said President Robert DeLaney.

Feral offered to donate vegetarian meals to make up for the loss if the soup kitchens agreed to refuse the deer meat.

But Kate Lombardo, executive director of the Food Bank of Lower Fairfield County, said she can't afford to refuse any food. Lombardo said she would be pleased if Friends of Animals also would donate, but she can't accept the food if it requires that she refuse someone else.

"I am not a fan of hunting," she said. "In my mind it's cruel," but "we are not in a position as a food bank to refuse food from any trustworthy, reliable source."

Asked about her often confrontational and controversial stances, Feral said she recalls the words of the group's founder, Alice Herrington.

"She used to say, 'Your job is to stir up a hornet's nest,'" Feral said. "She was right."

In the 1970s, Feral's first task with the group was to organize a protest against an animal welfare society that was having a fur fashion show to raise money in the 1970s.

She has butted heads with animal rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for what she calls "obnoxious stunts" that don't advance the social justice message of animal protection.

She pointed to PETA protesters who recently took off their clothes in North Carolina to protest the wearing of fur.

Instead of stripping, Feral sues.

In state court in Alaska, Friends of Animals is trying to block a decision last fall by the Alaska Board of Game and Department of Fish and Game to reinstate aerial hunting of wolves. Alaska biologists said it was done to control predation on moose and caribou.

But Feral said it is to improve hunting for humans, Feral said, adding that hunters are a small group. About 14 percent of Alaskans have hunting licenses. In Connecticut, about 1.5 percent of residents have hunting licenses, she said.

"How could it be that such a small, vocal minority could have a stranglehold on state and federal authorities?" she asked.

Governments are hooked on license fees and consider hunters to be their clients, she said.

To protest Alaska's action, Feral's group is holding about 50 "howl-ins" nationwide at which members ask people to sign postcards promising to not travel to Alaska, which has a $2 billion a year tourism industry, until the wolf hunts are stopped. Tapes of howling wolves play in the background, and some owners bring their dogs wearing signs that read "Don't shoot my cousin."

About 50,000 such postcards are on their way to Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, Feral said.

Murkowski has said Alaska is handling the hunting issue responsibly.

"We have a state to manage and game populations to manage, and we're not going to do it on emotion," Murkowski told The Associated Press in late December.

Alaska is accepting applications from hunters who want to shoot the wolves.

Friends of Animals staged a similar protest a decade ago, and Alaska stopped aerial wolf hunts.

Some of the group's battles are not about hunting. Last summer, Friends of Animals protested against pig racing at the Derby Days fair in Derby.

The town investigated race conditions and found that the pigs were humanely treated and had air conditioning on hot days, Mayor Marc Garofalo said.

"It was clean, they had electricity for the air conditioning unit," he said. "Everybody seemed to have fun. The great thing is that, in this country, you can express your view."

In between battles, Feral sifts through recipes. Friends of Animals' first book, a vegetarian cookbook, will be published in the spring. It is full of the philosophy and ethics of the group's no-kill diet.

"I almost went into catering years ago, so I am into cooking," Feral said.

Priscilla Feral
President

Friends of Animals
777 Post Road
Darien Connecticut

feral at friendsofanimals.org

www.friendsofanimals.org 