Is Malaysia big and wild enough to keep wild tigers?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

SUNGAI PETANI, Kedah, Malaysia–The mid-January 2003
disappearance of Malaysian oil palm plantation owner Haji Zaitun
Arshad, his family, and the pet tiger he allegedly imported from
Thailand combined into one case the dilemmas surrounding both private
tiger-keeping and wild tiger survival.
Zaitun was photographed a few days earlier in the act of
giving the tiger a jeep ride. Possessing the tiger exposed him to a
fine of up to $4,000 plus four years in jail.
Before vanishing, Zaitun reportedly admitted that the
18-month-old tiger was trapped in the wild. Malaysian Wildlife and
National Parks Department policy called for returning the tiger to
the wild if found, but Sahabhat Alam Malaysia president Mohamed
Idris warned that even brief habituation to humans could increase the
risk of the tiger killing people and livestock.

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India loves leopards (with some reservations)

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

MUMBAI–India still has about 6,000 wild leopards,
approximately half of all the leopards of all species left in Asia,
because much of the public is concerned about their survival–and
might even be said to be fond of leopards despite their penchant for
getting into serious trouble.
Since January 1999, when ANIMAL PEOPLE began keeping track,
at least 111 leopards are known to have been poached or otherwise
illegally killed.
During that same time, Indian leopards have killed 62 people and
injured at least 62 more in reported incidents.
The victims were typically either children or elderly people,
mostly poor and rural, who were attacked at night near their homes,
and in some cases were actually dragged from homes whose doors and
windows were open to the night breeze because of the heat.
The leopards were usually believed to be in the vicinity to
hunt goats, dogs, sheep, pigs, cattle, or chickens. Many
attacks occurred in areas where wild prey populations had crashed due
to drought, disease, fire, or poaching.

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Orangutans in Kalimantan coal smoke & heated dispute

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

DENVER–Underground coal fires beneath Kalimantan province,
Indonesia, could exterminate the island’s orangutans and sun bears,
Indonesian Ministry of Energy coalfield fire project chief Alfred
Whitehouse and East Georgia College professor Glenn Stracher told the
American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference
in Denver on February 15, 2003.
Of the 20,000 remaining wild orangutans, about 15,000 live
in Kalimantan, Wbitehouse and Stracher said. Already imperiled by
habitat loss due to logging and slash-and-burn agriculture,
orangutans have now lost about half of Kutain National Park due to
underground fires and lethal smoke, according to Whitehouse and
Stracher.
The Kalimantan coal reserves apparently ignited after
slash-and-burn fires raced out of control during the drought years of
1997 and 1998. razing an area the size of Costa Rica. Since then,
at least 159 separate underground fires and perhaps as many as 3,000
have evaporated groundwater and dried surface vegetation, allowing
more fires to start and burn uncontrolled on the surface. The fires
emit as much carbon dioxide per year as all the motor vehicles in the
U.S. combined, Whitehouse and Stracher said.

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Thai government to buy surplus elephants for forest patrol

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

BANGKOK–Two hundred out-of-work domesticated elephants are
to be purchased by the Thai government and be re-employed patrolling
37 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, natural resources and
environment minister Prabhat Panyachartak announced on February 12.
Prabat Panyachartak expected to obtain cabinet approval for
the purchases as a Valentine for Queen Sirikit, who apparently
suggested using the elephants for patrol work after the national
police reported promising early results in training 50 street dogs
for investigative duties, as King Bhumibol Aduladej recommended in
his November 2002 birthday speech.
The King, 75, and Queen, 72, have no formal political
authority, but are viewed as the moral guardians of Thailand.
Always fond of animals, both have become outspoken about animal
welfare since adopting a street dog in 1998.
“Elephants would be well-suited to the job. Using elephants
is better than using four-wheel-drive vehicles, in terms of
pollution reduction and energy savings,” World wildlife Fund
Thailand secretary general Surapon Duangkhae told Ranjana Wangvipula
and Kultida Samabuddhi of the Bangkok Post.

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Sweeping pro-animal bill in Turkey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ANKARA, Turkey–The Parliamentary Domestic Affairs
Commission on January 15, 2003, adopted a draft national animal
protection bill which would provide prison terms for animal torture,
allowing animals to starve, and bestiality; would prohibit all
forms of animal fighting; would prohibit killing animals by
electrocution, cervical dislocation, drowning, burning, and
boiling; would forbid training animals by methods that cause
avoidable injury or distress; and would prohibit killing animals for
population control unless necessary to halt the spread of an epidemic.
The draft bill would require drivers to make every reasonable
effort to avoid injuring animals on the road, and to take any
animals they hit to a veterinarian and pay for the necessary
treatment.
Only licensed veterinarians would be permitted to perform euthanasia.
Vets would be directed to use the least painful method available of
killing an animal.
The draft bill would form a national animal protection
foundation, and would create animal protection boards in each
province, under the deputy governors.
As drafted, the bill would be perhaps the most comprehensive and
progressive animal protection statute on the books of any nation.
Whether it can gain enough support to pass into law without
substantial amendment remains to be seen.

Dogs and gamecocks take their revenge

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

 

For 40 years dogcatcher Manuel Pascual, 61, of Bulacan city
in Bulacan province, The Philippines, caught stray dogs and
reputedly sometimes stole freeroaming pets, selling them to
restaurants in Malolos, Marilao, Bocaue, and Baliuag, the
Philippine Inquirer reported on February 1, 2003. Eventually,
however, a dog caught Pascual, who died from rabies on January 26.
His was the second turnabout death in the Philippines in just
two weeks. On January 12 gamecock handler Elmer Mariano of Zamboanga
had just strapped spurs to the legs of a cock in preparation for a
fight when the cock wrested one leg free and fatally stabbed him in
the groin.
A similar incident occurred at Kampung Murni, Nabawan
district, Malay-sia, on January 29. According to The Star of
Malaysia, cockfighter Tungkaling Ratu had also just strapped the
spurs to a cock when the bird escaped, fatally slashing the thigh of
his 12-year-old son Henrysius, who had crowded close to the ring to
watch the fight.

Cockfighters spread Asian killer bird flu

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

BANGKOK, BEIJING–Cockfighters, cock
breeders, and public officials kow-towing to
them tried to pass the blame for spreading the
deadly H5N1 avian flu virus throughout Southeast
Asia to pigeons, sparrows, and even open-billed
storks.
Bad vaccines took some of the rap, too.
An attempt was even made, as the death
toll increased on factory farms, to attribute
the epidemic to free range poultry producers.
But as the H5N1 “red zones” expanded in
at least eight nations, the evidence pointed
ever more directly at commerce in gamecocks–and
at the efforts of cockfighters and cock breeders
to protect their birds from the culls and disease
outbreaks that had already killed more than 100
million chickens who were raised to lay eggs and
be eaten, as well as 22 people, most of them
children.
The pattern of the H5N1 outbreak
paralleled the spread of exotic Newcastle disease
through southern California and into Arizona
between November 2002 and May 2003.
Approximately 3.7 million laying hens were killed
to contain the Newcastle epidemic, but USDA
investigators believe it began among backyard
fighting bird flocks, advancing as gamecocks
were transported between fights. It apparently
invaded commercial layer flocks through
contaminated clothing worn by workers who
participated in cockfighting.

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Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary animals seized in Thai crackdown

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Phop Phra, Tak, Thailand–Thai forestry officials trying to
halt illegal wildlife farming on November 27, 2002 raided the
Highland Farm & Gibbon Sanctuary, where on May 10 cofounder William
Emeral Deters, 69, housekeeper Ratchanee Sonkhamleu, 26, her
three-year-old daughter, Hmong worker Laeng sae Yang, and a Thai
worker known only as Subin were massacred during a botched robbery.
The forestry department on November 28 seized 126 sambar elk
from an alleged illegal antler farm in Kanchanburi province, and may
have been confused by the use of the word “farm” in the name of the
Highland Farm sanctuary.

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Russian, Korean, & Chinese pelt demand drives U.S. fur trapping

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2003:

SEATTLE,  VANCOUVER,  NEW ORLEANS-“The main markets for
trapped fur are in Russia,  Korea,  and China,”  Seattle fur broker
Irwin Goldberg told Joel Gay of the Anchorage Daily News in December
2002.  Goldberg said river otter pelts were selling to China this
winter at about half again the average price of recent years.
“Illinois’ raccoon population has declined about 10%,
officials say,  largely because of demand for their pelts in the
former Soviet Union,”  recently wrote Jay Hughes of Associated Press.
Killing 86,673 raccoons in 2000-2001,  Illinois trappers
raised the total to 165,373 in 2001-2002,  76% of the animals they
skinned,  and more than doubled their income,  which rose from
$682,000 to $1.4 million.

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