Elephant captures & rampages spotlight habitat encroachment

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

PRETORIA, NEW DELHI, NAIROBI, SAN DIEGO, BANGKOK,
COLOMBO–Pretoria Regional Court magistrate Adriaan Bekker on April 7
found African Game Services owner Riccardo Ghiazza of Brits, South
Africa, guilty of cruelty to 30 young elephants in 1998-1999. The
verdict reportedly took Bekker four hours to read.
Convicted with Ghiazza, but on just two cruelty counts, was
student elephant handler Henry Wayne Stockigt.
Charges were dismissed against another handler, Craig
Saunders, and another company, African Game Properties Inc.
Captured in the Tuli district of Botswana during July 1998,
the elephants were transported to Brits for training and sale to
overseas zoos.
Global outrage erupted first over the separation of the
elephants from their mothers, and then over alleged rough treatment
of the elephants by trainers hired from Indonesia. The South African
National SPCA began the long effort to convict Ghiazza after
videotape surfaced that reportedly showed Stockigt and others beating
the chained elephants.

People for Animals founds Delhi shelter for ex-laboratory monkeys

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

DELHI–Gautam Grover, president of the Delhi chapter of
People for Animals, has “started a shelter for monkeys called
Hanuman Vatika,” he recently wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“We get monkeys from research labs,” Grover explained.
“Most are old and deformed [from experimentation] and are incapable
of survival in the wild. We also have infants who have had a
terrible past,” Grover added. “For example an infant came to me
whose mother was killed by dogs. The infant was clinging to her,
crying. We called the infant Chiku. He now has a new mother, named
Basanti, and a new father, called Dharmender.”
Hanuman Vatika now has more than 100 monkeys, attended by a
human staff of 12, Grover said. But it does not yet have adequate
funding to ensure stability and permit expansion. Ahead is the long
task of educating people who are sympathetic to monkeys about the
distinctions among sanctuaries, zoos, and Hanuman temples.

Vegetarian mandates

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

“Tourists visiting wildlife sanctuaries in Orissa state will
now have to turn vegetarian for the entire duration of their trip,”
Times of India News Network correspondent Rajaram Satapathy reported
from the Bengal coast city of Bhubaneswar in February.
“Concerned with rampant poaching, the state government has
banned cooking and eating non-vegetarian food in all 18 sanctuaries
in Orissa,” Satapaty elaborated. “The order, issued by the chief
conservator of forests, is being strictly implemented. Recently
more than 125 tourist vehicles, on a single day, were refused entry
into the Similipal Tiger Reserve because they were found carrying
meat and chicken for consumption.”
Taking an opposite view of diet on the opposite coast, South
Mumbai leaders of the neo-fascist Shiv Sena political party in
mid-April threatened to retaliate against Jain and Hindu vegetarian
housing cooperatives by opening stinking fish or chicken stalls
beside their buildings, wrote Haima Deshpande of the Indian Express.
Shiv Sena is a “party, movement and gang at once,” wrote
Julia M. Eckert in The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics
and the Shiv Sena, recently published by Oxford University Press.
Build-ing a power base among disaffected Hindus of the meat-eating
middle classes and military castes, it was once the second strongest
faction within the Hindu nationalist coalition government headed by
the Bharatiya Janata party, but fell from influence after alienating
the Jains, Brahmins, and other vegetarian classes, along with the
Dalits, who are the poorest of the poor.

Bear sanctuary at the Taj Majal

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

AGRA–The future of captive wildlife
protection in India is at Agra, People for
Animals founder Maneka Gandhi believes, near the
east gate of the Taj Mahal.
There, at Soor Sarovar village,
Wildlife SOS cofounders Kartick Sayanar-ayan and
Geeta Sheshamani in December 2002 opened a
30-acre sanctuary for former dancing bears.
Nearly two years into a sustained effort
to enforce provisions of the 1972 Indian Wildlife
Protection Act that prohibit the traveling
exhibition of lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys,
apes, and bears, Mrs. Gandhi sees in the
Wildlife SOS project the start of a sanctuary
network to provide quality care-for-life to
hundreds of seized former circus animals.
The drive to end the use of lions,
tigers, leopards, monkeys, apes, and bears in
traveling shows began in 2001. As then-minister
of state for animal welfare, Mrs. Gandhi won a
series of verdicts from the Supreme Court of
India against exhibitors who had for a decade
used protracted lawsuits to defy seizure order
she originally issued in 1989, during a stint as
environment minister.

Is the NIH really going to send chimps to India?

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

THIRUVANATHAPURAM–G. Mahadevan of The Hindu daily
newspaper caught both the Indian and U.S. animal advocacy communities
by surprise with an April 15 report that the Thuruvananthapuram Zoo
in the capital city of Kerala state “is finalizing paperwork for the
transfer of two male and two female chimps from the National
Institute of Health in Maryland.”
Joyce McDonald, acting communications director for the
National Center for Research Resources at the U.S. National
Institutes of Health, confirmed to ANIMAL PEOPLE that “NCRR has
begun preliminary discussions with the Thiruvananthapuram Zoo in
India concerning the transfer of chimpanzees from the United States,”
but indicated that it is far from a done deal.
“There are many issues that need to be resolved before any
final determinations are made,” McDonald said. “For instance, NCRR
has to be assured that the zoo environment is appropriate and
properly accredited; that lifetime care is available; that the
animals will stay in the zoo; that notification and approval from
U.S. and Indian regulatory agencies has been obtained; that proper
transportation can be provided, etc. In addition, we need to assured
that expenses can be covered by the Indian zoo. Again, our
discussions are very preliminary,” McDonald emphasized, “and these
issues must be resolved to our satisfaction before NIH would
coordinate the transfer of the animals from a U.S. research facility.

Helping donkeys in Middle East & Central Asia

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

PETA president Ingrid Newkirk offended numerous Jewish groups
in January 2003 with a letter to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
protesting the use of a donkey as an unwitting “suicide bomber” on
January 26.
Newkirk also mentioned “stray cats in your own compound” who
“fled as best they could” from Israeli forces, but made no objection
to the human toll in the ongoing Israeli/Palestianian strife.
The recorded history of harsh treatment and overwork of
donkeys in the Middle East dates at least to the time of Moses, when
Balaam’s donkey reputedly spoke out on her own behalf.
However, the London-based Society for Protecting Animals
Abroad now operates clinics for donkeys and other equines in Algeria,
Jordan, Mali, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia.
The Brooke Hospital for Animals, also of London, has active
equine clinics in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Jordan,
and Pakistan.
Maintaining a presence in refugee camps along the
Afghanistan/Pakistan border throughout the Taliban regime,
1996-2001, and in Kabul since soon after U.S. troops forced the
Taliban out, the Brooke in March 2003 opened another free clinic for
equines in the southern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

Hong Kong & WHO seek SARS host

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

HONG KONG–Severe Acute Respirat-ory
Syndrome, the latest flu-like disease among many
to cross from animals to humans in southern
China, had been diagnosed in 3,947 people in
five months as the May edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE
went to press, killing 229 while 1,935 were
fully recovered, according to the latest daily
data summary from the World Health Organization.
As epidemics go, SARS was not especially
serious. The global toll from all forms of flu
ranges from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths per year.
Dengue fever afflicts 50 million people per year.
AIDS is diagnosed at the rate of five million new
cases per year, killing 3.1 million people in
2002.
But few diseases have ever terrified a
city as SARS has terrified Hong Kong–and as
cases turned up in other nations, almost
entirely among recent visitors to Hong Kong, the
panic spread.

BOOKS: Please Help Stop The Illegal Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Please Help Stop The Illegal Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines
by Freddie J. Farres, executive director of Linis Gobyerno, and associates
Linis Gobyerno [Clean Government], P.O. Box
1588, 2600 Baguio City, The Philippines;
<www.linisgobyerno.org>), 2002. 46 pages,
stapled.
No price listed; donation recommended.

Long aware of dog-and-cat-eating in the
Philippines, but unaware of any Philippine group
fighting it with the vigor shown by Korean
anti-dog-and-cat-eating activists in recent
years, we were surprised on Christmas Eve 2002
to learn from an article by Vincent Cabreza of
the Philippine Inquirer that seven people had
been arrested in Baguio City during the previous
weekend for inhumane treatment of more than 120
dogs who either died or were found dead in
transit from local dogcatchers to restaurants.
On April 9, 2003 Mike Guimbatan Jr. of
the Philippine Times reported that 20 dead dogs
were found and 40 live dogs were rescued from
illegal dog meat traders in Baguio City during
the preceding week.

Elephant captures & rampages spotlight habitat encroachment

May 1, 2003 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

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