Governments push hunting the big bucks, boars, et al–for the price on their heads

September 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2004:

CANBERRA, JOHANNESBURG,
NAIROBI–Australian government agencies are
missing the gravy train by hiring sharpshooters
to kill non-native wildlife, University of
Queensland faculty members Gordon Dryden and
Stephen Craig-Smith reported in early September
2004 to the Rural Industries Research &
Development Corporation.
The RIRDC is a federal think-tank formed
to create jobs in the Outback. It envisions the
Outback as a tourism draw rivaling Africa–for
one type of tourist.
“Wealthy hunting enthusiasts around the
world would be happy to cull these animals that
nobody in Australia wants, and would pay for the
privilege,” Craig-Smith said. “This would be a
niche tourism market targeted at cashed-up
hunters,” he added, “not a wholesale slaughter
of animals.”

USAid pushes Zimbabwean “wise use” wildlife management model in Kenya

July 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

HARARE, NAIROBI–The future of wildlife in Zimbabwe and
Kenya may depend on the outcome of the November 2004 U.S.
Presidential election–or may be decided sooner, as officials in a
position to cash in on consumptive use rush to do it.
U.S. President George W. Bush brought to the White House a
renewed commitment to the wildlife policies of his father George H.
Bush and Ronald Reagan.
Echoing the “sustainable use” rhetoric of the World Wildlife
Fund and African Wildlife Foundation, all three Presidents have
actually been more closely aligned with the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and Safari Club International–and none more so than George
W., who was the Safari Club “Governor of the Year” in 1999 for
vetoing a Texas bill to restrain canned hunts.
Operative assumptions of the George W. Bush administration
African wildlife policy, are that wildlife should pay its own way;
that trophy hunting is the best ecological and economic use for large
wildlife; that breeding huntable populations of wildlife in
captivity is an acceptable alternative to protecting habitat; that
conservation is best motivated by profit rather than altruism; and
that his Republican forebears knew what they were doing, since none
of the Big Five trophy species–African elephant, rhino, lion,
leopard, and Cape buffalo–went extinct on their watch.
The Center for Private Conservation, a Competitive
Enterprise Institute subsidiary, touted Zimbabwe as the showplace
for successful “wise use” wildlife policy during the 2000 U.S.
election campaign. Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, an avowed
Marxist just a few years earlier, seduced the Reagan and George H.
Bush administrations by turning conservation over almost entirely to
the private sector.

HAPS is back at work in Ethiopia

July 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:

ADDIS ABABA–The Homeless Animal Protection Society of
Ethiopia has survived six months of bureaucratic attack by proponents
of killing street dogs, cofounders Efrem Legese and Hana Kifle
e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on July 5, 2004.
“After all the pressure to destroy us and HAPS through
misinformation became exposed,” Legese and Kifle wrote, “about 98%
of all the higher officials, the local community, and the staff of
Bale Mountains National Park promised to stand beside us and help in
any way they can. We pray for longer life and health so that we can
stop the suffering of homeless dogs here in Ethiopia.”
In June 2004, Legese explained, “The Oromiya Civil Service
commission law court decided that we should return to our work, with
all our salaries paid since the day we were suspended unjustly,” in
January 2004.
Oromiya Rural Land and Natural Resource Authority director Siraaj Bakkalii
Shaffee refused to accept the verdict, Legese said, and
tried to have Legese and Kifle arrested. Legese and Kifle turned
themselves in to the Bale Zone Police Department, who found that the
court had already dismissed the charges.
Radio Ethiopia amplified the outcome.

Africa

Wars destroy Abidjan Zoo & Gaza Zoo

June 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast; RAFAH, Gaza Strip– The Abidjan Zoo
was once among Africa’s largest and the pride of Ivory Coast. The
two-acre Gaza Zoo, between the embattled Rafah and Brazil refugee
camps near the border of Israel and Egypt, was among the smallest,
but still offered thousands of Palestinian children their only chance
to see animals other than dogs, cats, and domestic livestock.
War has destroyed them both, the Abidjan Zoo by attrition
since civil war broke out in September 2002, and the Gaza Zoo in a 3
a.m. onslaught by Israeli tanks and bulldozers on May 20 that
reportedly also smashed 43 homes.
“Like much of the other destruction in the six-day Israeli
offensive, the demolition of the zoo seemed more a psychological
attack on Rafah’s population than a military strike against the
Pelestinian guerrillas who maintain a strong presence in the city.
Even people whose homes or shops were destroyed had anger and anguish
to spare on behalf of the zoo,” observed Newsday correspondent James
Rupert.
Israeli military spokespersons said the action was meant to
intercept Palestinian arms smugglers.

South Africa purges “95%” of Table Mountain tahr

June 2, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2004:

CAPE TOWN–South Africa National Parks on June 9, 2004
suspended efforts to exterminate feral Himalyan tahrs on Table
Mountain, after 25 days of shooting.
SANParks claimed to have killed 109 tahrs, estimated to be
95% of the descendents of a pair who escaped from the long defunct
Groote Schnur Zoo in 1935.
Officially, the killing stopped due to the onset of winter
weather. But SANParks chief executive David Mabunda had come under
increasing public criticism for claiming to have no alternative to
killing the tahr.
In fact The Marchig Animal Welfare Trust had proposed in
March 2004 to pay for either sterilizing and relocating the tahrs to
the Sanbona Wildlife Reserve near Barrydale, operated by private
conservationist Adrian Gardiner, or returning them to their native
India if the logistics could be arranged.
The tahrs are an endangered species in India. The Indian
government has asked several times for the tahrs to be repatriated,
but has lacked funding for their capture and transportation. A
coalition called Friends of the Tahr pursued repatriation from 1999
until earlier this year, but disbanded, without remaining assets,
after unsuccessfully pursuing legal action on the tahrs’ behalf.

“Why be kind to tahrs?”

May 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2004:

CAPE TOWN–Twenty-three prominent South African
environmentalists on April 4, 2004 published a joint letter urging
the immediate massacre of the last Himalayan tahrs on Table Mountain.
Endangered in India, where the goat-like tahrs are native,
they are officially deemed “invasive” in South Africa. The Table
Mountain herd, culled sporadically for nearly 30 years, is
descended from a pair who escaped from the long defunct Groote Schuur
Zoo in 1936. A helicopter count recently found 51, but Table
Mountain National Park staff say there may be as many as 150.
Fifty-four tahrs were killed in 2000 before an effort to
exterminate them was halted at request of former Indian minister for
animal welfare Maneka Gandhi and Friends of the Tahr, who hoped to
repatriate the survivors to India but have not raised enough money to
do it.
“Why be kind to tahrs specifically? Why not a ‘Friends of
the Norwegian rat’ or a ‘Friends of the cholera virus’?” asked the
joint letter from the environmentalists.
The joint letter was reportedly drafted by Working For Water
chair Guy Preston.

Humane education materials from South Africa

April 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

Animals In Religion: Our relationship with animals in a Multi-Faith Society
Shopping with CARE: A Classroom Guide to Ethical Consumerism
New Words for a New World * We Care About Cats * We Care About Dogs
Goosie’s Story * Heroes & Lionhearts — all from The Humane
Education Trust:
P.O. Box 825, Somerset West, 7129, South Africa;
27-21-852-8160; <avoice@yebo.co.za>; <www.animal-voice.org>.

Long before South African education minister Kader Asmal
endorsed the addition of humane education to the national curriculum,
beginning this year, Louise Van Der Merwe formed the Humane
Education Trust and began developing materials in hope of such an
eventuality.
The South African introduction of humane education is much too young
yet to begin to assess outcomes, or even which materials will gain
the most classroom favor. The All-Africa Humane Education Summit
hosted by Van Der Merwe in Cape Town in September 2003 was only the
beginning of the in-service training that will be necessary to
inspire and enable South African teachers to fulfill the new mandate.

Africa

Ethiopian animal advocates lose jobs for exposing dog shooting

March 1, 2004 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

ADDIS ABABA–Homeless Animal Protection Society of Ethiopia
cofounders Efrem Legese and Hana Kifle were on January 23, 2004
suspended from their jobs at Bale Mountains National Park without
pay, and as of February 23 imminently anticipated termination
notices from Oromiya Rural Land and Natural Resource Authority
director Siraaj Bakkalii Shaffee.
Their apparent offense, not spelled out in their letters of
notification of suspension, is that they shared information with
ANIMAL PEOPLE and Radio Ethiopia about the delayed and tactically
inept response of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Organization
and Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme to an ongoing rabies
outbreak at the park, as detailed in the November and December 2003
editions of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Dinsho town council chair Tessema Hailu, agitating to have
homeless dogs in the Dinsho region killed, precipitated the
suspensions and probable firings of Legese and Kifle by writing to
Siraaj Bakkalii Shaffee that they had “performed activities which can
affect the fundraising process of the EWCP,” Legese told ANIMAL
PEOPLE.

Africa

Letters: Conservation group experts urged dog shooting in Ethiopia

December 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2003:

Not “euthanasia”

I am a great admirer of Virginia McKenna and Will Travers,
who started the Born Free Foundation. In the early 1960s a screening
of the film Born Free was the first major fundraiser of the Blue
Cross of India, with which I have been associated since its founding.
Over the years I have often been surprised and disappointed
to hear so-called animal advocates use the term “euthanasia” to mean
anything ranging from killing one’s pet to the mass slaughter of
animals, whether in pounds or in the wild. “Euthanasia” means mercy
killing and is only justified when it means putting a suffering being
out of its misery when the being is in severe pain which is likely to
endure.
The slaughter of the dogs at Bale Mountains National Park in
Ethiopia can be called culling or killing or worse, but not
euthanasia. I am surprised at the Born Free Foundation calling it
so.
From a personal viewpoint, reflecting neither the official
position of the Blue Cross of India nor that of the Animal Welfare
Board of India: species have gone extinct since life began. Humans
as thinking and rational beings have a responsibility to avoid
speeding up this process and to help slow it down where possible
without causing collateral damage. We cannot play God by deciding to
slaughter one set of animals in favor of another.
The Born Free Found-ation’s position on these issues should
be made clear when it solicits funds from the public.
–S. Chinny Krishna, Chair
Blue Cross of India
and Vice Chair
Animal Welfare
Board of India
Ministry of
Environment
& Forests
Government of India
1-A Eldams Rd.
Chennai
Tamil Nadu 600018, India
Phone: 91-44-234-1399
Fax 91-44-234-9801
<drkrishna@aspick.com>

Clueless

I am amazed that with homeless dog populations around the
world in virtually every developing country, the “experts” remain so
clueless about their niche and how to “manage” them. Shooting at any
animal will drive the animal further away into more remote areas.
The homeless dogs around Bale Mountains National Park should
have been vaccinated for rabies years ago: they are more of a risk
factor than owned animals.
–Julia N. Allen, PhD., DVM
c/o Emergency Management Veterinary Services
3618 39th Ave West
Seattle, WA
Tel/Fax: 206-281-0988
<DrJNA@att.net>

Chaining

I am alarmed at all that has been going on in Ethiopia with
the dogs and the wolves, including that chaining dogs for life was
recommended by government officials and conservationists as a
solution to the problem.
Vaccination and sterilization are what is needed, not
keeping dogs chained. Domestic dogs need to be part of the family,
their pack, and not be chained out as though they are not living
beings deserving of care and respect.
I urge anyone who recommends chaining to cease, and would be
happy to send educational materials in English or Spanish to Ethiopia
for use in community education.
–Tammy Sneath Grimes, founder
Dogs Deserve Better
P.O. Box 23
Tipton, PA 16684
877-636-1408
<www.dogsdeservebetter.com>

[This letter was also sent to Ethiopian officials and to the
Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program, which is financially supported
by the Born Free Foundation and World Wildlife Fund.]

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