User:Saman.banga

Black Beauty Ranch
Inspired by Anna Sewell's novel Black Beauty, Cleveland Amory established the Black Beauty ranch, a 1, 460-acre sanctuary that sheltered various abused animals including chimpanzees, burros and elephants.[1] Located in east Texas in a town called Murchison, this ranch accommodated six-hundred-plus resident animals.[2] One of Black Beauty's most famous resident however, was a 25 year old chimp named Nim Chimpsky.[3] Amory's goal when creating the animal refuge was to "Create a sanctuary where it's inhabitants would roam unfettered and unbothered by human taskmasters."[4] The words on the ranch's gate are actually even taken from the final lines of Sewell's novel, "I have nothing to fear, / and my story end. / my troubles are all over, / and I am at home."[5] This ranch wasn't just an ordinary ranch for animal rights advocate Amory, for him, it was a ranch of dreams. As he explains in his 1997 book Ranch of Dreams, "It was not long after reading Black Beauty for the first time that I had a dream that one day I would have a place which would embody everything black beauty loved about his final home. I dreamed that I would go even a step further- at my place none of the horses would never wear a bit or blinkers or check reins, or in fact have reins at all, because they would never pull a cart. a carriage, a cab, or anything else. indeed, they would never even be ridden- they would just run free."[6] Today, in memory of Cleveland Amory, a stone monument of Amory stands beside the monument of his beloved cat, Polar Bear, whom he rescued from starvation years ago on Christmas eve.[7]

Biography
Before Cleveland Amory died at his home in New York City at the age of 81, he accomplished quite a lot. Born into a privileged and established Boston family, Cleveland spent the first half-century of his life as a social historian, novelist, satirist, and cultural critic.[8] It was not until he was 18, at his mentorship to William Zinsser, that he fostered a realization that journalism was his forum.[9] While at Harvard, he landed the top editorship of the Harvard Crimson. After his graduation at Harvard, he became the youngest editor of the Saturday Evening Post.[10] He took part in many campaigns such as the one waged by Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society against whaling and sealing. [11] In the early 1980s he opened his Fund for Animal's treasury to support a removal by air and land of 580 Grand Canyon burros slated for destruction by the National Park Service.[12] Soon after, he fought a similar battle to prevent the killing of San Clemente Island's goats by the Department of Defense. [13] Amory eventually settled down and got married to a woman named Martha Hodge. He traveled to France in the spring of 1955 with her for his assignment with the Duke and Duchess.[14] He agreed to ghostwrite her autobiography but after realizing that the former Wallis Warfield Simpson just wanted him to sugar-coat her life, he quickly dumped the project. [15]

While he was a popular writer and spokesperson, he was a controversial one nonetheless. One of his first controversial moments happened while he held a position at the "Today" show. After learning about the "bunny bash" in North Carolina, Amory and his assistant Probst traveled to Harmony to engage in a debate with its planners. [16] The "Today" show management expected him to give a lighthearted commentary about the trip when he returned, but it everything except lighthearted. [17] On the show, he proposed the formation of a hunt club where hunters would be tracked down and killed-for sport.[18] Initiating arguments he had heard many times before, he proposed that the killing of hunters would be, at its core, "humane"[19]. After all, he noted, because of the hunters' overpopulation, killing them in cold blood would actually be kind. [20] "Today" show viewers did not see or enjoy the humor in this commentary however. The reaction was almost all negative in fact. Amory was reprimanded by NBC's President Julian Goodman Amory almost immediately.[21] In another incident, within only a few months of his hunt-the-hunters commentary, he once again brought up his opinions regarding animal rights without prior script approval.[22] This time however, he spoke at length on the "Today" show about the evils of vivisection-the abuse of animals in laboratory experiments. [23] Even though he did not oppose to the use of animals in the experiments entirely, he strongly believed that many of them were being needlessly mistreated and treated inhumanely. [24] This resulted in outspoken scientists voicing their opposition to what they heard on the show. Only this time, he was given no warning or reprimand; he was fired. [25]

While he spent considerable time as an outspoken reporter, he still remained committed to his organization Fund for Animals. The Fund struggled during the first decade or so of its existence, but by the time Amory died in 1998, it had a "$2 million budget, more than 200,000 members, and three animal sanctuaries, and had initiated several highprofile animal rescues, including the organic "painting" of baby harp seals off the Magdelene Islands in Canada to ensure that their fur was worthless to hunters." [26]