Category: Asia

Bear rescue season follows tsunami

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

AGRA, CHENGDU–Wildlife SOS founder Kartick Satyanarayan
spent most of the first two months of 2005 often literally up to his
hips in post-tsunami swamp water and sometimes displaced salt water
crocodiles, gorged on human remains. Still, Satyanarayan did not
forget that his primary objective for the year was to rescue sloth
bears and jail the poachers who supply cubs to dancing bear trainers
and bear-baiters.
“Kartick has been madly rushing from tsunami work in the
Andaman Islands and Tamil Nadu to anti-poaching work, as this is the
peak season for bear cub poaching,” Friendicoes SECA shelter manager
Geeta Seshamani told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We have managed four raids
between all the other work and rescued nine tiny cubs and six
slightly older cubs at locations in Orissa, Karna-taka, and
Maharashtra states.”
Wildlife SOS originally partnered with Friendicoes SECA to
rescue animals from the streets of Delhi. Friendicoes SECA handles
dogs, cats, and other domestic species; Wildlife SOS responds to
calls about urban wildlife, mostly snakes and monkeys.

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“Too many stray dogs and cattle”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

CHENNAI, VISAKHAPATNAM, PORT BLAIR
–The first phase of disaster relief is rescue.
Then comes accommodating refuges, followed by
rebuilding.
“Our immediate relief activities have
been now replaced by the medium term to long term
relief work made necessary by the animals we have
rescued,” Blue Cross of India director Chinny
Krishna told ANIMAL PEOPLE, two months after the
December 26, 2004 tsunami.
Eager to start rebuilding, including
developing India’s first formal animal disaster
relief plan, Krishna found himself still in the
middle of refugee accommodation.
“The large number of rescued animals, as
well as those surrendered by people who said they
found them in their neighborhoods, have made
things difficult at our Guindy center,” Krishna
explained. “A rescued pig and her litter of
eight piglets occupy a large area behind our
cattle shed. Rescued dogs occupy every available
step on the staircases, and the recent rains in
Chennai have sent all the dogs normally in the
four-acre outdoor part of the shelter scurrying
indoors to have a roof over their heads!”

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Indian ocean marine life less hurt by tsunami than was feared

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

COLUMBO, CHENNAI, PHUKET–Concern for marine life after the
Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 centered on sea turtles
and coral reefs.
Sea turtles, just beginning their nesting season, and usually
drowned by the thousands in trawler nets, appeared to be among the
few beneficiaries–other than fish–of the destruction of fishing
fleets and beachfront development.
Thirty olive ridley sea turtles hatched on February 16 at
Tanjung Beach on Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for example, a
tsunami-struck resort area where sea turtles had not nested
successfully in more than a decade.
But U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service coral reef expert
Tom Hourigan told Paul Recer of Associated Press that reefs badly
damaged by the regional El Nino effect of 1997-1998 were likely to
have taken a further pounding.
“It is very likely that the tsunami would damage the coral
and some of the worst damage would come from debris thrown up against
the reefs,” Hourigan told Recer.
“Some entire reef ecosystems could have been buried by
sediments flushed into shallow environments,” added coral reef
division chief Russel E. Brainard of the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration.

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Rescuers find that no good deed goes unpunished in Thailand

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

PHUKET, Thailand–As the tsunami waves receded on December
26 and the size of the disaster became evident, Soi Dog Foundation
volunteer John Dalley e-mailed to the International Fund for Animal
Welfare a plea for help on behalf of the animals. No one responded.
Dalley, Soi Dog founder Margot Park, and the other Soi Dog
volunteers took in as many human and animal refugees as they could,
then tried again.
ANIMAL PEOPLE wired relief funding on December 29. The Best
Friends Animal Society sent aid the next day.
The IFAW response came at last on February 16, from IFAW
grants manager Laura Saliba. “Thank you for your interest in IFAW
grants,” Saliba wrote. “Unfortunately, IFAW is currently not
accepting unsolicited grant requests. We receive a large number of
worthwhile proposals, and we are only able to fund a portion of
those due to limited funds, and the desire to be as effective as
possible in the work we support. “
As of the most recent IFAW filing of IRS Form 990, it had
cash and securities reserves of approximately $17.8 million.

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Python was the first animal hero in Sumatra

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

MEDAN, Sumatra, Indonesia– Among the dogs, elephants,
and other species who saved humans from the Indian Ocean tsunami on
December 26, 2004, the most surprising story may have been that of
the python who pulled a 26-year-old clothing vendor named Riza and a
neighbor’s nine-year-old twin daughters to safety near Bandar Blang
Bintang, Indonesia.
The Indonesian state news agency Antara reported on December
30 that, “Riza at about 8 a.m. was enjoying the holiday in bed when
suddenly she saw walls of water, mud, rocks and branches rushing
into the neighborhood. People were screaming and running. Riza,
living in a rented house near the coast in Banda Aceh with three
friends, dashed up to the second floor of a neighbor’s house and
stood on top of a cupboard.
“But as she told Antara from a makeshift shelter, the current swept
her and her friends off their perch. As Riza drifted, she saw the
two girls and their mother.”
All three were badly injured.

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Tsunami destruction of fishing fleet brings respite for sea turtles

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

VISAKHAPATNAM, VELANKANNI, PHUKET–The Indian Ocean sea
turtle nesting season had just begun when the tsunami hit on December
26, 2004.
“I was awake by five a.m.,” Visakha SPCA founder Pradeep
Kumar Nath told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
Every morning during the nesting season Nath organizes
volunteer foot patrols to find and protect sea turtle nests along the
beaches of Visakhapatnam, India. The volunteers try to spot the
turtles as they come ashore, keep crowds away, and ensure that the
nests are properly buried, to avert predation by street dogs,
jungle cats, jackals, and foxes. “I have witnessed such incidents
since we began our turtle protection program,” Nath said. “The
dogs eat quite fast.”
On December 26, Nath recalled, “Our
poacher-turned-volunteer saw a sea turtle laying eggs, while another
turtle returned to the sea without laying, he informed me around
8.30 a.m.” It was a quiet morning. Done at the beach, the Visakha
SPCA team departed–just in time.

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Soi Dog Foundation anchors Thai tsunami animal relief effort

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

PHUKET, Thailand–“We are okay,” Soi
Dog Foundation president Margot Park e-mailed to
ANIMAL PEOPLE on December 26, soon after the
tsunami, “but the devastation is indescribable.
Three Norwegians, including a baby, three
Russians, and a German are stranded at our house
with seven more Norwegians on their way. Many
dogs have lost their homes and more will be
dumped as people flee.
“My extremely good friend Leone Cosens
has been found dead,” Park added. (See
Obituaries, page 22.)
The Phuket Animal Welfare Society,
founded by Cosens in 1992, lost countless local
volunteers. Almost a month later the PAWS web
site still said nothing of the tsunami; there
was apparently no one to update it.
“If anyone travels to Phuket,” Park
asked, “he/she could perhaps bring some things
such as long-acting antibiotics, Iver-mectin to
treat mange, and suture materials for
sterilization surgery. But our most immediate
need,” Park stipulated, “is funds to buy dog and
cat food. Many dogs and cats perished, but
those who survived have lost their food sources
and cannot find fresh drinking water.”

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Wildlife fared better in Sri Lanka than Thailand

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

Like the wildlife of India, Sri Lankan wildlife mostly
seemed to have sufficient warning to escape the tsunami–but the
wildlife of Thailand, hours closer to the earthquake that detonated
it, fared far worse.
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society president Ravi Corea
inspected Yala National Park soon after the tsunami.
“There were reports that elephants fled the coast just before
the tsunami hit. We saw no dead animals except for two feral water
buffalo,” Corea e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. “We saw large herds of
axis deer, a male elephant, many peacocks, wild boar, black-naped
hare, two species of mongoose, and a pack of five jackals,” Corea
recounted.
However, Corea saw longterm threats to Sri Lankan wildlife
in the extensive damage to vegetation and fresh water sources.
“It is important to assess how salt water is affecting the
life in lakes and will affect the food chain, especially for apex
feeders such as aquatic birds, fish-eating mammals, and reptiles,”
Corea said. “Such study might help us to understand how global
warming and a resulting rise in sea level might affect inland coastal
areas.”

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Elephants and trained street dogs are heroes of the tsunami in Thailand

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2005:

KHAO LAK, Thailand–Elephants, the totems of Buddhism and
Thailand, were among the heroes of both the December 26 tsunami and
the aftermath.
“After the tsunami, reports circulated that elephants became
superheroes, snatching up people with their trunks and pulling them
from harm’s way,” wrote Denver Post correspondent Jeremy Meyer.
“The owners of eight elephants who live in a tourist camp
near one of the worst- hit areas on Thailand’s southwestern coast say
they witnessed no pachyderm heroics,” Meyer continued, “but Chain
Usak Jongkrit,” one of their mahouts, “believes they may have tried
to warn people of the impending disaster.
“Early in the morning they started making an unusual sound,”
Jongkrit told Meyer through an interpreter.
“Five minutes before the tsunami hit,” Meyer wrote, “the
elephants, secured by chains around their front ankles, began
screaming again. One broke free and ran uphill. Another also
bolted, carrying tourists.”
“If the elephants didn’t react to the tsunami, more people
would have died,” Jongkrit said. “People saw them running and knew
something was wrong.”

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