On the job with Jean Gilchrist and crew at the Kenya SPCA

December 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

NAIROBI––“Kenya SPCA director of animal welfare
Jean Gilchrist, KSPCA vice chair Dr. S.V. Varma, some
KSPCA staff, and a visiting vet from Burundi set off bright
and early one morning on a field trip to Naivasha,” recounted
the Kenya SPCA July/September 1999 quarterly report.
“They were looking forward to a day in the country,
but things did not go according to plan. They were inching
their way through traffic when out of an alley hurtled a bull,
closely followed by a pack of screaming men, wielding clubs.
“Jean stopped the vehicle and took off in hot pursuit.
She grabbed one man, wrestled his club away, and pounced on
the next man, also grabbing his club, waving both in the air
and bellowing at the gathering crowd of about 300 people. The
men insisted they were not going to club the bull, but Jean
noticed that one of the clubs had blood on it.

Buffy chimp goes home

November 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe––Buffy, 15, a Zaireborn
chimpanzee who was smuggled into Zimbabwe as an
infant, arrived on September 20 at the Chimfunshi Wildlife
Orphanage in northern Zambia, five miles from Zaire.
“About 10 years ago Harare Lion and Cheetah Park
owner Viv Bristow paid $10,000 for her and a male chimp
named James,” Bulawayo Branch SPCA national coordinator
Meryl Harrison told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “They were kept in
a small enclosure where James was chained to the wall.
Bristow’s son tried to ‘train’ James with an electric cattle prod.
James became very aggressive.”

Kenya Wildlife chief Leakey given whole civil service

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

NAIROBI––Stating, “The time has come to give
public jobs to those who can deliver,” Kenyan president
Daniel arap Moi on July 20 promoted Kenya Wildlife Service
director Richard Leakey to the post of permanent secretary in
the office of the president, making him head of the entire
Kenya civil service and secretary to the cabinet.
“Leakey, 54, a third generation Kenyan who was in
his second stint as director of the KWS, has a reputation for
efficiency and thoroughness,” explained Emman Omari of
The Nation, the leading Kenyan newspaper. Leakey previously
headed KWS from 1988 until mid-1994, a year after losing
both legs in a plane crash but gaining public stature with his
swift return to duty.
Resigning in frustration with arap Moi minions who
hoped to open Kenya to commercial hunting, Leakey formed
Safina, a leading opposition party, and was elected to the
Kenyan parliament. After arap Moi personally denounced
Leakey, a pro-arap Moi mob dragged him from his car and
flogged him––but when KWS became “a staff-bloated organization
wallowing in cash flow problems,” as Nation reporter
Ken Opala put it, arap Moi put Leakey back in charge.

LAST OF THE TULI 30, LOKI/MURTHY, AND THAI LOGGING ELEPHANTS ALL FIND REFUGE

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

JOHANNESBURG, CHENNAI, BANGKOK– –
Seven thousand South Africans marched on African Game
Services owner Riccardo Ghiazza’s farm near Brits on July 11
demanding an end to wild elephant exports and freedom for the
nine elephants of the “Tuli 30” then still with Ghiazza.
Ten burly bikers crashed Ghiazza’s gate and threatened
to free the elephants themselves, said WildNet Africa.
Outrage built for a week after the South African
Broadcast Corporation program Carte Blanche on July 4 aired
National SPCA undercover video of mahouts beating the elephants.
The videotaping was done at the Ghiazza farm over a
two-month interval by NSPCA inspectors Andries Venter, 25,
Yvonne Seaton, 26, and Karen Moller, 24, following instructions
from a High Court judge.

A Mickey Mouse take on Africa: AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT?

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

TOWN, HARARE, KAMPALA,
KILGALI, MAPUTO, NAIROBI– – T h e
defining attraction at Walt Disney’s Wild
Animal Kingdom is a 20-minute Mickey
Mouse version of an African photo safari.
Canvas-topped four-wheel drive
trucks haul guests on a jolting, twisting,
splashing drive through fake savannah and
jungle so seemingly real that many ask how
Disney moved the 400-year-old baobab
trees––or are they also native to Florida?
The fake baobabs stand among
more than 100,000 real African and Asian
trees which were either transplanted or grown
at the site, along with examples of 1,800
species of moss, ferns, and perennials, and
350 kinds of grass, each specific to the needs
of particular creatures.

GUERILLA WARFARE HITS GORILLA TOURS

April 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:

KAMPALA––An estimated 117 alleged members of
the displaced Hutu tribal militia Interhamwe on March 1 turned
from fighting the Tutsi-tribe-led coalition that has ruled
Rwanda since 1994 to strike a deadly blow at tourism in the
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park of western Uganda.
Four wildlife guards were killed in the March 1 dawn
assault, including community conservation chief warden Paul
Ross Wagaba, who was burned alive, and 32 park visitors
were abducted from tourist camp sites near Lake Katangira.
Five vehicles and trailers used as residences were
burned, along with the Ugandan headquarters of the
International Gorilla Conservation Project.
Chicago University gorilla researcher Elizabeth
Garland, 29, woke to gunfire but escaped physical harm by
slipping into the bush as other visitors fled their tents into open
view and were captured. She watched as the raiders segregated
the visitors by language and nationality, taking those who spoke
English with them.

ANIMAL WELFARE ABROAD

April 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:

An attempt to vasectomize urban
baboons and vervets in the Diani beach district
along the south coast of Kenya started
slowly in January, as after fixing and releasing
just one vervet, the team was unable to catch
any more monkeys of either species,
Columbus Trust official Clement Kiragu told
The Nation, of Nairobi.
Britain will within a year introduce
“pet passports” in lieu of the six month
quarantine of all imported dogs and cats
which has been in effect since 1900, agriculture
minister Nick Brown announced on March
26. The “pet passports” will certify that the
bearer animals have been vaccinated against
rabies, have microchip ID, have had a blood
test, have no exotic infections, and come from
a nation with no endemic rabies. While pets
who have come from most European Union
nations and Australia, New Zealand, Japan,
Taiwan, and Singapore will qualify, pets from
the U.S. and Canada would not, under the
rules as Brown explained them ––but, Brown
added, “We are looking again at the position
for the U.S. and Canada.”

Can mercenary management stop poaching in Africa?

April 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:

GENEVA, HARARE, JOHANNESBURG,
NAIROBI––The Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species on February 10 authorized Namibia and
Zimbabwe to sell 34 metric tons of stockpiled elephant tusk
ivory to Japan, as agreed by CITES members at the June 1997
CITES triennial meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe.
CITES withheld permission for Botswana to sell up
to 25 metric tons of ivory, pending improvement of security
arrangements including protection of wild elephants from
poachers, but the government of Botswana was optimistic,
according to the Pan-African News Service, that it too would
soon get the go-ahead.
Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana hope to collect
from $100,000 to $200,000 a ton for the ivory, which is used in
Japan for making ceremonial signature seals. Such seals are
customarily used in finalizing contracts.

Where elephants roam

January 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

BANGKOK, Thailand; BRITS, South Africa––
The five survivors among a group of six young Asian elephants
whom Thailand exported to Indonesia in October 1997 returned
home on December 31 to floral necklaces, cheering crowds, a
welcoming banner at dockside in Ao Makham, and all the
bananas, sugar cane, and pineapples they could eat.
Presiding over the feast were prime ministerial secretary
Wattana Muangsuk, Phuket member of parliament
Anchalee Theppabutr, and Phuket governor Padet Insang.
Explained Attaya Chuenniran of the Bangkok Post,
“The five beasts, and another, who died in Indonesia, were
sent with their mahouts in October 1997 under a 10-year contract
to help their Indonesian counterparts catch wild elephants,”
who were allegedly terrorizing the countryside in the
wake of fires set to clear brush and facilitate rainforest logging.

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