I dunno. They look good for a straight "translation" framework. But I prefer a more fast-and-loose system for designing a race. I mean, not everyone wants to eat an ECL hit just to play an anthropomorphic animal.
It seems to me that you should be able to build just about any anthropomorphic animal as a base character race by comparing it to the normal base races and changing things around to suit.
This also allows for the addition of drawbacks (other than reflected in stat penalties.
