Remoteness of deadly Pakistan earthquake thwarts aid

November 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

KARACHI–An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale
killed more than 30,000 people and countless animals on October 5,
2005 in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
The remoteness of the region, lack of established animal
welfare infrastructure anywhere in Pakistan, and lack of official
interest in helping animals thwarted prompt response by international
organizations.
“I just got back to Karachi after spending two weeks filming
in Balakot.” e-mailed Pakistan Animal Welfare Society representative
and Geo TV assistant producer Mahera Omar on November 11.
Omar, more than a month after the earthquake, was nonetheless among
the first pro-animal representatives to bring back first-hand
testimony about what is needed.
“Balakot is a small town in the North West Frontier Province,
about 60 miles north of Islamabad,” Omar explained. “Located near
the quake’s epicenter, it is said to be among the worst devastated.
“We visited a few small villages up in the mountains around
Balakot,” Omar recounted. “The people in these areas depend on
subsistence farming and their livestock. Many of the livestock have
been killed. The rest are without any sort of shelter. Many people
are still without tents. Some have provided makeshift shelters for
their animals, using cloth or plastic sheets. Without shelter,
their livestock will not survive the harsh winter. The animals also
require veterinary care.

First humane responder to tsunami is hit by typhoon

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

VISAKHAPATNAM–The Visakha SPCA, among the first humane
societies to respond to the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami,
was almost obliterated by flash-flooding following a September 19
typhoon that broke an upstream dam.
“At 11:30 a.m.,” founder Pradeep Kumar Nath noticed, “most
of the 330 cattle on the premises suddenly turned restless,” after
enduring a day and a half of heavy rain and ankle-deep standing water
in their sheds.
“They began to cry out in despair,” Nath continued.
“Immediately shelter manager Sarada Buddhiraju and deputy shelter
manager J.V.V.S. Rajsekhar threw the goshala gate open, and all of
the cattle ran out. Half an hour later the west wall gave way and
flooding began that reached eight feet. This made Sarada and Raj
rush to pull all the puppies out of the pound and a nearby storage
area where some dogs rest.

South China kills dogs to send a message

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

GUANGZHOU–The Guangdong provincial government seized the
2005 National Day weekend, the first in October, to send messages
to both pet keepers and Beijing.
The message for pet keepers was that the rising popularity of
pet dogs will not be allowed to jeopardize the dog meat industry,
either by spreading rabies, the pretext used for killing pet dogs in
the streets, or by building a human constituency for treating dogs
kindly.
“The Guangzhou campaign follows similar crackdowns in
Shanghai and other cities across the mainland, as dog attacks and
rabies cases increase and more urban dwellers keep pets,” noted
Simon Parry of the South China Morning Post. But Parry failed to
note that the dogs most at risk from rabies are so-called “meat
dogs,” raised in close confinement and not required to be vaccinated.
The Guangdong message for Beijing was that even as the
central government strives to build a more animal-friendly image in
advance of the 2008 Olympic Games, in the part of China where dogs,
cats, and wildlife are relatively rarely eaten, the Cantonese
southern and coastal regions are quite capable of spoiling the effort.

News from the Islamic world war zones

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

The World Wildlife Fund, which usually supports trophy
hunting as a conservation strategy, is opposing a scheme advanced by
Mumtaz Malik, chief conservator of Northwestern Frontier Province,
Pakistan, to introduce trophy hunting for leopards. Officially,
about 40 snow leopards survive in Pakistan, but hunters and herders
claim there are 150-250. Two were shot in June after one snow
leopard allegedly killed six women in two weeks by pouncing down on
them from trees as they gathered firewood near Abbottabad. Malik
claims to have saved markhor mountain goats, a prey species for snow
leopards, by introducing markhor trophy hunting.

Thirty-five small herds totaling 155 markor, a mountain goat
standing six feet tall at the shoulder, have recently been
rediscovered near the Line of Control dividing Kashmir, India, from
Pakistan. “As recently as 1970 there were 25,000 on the Indian
side,” reported Justin Huggler, Delhi correspondent for The
Independent, “but by 1997 they had been poached to near extinction,”
as troops and guerillas often turned their guns from fighting over
the boundary to profiteering on the sale of the markors’ spectacular
spiral horns.

How to protest the Taiji dolphin killing by Ric O’Barry, One Voice/France

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

In response to our call for October 8 to be an international
day of protest at Japanese consulates and embassies against the Taiji
dolphin slaughters, we have received much correspondence suggesting
that we should either hit Japan with an all-out boycott, or just
meet quietly with Japanese officials.
Both approaches have already been repeatedly attempted, and
both were big mistakes.
Having witnessed the dolphin slaughters myself, I can report
with absolute certainty that the Japanese people are not guilty of
these crimes against nature. I saw only 26 whalers in 13 boats drive
dolphins into a cove and slaughter them. The vast majority of the
people in Taiji and surrounding villages were exceptionally friendly
toward our small group of protesters, and should not be targeted and
punished for something they are not guilty of.
The Japanese people don’t need a boycott. They need the
information that we take for granted. If they knew the truth about
the dolphin slaughter, they would help us to stop it.

Flu threat spreads opposition to cockfighting, postal bird shipment

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

RALEIGH, MADISON, HONG KONG, HANOI–With the H5N1 strain
of avian influenza, potentially deadly to humans, striking
throughout Asia and threatening to hit Europe, North Carolina
Department of Agriculture food and drug safety administrator Joe
Reardon on August 18, 2005 warned a gathering of state and federal
officials that U.S. Postal Service regulations governing transport of
live birds “are inadequate and present great potential for
contamination of the poultry industry.”
Reardon estimated that each day between 1,000 and 3,000 game
birds, fighting cocks, and other fowl enter North Carolina via the
Postal Service. More than 70%, Reardon said, have not undergone
health inspection. The uninspected birds are often in proximity to
birds in transit to and from the 4,500 North Carolina poultry farms.
Birds involved in human food production are inspected, but may then
be exposed to disease before reaching their destination.
North Carolina agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler and
U.S. Representative Walter Jones (R-Farmville) pledged to pursue
legislation which would require all birds sent by mail to have a
health certificate.

Disasters driven by global warming hit animals from India to Alaska

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

DELHI, AHMEDABAD–Six months to the day
after the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated the
Indian east coast, monsoon flash floods on July
26, 2005 roared through Mumbai, western
Maharashtra state, and parts of Karnataka state.
Surging water, mud slides, broken power
lines, and collapsing houses killed more than
1,000 people and countless animals in Mumbai and
surrounding villages.
As after of the December 26, 2004
tsunami and the January 2001 Gujarat earthquake,
Wildlife SOS of Delhi and the Animal Help
Foundation of Ahmedabad were among the first
responders. They worked their way toward Mumbai
while People for Animals/ Mumbai pushed out to
meet them.
“We distributed fodder to poor villagers
to feed their cattle, wherever required, and
fed biscuits to all the stray dogs we found. We
also distributed free medicine to needy farmers,”
PFA/Mumbai managing trustee Dharmesh Solanki
reported.

Feral cats & Singapore animal advocacy

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

SINGAPORE–The first feral cat in Singapore may have been the
animal for whom the island city-state is named.
He was reputedly a big one, with a red body and black mane.
When he lived and who saw him is mysterious.
Singapore in the fifth century A.D. was known to Chinese sea
farers as “Pu-luo-chung,” meaning “little town at the end of a
peninsula.” From the seventh century to the 10th century the little
town was Temasek, a Buddhist city-state.
After several centuries of obscurity, Temasek rose as a
regional power in the 14th century, passing from Buddhist to Islamic
rule, but was eventually destroyed by warfare. The ruins were
sparsely inhabited until 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles rebuilt the
ancient palace grounds as the seat of British government in Southeast
Asia.
By then, the former Temasek was already Singa-pura, meaning
in Malay and Sanskrit “The lion city.”
Singapore mythology holds that the name Singa-pura was
conferred in the early14th century by the Sri Vijayan prince Sang
Nila Utama, who had sailed from Sumatra seeking a place to build an
empire.

Asia

Dog round-up & shark fin controversies bite Hong Kong Disneyland

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

HONG KONG–Hong Kong Disneyland had barely found a
face-saving way to retreat from serving sharks’ fins at weddings when
Hong Kong Dog Rescue founder Sally Anderson complained to South China
Morning Post reporter Simon Perry that Disney management had lethally
purged several dozen dogs she was trying to capture at the theme park
and offer for adoption.
“Dozens of stray dogs adopted by construction workers on the
Disney site have been rounded up and killed in the run-up to the
park’s opening in September,” Parry wrote on July 25, 2005.
“Forty-five dogs, some believed to have been used as unofficial guard
dogs on the site during construction, have been caught by government
dog catchers at Disney’s request.
“Disney last night denied the strays had ever been officially
used as guard dogs and said it had called in dog catchers because the
animals were roaming in packs and posing a threat to staff.”
Reuters sent the story worldwide.

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