Message from Jakarta

June 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

JAKARTA, Indonesia––As dogs, cats, monkeys,
students, and looters are shot in Indonesian streets, against a
backdrop of razed stores, ethnic mayhem, and jungles ablaze
across Kalimantan and Malaysia, Hindu myth almost seems to
explain it all––especially amid the additional reverberations of
five nuclear tests in the Rajasthan desert of India.
The blasts sent a warning to Pakistan, 97% Islamic,
that added to the stress in Indonesia, too, 87% Islamic.
“It is said that when great evil stalks the earth,”
explains Nanditha C. Krishna, honorary director of the C.P.
Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation in Chennai, India, “Vishnu will
appear as Kalki, and the world will go up in flames.”

Maneka faces wise-users: FIRST ACTS IN NEW INDIA GOVERNMENT ARE FOR BEARS AND BEAGLES

May 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

NEW DELHI––Koose Muniswamy
Veerappan, perhaps the most notorious
alleged poacher at large in the world, on April
11 reportedly sent three former henchmen to
police with a cassette containing an offer of
surrender. But Indian authorities were reportedly
unexcited. According to the Press Trust
of India, Veerappan has often in the past
offered to surrender in trade for clemency. He
is believed to be the world’s leading trafficker
in poached Asian elephant ivory and illegally
logged sandalwood.

Abroad

May 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

In Germany, “animals kept in shelters are
never killed as a result of pet overpopulation,” federal
animal shelter overseer Jorg Styrie recently
wrote to Diana Nolen, president of the STOP antipet-overpopulation
project in Mansfield, Ohio.
According to Styrie, unless an animal “is incurably ill
and suffers pain, it is forbidden to put animals to
sleep.” Adoption, surrender, vaccination, and neutering
fees at German shelters are all comparable to
those in the U.S., but pet abandonment brings a fine
of about $1,500, Styrie told Nolen.

HINDU GOVERNMENT TO INCLUDE MANEKA

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

NEW DELHI––”Maneka Gandhi was re-elected as
an independent and has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party government,”
Help In Suffering executive director Christine
Townend faxed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on March 14. “It looks
likely she will be given a lesser cabinet ministry,” an analysis
confirmed by the editors of The Hindu, the nationally circulated
newspaper most closely aligned with the BJP.
Founder of People for Animals, the strongest Indian
animal advocacy group, Maneka thus for the third time in her
political career parlayed isolation into strength. Twenty-two
seats short of a majority in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, after
national elections held in stages from February 16 through
March 5, the BJP needs the support of every non-aligned delegate
it can get in order to take office. Previously in power only
once, for just 13 days, the BJP––if it can form a majority––
will represent the ascendency of Hindu nationalism over the
secular Congress Party, which had dominated Indian politics
since India won independence from Britain in 1948.

THAIS MULL MACAQUES

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

MADISON, BANGKOK
––Efforts to keep 143 rhesus macacques
from the Vilas Park Zoo colony
of the Wisconsin Regional Primate
Research Center out of laboratories
failed on March 5, but as ANIMAL
PEOPLE went to press on March
17, animal rights activists and conservationists
around the world still
hoped to send 51 stumptailed macaques
from the disbanded facility to
their ancestral home in Thailand.
The Thai Forestry Department
during the second week in
March appointed a working group to
study repatriating the stumptails,
chaired by Wildlife Research
Division director Chawn Tunhikorn.

Asia

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

With the help of Hilary Koprowski,
inventor of the oral rabies vaccine used successfully
against fox, raccoon, and coyote rabies in Europe
and the U.S., the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and
Animal Sciences University in Chennai, India, is
reportedly close to perfecting oral rabies vaccines to
protect both humans and street dogs. The human dose
would be embedded in a spinach roll; the dog dose
would be embedded in tobacco, which street dogs
avidly consume but humans rarely keep down even if
they do swallow some by accident. Chennai was previously
scene of a major humane innovation when in
1968 the Blue Cross of India introduced the Animal
Birth Control program there, now so successful in
so many cities that the Animal Welfare Board of
India in November 1997 declared as a national goal
the abolition of animal control dog-killing by 2005.

Watching the world go to hell

April 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

INDONESIA, THAILAND,
BRAZIL, TIBET, NEW ZEALAND,
CALIFORNIA, FLORIDA––Wildlife officials
rescued eight orangutans including four
babies from the path of flames in early
February at Kutai National Park in East
Kalimantan, Indonesia, but found the
remains of two others in poachers’ traps.
A third orang was killed on March
12 when according to Indonesian media she
apparently mistook two farmers who had
been drafted into a firefighting force for
attackers, and rushed them to defend her
baby. She reportedly bit three fingers off one
of the men before the other man beat her to
death with a machete. Antara, the Indonesian
state press agency, hinted that the men
might actually have killed the mother in
attempting to steal and sell her baby.

HSUS doesn’t get it in Taiwan

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

TAIPAI, TAIWAN––“Approximately two
million dogs in Taiwan are owned––and 1.3 to 1.5 million
are strays,” Humane Society of the U.S/Humane
Society International vice president for companion animals
Martha Armstrong lamented in the winter 1998
edition of HSUS News. “There are few bona fide animal
shelters in Taiwan, and there is no clear-cut
authority or responsibility for controlling strays.
Citizens are very reluctant to cooperate with government
in the control of stray and unwanted animals.”
The Taiwanese Environmental Protection
Administration has the chief jurisdiction over stray
dogs. But agency staff, Armstrong found, don’t like to
kill animals. “Chinese has no term for euthanasia,” she
claimed, seemingly unaware that there are several
“Chinese” languages. The official language of Taiwan
is Mandarin.

“ALMIGHTY GOD HAS BLESSED HUNDREDS OF MILLIONAIRES.”

March 1, 1998 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1998:

PALI MARWAR, RAJASTHAN,
INDIA––The Shri Pinjarapol Gaushala,
founded 150 years ago, has sheltered animals
for 25 years longer than any humane society in
the United States. But while older U.S.
humane societies have usually built up endowments
that guarantee at least some steady
income, the Shri Pinjarapol Gaushala staff of
21 plus 10 volunteers cheerfully describe their
finances as “A question mark before us.”
They now care for 1,201 cattle and
1,228 goats: blind, disabled, rescued from
illegal traffic to slaughter, or just abandoned
as poor milk-producers or cart-pullers. Their
upkeep costs just over $10,000 a year.

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