Sonoma Stories: A new veterinarian and a rescued elephant, plucked rabbits and whale sushi

There’s a new veterinarian in Sonoma County, one who might take to treating pampered pets if she weren’t so busy advocating for caged backyard lions, chained and trained elephants and other animals whose suffering at human hands can be unspeakable.

Heather Rally always knew she wanted to work with animals.

“My mother will tell you I popped out that way,” said the 31-year-old transplant from Southern California and newcomer to Sebastopol.

She said her destiny as an animal welfare activist was sealed as she watched in anguish the 2009 documentary “The Cove,” which details the slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

Today, Rally works full time for the Foundation to Support Animal Protection, also known as the PETA Foundation. Her primary focus is advocacy for captive wildlife kept in roadside menageries, circuses and private homes.

She thinks most people would be surprised knowing how many lions and bears are detained as pets or in wildlife exhibits.

“There are states where you can literally have anything in your living room with zero regulation,” she said.

She and PETA get involved upon evidence the animals are suffering from abuse or neglect. In one case, Rally said, she documented the mistreatment and deteriorating health of Nosey, an African elephant long kept by a traveling circus. Last year, authorities seized Nosey and moved her from Alabama to a sanctuary in Tennessee.

Investigations and advocacy of that sort are what occupy most of Rally’s attention as the supervising veterinarian of the PETA Foundation’s Captive Animal Law Enforcement division. But a new PETA video features Rally taking up the cause of animals far different from a circus elephant.

Rally traveled to a rural area outside of Shanghai, China, on behalf of a global garment retailer that had been assured rabbits raised for angora fur were treated humanely. Rally documented the opposite.

She said she watched in revulsion as factory farm workers plucked the fur of tied rabbits in clear agony. “The scream these rabbits emit is just horrifying,” she said.

Shown video of the practice, the people running the clothing retail business halted its sales of angora and donated all of its angora products to Syrian refugees.

Rally’s video on angora is featured in a 10-part PETA series, “PETA Reveals: Everybody’s Got a Story.”

Rally said that though rabbits continue to be plucked in China, oftentimes right next to ones being humanely sheared, more than 300 retailers have agreed to no longer purchase and sell angora. Just last month, the luxury brand Coach announced its adoption of a fur-free policy.

Rally grew up near the ocean. Not surprisingly, she said, “Marine mammals hands down are my greatest passion.”

While studying veterinary medicine at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, she received hands-on training at the National Wildlife Health Center in Honolulu, the Fort MacArthur Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro and Marin County’s Marine Mammal Center.

In 2010, Rally joined up with activists who’d filmed “The Cove” to investigate a claim that a Japanese restaurant at the Santa Monica airport was serving whale meat in violation of federal law.

She recalled, “My first reaction was, ‘This isn’t real. Not at the Santa Monica Airport.’ ”

Working alongside investigators with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Rally and a second woman went into the restaurant — called Hump — and posed as diners interested in eating the most exotic seafood available.

Rally said the sushi chef was wily but she and the other woman were persistent. At last, she said, the chef left the restaurant, walked to a parked Mercedes and took something from an ice chest in his car.

Served the delicacy, the women secretly wrapped some in a napkin for testing.

“It ended up being an endangered species of whale,” Rally said.

Federal officers arrested the chef on suspicion of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act by serving Sei whale. The story made the New York Times.

The next week, “The Cove” won the Academy Award for best documentary.

The story of the undercover operation that led to the shuttering of the Hump restaurant was included in the 2015 documentary by the Oceanic Preservation Society, “Racing Extinction,” which was nominated for an Oscar.

Rally completed her studies in 2014 and became a wildlife veterinarian. She was on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, becoming acquainted with the rainforest destruction caused by palm oil producers, when she met her future husband, conservationist Shayne McGrath.

It was his work that prompted the couple’s move to Sonoma County. Rally said she expects to become active in local animal welfare efforts once she becomes familiar with them.

As devoted as she is to working with animals, she said it’s also essential to help educate and galvanize humans to be more conscious of the impact their food, clothing and entertainment choices have on animals.

“Any time they pay for anything,” Rally said, “they are voting for the kind of future they want.”

You can reach columnist Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.

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