Category: Asia

Defending Animal Birth Control after a fatal dog attack

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2007:
Defending Animal Birth Control after a fatal dog attack
by Poornima Harish

None of us are as smart as all of us. This was illustrated
in how the animal welfare organizations of Bangalore handled a recent
fatal dog attack.
Bangalore electrocuted street dogs until 1999, killing about
200 dogs per day, yet still suffered nearly 40 human rabies deaths
per year, plus dog population growth commensurate with the rising
human population.
Finally, in keeping with the Indian national policy adopted in
December 1997, the city opted to stop the killing and instead
support an Animal Birth Control program.
Beginning in October 2000, Banga-lore was divided into three
zones for ABC, to be handled by the Animal Rights Fund, Compassion
Unlimited Plus Action, and the Bangalore SPCA. At about the same
time the Krupa 24-Hour Helpline for Animals was commissioned to
counsel people about animal welfare and the ABC program.

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Landmark verdict in Jaipur elephant case

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January-February 2007:
JAIPUR–Eighteen years after a jeep killed an elephant used
to give tourists rides up the narrow, winding road to the Amer
Palace overlooking Jaipur, the Rajasthan High Court on December 20,
2006 upheld a 1993 ruling by the Motor Accident Tribunal of Jaipur
that elephant owner Saddique Khan should be compensated the same
amount as if the elephant had been a human being.
The sum, about $12,500 U.S. plus interest, is to be paid by
the New India Insurance Company. The company contended that it
should only pay the standard rate for livestock of equivalent size,
about $41.50 as of 1988, when the accident happened.

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Pacific rim anti-dog & cat meat activism gains momentum

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:

HONG KONG, BANGKOK, MANILA–Tuen Mun magistrate Kwok
Wai-kin on December 22, 2006 sentenced four men to serve 30 days in
jail apiece for killing and butchering two dogs just 40 days earlier,
on November 12.
Kwok Wai-kin “rejected the defendants’ argument that eating dog was
simply a matter of culture, saying society could not accept or
condone such an act,” reported Jonathan Cheng of the the Hong Kong
Standard.
The four men–Lau Lap-kei, 49; Wong Yung-hung, 44; Liu
Wai-hong, 40; and Wong Chun-hung, 49–immediately appealed their
sentences, and were released on bail.
Slaughtering dogs and cats has been illegal in Hong Kong
since 1950, but the four are believed to be the first offenders who
have received jail sentences.

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Mercury poisoning may save whales

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
TAIJI–Three days after Christmas 2006, a long-anticipated
confrontation between the two-ship fleet of the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society and the Japanese whaling fleet inside the
International Whaling Commission-designated Southern Oceans Whale
Sanctuary had yet to develop–but Ric O’Barry took the fight against
Japanese whaling right into Japanese supermarkets, and on Boxing Day
2006 scored a second round knockout against the Taiji coastal whalers.
Taiji coastal whaling little resembles high seas whaling.
Instead of shooting great whales with harpoon guns and butchering
them aboard the factory ship Nisshin Maru in the name of scientific
research, the coastal whalers drive small whales into shallow water
where a few are selected for sale to marine mammal parks.

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Which wild pigs are running amok in Malaysia? And why now?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
KUALA LUMPUR– Rampaging wild pigs are a problem in Malaysia,
practically all sources agree. Less clear is which wild pigs are the
culprits.
Malaysia has native warty pigs and bearded pigs, as well as
abundant feral domestic pigs–and they can hybridize.
The warty pigs and bearded pigs are subjects of conservation
concern, albeit perhaps more as prey for highly endangered tigers
than for their own sake. Malaysia now has as few as 500 tigers,
down from more than 3,000 circa 1950.
Feral and hybrid pigs are also prey for tigers, but
conservationists tend to view feral and hybrid pigs as unwelcome
competitors for warty and bearded pig habitat.

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Hong Kong kills feral pigs

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
“The solution to the increasing havoc caused by marauding
bands of wild pigs in the New Territories is relatively simple: kill
them,” reported the South China Morning Post on December 21, 2006.
Sarah Liao Sau-tung, Hong Kong Secretary for Environment,
Transport and Works, confirmed a day earlier that members of hunting
clubs in Tai Po and Sai Kung had been officially encouraged to hunt
pigs more often. “We believe a lot of people will volunteer because
they enjoy it as a hobby,” Sau-tung said.

Indian street pigs are mostly not feral

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
DELHI, MYSORE, BANGALORE–India easily leads the world in
numbers of street pigs, but relatively few are completely feral.
Much of the Indian domestic pig population roams the streets to
forage, loosely attended by herders who may be blocks away.
Relatively few pigs are raised in confinement, in a nation whose
upper caste Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims have
traditionally shunned pork.
Historically, only what are now called the “scheduled”
castes, “tribals,” and the Christian minority ate pork. For
millennia, pig-herding was accordingly a minor and not very
profitable branch of animal husbandry. This has recently abruptly
changed. A high birth rate among “scheduled” castes, increasing
affluence among “scheduled” caste members who have pursued subsidized
education, enabling them to buy more meat, and weakening caste
barriers throughout Indian society have enabled pig herders to
rapidly expand their markets.

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Chinese president Hu Jintao halts canine confiscations

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:
BEIJING–Chinese President Hu Jintao in late November 2006
personally “intervened to end a national crackdown on dogs,”
reported Jane Cai of the South China Morning Post, who made the
action known to the world on December 13.
“One petitioner said Mr. Hu’s chief secretary told her that
the president had read her two petitions, signed by more than 60,000
people, calling for an end to the campaign,” Cai wrote. “She said
Mr. Hu was unhappy about the complaints and international media
coverage of the campaign, and had put a stop to the program late
last month,” about four weeks after it started. “A government
official confirmed Mr Hu had ordered a halt after reading the
letters,” Cai continued.

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ABC & clandestine captures drive Bangalore street dog population down by half since mid-2006

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2007:

 

BANGALORE–A door-to-door canvas of 3.2 million Bangalore
households in mid-June 2007 found just 49,283 dogs– including 17,480
pet dogs, and only 24,491 street dogs, fewer than half the 56,500
estimated to be at large a year earlier.
The plummeting street dog population attested to both the
efficacy of the much-maligned Animal Birth Control programs in
Bangalore, and the undiscriminating tactics of dogcatchers who were
deployed repeatedly in the first half of 2007 to purge dogs.
ANIMAL PEOPLE surveys of dogs in representative Bangalore
neighborhoods found in January 2007 that the ABC programs managed by
Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, Karuna, and the Animal Rights
Fund appeared to have sterilized between 70% and 90% of the
free-roaming dog population. But dog pogroms following fatal dog
attacks in January and March 2007 jeopardized the programs’ success
by killing dogs who had already been sterilized.

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