California anti open-coursing "hunt" bill passes committee

(Californians, please see legislative note at the end of this alert. Others, please forward to Californians.)

On Tuesday, April 4, a California bill that would ban open field coursing passed Assembly committee. It is now headed for the Assembly floor. Dan Noyes, from the I-team at KGO, the ABC affiliate in the San Francisco area, has been covering the issue and did yet another hard-hitting follow-up on it yesterday.

The coverage included footage illustrating this voice-over:
"Dog owners from across the state, Seattle and even Canada gathered to race their dogs. Three at a time walked to the front. The rest of the owners and spectators formed a line at the rear to flush out jackrabbits.

"When one bolted, the race was on. The dogs got points for how aggressively they pursued the rabbit, for each time they made it turn and for killing it. When one dog caught a rabbit, the others joined in a tug of war -- the rabbit squealing -- a full 30 seconds in one case, until it died."

The story covered the hearing. Voters in the San Jose area should know that Rebecca Cohn, D-San Jose, came out strongly against the bill, saying "If my family didn't hunt, particularly before the winter time, we didn't have any protein available to us" -- as if sending dogs out to rip apart rabbits, and scoring their performance, has anything to do with hunting for desperately needed protein!

You can read the full transcript, and watch the video of the news segment on line at:
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=i_team&id=4054999

Dan Noyes and the ABC I-Team have been fantastic on this issue. Please make sure you thank them. Positive feedback for animal friendly coverage makes it easy for reporters to do similar stories in the future. The I-team takes comments at:
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=i_team&id=3308976

Californians -- the coursing lobby has been flooding legislators with letters against the anti-coursing bill. Please make sure the animal advocacy voice is heard so that open field coursing is banned and so that legislators see that the animal advocacy movement is a significant lobby. Please visit https://community.hsus.org/campaign/CA_2006_coursing2 from where you can easily send a note to your Assembly person in support of the bill.


(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)