BOOKS: Animal Rights In South Africa

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Animal Rights In South Africa by Michele Pickover
Double Storey Books (Mercury Crescent, Wetton, Cape Town 7880,
South Africa), 2005. 209 pages, paperback. 154 rand (about $22.00
U.S. .)

Pickover is a well-known and respected member of the
pitifully small South African animal rights community. In a country
where hunting cage-reared lions has become a significant rural
industry, her book is an important contribution to the causes of
both animal welfare and animal rights, between which she draws a
sharp distinction.
Early chapters describe the harm done to wild animals by
hunters, and analyse the so-called game industry, which facilitates
the slaughter. Pickover then summarizes the 1998-1999 Tuli elephant
scandal, involving the illegal capture of baby elephants in Botswana
whose subsequent abuse in South Africa was finally brought to a
semblance of courtroom justice in 2003.
Chapter 4 is a shocking expose of commercial exploitation of
wildlife in Kruger National Park. Pickover exposes the South African
National Parks Board as in essence a game farming operation, using
the national wildlife heritage as a private stock-in-trade.

Scoping elephants & rhinos on the web

June 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

MERU–The latest Kenyan venture in wildlife tracking could
either help to stop elephant and rhino poaching or accelerate it,
depending on the monitoring and interdiction capabilities of the
Kenya Wildlife Service.
“Elephants in some national parks are being fitted with SIM
card collars that send a text message telling wardens exactly where
the elephants are every hour. That information will soon be
available over the Internet, and accessible to people who choose to
sponsor an animal or make a donation to charity,” London
Independent correspondent Meera Selva reported on June 5, 2005.
Confirmed Meru National Park senior warden Mark Jenkins, who
is introducing the tracking technology, “People can go online and
see where ‘their’ elephant is at any time of day or night. It should
be a very useful tool for fundraising.”
“A similar technology is also being used to track rhinos,”
Selva added.

Elephants source of Marburg & Ebola?

June 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

LUANDA–The World Health Organization and Angola Ministry of
Health are optimistic that the worst outbreak on record of the
Ebola-like Marburg hemorrhagic fever may be close to burning itself
out, after 423 known cases through June 5, 357 of them fatal,
including 346 of the 412 cases that occurred in the city of Uige,
where the outbreak was first recognized.
The Uige outbreak may never be clearly traced to a source,
since the first persons exposed apparently all died before sharing
details about how they fell ill. Once either Marburg or Ebola
occurs among humans, it spreads chiefly through human contact.
Investigators are more optimistic about finding the origin of
an Ebola outbreak that struck the Cuvette-Ouest region of the
Republic of Congo in April, killing at least 10 people. The first
victims were “five hunters who became ill after emerging from the
forest,” Wildlife Conservation Society field veterinary program
director William Karesh posted to the International Society for
Infectious Diseases’ ProMed newsgroup.

Violence vs. animal law enforcement

June 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

NAIROBI–Nairobi police fired teargas to disperse
demonstrators on May 18, 2005, and Masai leader Ben Koisaba
threatened to “mobilize Masai to invade Delamere ranches in Nakuru to
press for the re-arrest and prosecution” of Tom Gilbert Patrick
Cholmon-deley, 37, a day after Philip Murgor, Kenya Director of
Public Prosecution, dropped a murder charge filed against
Cholmondeley on April 28 for killing Kenya Wildlife Service ranger
Samson ole Sisina with one of a volley of five shots fired on April
19.
Cholmondeley, an honorary KWS game ranger himself, claimed
Sisina shot first, and said he had mistaken Sisina for a bandit, as
Sisina led an undercover KWS raid on an illegal wildlife
slaughterhouse at one of the Cholmondeley family ranches.
Cholmon-deley remained under investigation in connection with the
slaughterhouse.
Cholmondeley’s grandfather Hugh Cholmondeley, the third
Baron Delamere, visited Kenya to hunt in 1895, decided to emigrate
from Britain to raise cattle, and established the family land and
livestock empire that Tom Cholmondeley now directs.
The Sisina slaying followed the late March murder of a
Swaziland ranger identified only as Mandla.

Evictions to clear a park in Ethiopia

June 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

While land invasions and their aftermath destroy the remnants
of wildlife protection in Zimbabwe, the African Parks Foundation has
reportedly introduced to Ethiopia the heavy-handed relocation of
longtime land occupants in the name of conservation that helped to
create the pressures leading to the Zimbabwean debacle.
“Ethiopia wants a Kenyan-style network of wildlife parks to
serve a Kenyan-style tourist industry,” columnist Fred Pearce
charged in the April 16, 2005 edition of New Scientist. “Following
the model of Kenya, the country’s leaders have been throwing the
locals out of the park to achieve the ultimate safari experience for
western visitors: wildlife without people.”
The African Parks Foundation, summarized Pearce, “was set
up by a leading Dutch industrialist, Paul van Vlissingen. It offers
to take over moribund parks from African governments, find
international funding to spruce them up, and then get the tourists
rolling in. It is building a portfolio of parks across Africa,”
including in Malawi and Zambia as well as Ethiopia, but will not
invest in parks that are jeopardized by human encroachment.

What happened to the hippos?

May 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

KAMPALA–Did anthrax kill the hippos, or was it poison?
What became of their teeth? Who was responsible?
“We have lost 287 hippos since July 2004,” Uganda Wildlife Authority
veterinary coordinator Patrick Atimnedi told fellow members of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases in March 2005.
“So far, we have lost about 11% of the hippo population.
“August 2004 was the peak of mortality,” Atimnedi continued,
“declining toward December. We were surprised with a resurgence from
January 2005.
“So far the source of infection is unclear,” Atimnedi
admitted. “[Mass] hippo mortalities have occurred in this park in
the last 50 years, usually in 10-year cycles. These, however,
would affect at most not more than 30 hippos, and were mainly
associated with drought.”
Atimnedi is certain that anthrax is the lethal agent. “All
cases are actually being investigated,” Atimnedi emphasized,
mentioning visits by foreign experts and samples sent to laboratories
outside Uganda to confirm his observations.

H5N1 & Marburg outbreaks

April 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

HANOI, LUANDA–If an epidemiologist’s worst nightmare isn’t
the avian influenza strain called H5N1, it might be Marburg
hemorrhagic fever, a virulent close cousin to the better known Ebola
virus. Both are zoonotic diseases, meaning that they spread to
humans from animals. With a quirk or two of virus evolution, both
could depopulate continents. The worst-ever outbreaks of each are
raging right now in Southeast Asia and Central Africa.
H5N1, discovered after it killed three people in Hong Kong in 1997,
apparently crossed from migratory wild birds to ducks and geese
reared in huge outdoor pens and paddies in southern China, crossed
to indoor-raised chickens, then raced throughout Southeast Asia with
the mostly illegal but lightly prosecuted commerce in gamecocks.
Killing about 70% of the humans who contract it from birds,
H5N1 has not killed millions chiefly because it has not evolved into
a form that spreads easily from human to human, and does not spread
easily from bird to human. Only the estimated 25 to 40 million
Southeast Asians who raise poultry are believed to be at risk of
becoming infected by the bird-to-human route.

Ethiopians fight on against dog shooting

April 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Homeless Animals
Protection Society of Ethiopia. I can not stress enough how bad is
the situation in the struggle against the influence of the Ethiopian
Wolf Conservation Program at Bale Mountains National Park, where
Efrem Legese and Hana Kifle put their own jobs and families on the
line for the sake of animals. Such actions are rare, especially
here in Ethiopia, where losing your job can mean starvation for your
family.
Efrem had to send his children to relatives and take them out
of school because he could not provide for them. Hana’s family has
been hurt, too. Their families do not understand why Efrem and Hana
would risk their jobs for the sake of stray dogs. Even so, Efrem
and Hana are trying to keep HAPS together and showing more courage,
determination and integrity then anyone else I know in this field.
They have continued to defend animals here in Addis Ababa. They have
won governmental consent for implementing an Animal Birth Control
program, and have increased membership in HAPS to almost 90 people.
They feel that the quarrel with the EWCP is now chasing them
in the form of baseless and vicious rumors that hurt HAPS’ good name
and delay its progress. This is not only a disaster for HAPS, but
for the abandoned animals of Ethiopia.
Please help us fight evil rumors in favor of people who really care.

Africa

New faces at the Zimbabwe National SPCA

April 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

HARARE–If anything good for animals comes out of the last
years of the Robert Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, it may be the
Africanization of the Zimbabwe National SPCA.
Often seen by Zimbabweans of African descent as a relic of
colonialism, the ZN/SPCA has become emblematic of the battered hopes
of many Afro-Zimbabweans who still aspire to a peaceful and
productive society that shares norms and values with the developed
world.
Mugabe, 81, on April 1, 2005 strengthened his grasp and
that of his henchmen on control of what remains of the faltering
Zimbabwean government after 25 years of increasingly corrupt misrule
by claiming a two-thirds majority in Parliamentary elections.
Critics of the regime both within Zimbabwe and abroad challenged the
authenticity of the results.
Whether or not the balloting was rigged, supporters of
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party again tortured animals to terrorize opponents
before the election, as they often have before. In Makoni, for
example, near Mutare, Mugabe backers burned an opposition leader’s
henhouse, killing 14 birds.
“No arrests have been made but police and the ZN/SPCA
continue to make enquiries,” said ZN/SPCA national chair Bernice
Robertson Dyer.

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