Disasters driven by global warming hit animals from India to Alaska

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

DELHI, AHMEDABAD–Six months to the day
after the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated the
Indian east coast, monsoon flash floods on July
26, 2005 roared through Mumbai, western
Maharashtra state, and parts of Karnataka state.
Surging water, mud slides, broken power
lines, and collapsing houses killed more than
1,000 people and countless animals in Mumbai and
surrounding villages.
As after of the December 26, 2004
tsunami and the January 2001 Gujarat earthquake,
Wildlife SOS of Delhi and the Animal Help
Foundation of Ahmedabad were among the first
responders. They worked their way toward Mumbai
while People for Animals/ Mumbai pushed out to
meet them.
“We distributed fodder to poor villagers
to feed their cattle, wherever required, and
fed biscuits to all the stray dogs we found. We
also distributed free medicine to needy farmers,”
PFA/Mumbai managing trustee Dharmesh Solanki
reported.

Transforming Phuket animal conditions post-tsunami

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

PHUKET, Thailand–Urbanization is hitting Phuket much harder
than the tsunami of December 26, 2004.
What that may mean for animals on the 400-square-mile resort
island near the extreme south of Thailand is anyone’s guess.
The Soi Dog Foundation and Gibbon Rehabilitation Project,
among Phuket’s most prominent pro-animal organizations, are
guardedly optimistic.
More development may mean more homes for dogs and cats, and
more donors to support animal charities.
Paradoxically, more development could even mean more
protected wildlife habitat. Tourism employs one Phuket adult in
four. The August-to-November bird migration season drives tourism
from midsummer until the winter holidays. That makes safeguarding
bird habitat, at least, a high priority for planners.
Yet more people might mean more traffic and less tolerance of
street dogs, already considered a nuisance by much of the Buddhist
majority, and mostly abhored by Muslims.

Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust takes over in Sri Lanka

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Colombo, Sri Lanka–The Tsunami People/Animal Welfare
Coalition on July 26, 2005 wrapped up emergency relief operations
begun after the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, rolling all
remaining assets over into the Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust.
Coalition and Trust cofounder Robert Blumberg arranged that
ANIMAL PEOPLE officially sponsored the last of a six-month series of
vaccination missions by Pets V Care mobile clinics into refugee camps
and tsunami-stricken coastal villages.
“ANIMAL People recognized almost immediately after the
tsunami that something of major consequence had taken place regarding
animal welfare,” Blumberg wrote in the last Coalition update.
“Within days after the tsunami hit, Animal People sent financial
assistance to start the Tsunami People/Animal Welfare Coalition.
This allowed us to get on the road, assessing, treating and
vaccinating. So far the Coalition itself has vaccinated more than
14,000 animals in the tsunami zones,” Blumberg said. “Animal People
sponsored our first trips and now our last vaccinating trip, and is
now supporting the Tsunami Memorial Animal Welfare Trust as it
sterilizes and vaccinates in the tsunami zones and refugee camps.”

Fire when ready by Sybil Erden, founder, The Oasis Sanctuary

June 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2005:

Fire when ready by Sybil Erden, founder, The Oasis Sanctuary

The Oasis Sanctuary, in rural southeastern Arizona, cares
for captive exotic birds, mostly parrots. Our eight resident staff
look after more than 400 birds, plus 50 other farmed and domestic
animals.
At 9:50 p.m. on May 25, 2005 I stepped outside and saw a
plume of fire towering over the trees–an orange glow, soundless,
mindless, reaching into the heavens. A foreclosed property
adjacent to our 72 acres was fully ablaze.
I called 911 to get the fire department before doing anything
else, but was told they had already been notified and were on their
way. But being “on their way” is a relative term out here in the
rural Southwest.
The members of the Cascabel volunteer fire department are
individually notified. They have one truck and a water tanker. The
other local fire departments are also volunteer. The closest, in
St. David, is 45 minutes away. The next closest is an hour away.
After calling 911, I called and probably awakened one of our
staff and asked him to call everyone else. Within five minutes
everyone went to work.

Disaster Relief

Post-tsunami anti-rabies drive shifts gears to sterilization

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka–Fear that a rabies panic might fuel a
dog massacre subsided in coastal Sri Lanka as January 2005 rolled
into February, allowing the emergency vaccination drive initiated on
December 31, 2004 by volunteer disaster relief coordinator Robert
Blumberg to roll over into a mobile sterilization campaign.
“Sterilization is becoming a crucial issue, with many
animals coming into heat soon and, especially on the east coast,
crowded into refugee camps,” Blumberg said.
“The vaccination campaign put 12,000 red ‘I’ve been
vaccinated’ collars out into the field to calm any hysteria over
rabies that could have led to mass killings, and allowed us to
observe first-hand the conditions for the animals after the December
26 tsunami,” Blumberg explained. “We are now going back to a number
of those initial areas and doing the saturation vaccinating necessary
to ensure having done the 70-75% required for effective rabies
prevention.
“Animal People was our first sponsor, only days after the
waves struck, making it possible to quickly field initial assessment,
vaccination, and treatment teams,” Blumberg acknowledged. Blumberg
also thanked the Best Friends Animal Society, Noah’s Wish, Marchig
Animal Welfare Trust, and the Association of Veterinarians for
Animal Rights for substantial contributions.

Noah’s Wish disaster training dates

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Just back from helping with post-tsunami animal relief work
in Sri Lanka, Noah’s Wish founder Terri Crisp has announced her 2005
disaster relief training schedule.
Eleven regional three-day workshops will offer interactive
training in animal intake, reclaim, and lost-and-found; shelter
management; emergency management; safety; search and rescue, the
emotional aspects of disaster response; and disaster preparedness.
“Participants will stay on-site the entire three days,”
spokes-person Shari Thompson said, “to give them a realistic
experience of the physical challenges of responding to a disaster.”
Workshop dates and locations include March 4-6 in
Charles-ton, South Carolina; March 18-20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma;
April 1-3 in Nashville, Tennessee; April 22-24 in Columbus, Ohio;
May 6-8 in Boston; May 20-22 in Flagstaff, Arizona; May 27-29 in
Prince George, British Columbia; June 3-5 in Cheyenne, Wyoming;
June 24-26 in Seattle; July 8-10 in Monterey, California; July
22-24 in Edmonton, Alberta; and August in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Contact Noah’s Wish c/o P.O. Box 997, Placerville, CA 95667;
530-622-9313; fax 530-622-9317; <info@noahswish.org>;
<www.noahswish.org>.

Barn & kennel fire deaths are preventable

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

Catastrophic fires at the end of January and beginning of
Febuary 2005 illustrated yet again the importance of avoiding fire
hazards at animal facilities and developing contingency plans that
allow for fast smoke-venting and/or animal evacuation.
Three fires erupted on January 24.
The first was discovered at 2:45 a.m. at the Shepherd’s Way
Farm near Nerstand, Minnesota, the largest producer of sheep’s milk
in the U.S., founded by Stephen Read and family in 1994. Of the
flock of 800, about 113 ewes and 228 lambs were killed outright.
University of Minnesota veterinary students and volunteer faculty
later euthanized another 80-plus, chiefly due to lung damage from
smoke inhalation.
Believed to have been an arson, the fire came four days
after someone torched a stack of 30 round hay bales in a roadside
pasture. There were no immediate suspects.
Smoke inhalation is the chief cause of death of both humans
and animals in fires, but is somewhat more preventable in barns than
in houses, if hay is stored away from the animals, if large doors
can be opened on all sides, and if the large exhaust fans often used
to vent manure fumes remain operable after a fire begins. Relatively
few barns meet these requirements.

Trying to aid tsunami victims in Myanmar

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2005:

TAMPA, Fla.–Florida humane worker Carol Childs may have
been the only outside animal rescuer to reach Myanmar after the
December 26, 2005 tsnami.
Better known to the world as Burma, and still called Burma
by most of the residents, according to Childs, Myanmar has been an
isolationist military dictatorship since 1962. News media are
strictly censored. Few visitors are admitted. The
security-conscious Myanmar regime at first denied having any tsunami
casualties, and refused outside aid, but rumors leaked out of at
least 90 deaths.
Childs, planning an intensive Southeast Asian excursion that
also took in parts of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in
late 2004 managed to secure a tourist visa to go to Myanmar. A
veteran of Florida disaster relief efforts, including the aftermath
of Hurricane Andrew and four hurricanes in six weeks during the
summer of 2004, Childs realized that her skills might be needed.
She landed in Thailand on January 11 with suitcases of veterinary
supplies, but was unable to connect by telephone with any of the
Thai animal disaster relief organizations. Not a computer user, she
did not try via the Internet.

Bear rescue season follows tsunami

March 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

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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