Category: Asia

Animal exhibitions in the Islamic world

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

Bear-baiting

“Punjab [Pakistan] authorities have stopped an illegal bear
baiting event from going ahead for the first time in twenty years,”
World Society for the Protection of Animals publicist Jonathan Owen
announced on April 8, 2005. “The event, to have climaxed a
week-long fair at Pir Mehal in March, famed for bear baiting, was
disbanded after WSPA representatives warned police and wildlife
officials. Mehmood Ahmed, Secretary of Forests & Wildlife in Sindh
state, Pakistan, on March 7 announced at a ceremony in Hyderabad
honoring staff for successful actions against bear baiting with dogs
that his department is seeking amendments to the Sindh Wildlife
Ordinance that will ban bear baiting entirely. Mehmood Ahmed thanked
WSPA for “controlling bear baiting up to 80%,” the Pakistan Times
reported. Repres-enting WSPA, Animals’ Rights in Islam author
Fakhr-I-Abbas told the gathering that while the wild bear population
of Pakistan is in jeopardy, exhibitors of dancing bears and
promoters of bear baiting hold as many as 850 bears captive. In 2002
WSPA donated to the Pakistani government a bear sanctuary at Kund
Park in the North West Frontier province that WSPA built in 2000.

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Russian circus animals killed in fire during controversial visit to India

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2005:

MUMBAI–Seven trained Siberian huskies, seven cats, and four
sea lions belonging to the financially struggling Rosgoscirc circus
died in an April 5 fire at the Chitrakut Grounds in the Mumbai suburb
of Andheri West.
Animal Welfare Board of India representative Bhavin Gathani
alleged that the fire was an arson, but that suspicion lifted after
animal caretaker Jasmin Shah and Chitrakut Grounds manager Rajvir
Dhillon confirmed that the $200,000 insurance policy on the animals
had expired two days earlier. Dhillon attributed the blaze to a
short circuit.
Colonel J.C. Khanna of the Animal Welfare Board of India and
Mumbai PETA representative Anuradha Sawhney on February 5, 2005 won
a stay on Rogoscirc performances with a petition to the Bombay High
Court alleging that the circus was operating in violation of Indian
animal welfare laws.
In mid-March, wrote Surojit Mahalanobis of the Times of India
News Network, “The court accepted the Rosgoscirc plea that the
Indian laws for animal use in circus shows apply only to Indian
animals, and not to foreign species.”

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H5N1 & Marburg outbreaks

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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.

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Demolition, eviction, & good deeds that save animal shelters

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2005:

DELHI, CANCUN, BUCHAR-EST, MONROE
(Ct.)–Two kinds of good deeds are the life and
death of animal shelters: good deeds for animals,
and good title deeds to the land they occupy.
Rescuers who try to do good deeds without
good title deeds may find their hopes and dreams
crashing down around them, as Friendicoes SECA
shelter manager Geeta Seshamani of Delhi, India
did on March 16, 2005.
Acclaimed worldwide for tsunami relief
work in Tamil Nadu state and the Andaman Islands,
Friendicoes SECA “just had a large chunk of its
shelter ripped down by a demolition squad,”
Seshamani e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
In addition to her regular workload,
Seshamani for the first six weeks of 2005
supervised operations at the Wildlife SOS
sanctuary for rescued dancing bears near Agra,
while Wildlife SOS co-founder Kartick Satnarayan
directed the three Wildlife SOS/Friendicoes SECA
tsunami relief teams. The field work left both
institutions shorthanded.

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Post-tsunami anti-rabies drive shifts gears to sterilization

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka–Fear that a rabies panic might fuel a
dog massacre subsided in coastal Sri Lanka as January 2005 rolled
into February, allowing the emergency vaccination drive initiated on
December 31, 2004 by volunteer disaster relief coordinator Robert
Blumberg to roll over into a mobile sterilization campaign.
“Sterilization is becoming a crucial issue, with many
animals coming into heat soon and, especially on the east coast,
crowded into refugee camps,” Blumberg said.
“The vaccination campaign put 12,000 red ‘I’ve been
vaccinated’ collars out into the field to calm any hysteria over
rabies that could have led to mass killings, and allowed us to
observe first-hand the conditions for the animals after the December
26 tsunami,” Blumberg explained. “We are now going back to a number
of those initial areas and doing the saturation vaccinating necessary
to ensure having done the 70-75% required for effective rabies
prevention.
“Animal People was our first sponsor, only days after the
waves struck, making it possible to quickly field initial assessment,
vaccination, and treatment teams,” Blumberg acknowledged. Blumberg
also thanked the Best Friends Animal Society, Noah’s Wish, Marchig
Animal Welfare Trust, and the Association of Veterinarians for
Animal Rights for substantial contributions.

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Fighting Kenya zoo deal

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

NAIROBI–A deal to export 300 animals from Kenya to the
Chiang Mai Night Safari zoo in Thailand, reportedly personally
arranged by Kenyan president Emilio Mwai Kibaki on an October 2004
state visit to Bangkok, in February 2005 appeared to have become
shaky through the determined opposition of Youth for Conservation.
Retreating from firm commitment to the animal export, acting
tourism minister Raphael Tuju in late January 2005 told the East
African Standard that talk of the deal amounted to “speculation and
rumours from busybodies,” while appearing to weigh whether the Thai
zoo or U.S. and European animal advocates would be most likely to
fund efforts to reduce crop damage from wildlife.
Youth for Conservation, which earlier persuaded Kibaki to
veto a bill that would have reauthorized hunting in Kenya, meanwhile
won backing from overseas organizations including the Humane Society
of the U.S., In Defense of Animals, Born Free Foundation, and PETA.

13 killed, 350 injured in Indian bull events

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

ALANGANALLUR–At least 13 people were killed and more than
350 injured during the third weekend in January 2005 at traditional
“Jallikattu” bullfights and bullrunning events held around Tamil Nadu
state, India, to celebrate Pongal, a Hindu holiday.
“Jallikattu is held at temples,” explained Justin Huggler of
the London Independent. “At the most famous, at Alanganallur, the
spectacle began with young men competing to grab a gold chain tied
around horns of the first bull.
“After that, 500 bulls were released into the crowd, as at
Pamplona,” in the most famous Spanish bullrunning event. “But in
Pamplona the crowd runs,” Huggler continued. “In Tamil Nadu they
compete with each other to try to bring the bulls under control.
“Unlike in Spanish bullfighting, the bulls are not killed.

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Is anyone watching out for Indian wildlife?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

DELHI–“There is no one left to raise hell with,” People for
Animals founder and former Indian minister of state for animal
welfare lamented to ANIMAL PEOPLE on February 15, after disclosures
raised questions as to whether anyone is looking out for wildlife
within the present Indian government.
The most humiliating disclosure, had anyone been paying
attention, was that the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species on December 22 recommended that “all Parties [to
the United Nations-brokered treaty] suspend commercial trade in
specimens of CITIES-listed species with Gambia and India until
further notice.”
The suspension came because Gambia and India failed to submit
legislative plans for strengthening CITES enforcement.
The humiliation might have been acute because the CITES logo
was designed in India and India has three times chaired the CITES
standing committee.
But hardly anyone in India knew about the suspension, Times
of India correspondent Chandrika Mago disclosed on February 18.
“Even seniors in the environment ministry have just heard of
the decision,” Mago wrote. “They hope CITES will relax its stance
in a month or so.”

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Trying to aid tsunami victims in Myanmar

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

TAMPA, Fla.–Florida humane worker Carol Childs may have
been the only outside animal rescuer to reach Myanmar after the
December 26, 2005 tsnami.
Better known to the world as Burma, and still called Burma
by most of the residents, according to Childs, Myanmar has been an
isolationist military dictatorship since 1962. News media are
strictly censored. Few visitors are admitted. The
security-conscious Myanmar regime at first denied having any tsunami
casualties, and refused outside aid, but rumors leaked out of at
least 90 deaths.
Childs, planning an intensive Southeast Asian excursion that
also took in parts of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in
late 2004 managed to secure a tourist visa to go to Myanmar. A
veteran of Florida disaster relief efforts, including the aftermath
of Hurricane Andrew and four hurricanes in six weeks during the
summer of 2004, Childs realized that her skills might be needed.
She landed in Thailand on January 11 with suitcases of veterinary
supplies, but was unable to connect by telephone with any of the
Thai animal disaster relief organizations. Not a computer user, she
did not try via the Internet.

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