Category: Asia

Do they see pink humans?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BENGAL––Cops, sociologists,
and commanders of troops know that males
without females may start fighting and
boozing––and that’s the problem among the
elephants of eastern Bengal, reports the
Wildlife Institute of India.
Normal Indian elephant herds,
they say, consist of one male to several
females, governed by the eldest female.
Adult males usually travel apart from the
main herd when no females are in estrus,
but remain under herd rule. Bachelor elephants
are normally just the grown but not
yet mated, and the very old or dispossessed.
Few and alone, they historically kept out of
trouble.

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TROUBLE AT HSUS-SPONSORED SANCTUARY IN SOUTHERN INDIA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

CHENNAI– –ANIMAL PEOPLE learned at press time
that the scheduled January 2 hearing of a legal action seeking to
remove Deanna Krantz of Global Communications for Conservation
from the management of the Nilgiris Animal Welfare Society was
delayed to February.
NAWS, a 52-acre facility in the Nilgiri Hills region of
southern India, a popular vacation area, was founded in 1954 by
Dorothy Dean, an English immigrant, and run after her death for
some years by an Australian couple. After they retired, Krantz,
wife of Humane Society of the U.S. vice president Michael Fox,
assumed direction of NAWS in 1996. She apparently received
funding from the Dean estate, the GCC-India Project for Nature,
and Humane Society International, an HSUS subsidiary. Warmly
welcomed by Indian animal rights activists and prominent Jains,
Krantz issued glowing reports about her improvements of facilities
and animal rescues, and her work was profiled–– from afar––by at
least two U.S. animal protection publications. When she ran into
trouble with local people, including a March 1997 physical altercation
with a female neighbor, she claimed it was over her opposition
to cruelty. When major Indian humane societies investigated,

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Money, influence, and wildlife

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

The Nation newspaper, of Bangkok,
Thailand, on December 18 reported that
Pavillon Massage Parlor manager Somchai
Rojjanaburapha contributed $111 of the
$222 price of a 14-month-old sun bear to save
him from sale to a Korean restaurant,
and––though the Thai economy is in freefall
collapse, the massage business with it––forty
masseuses chipped in the rest. The bear was
sent to the Khao Khieow Open Zoo, 50
miles southeast of Bangkok.

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Editorial: A passage to India

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

Faced with a choice between a rare chance for three representatives of ANIMAL
PEOPLE to visit India for the price of one, or a better chance to erase a budget deficit
before year’s end, we prioritized by considering which would be most valuable to our role
as an investigative newspaper.
Though sustaining solvency is self-evidently critical, we found we had no real
choice but to find out what was happening in India. Almost directly opposite to us on the
earth, scarcely anywhere could have proved more relevant or enlightening relative to the
state of humane work and wildlife conservation in North America.
We knew already that India has the oldest recorded humane tradition, is the only
nation which constitutionally recognizes a human obligation to treat animals kindly, has
more than half the world’s vegetarians, has more native mammals and birds than any other,
and is deeply involved in the struggle to protect endangered species.
With due respect to the economic clout of Japan and sheer size of China, we recognized
as well that India may be pivotal in determining the cultural, social, and moral
direction of all Asia. India has accomplished a perhaps unparalleled synthesis of westernstyle
democratic government and technological transition, still underway, with social stability,
lifting a growing percentage of her people out of dire poverty and illiteracy despite
rapid population growth that has only just begun to slow.

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Avian flu panic has Hong Kong bureaucrats choking chickens

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

HONG KONG––The Hong Kong
Directorate of Education on January 6 advised
teachers and principals at more than 2,000
kindergartens, primary schools, and secondary
schools to watch for signs of emotional distress
in children who witnessed the panic-stricken
first-days-of-the-year massacre of more than 1.5
million chickens and other domestic fowl, and
to refer traumatized youngsters to counsellors.
“Try to help them express their feelings
and listen with empathy,” the bulletin said.
Explained senior Hong Kong education
officer Tony Fat-yuen to Shirley Kwok of
the South China Morning Post, “They have
been taught to love animals and birds, but now
the government slaughters all the chickens,
some their pets.”

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Ahimsa won’t be cowed

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:

BOMBAY, JAIPUR, DELHI, JALGAON,
AGRA––We missed the fleeting chance to snap a photo, as
our driver sped through an intersection almost in the shadow of
the Taj Mahal, but won’t forget the sight of a huge Brahma
bull placidly chewing his cud amid the blaring horns of heavy
traffic, dodging around him.
We took the November edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE
to India with us. An article in it described how Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition founder Steve Hindi has repeatedly
captured on video the use of electroshocking devices by rodeo
stock contractors to make Brahma bulls buck.
We expected the revelation of bull abuse in rodeo to
shock our Indian hosts, but we didn’t expect to meet the difficulty
we did in even explaining what rodeo is. The idea that
adults of normal intelligence and sensibility might try to ride a
bull was foreign enough; the idea that others might pay to
watch the effort, over and over, stretched credulity.

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Great apes practice peace under fire

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

YAOUNDE, Cameroon––Seizing an infant
gorilla, hunter Ntsama Ondo returned home to Olamze village
triumphant in mid-October, certain he’d make his fortune
just as soon as he could sell her to international traffickers––apparently
regular visitors to Olamze, situated near the
border of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
Her troop had another idea, the October 22 edition
of the Cameroonian newspaper L’Action reported .
Apparently following his trail, an estimated 60 gorillas
marched into Olamze single file just before midnight, ignoring
gunfire meant to scare them away as they paraded in
silent protest.
When that didn’t get the infant back, the gorillas
returned the next night. This time they battered the doors
and windows of the houses until the Olamze village chief
ordered Ondo to release the infant.
“Immediately the assailants returned to the forest
with shouts of joy, savouring their victory,” L’Action said.

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Orangs in the smoke

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1997:

JAKARTA, Indonesia– – Unidenti-
fied creatures and species long believed extinct
are among the beasts fleeing forest fires that
have ravaged an estimated 4.2 million acres of
Sumatra, Borneo, and Java since mid-July.
Scientific enthusiasm over possible
discoveries and rediscoveries of species is
sobered by the certainty that much and perhaps
all of the rare animals’ habitat may be lost.
“Burning fields and forests is an
annual occurence in Indonesia,” Pat Bell of the
Ottawa Citizen reported on October 8. “But
this year plantations and forestry firms
increased the number of fires in an apparent
attempt to clear as much as they could before
the government was able to enforce a ban,”
which was imposed after fires in 1982-1983 and
1994 destroyed 15.8 million acres of forest.
Environmental law enforcement is
traditionally lax in Indonesia, recently rated the
most corrupt nation among 46 assessed by the
public interest group Transparency International.
In 1994, for instance, after the Forest
Ministry fined two timber firms a combined
total of more than $2 million, and denied
extensions of 43 logging leases, President
Suharto ordered the ministry to make an interest-free
loan of $185 million to the aircraft
maker Industri Pesawat Terbang Negara. The
money was diverted from a reforestation fund.

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REFUGE OR NO-MAN’S LAND?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

BURMA––”About 300 Karen
civilians fled into the Mae Sarieng district” of
Thailand, the Global Response environmental
and human rights electronic mail network
alerted 6,500 members on August 21, “after
Burmese soldiers torched six villages in
Burma’s Doi Kor province,” torturing relatives
and friends of the refugees who were
captured, according to interviews with the
escapees and relief workers published by the
Burma News Network and Bangkok Post.
The refugees, like many other
Karen fleeing the dictatorship of Burma over
the past several years, were interned at a
Thai government camp for displaced persons.
Especially problematic for human
rights advocates was that the incident came in
association with the establishment of the
Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve.

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